Baz v Shenton feud

There has been growing disquiet for a good while now by people like Shenton and Carl Woodward (and many others) about two things: the tone of Daily Mail 'reportage' and commment (covered extensively in a different thread) and the perception that theatre PRs hand Baz exclusives on a plate on a weekly basis to the detriment of other showbiz journos. The two issues merged recently after Richard Littlejohn wrote a column on Tom Daley. A petition was launched to ask theatre PRs not to give the Mail preferential treatment. Baz in a tweet described London as 'toxic' recently and is obviously pretty miffed by the tone of the comments made about his work.

The specifics of the tweet above were that for some reason, very unusually, Shenton only seems to have heard about the Height of the Storm a day or two ago and tweeted some remark along the lines of 'we'll have to wait for Baz to tell us what this play is' only to discover that Baz had in fact broken the story and announced the show back on 8th Feb. And I think Shenton said that there was still no official PR release.

Actually I did notice a new post in the Height Of The Storm thread the other day where someone added that Jonathan Pryce and Eileen Atkins would be in it, which I thought was unusual because that information had been available in the thread since the very first post. Now I'm wondering if that person also missed the original announcement and took these tweets as the breaking news that Shenton clearly thought it was (and possibly even started a new thread that was unceremoniously merged into the existing one).

I spotted this tweet a couple of weeks ago. Not sure it has any relevance here but I’ll post it anyway...

Baz has the middle class readers who go to the theatre, Baz has the contacts - other people are clearly jealous of what he does and the exclusives he gets.

But Baz will have no impact at all on the editorial stance of the Mail so I'm fine with reading him. Shenton, is he actually still on the go? Well at least I've learnt one impossible thing before breakfast.

I'm team Baz because I'm tired of seeing Shenton wearing the same lumberjack shirt every time I go to the theatre

And that, quite frankly, is a good enough reason to do so.

Myself, I am on the fence. I might have sided with Baz if he had kept the photo of himself on his Twitter account as the one of him looking like a 70s Agony Aunt but now that he just has lots of photos of Nicole Kidman I'm not so sure.

Yeah, Shenton's a terrible hypocrite - tweeting about how terrible it is that women's bodies are described/objectified in reviews one minute and then complaining about a man having shaved his chest (and the actor actually replied to his tweet to say he hadn't, actually!) a couple of days later. That's when I unfollowed him in disgust.

I do wish Baz would stop leaving pinned tweets at the top of his feed for months on end. But compared to the rank hypocrisy (and lumberjack shirt) of Shenton, that is a small price to pay.

This is not to say that Baz is without flaw - I certainly don't give his critical opinion any weight and he does work for the Daily Hate Mail!

Don’t think I could wish “good luck” to someone being paid by the Daily Mail. I’d rather wish good luck to those whose lives are affected by the hate the Daily Mail spews. Don’t really care if you’re writing the vile opinions the “paper” expresses, or just writing the horoscope in it, you’re still working for them.

Comms people in every single sector there is give exclusives to certain journos if it's a useful thing to do - it's practically Stalinist to suggest they shouldn't be allowed to do so!

Also Shenton is quite irritating.

I hope this post conforms to 'how we talk on the board' rules.

Listen - let me be clear I don’t support the bigoted and racist Daily Mail, I dont buy it, have read it and at times it does exceptional reporting, their opinions let it down - but I have it in me to divorce Baz from that toxic paper and understand why he reports for them.

Seeing the tribute Baz paid in today’s paper to Ruthie Ann Miles who was due to star in The King and I at the Palladium, but has been in a horrific road traffic accident in Manhattan, where Ruthie was seriously injured and tragically lost her daughter, it is a reminder why I like Baz. As I say his views are often at odds with the paper who employs him.

They like Baz and think he's a hard worker and support him but are simultaneously campaigning to make it impossible for him to his job (by having all theatre PRs boycott him) - it makes no sense.