Mensch & Murdoch turn Bataclan into terrorporn

When terrible things happen to people, it's not unusual for the authorities to withhold some of the worst details. It's done out of respect for the dead, and out of concern for their families.

So it was with the slaughter in the Bataclan - the public was told of the murder; the bestial nature of what happened inside the venue was alluded to. But the fine detail - the horrific fine detail - wasn't made public.

There was no need - if you felt you required something more than 'people murdered because they were at a gig' before you felt it was unacceptable, before you were horrified, you might have a problem yourself.

At this point, enter Heat St. You probably haven't heard of Heat St - it's Rupert Murdoch's version of the Drudge Report, with Louise Mensch as the drudge.

You might wonder why, with a media empire stretching from the Wall Street Journal in the first circle down to The Sun and Fox News in the seventh needs a tattle-based website. It looks like the main motivation is a way to get "things" "out there" without tarnishing his mainstream brands.

And, yeah, if it's something that could tarnish a brand like the New York Post, you can imagine the sort of content they're publishing.

Hence, it was the natural home for an "exclusive" detailing what happened to people inside the Bataclan. Doubtless, Mensch and Murdoch would defend the publication in some vague 'it is important to know what we are dealing with'.

And it is.

But who didn't already know? Why hadn't already imagined the detail? Where is the audience going 'when I thought it was just shooting the people sitting in the area reserved for the disabled and laughing, I was going to cut ISIS some slack but this feels like they went too far?'

There's nobody who needs this terrorporn.

It's funny that the sort of people who wail 'you're playing into their hands' when the BBC forget to add "so-called" in front of "Islamic State" are quite happy to re-up ISIS propaganda and to burnish their reputation when it might get a few extra clicks for a website.

There are monsters everywhere. Why would you work with them?