What’s wrong with Private Eye? (Part two)
As we said earlier, what's wrong with Private Eye is that it’s too much like the thing it affects to despise.
Private Eye has – if not a split personality – two sides that are always liableto fall apart,and collide. On oneside – as its Wikipedia page shows – it is bound to tell (or, at least, to have pretensions to telling) the truth about the world. This side of its business is criticism, satire, under-reported scandals, cover-ups, the misdeeds of the powerful, the hypocritical behaviour of newspapers, corruption and self-interest, the unethical at large. Seen in this light, its editor is what, in Heart of Darkness, Marlow's aunt seems to think her nephew: "Something like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort of apostle."
But the other side of Private Eye's business is, as it might say itself...er... business; and, if it seems to have an idea of itself as exceptionally high-principled and disinterested, we might – like Marlow to his aunt – "venture to hint that the Company is run for profit". It's been going for sixty years. It sells five to six million copies a year and has numerous sidelines and spin-offs. Wikipedia says it is "Britain's best selling current affairs magazine", "privately owned" and "highly profitable". It doesn't say it is as powerfulas it is rich but doesn't need to. That's clear from the list of people known to be connected with it and also from that other list of people it hasn't been afraid to insult. And if there were only a list of its contributors to be seen anywhere, the extent and power of its influence would be clearer still.
So why would it refuse to take a small-ad saying "For what's wrong with Private Eye see Bournbrook"? Isn't it puzzling that such a magazine – so big, so influential, so profitable and, apparently, so dedicated to criticism – should behave as if it feared the criticism of a magazine as humble as Bournbrook? You'd think that either shame or pride would oblige its editor and owners to take our money. Or, if neither of those, then that famous sense of humour they are reputed to have. You'd think they'd think it a good joke, one after their own hearts, something to adopt enthusiastically, in one of those famous "anonymous and collaborative" joke sessions (which only two outsiders have ever been found fit to join – Christopher Booker, The Spectator, eleven yearsago).
But it won't have refused the ad because of any damage it might do. (What damage could we do?) It won't have refused for any reason at all but automatically, because that's what successful brands do. They protect themselves. Put to the test, Private Eye – more than anything else – is a brand and behaves like a brand. And if, in doing so, it sacrifices that other side of itself... so what? That can't be helped. It's a brand... stupid.
But, of course, in behaving like any other brand, it behaves exactly like one of its own butts, whose self-interestedness it mocks so enthusiastically. Issue 1558, for instance, had a cartoon showing Facebook executives ordering the removal of 'harmful content' which said "Facebook are evil b******s". Now, just fancy, mocks Private Eye: Facebook doesn't want any harm done… to itself. And just fancy: the magazine that specialises in criticism discourages criticism… of itself. Private Eye mocks Facebook for being self-interested and refuses a small-ad… from self-interest. The newspaper noted for mocking the hypocritical behaviour of other newspapers… behaves hypocritically. As we said earlier, what's wrong with Private Eye is that it’s too much like the thing it affects to despise.
(Weshould like to have reprinted their ad and mimicked it with one of our own but were afraid they might set Carter-Ruck on us.)
