Heather Mills McCartney was talk of the town yesterday following a live interview on GMTV in which she waged war on the media announcing that she would seek European legislation to compel newspapers to apologise for untruthful stories. During the interview, she compared herself to Princess Diana and Kate McCann and claimed that her treatment in the press has been worse than that of a paedophile.
A cry for help, or a calculated media campaign in a scrupulous quest for publicity and ultimately a higher divorce settlement?
Speaking to the Scotsman today Roy Greenslade, former journalist and media writer, is unsympathetic. He said: “I don’t think we should take it seriously. She has a long history of emotional outbursts which are lacking in logic and common sense. She seeks publicity at certain times, and this is another example.”
Others were a little more relenting. Charles Fletcher, chairman of MediaWise, a charity promoting responsible journalism, said after viewing the interview: “It should have been stopped. Clearly, she’s distraught. That was somebody losing it on air. She came across as seriously unwell.”
So where did it all go wrong for Heather? Lets take a look at.
• The biggest mistake was her prop of “18 months of abuse, 4,400 abusive articles”. Her key message was clear – to illustrate her quite valid argument against the “vicious” media – but the prop achieved the opposite, making her look like a media obsessed estranged wife of a rock star rather than the victim she wanted to portray herself as.
• No one could argue that her key messages were unclear, nor inconsistent, the problem however was in her delivery. As she ranted on, often speaking over sympathetic interviewer Fiona Philips, her performance became just that – a performance: animated, eccentric and often disturbing (in particular as she raged on about a “box of evidence that’s going to a certain person should anything happen to me, so if you top me off, it’s still going to that person, and the truth will come out.)
• Comparing herself to Princes Diana and Kate McCann was also not advisable. Just as her prop served to draw attention to her obsession with the media, this comparison only served to highlight her obsession with her own status – the fact that she held her suffering to be at the same proportion as a national icon who lost her life and that of a mother who lost her child.
• Heather’s final mistake was doing too much too soon. Her campaign did not stop at GMTV studios. She continued to rant on BBC radio and to anyone else who would listen.
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