FROM A.R SELICKER, LONDON

THE CIVIL LIST, which pays members of Britain’s Royal Family and sundry hangers on millions of pounds from public funds, is now rumored to have a major newspaper on its payroll.

The Daily Mail, whose almost continuous coverage of the Royals in a golden heavenly light has caused some people to spontaneously fit, is believed by many to be in receipt of significant public funds for its endlessly sycophantic prose and preposterously positive photographs of the German family that currently sits on the British throne.

“This used to be the stuff of Hello Magazine,” says media consultant Kane Foster Charles, a former London tabloid editor fired for refusing to hack celebrity phones. “And you accepted Hello‘s content because it made no attempt to hide what it did. But somewhere along the way, the Daily Mail which had always done its fair share of periodic royal arse-tonguing, muscled in on the all-out lick big time without revealing what it was doing. You know, the ludicrously soft focus photographs, the oily fawning paragraphs, the puke-inducing crawling. So now people in the industry, and further afield, are legitimately asking whether there’s more to this than a ruthless desire for circulation and internet clicks. Maybe the newspaper is actually being paid for its obsequiousness. And if it’s from the Civil List, then the Great British Public, whose money it is, has a right to know. The basic argument is that no one with any sense of self respect would behave like that without being paid. But perhaps that’s it.

“I mean the kind of stuff published in the Daily Mail would put Leni Riefenstahl to shame. Even the BBC, at its most pompous National-Broadcasteresque, finds it difficult to compete. Journalists who have tried to emulate the Daily Mail have had their hearts stop. It’s the type of journalism -if that’s even remotely the word to use – that brings on strokes. Frankly, it’s dangerous to anyone with a brain and a conscience. And yes, I realize that the Daily Mail and those words don’t sit naturally in the same sentence. Still, young reporters cannot be exposed to this silage without being told that it is really mere sponsored material. What we used to call advertorial in the old days, before most of what is published became some kind of advertisement for something or other. Genuine news is a rarity. And getting rarer.”