Extra! Extra! Tabloid justice!: The news panic about a celebrity spy©

Extra! Extra! Tabloid justice!: The news panic about a celebrity spy©

Sensational anti-spy reporting has been a popular theme of tabloid journalism since the development of compact newspapers. News expressions of outrage have focused on scandals about so-called traitors. This paper explores the tabloid justice coverage of an event involving British accused spy and self-proclaimed journalist, Adela Pankhurst, and John Curtin, a hard-hitting, labour-oriented reporter who became Australia’s Prime Minister during World War II. The daughter of pioneering feminist Emmeline Pankhurst, Adela Pankhurst had been a celebrity labour ally, joining Australia’s anti-conscription protests in World War I. However, a press-inspired panic engulfed Adela Pankhurst and a circle of fascist sympathisers at the onset of another global war. By then, she had changed her political affiliation and produced a short-lived newspaper that was dubbed “Axis propaganda” in the popular press. Government investigators charged that she had become a pro-Nazi spy who had passed on war secrets to foreign agents. She was imprisoned for several months during the war. This study draws on the concept of moral panic that can involve stylised and stereotyped media representations about an individual threat. The paper counters traditional views that the wartime media cooperated in unison to generate an anti-spy panic. This study has discovered that the initial press panic about Pankhurst generated both news supporters and critics. News groups also showed Curtin’s desire to distance his prime ministership from an anti-spy panic. As this paper argues, there is a need to consider the varied voices within journalism that have helped to calm a moral panic and provide different views beyond the media identity of a celebrity traitor.©

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