This story begins in mid-February when a national broadsheet newspaper ran an article disclosing that Chris Morris's Brass Eye series would contain a sketch where Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, was seen in a musical production of his own life. Close to the end of the piece there is a one-sentence defence from Channel 4 which mentions that this sketch is part of a programme called Moral Decline, and that it illustrates how society is obsessed with killers, and how the sketch is intended as a spoof in the tradition of black humour. But by then it's too late. By then it has been condemned as "sick and tasteless". An MP has condemned it. A member of a TV pressure group has done the same. It's official: it's sick.

Any media journalist will tell you that all you need for a good TV outrage story is a quote from an MP and a quote from a member of a pressure group. It happens all the time. The MP legitimises it and the spokesperson lends it the credibility

Defending a sketch about the Yorkshire Ripper is an improbable task. They had to place it in context, even if no one else could be bothered to. The Morris team had pointed out that the whole of that week's programme would lampoon the media's ever-enlarged appetite for verite TV, where the principal ingredient is the vicarious pleasure offered by doorstepping tragedy, whether it's on the back of paramedics of police cars. They would point to the huge stash of books, films and TV programmes routinely made about murders. And who can properly say that a TV documentary about this or that notorious killer is not, at least in part, an exercise in entertainment?

Here was the mother of all TV outrage stories. The Mail piled in: "fast becoming the most loathed man in television" "what drives him to such outrageous and vicious extremes?". They were particularly agitated by the part of the programme that dupes various celebrities into making nonsense statements about some hoax event. For instance when David Amess, MP, was caught condemning the non-existent drug "cake", or when Nick Owen was seen lamenting the tragic consequences of "heavy electricity" which was "falling from the skies" and had reduced one 14-year-old girl victim to just 18 inches in height. He even measured the distance with his two hand. They were hoaxes. They were hilarious.

The Morris programme might lay the blame for that article at society's lust for hysteria and moral panic. But above all the programme was "an anti-hysteria show" says one person close to it: "It was about placing doubt. Doubt about what you see in the media. Doubt about what people say". And though we assume that the Mail's turbo-charged moral outrages are conducted with the utmost integrity, this journalist has, since that conversation, always gone armed with a large bottle of doubt when invited in to the high-pitched moral frenzy that characterises TV outrage stories.

Which brings us back to the Mail. Eventually it ran a story about how the Metropolitan Police were monitoring the show. The Morris team knew nothing about this, but the Mail wrote that "The Metropolitan Police's Clubs and vice unit confirmed it had received a complaint and would be monitoring the programme." The police evidently were not too exercised by this since they hadn't bothered to inform anyone in the Morris team but, nevertheless, monitoring they were.

Which brings us, briefly, to the Chris Morris series. It was about raising doubt; questioning whether what you see and read in the media is real and truthful. It parodied the media's obsession with hysteria and panics. It proved how easy it is to get people to talk. It invited us to doubt whether the usual parade of spokespersons the media call on actually know what they are talking about. In some cases it was painfully obvious they didn't. And the newspaper story proves Morris's point very well - the fact that no on outside of the Morris team and senior executives at C4 could have seen the Sutcliffe sketch (much less in the context of the finished programme) was never likely to get in the way of a little moral panic and a class A TV outrage story.

This is common practice. One newspaper routinely calls on the same three of four MPs to add fibre to its screaming headlines. The MPs oblige, as does a member of a pressure group. It's a convenient recipe; you can't go wrong. You may even get a splash - a front page story. One journalist who diligently follows the recipe and who will admit privately that it's a sham says, "The people who work for this paper and cunts and the people who read this paper are cunts. So you just do it." That's all right then.

This is common practice. One newspaper routinely calls on the same three of four MPs to add fibre to its screaming headlines. The MPs oblige, as does a member of a pressure group. It's a convenient recipe; you can't go wrong. You may even get a splash - a front page story. One journalist who diligently follows the

Some common words found in the essay are:
Youth Media, Chris Morris, Police's Clubs, East Soho, Yorkshire Ripper, Moral Decline, Peter Sutcliffe, Maybe Guardian, Daily Mail, Nick Owen, tv outrage, morris team, sutcliffe sketch, moral panic, tv outrage story, tv outrage stories, outrage stories, outrage story, fake concern, yorkshire ripper, mail journalist, defence programme, injecting filth hearts, filth hearts minds, films injecting filth,
Approximate Word count = 4559
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page double spaced)