Tabloid

In 1977 a Mormon missionary was kidnapped in England and, it was alleged, chained up and held. The accused was Joyce McKinney, a former beauty pageant contestant, and the case ran in the British tabloids for months. The film tells the story through McKinney and the journalists of the time. It is not interested in what actually happened. It is interested in the same events being turned into two entirely different stories by two newspapers: one sold her as an innocent lover, the other as the centre of a sex scandal. Both sold. The form is Morris's familiar arrangement: interviews looking straight into the lens, headlines cut in, archive. There is no narrator; everyone defends their own version and the audience is left to choose who is telling the truth. The film's sequel took place in court. McKinney sued Morris in 2011, claiming she had been told the documentary was about the paparazzi and that the film portrayed her as crazy, a sex offender and a prostitute. The appeals court found for Morris, noting that the film's real subject was tabloid journalism rather than her persona. Who it is for: viewers who like true crime documentary and media criticism. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a verdict. The film does not decide who is telling the truth, and that is deliberate.