Question One

Question One

For my area of critical research I have chosen to look at crime in the media. Hugely tabloids and Internet access will form the basis for my research. In this topic I have chosen to take a close look into the lifestyle and fans of Pete Doherty, lead singer and guitarist of both “The Babyshamble’s” and “The Libertines”. I am asking the question of Are Pete Doherty’s criminal actions a reason for his popularity with his fans, personally I don’t believe this should be true but I want to find out and gain a better understanding of people views of one of my hero’s.

To start the project I thought I would type in my question in to google and see what I would find, and straight away I found my self in a blog debating a similar question to mine. The blog I found was on a site called digital spy. This really helped with my research as people where debating there opinions on exactly what I need to hear.

On you tube I found an interview with Pete Doherty on the Jonathan Ross show. Jonathan Ross is a Doherty fan. Jonathan questions Pete about drugs, his life and lifestyle and his career. I found this really in depth and a huge help to my research.

I searched google for blog’s and forums on Pete Doherty, and I found an official Pete Doherty forum on this site www.petedohertyforum.com. I registered and posted a thread around my question, but didn’t get back any decent replies or any substantial evidence backing up or going against my question.

On the Guardian website they have their article history, I search through it for Pete Doherty articles and found really interesting evidence. In particular an article written by Patrick Barkham on sat 27 august 2005. In this article I learnt about some more criminal actions of Pete and I learnt deeper about his lifestyle and his habits, I didn’t like this article though because it was starting to make him seem like a bad guy and slightly altered my perception of Pete.

My two interviews were also a huge help; I asked a series of 4 in depth question to two different people, a male who was a Pete Doherty Fan and female who wasn’t. I found the fan was a lot more intrigue with the topic and definitely backed up my view that his criminal actions do raise his interest in fans. However the non-fan really believed the persona of him made by the media to be accurate. If any thing ive found his criminal actions have put people of listening to music, rather than gaining him popularity.

My primary and secondary research slightly altered my perception of Pete, however I still feel his is miss understood. Yes he is a drug abuser, and yes he is a bit of idiot the majority of the time but these perceptions should not effect people being a fan, his musical talent is admirable he really is a hero in his trade and people should not pass a judgement on him with out first given his music a listen, don’t judge a book by its cover.