Links

As it's silly season, the Sun has been running far too many stories about an abseiling donkey. The paper claimed to have saved the animal by buying it from its owner. But MediaGuardian reports that the owner says the Sun bought the wrong donkey.

Could it be a re-run of the Sun's ludicrous Newquay shark hoax from 2007?

Meanwhile, the influence of the tabloids has been shown by several instances where stories have been repeated by people in positions of power. So:

• a government minister repeats the 'Winterval' myth;
  
• a government white paper repeats a 'PC gone mad' half-truth about a 92-page police manual on riding a bike;
• a government spokeswoman refers to housing benefit policy being based on stories from the Sun and Mail.

Following on from the Mail's misleading article about a path on Snowdon, Minority Thought looks at changes to some stepping stones in Derbyshire that the Mail calls an 'elf'n'safety step too far'.

Also from Minority Thought, posts about hymen repair operations and Richard Littlejohn complaining about swine flu scaremongering, conveniently forgetting the coverage in the paper he works for.

Exclarotive has looked at Littlejohn's claim about something being banned because of human rights - and finds there's no such ban.

And Jonathan looks at some of Littlejohn's word games, and also shows how the Mail changed a misleading, reader-baiting, headline about immigration, benefits and jobs.

Angry Mob shows that the Mail thinks that tombstoning is 'madness' and 'dangerous' unless the person doing it is a plucky 75-year-old ex-Army Major.

Blogger Fagburn wonders if pop singer Joe McElderry had come out in 'exclusive' interviews for the Sun and, er, Mirror because a kiss-and-tell story was about to out him anyway.

Finally, the News of the World have paid out damages to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie over claims they were divorcing.