How 'Heat' went from froth to filth - and who we should blame

HEATMAGAZINE used to be pretty smart. In anticipating the appeal of reality-TV characters – their on-screen appeal and postshow life – it was a cheeky subversion of the celebrity order. It understood the appeal of daytime-TV hosts and the addictive silliness of soap plots, understanding not just how ridiculous modern celebrity is but also how much it matters to readers. It found that balance with humour and vibrancy. It was the trash mag it was okay to like.

Now? It’s just a trash mag. Its covers, once featuring beaming C-listers enjoying their month in the sun, are given over to a triptych of papped shots of celebrities on the beach alongside some comment about their weight. At present, it’s of the “we don’t care about our size” variety, in a magazine that grew a reputation for circling blemishes and bits of cellulite on other celebrity pics. Recently it ran a cover story, “We’ve got booze bellies and we don’t care”, that included recovering addict Lindsay Lohan. Where once it revelled in froth, now it crawls through the dirt.

Even in its good years, before severe drops in sales forced it into aping magazines that once aped Heat, it had a soft spot for a bit of visual gossip. Its Spotted section rewarded readers for their cameraphone shots of celebrities on the street, at lunch, wherever. It offers £200 a pop. This issue shows the actor Ben Affleck in a cafe with his young son. Presumably, the attitude is that Affleck's in the movies, in the public eye, and the frame of a window is no different from the frame of a cinema screen. His son is to be considered no more than an appealing extra.

Actually, the attitude is one of pride, as the Leveson inquiry into Britain's press ethics showed this week. Heat's editor, Lucie Cave, justified the publication of "unposed" pictures, because they would probably end up on Twitter or Facebook anyway.

This revealed where the true competition now lies for celebrity magazines, but also the subsequent lack of perspective. Much of the traditional media has spent recent years trying to figure out how online conversation is redrawing its boundaries. For Heat, it seems to be as far as a cameraphone will zoom.

Cave was at the inquiry alongside the editors of OK!and Hello!magazines, and it turned into an entertaining audit of the tricks of the gossip magazines. OK!came in for particular stick for misleading covers, such as an issue splashing on Kate Middleton's birthday, alongside the line "My husband is my soulmate", which related to a different story. Hello!'s editor was asked about its 2001 "exclusive" JK Rowling interview that was in fact a Q&A with schoolkids done for charity.

In 2008 OK!had run a cover story on Wayne and Coleen Rooney's wedding that led instead to an ad for coverage in the next issue. (That issue was the subject of one of several Press Complaints Commission rulings in a single month against misleading magazine covers.) On Wednesday the editors were a little bashful about their previous errors, but they defended their approaches against accusations of misleading the reader – as is their prerogative. They claimed, not without truth, that many of their stories are put together with the quiet co-operation of the celebrities they feature.

Yet, look at those magazines and you’ll find cover lines promising an “only interview” that might be taken from the playback of a celebrity’s radio-station chat. There will be quotes (“We’re having a baby”) based on the vague aspirations of celebs (“We’d like to have a baby sometime in the years to come”) or quotes from unnamed “friends” that are paraphrased for a striking cover line.

And throughout is a shameful and damaging attitude to body image – unrealistic, ill-judged, hypocritical, insincere or a mixture of all of these – that is depressing. How do you bring up a girl when the world is wallpapered with such magazines; when they are the reading material in every medical and dental surgery, every spa, every beauty salon?

The Leveson inquiry is interested in how such magazines feed tabloid magazines, and how the likes of Closeralso used private detectives to truffle for stories. But for all the outrage about the tactics, that lust has hardly cooled. Heatstill runs Spotted. Magazines still fight for the most daring cover lines. And they still sell. The top 10 magazines in the UK are riddled with such titles. New!leads with 500,000 sales a week (sample story: "Papped! Which actress is having a hard time hiding from the cameras?").

The public appetite for such magazines is self-destructive. Leveson may put manners on the tactics, but it will not dampen the desire for them. Someone needs to circle the blemish on our brains that needs them so much.

shegarty@irishtimes.com

Twitter: @shanehegarty