Tabloid Watch

Recommended: A year of headlines

2012-01-23T20:15:00.001Z

On 31 December 2011, Ned Morrell listed every front page headline published by the Daily Express in 2011.

Inspired by that effort, Scott Bryan has now done the same for the Daily Star.

The Express, the EU and plastic bags (cont.)

2012-01-19T00:53:00.001Z

In May 2011, an Express front page headline claimed the EU had said 'ban shopping bags':

The sub-head clarified that this was plastic bags, not all shopping bags. But either way the EU hadn't actually 'said' this. They had, however, launched a public consultation 'asking the public how best to reduce the use of plastic carrier bags.'

The front page of today's Express carries a similar headline, albeit not as the main story:

'Daft EU want all plastic shopping bags made illegal'.

The article, by Dana Gloger, begins:

Plastic bags could be banned in Britain and across Europe in a move by the EU to cut pollution.

Ah: 'could'. How strange they didn't include that caveat in the front page headline.

According to European Voice, there were 15,500 responses to the two-month public consultation (500 from 'public authorities, industry associations, NGOs and academic organisations', the rest from citizens) and 70% of these favoured a ban on plastic bags.

So does the EU want all plastic bags to be 'made illegal', reflecting the results of its consultation? Well, it hasn't said - as the Express' article admits mid-way through when it quotes the EU's environment spokeswoman Monica Westeren saying:

“We are still discussing it internally and seeing what our next steps will be.”

The European Voice article echoes this:

A Commission official said the consultation will feed into an impact assessment planned for this year. But no decision has been taken on the way forward, and no new action is likely to be proposed in the forthcoming green paper.

So it appears that, not for the first time, the Express has, in a front page headline, attributed a point of view to the EU which it hasn't expressed, simply because it fits the paper's agenda to do so.

Yet it was only last week that editor Hugh Whittow told the Leveson Inquiry:

we don't twist anything. We just present the news of the day.

Drake/Leon Best

2012-01-18T18:35:00.000Z

In an article in the 'sport' section of MailOnline, a headline claims:

Rik Sharma reports:

not many people will have harboured the desire to appear identical to Newcastle United footballer Leon Best.

Nothing against Best of course, but let's be honest, he's not what you would call a household name - although if he continues to score goals like his winner against QPR on Saturday, maybe that will change.

But this girl not only wants to look like Best, her 'favourite soccer player eva', but she'll show you how to as well. Just in case, you know, you ever wanted to.

Using a variety of cosmetics like hair lotion, eyeshadow and eyeliner, she talks you through her creepy transformation from a regular looking girl through to a carbon copy of the striker.

'Add a silver necklace if you wish,' she says. 'And then the transformation is complete.'

The Mail has embedded the video from YouTube at the end. What it hasn't done, however, is read any of the comments under it (or, it seems, any of the comments under its own article). The vast majority are pointing out this isn't really about Leon Best at all. This version of the video is a spoof.

The 'girl' in question is Promise Phan, who has posted lots of videos on YouTube of her using make-up to make herself look like other people - Angelina Jolie, Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian among them.

Leon Best would certainly seem an unlikely addition to that list. Indeed, what Promise Phan was actually doing was transforming into a rapper called Drake.

Sharma would also have known this if he had read an article (about the 'real' video) which appeared only six days before on...MailOnline:

If Sharma hadn't read the Mail, it is possible he had read Mirror Football's 3pm Extra, which highlighted the video an hour or so before his article was published. It appears the Mirror hadn't realised it was a joke, either.

There is now a link to a second clip embedded in the video, in which someone pretending to be Best speaks to someone pretending to be a journalist about the coverage:

All because you couldn't spare some common sense to do a background check on where this video had come from.

MailOnline clarifies story on Dale Farm lawyers

2012-01-18T17:46:00.000Z

In November, an article published by the MailOnline carried the headline:

Dale Farm lawyers scoop MASSIVE £6m of taxpayers' money to fund gypsies' legal battle

Last week, the PCC announced that following a complaint from Dr Keith Lomax of law firm Davies Gore Lomax, the Mail had added the following correction to the article:

A previous version of this article said that lawyers for the Dale Farm Travellers had "scooped" £6million of taxpayers' money to fund the Travellers' legal battle and that Davies Gore Lomax "pocketed more than £1.1 million in legal aid in 2008", and "then received a further £1.1 million last year". We also reported that Dr Lomax, the founding partner of the law firm, had stated that the work the firm did for Gypsies only made up a tiny "fraction" of their lucrative business.

We are happy to clarify that the £6million referred to was for the entirety of the firm's legal aid costs from 2006 until October 2011 including court fees, expenses, and VAT. The work the firm did for the Dale Farm Travellers was only a fraction of the firm's legal aid funded work. Dr Lomax did not say that the firm's work was a lucrative business. We regret any distress caused by the original story.

It has also changed the headline, which now reads: 'Revealed: How lawyers acting for Dale Farm gypsies have scooped £6m of taxpayers' money in the last five years'.

What's wrong with this picture?

2012-01-17T22:22:00.001Z

An apology from the Daily Mail, published today:

A picture published on January 4 which was captioned as showing convicted murderer David Norris at Deansfield Primary School in fact showed another young boy of the same name. While the picture was published in good faith, neither the individuals pictured nor the school had any connection with the events reported and we apologise for any distress caused.

An apology from the Daily Mirror (spotted by Regret the Error on 16 January):

On Friday 30 December 2011, as part of an article concerning a drugs test investigation at Hull FC, we published a picture of a man we said was Ben Cooper who has been suspended for his role in the affair.

In fact the picture was of Stuart Donlan, the assistant coach of Castleford Tigers, who has never been involved in any way with any drugs testing incident. The photo was supplied by an agency. We offer Stuart Donlan, his family and friends our sincere apologies.

Richard Desmond and the McCanns

2012-01-14T18:17:00.000Z

At the Leveson Inquiry on Thursday, there were intriguing exchanges about the McCanns between a clearly unimpressed Robert Jay QC and Richard Desmond, owner of the Daily Express and Daily Star. Desmond coughed up £550,000 in damages for a relentless barrage of defamatory articles and all his papers published front page apologies which read:

The Daily and Sunday Express have taken the unprecedented step of making a front-page apology to Kate and Gerry McCann.

We did so because we accept that a number of articles in the newspaper have suggested that the couple caused the death of their missing daughter Madeleine and then covered it up.

We acknowledge that there is no evidence whatsoever to support this theory and that Kate and Gerry are completely innocent of any involvement in their daughter's disappearance.

We trust that the suspicion that has clouded their lives for many months will soon be lifted.

As an expression of its regret, the Daily Express has now paid a very substantial sum into the Madeleine Fund and we promise to do all in our power to help efforts to find her.

Kate and Gerry, we are truly sorry to have added to your distress.

We assure you that we hope Madeleine will one day be found alive and well and will be restored to her loving family.

Here's how some of the exchanges went at the Inquiry:

Q. But isn't it fair to say, Mr Desmond, that if you look at the hard facts, I think the McCann litigation involved 38 defamatory articles. It is right, and Mr Ashford has drawn to our attention that there are other newspapers who also perpetrated defamations, but not to the same extent as your papers.

A. Is that -- I'm not sure that's right. I'm not sure that's right at all.

Q. If it's wrong, Mr Sherborne here, who -- the McCanns are his client -- will demonstrate that in due course, but it's certainly my understanding that we're talking about 38 defamatory articles over a four-month period and that your paper was guilty, if I can put it in those terms, of the most egregious and serious defamations, and other papers were guilty of defamations of perhaps less severity in terms of quantity. Do you accept that?

A. Once again, I don't wish to minimise it, right? But four months is -- let me see now, it's 12 weeks?

Q. It's 17 weeks, on my reckoning.

A. 17 weeks, thank you. 17 weeks times 6 -- you have to help me again.

Q. 102, is it, Mr Desmond? I don't know. You're the businessman.

A. Well, I don't know. 102, very good. Is 102.

Q. Yes.

A. And there were 37 --

Q. 38.

A. I'm not trying to win points here, because we did do wrong, but I could say there were more, if there were 102 articles on the McCanns, there were 38 bad ones, then one would say -- and I'm not trying to justify, please, I'm not trying to justify anything, but you could argue there were 65 or 70 good ones.

In other words: yes, we may have accused the McCanns of 'selling their daughter for money and hiding her body in a freezer', but hey, some of our other articles were 'good'.

Yes, you 'could argue' that, although it's hard to see why you'd want to.

Moreover, just because the stories weren't defamatory doesn't make them 'good'.

Desmond continued later:

A. At the end of the day, the McCanns, you know, as I understood it, although I've never met them, were perfectly -- if we ran it for four months, you know, it took them a long time to get involved in a legal dispute with us. They were quite happy, as I understand, in articles being run about their poor daughter, because it kept it on the front page. I think it was only when new lawyers came along, who I think were working on a contingency, that the legal --

Q. I can't --

A. Well, that's the facts. I'm sorry, that is the facts.

Q. Mr Desmond I'm going to interrupt you.

A. I'm sorry, that is the facts.

Q. That must be a grotesque characterisation.

A. I'm sorry, that is the facts.

Q. Your paper was accusing the McCanns on occasion of having killed their daughter. Are you seriously saying that they were sitting there quite happy, rather than entirely anguished by your paper's bad behaviour?

A. I'm sitting here --

Q. Just think about the question before you answer.

A. I'm going to answer your question, and I've already answered it. We ran -- on your suggestion, we've run 102 -- your figure, 102 articles. For four months you say we ran it, right? Nothing happened, to the best of my knowledge, until a new firm of lawyers were instructed, who were on a contingency, that then came in to sue us.

Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for the McCanns, said in response to Desmond's evidence:

"Mr Desmond's memory is apparently doing him a great disservice. For him to suggest that Kate and Gerry were happy with Express Newspapers' coverage, he must be living in a parallel universe." Desmond's portrayal of the McCanns' reaction to his papers' coverage of their daughters' disappearance was "grotesque in the extreme", he added. He said that the coverage, some of which was just "lies", had added to the suffering they endured.

Still, at least Desmond's many apologies to the McCanns sounded genuine. Didn't they?

But once again, please, I do apologise to the McCanns. I'm not trying to -- I am very sorry for -- you know, I am very sorry for the thing and I am very sorry that we got it wrong, but please don't, you know, try and -- every paper was doing the same thing

...

once again I do apologise to the McCanns, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but there are views on -- there are views on the McCanns of what happened. And there are still views on the McCanns of what happened.

Somehow, ending an apology with 'et cetera, et cetera, et cetera' doesn't suggest it's entirely heartfelt.

Ethical

2012-01-13T18:32:00.000Z

From the Leveson Inquiry yesterday:

Robert Jay QC: What interest, if any, do you have in ethical standards within your papers, or is that purely a matter for the editors?

Richard Desmond, owner of the Daily Express and Daily Star: Well, ethical, I don't quite know what the word means, but perhaps you'll explain what the word means, ethical.

Richard Desmond and the Daily Star

2012-01-13T17:56:00.000Z

In November 2011, Richard Desmond was trumpeting the circulation figures of the Daily Star:

The Daily Star was selling 400,000 when we bought it, it now sells around 800,000.

As this blog pointed out at the time, his figures weren't accurate. The Daily Star was actually selling 627,317 copies per day in November 2000, when he bought it. The October 2011 ABCs showed the figure was around 658,690 at the time he spoke.

In fact, the Daily Star's circulation hasn't been above 800,000 since September 2010.

When giving evidence to the Leveson Inquiry yesterday, Desmond admitted:

We see the figures daily

So surely he would be able to give Lord Leveson a more accurate picture of the Star's circulation? Not exactly:

We've invested more in the Daily Star than, you know -- just look at the product. It's fantastic. At the end of the day the reader decides, and 11 years ago we were selling about 400,000 copies a day and now we're selling 700, 800,000 copies a day in a mature newspaper market, shall we say. I think it's fantastic what we've done on the Daily Star, but the readers have decided, you know, they can't get enough of it.

If someone genuinely believes the Daily Star is 'fantastic', it's hard to take much else they say seriously.

Not unsurprisingly, he simply repeated the same incorrect figures he'd used before. If he does see the figures so often, how can he get them so wrong?

Moreover, the latest ABCs - released today - are even worse news for Desmond. They show that in December 2011, the Daily Star's circulation was 616,498 copies per day.

That means the Star is now selling, on average, 11,000 fewer copies per day than when Desmond acquired the paper just over eleven years ago.

Ahem:

I think it's fantastic what we've done on the Daily Star, but the readers have decided, you know, they can't get enough of it.

(Meanwhile the circulation of the Express has dropped from 985,253 in November 2000 to 596,415 in December 2011 while he's been owner.)

(More on Desmond's evidence from Steven Baxter and The Guardian, while Roy Greenslade looks at the media's reaction to it.)

Neesom and Whittow give evidence to Leveson

2012-01-12T21:49:00.000Z

Today, the Leveson Inquiry heard from Dawn Neesom, editor of the Daily Star, and Hugh Whittow, editor of the Daily Express.

Neesom asserted:

we write stories to be as accurate as possible.

Regular readers of this blog might find that claim rather surprising. So might Rockstar Games, who the Star accused of planning a Grand Theft Auto game based on Raoul Moat. In their apology for that story, they admitted:

We made no attempt to check the accuracy of the story before publication and did not contact Rockstar Games prior to publishing the story. We also did not question why a best selling and critically acclaimed fictional games series would choose to base one of their most popular games on this horrifying real crime event.

Neesom was given the front page from 2 June 2011, which carried the headline 'Telly King Cowell is dead'. As we know, Simon Cowell is still alive. Robert Jay QC said 'it's wrong, isn't it?'

Neesom replied:

Um ... it's dramatic. Eye-catching.

She attempted to justify the clearly inaccurate and misleading headline like this:

"Telly king Cowell is dead" in particular was a quote from Gary Barlow, and obviously -- you only have a finite amount of words you can fit on a page 1 as a headline. The subject explains as far as a TV show is concerned, I believe the exact quote was -- and obviously Gary Barlow was only joking, because that's the nature of their relationship -- "As far as we're concerned, Cowell's dead", as far as the show was concerned, and that is explained in the sub-deck and the copy. But yes, it was designed to be an eye-catching headline.

Which might, might, be fair enough if the headline had been in quote marks and if the quotes she attributed to Gary Barlow in her evidence had actually been said by Gary Barlow. Or, indeed, anyone else.

But the original article made no such claim. In fact, the word 'dead' appears nowhere other than in the headline. What Barlow had actually said was 'Simon who?' when asked if he had taken any advice about being a judge on The X Factor.

Jay then asked Neesom about the Star's scaremongering 'Terror as plane hits ash cloud' front page headline of 21 April 2010. This appeared just after planes had started flying again after being grounded because of the ash cloud. Only inside the paper did the Star reveal this was actually a picture - and a story - from a televsion reconstruction of an incident that happened in 1982. Neesom claimed she was unaware that Gatwick and other airports had removed the paper from newsagent shelves overs fears it could create panic. Three months later, the Star published an apology. What was Neesom's view of the headline now?

It maybe overegged the pudding and occasionally headlines go too far. Maybe this was one of them.

Yeh. Maybe.

She was also asked about the 7 September 2011 front page headline 'Sex tease Amy get BB boot'. This was one of the Star's many front page headlines about Celebrity Big Brother and included the sub-head 'Eviction shock for sobbing telly babe'. At the time of the headline, Amy Childs had not been evicted from, or booted out of, the Celebrity Big Brother house.

Was this another bit of 'overegging'? Maybe, but Neesom's memory had suddenly gone blank:

I honestly don't remember this story, I'm sorry. I don't know what the "boot" refers to. It could have been from The Only Way is Essex, from her agency. I'm not familiar with the story, I'm sorry.

In fact, it couldn't have been from The Only Way is Essex - she left that programme to appear on Celebrity Big Brother. In any case, the wording of the headline was pretty clear.

Jay persisted:

Q. ...it is being suggested that the boot is the eviction from Big Brother, isn't it?

A. As I say, I'm not familiar with this story, so I don't know.

Jay questioned Neesom about another front page headline: 'Muslim thugs age just 12 in knife attack on Brit schoolboy'. Her response?

I must confess I am not familiar with this particular story.

Part of the problem with this headline was that there wasn't a 'knife attack' but threats made on Facebook. Jay asked:

Q. ...but the wording "Muslim thugs aged just 12 in knife attack", that does suggest to one objective reader, at least, that there was a physical attack on whom you describe as a Brit school --

A. Yes, I agree it could be interpreted that way.

Q. Could be or could only be interpreted in that way?

A. I said I'm not familiar with this story and I didn't write the headlines, so ...

Q. Again, it's the tendentious language. The Muslim thugs are British, yet it's the "Brit schoolboy". So you have the very uncomfortable juxtaposition and a tendentious message you're transmitting, would you accept?

A. I think it could be interpreted that way. As I said, I'm really not familiar with this story, which is a bit frustrating.

Q. You're resisting, or you're entitled to resist, the interpretation I'm putting on it, but it might be said that you are overresisting an interpretation which is the only interpretation you could fairly put on this story; wouldn't you agree?

A. I think -- yes, you can interpret it in the way you've interpreted it, and obviously people have done, you know, for which is -- you know, is not good.

Q. It's not good, but what, if anything, is being done about it to address this bias, Ms Neesom? Because you're the editor, you're the person responsible for this sort of message.

A. Yes, absolutely. We are not biased against Muslims.

This may seem a questionable claim from a paper that has published front page headlines such as 'BBC puts Muslims before YOU!' and 'Christmas 'nicked' by Muslims' - among many other stories. When pushed on some of her paper's coverage of Islam, she maintained:

We do have a balanced agenda.

This from the editor of the paper that was told off by the PCC for their untrue 'Muslim-only public loos' front page. She promised to provide the Inquiry with examples of this 'balanced agenda'. Whether that file will include a copy of the scrapped-at-the-last-minute Daily Fatwa page remains to be seen.

But what, overall, is Neesom's view on the headlines on the front page of her paper?

The nature of the Daily Star is we are a very young tabloid newspaper. We don't have historic readership, we don't have subscription, we don't have home delivery. We do rely on people picking up the newspaper off the news stands, which is why our front pages have to be as eye-catching as we can make them.

Those who remember the disgraceful 'I know who killed Jo Yeates' front page - based on the (incorrect) claims of a psychic - will know 'eye-catching' very often seems a far more important consideration that accuracy.

And what about the stories?

I think the Daily Star has a certain style of writing that appeals to the readers and stories are written in the way we know appeals to the readers.

Jay asked, in response to that:

Q. There might be a kernel of truth in the story, but in order to make it more appetising and entertaining to its readers, which obviously you are plugged into you spin, embroider and weave around the edges of the story. Does that happen?

A. It's -- I wouldn't quite put it in those words, but as I say, it's written in a style that we know works for our readers.

That wasn't a 'no'.

After Neesom, Express editor Hugh Whittow gave evidence. He was asked about the Express' blatantly untrue 'Salt banned in chip shops' front page headline. Despite lots of huffing and puffing about rigorously enforced 'diktats' in the story and editorial, there was no such ban.

Jay asked:

Q. Is this right: three chip shops in Stockport took part in a voluntary trial scheme in which extra salt was left behind the counter rather than on it?

A. Yes.

Q. The headline suggested that there was a ban and that it was wide scale, when it was neither; is that correct?

A. It says so: ban in chip shops. So there were three shops and it was an experiment and it would have been -- it would spread out if it was successful or not. It was a good story, everybody was talking about it. Salt in the diet is always an issue, isn't it?

Q. I think the point is that there wasn't in fact a ban. The extra salt was left behind the counter rather than on it --

A. I -- I accept that.

So he accepted, eventually, the headline and thrust of the article was wrong. But it was still 'a good story'.

Whittow added:

I'm not going to say it's the most important story in the world, but it's certainly a talker.

Jay replied, witheringly:

It's certainly not the most important story in the world, but it's found its way to the front page of the Daily Express.

Jay then asked him about another untrue Express headline, this one from 22 October 2011, which stated: '75% say: 'Quit the EU now''. Deliberately inflated to fit the paper's anti-EU agenda, the 75% figure was made up of 28% saying quit and 47% saying renegotiate. Jay explained those figures and asked if the headline was, therefore, misleading. Whittow replied:

I accept that from what you say.

Both of these admissions from Whittow came just after he told the Inquiry:

we don't twist anything. We just present the news of the day.

Evidence of the Express 'twisting' things - especially on Europe - is not hard to find.

But perhaps Whittow's 'finest moment' came when he was asked about the decision of the Express and Star titles to withdraw from the PCC. Jay asked:

Q. So is this right: your feeling is that it was right to leave the PCC because the PCC let you down in failing to stop your paper publishing defamatory articles about the McCanns; is that your evidence?

A. That's one of the reasons, yes.

The rumour mill

2012-01-12T17:29:00.000Z

The Leveson Inquiry, 9 January 2012. Robert Jay QC questions Sun editor Dominic Mohan:

Q. Wasn't the true position something along these lines: that there were rumours going around in the press, which you well knew about, which were suggesting that phone hacking was occurring on a fairly systematic basis in the Mirror's titles? Is that right or not?

A. There were rumours in the industry. There's always rumours in the industry about various methods, but this wasn't based upon any evidence at all. It was just the Fleet Street rumour mill.

...

Q. Did those rumours encompass the Sun, for whom of course you were working in 2002?

A. I can't remember. It was a very long time ago, clearly. I can't remember the specifics of the rumours.

The Leveson Inquiry, 20 December 2011. Robert Jay QC questions former Mirror editor Piers Morgan:

Q. Do you remember an interview in which you said: "As for Clive Goodman, I feel a lot of sympathy for a man who has been the convenient fall guy for an investigative practice that everyone knows was going on at almost every paper in Fleet Street for years."

A. Yes.

Q. Why did you say that?

A. Well, that was the rumour mill at the time. I mean, it was exploding around Fleet Street...I was hearing these rumours like everybody else.

...

Q. Did the rumour mill you're referring to embrace your newspaper as being amongst the perpetrators?

A. Not that I remember, no.

Re-heating old quotes for front page news

2012-01-12T17:26:00.000Z

On the day that Daily Star editor Dawn Neesom was giving evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, her paper came up with this front page story:

The Guardian's Media Monkey notes:

Gripping stuff too, as actor Benedict Cumberbatch tells of the terrifying moment he was carjacked in South Africa while filming mini-series To The Ends of the Earth. "The actor, 35, and his pals were ambushed when their car blew a tyre in an isolated spot in South Africa, he revealed for the first time last night." First time? Not quite.

What the Star omits to mention is that Cumberbatch spoke at length about the 2004 incident in an interview with the Prince's Trust, back in 2010. He also spoke about it in an interview with the Guardian's Weekend magazine, also in, er, 2010.

What the Star also omits to mention is that all the quotes it uses today appear to have been lifted - entirely - from an interview published in October 2010.

Despite this, today's splash has also been picked up and repeated by the Mail, Sun, Metro, Telegraph and Mirror.

Neesom told the Inquiry that the front page of her paper has to be as 'eye-catching' as possible so people pick it up on the newsstands. That obviously includes re-heating 15-month-old quotes about an incident from seven years ago.

Mail pays damages to Neil Morrissey

2012-01-12T16:06:00.000Z

The Daily Mail has paid substantial (five-figure) libel damages to actor Neil Morrissey after a lengthy dispute over their 19 March 2011 article 'Homme behaving badly: TV star banned from bar near his idyllic French retreat after locals object to 'le binge drinking''.

MediaGuardian explains:

The Daily Mail apologised to Morrissey on page 2 in its new corrections and clarifications column and on its website last October.

However, the actor was not satisfied with the apology and applied for permission to make a statement in open court. In the statement read out at the high court in London on Thursday, Morrissey said he now felt "fully vindicated" over the claims.

"The Mail alleged that [a] poster had gone up and Mr Morrissey had been banned because his behaviour had made him unwelcome to the proprietors and staff as a bad influence who encouraged the antisocial and offensive binge drinking for which English settlers had become notorious and were resented by local French people," Peter Crawford, solicitor for Morrissey, told the judge Richard Parks QC.

"Those assertions were not true. Most significantly, Mr Morrissey had not been banned from the bar. Nor had he been drunken or rowdy in the bar."

The 21 October apology published by the Mail said:

An article on 19 March suggested that actor Neil Morrissey had been banned from a French bar for drunken behaviour and encouraging binge-drinking, and that his property was worth £500,000.

While we were shown a poster which indicated that he had been barred, we now accept that none of these allegations are correct. We also accept that local property valuations were overstated. We apologise to Mr Morrissey.

Roy Greenslade highlights Morrissey's statement following today's court proceedings:

"The paper was told before publication that the allegations about me were completely untrue but it went ahead and published anyway."

The Mail's response to my solicitor's complaint took an age but the paper would not back down and I had to issue proceedings.

Eventually, the Mail admitted that the allegations were false and damaging to my reputation. It proved impossible to agree the wording of a suitable retraction and apology but the Mail published its own tiny version of an apology which bore no relation at all to the eye-catching space given to the original article.

The apology, such as it was, won't have reached anything like the same number of people who would have read the original article.

My solicitor read a statement in court today in the hope that the Mail's apology would reach more of its readers."

I'm dreaming of a ...oh

2012-01-03T12:03:00.000Z

Daily Express, 17 December 2011:

Daily Mail, 17 December 2011:

Bookmakers have slashed the odds on a white Christmas with temperatures set to remain below zero across much of the country in what is expected to be the coldest snap of the winter so far.

Daily Mail, 21 December 2011:

Britain enjoyed near-record temperatures on Tuesday - and Wednesday is predicted to be warmer that spring. The sudden mild spell, which is forecast to last into 2012, has led to bookies slashing the odds on this Christmas being the warmest on record.

Daily Express, 23 December 2011:

(More on the Express' weather reporting here)

(George Monbiot has written about the tabloids' forecasting for Comment in Free)

Daily Star on thin ice

2012-01-03T11:18:00.000Z

On 26 November, a front-page article from the Daily Star said:

David Beckham a contestant on Dancing on Ice? It sounded very unlikely. The first sentence of the article then stated:

David Beckham is considering an offer to star in Dancing On Ice.

So not definite, but 'considering an offer'. Was there an offer? That's not exactly clear. But there was an interview with Torvill and Dean in the Daily Record the day before in which the latter said:

"We did talk about David Beckham. He likes music so hopefully he has rhythm.

"We like the idea of an athlete from a different sport.

"You assume they are going to be good physically, but they aren't always co-ordinated as far as dancing goes. Beckham would be great."

The Star also claimed Justin Bieber was 'urging' Beckham to accept this 'offer'. But it appears the Star's Aaron Tinney dug up this quote from Bieber in OK! in March 2011 and included it to bolster the story:

"Next time I see David Beckham I will say that if he agrees to do it then so will I. I love all kinds of skating."

The Dancing on Ice line-up has now been announced.

David Beckham's name is nowhere to be seen.

Un-Dressed to Kill

2012-01-03T11:04:00.000Z

The Mail has decided to start the year as it means to go on - by publishing an attack on the BBC:

This time, Paul Revoir has had help from Adam Sherwin to pad out the story claiming the BBC was 'under fire' over Sunday's episode of Sherlock and that:

Viewers yesterday complained that the BBC had gone too far with the raunchy scenes

But the BBC spokesman quoted towards the end points out that they had not received any formal complaints 'at this stage'. What the Mail has instead is three comments taken from Twitter (out of 8.75million viewers).

So how shocking were these 'raunchy scenes'? If you didn't see the programme, never fear: the Mail has published the key screenshots on its website (in an article posted at 7:37am) and included a 'big blow up picture' on page nine of today's paper.

The comments on the article are overwhelmingly critical of the Mail, with several pointing out the selection of headlines on the right-hand side of MailOnline. These headlines include:

As one comment (Chaz McGlover, 10:48) puts it:

At least the nudity in Sherlock had some relevance to the plot, rather than just being an endless parade of women wearing little to nothing, presented as "news".

(Hat-tip to Chris G)

Back in 2012...

2011-12-24T12:00:00.000Z

Tabloid Watch is taking a short break.

Thanks to everyone who had read, commented, tweeted or offered suggestions during 2011. Everyone, that is, except the guy who keeps sending in links to stories about the Kardashians.

Have a great Christmas and New Year.

Sorry we stated that your dad said Holocaust victims 'lacked the initiative to get out'

2011-12-22T11:12:00.000Z

On 15 December, the Ephraim Hardcastle column in the Daily Mail wrote:

Tory MP Zac Goldsmith’s insensitive comparison of tabloid newspapers to Auschwitz – ‘no one stated that Auschwitz should have been kept open because it created jobs’ – reminds me of a re-mark made by his late father, Sir James Goldsmith, about why he felt no empathy for Holocaust victims: ‘These people lacked the initiative to get out.’

Jemima Khan, daughter of James, sister of Zac, tweeted:

Khan complained to the Mail and the PCC and the article was quickly removed from the online version of the Hardcastle column.

Today, an apology:

Following my item on December 7 in which I claimed that the late Sir James Goldsmith had remarked that victims of the Holocaust ‘lacked the initiative to get out’, I would like to clarify that he said no such thing. A number of Sir James’s relatives were murdered in the Holocaust, and he counted two Holocaust survivors among his closest friends. As his family has pointed out, he would never have made these remarks. My apologies to the family for any upset caused.

Khan tweeted:

Thanks to the PCC for their help with this & to the Daily Mail for retracting and apologising for the hurtful article promptly.

Breaking news from MailOnline

2011-12-21T11:37:00.001Z

According to the MailOnline, a 10-year-old boy standing on a wall might 'dwarf' his dad, who isn't standing on that wall:

Surprisingly, when the boy is not standing on that wall, he's shorter than his dad.

'Magic'

2011-12-19T23:47:00.000Z

Eye-catching headline of the day goes to the Express for the latest in a long line of 'miracle cure' health stories:

We've been used to the Express excitedly claiming a pill is the answer to a health problem. The tomato pill to beat health disease, the 'wonder pill' to add 20 years to your life, the vitamin pill to beat Alzheimer's, the daily pill to cure diabetes to name just a few. Add to those the 'wonder diet' that cures health disease, the 'miracle diet' to stop heart disease, the 'secret' of how to live longer...and on and on.

Now, today, a 'magic pill to keep you slim: drug kills hunger pangs without any side effects'.

Yes. 'Magic'.

Here's how the article, by Mark Reynolds, begins:

Millions of overweight Britons could benefit from a new wonder diet pill which switches off appetite without any side effects.

Scientists are close to developing the drug which will help combat the growing obesity epidemic with some 15 million in the UK now falling into that category.

Regular readers of the Express may feel they've been here before. On 23 April 2007, the paper asked: Is a magic pill a cure for obesity?

A week later, it was trumpeting a 'magic pill that helps you burn fat without exercise'.

Given there is, according to the article, a 'growing obesity epidemic' it appears those 'magic pills' didn't work.

Surprisingly.

Incidentally, this story, like a similar version in the Mail, was based on a report in yesterday's Sunday Times. The Express says the pill is 'without any side effects'. The Mail claims at the start there are no 'nasty side effects'. At the end of the article, however, the Mail states:

Side-effects are predicted to be limited to bouts of nausea, but OAP-189 will have to go through extensive human testing before it reaches the market, which is expected to take between five and seven years.

Ah. So there could be 'bouts of nausea' and it could be another 5 years - at least - before the product might be available. After 'extensive human testing'. In which time, the absence, or otherwise, of side effects might be rather more clear.

Mail's latest BBC 'uproar'

2011-12-19T18:37:00.001Z

MailOnline reports:

As the article points out, Dickens wrote two endings for Great Expectations and this adaptation:

chooses a ‘compromise’ ending between the two that Dickens originally wrote.

So who are the 'critics' who are in 'uproar' about this 'changed' ending?

Well, only one person is actually quoted in the entire story. Here's what he says in the Telegraph's article (the 'inspiration' for the Mail's piece):

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, an Oxford don and author of the book Becoming Dickens, said it was impossible to run out of ways to interpret the writer.

He said Miss Havisham as a "cougar rather than a crone" is "absolutely right" and added that Dickens always wrote his endings so they could be interpreted in different ways.

"I think Dickens is strong enough to withstand anything we do to him," said Dr Douglas-Fairhurst. "He has a chameleon-like ability to adapt to changing circumstances."

He added that it was fine to mess with both the time structure and the endings of Dickens' novels. "Dickens is inexhaustible," he said.

Not really an 'uproar' is it?

(Hat-tip to JemStone)

The Express, the EU and...fridges

2011-12-14T18:43:00.000Z

Following the bogus claim from the Express' Chief Political Commentator that 'every criticism' his paper has levelled at the EU has been 'justified', the Head of Media at the European Commission Representation in the UK has been forced to write to the paper again to challenge a story.

On Monday, the Express ran the headline 'Barmy EU 'colder fridges' order will cost us £100m'. The story, by Cyril Dixon, began:

Britain faces a £100million bill because a bizarre new EU regulation will order supermarkets to turn down the temperature on their refrigerators.

Eurocrats are demanding that stores’ cold storage areas are chilled by a further three degrees to “improve” food safety.

An 'order'. A 'new regulation'. A 'demand'.

Or maybe not, says Mark English:

Contrary to claims in your article, “Barmy EU ‘colder fridges’ order will cost us £100m”, 12 December 2011, there are no new EU regulations ordering supermarkets to turn down fridge temperatures. The facts are less chilling.

EU member states have asked the Commission to look into the fact that supermarkets’ own meat cutting plants are not covered by the same hygiene regulations as independent plants, even though they often process more meat.

So the Commission is carrying out a fact finding exercise, to make sure consumers are properly protected.

No changes have been proposed and none could enter into force without full scrutiny by MEPs and national ministers.

Sorry we said you won the lottery

2011-12-14T18:32:00.000Z

This apology was published by the Daily Mirror last week, and spotted by Regret the Error:

On December 6 under the headline Xmas dinner Is On £1m Lotto Win Coach, we wrongly reported that Mr Paul Trainor (right) had won a £1million Lottery prize. In fact the prize was won by another person.

Mr Trainor does not work at the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, nor did he buy a turkey-dinner for work colleagues or say the he was going to buy a new car. We are happy to correct the position and apologise to Mr Trainor for any embarrassment or confusion caused as a result.

PCC tells Mail to 'take greater care' when reporting 'BBC drops BC/AD'

2011-12-13T20:57:00.000Z

The Press Complaints Commission has issued its response to complaints made about the vast number of misleading 'BBC drops BC/AD' articles that appeared in September and October, particularly in the Mail newspapers.

Its verdict? It isn't going to adjudicate:

The Commission generally only considers complaints from those directly involved in the stories about which they are complaining. This is for reasons of co-operation, information and consent: often it will not be possible to come to a view under the Code without the input of a first party. In addition, any remedial action as a result of the complaint – or any decision issued by the Commission – would require consent. In this case, the Commission had contacted the BBC following receipt of the complaints in order to establish whether it wished to complain about the accuracy of the coverage. It had made clear that it did not wish to complain.

The Commission understood the position outlined by the complainants; however, it had to decide whether it was able to pursue the matter without the consent and co-operation of the BBC. It decided that it was unable to do so: it was for the BBC to complain about the coverage. In addition, the BBC’s position had been outlined in the article (albeit not with the prominence that one complainant had wished). Again, this was an issue that the Commission considered required direct involvement. It was not able to engage with the newspaper – or arrange for any remedial action – without the organisation’s consent. Ultimately, the Commission considered that it was unable to take the matter forward without the involvement of the BBC.

There were some outstanding concerns about the follow-up coverage in the Daily Mail on 29th and 30th September. The Commission noted that the coverage in these articles sought to summarise the basic premise yet had become increasingly reductive as the BBC’s position had not been included. However, while it acknowledged the complainants’ concerns, it ultimately considered that it could not take the matter forward without the involvement of the BBC. The Commission took the opportunity of this decision to bring the matter to the newspaper’s attention; furthermore, it trusted that the newspaper would, in the event of any further coverage on the issue, take greater care to clearly present the position of the BBC, as per its public statement. Nonetheless, in the absence of a complaint from the BBC, the Commission was unable to pursue the matter formally.

In some cases, it is understandable that the PCC would decided a third-party complaint is not enough. However, in this case, given the repeated and very clear public denials from the BBC of the original claims, it seems odd, if unsurprising, that the PCC felt unable to fully consider the complaints.

It took a similar line when Suffolk Police refused to complain about the false 'Police chiefs fly gay pride flag...but are forbidden to put up the Union Jack' story. But the PCC acknowledged public denials from the police and asked that the Mail 'take heed' and 'alter the article accordingly'. This was a far-from-perfect outcome - the Mail deleted the original article without ever having to explain why or print a correction. But it was something.

This time, the PCC's line that:

it trusted that the newspaper would, in the event of any further coverage on the issue, take greater care to clearly present the position of the BBC, as per its public statement

is worthless. After all, the Mail on Sunday had the BBC's very clear position in its original article but relegated those words to the end and ignored what they said. It chose to run its misleading story in the way it did anyway.

Incidentally, Peter Wright, the Mail on Sunday's editor, sits on the PCC but we are assured editors leave the room if a complaint about their paper is up for discussion.

(See also Nothing Special)

A cucumber ban?

2011-12-13T09:37:00.000Z

A few days ago, the Mail reported:

The article 'by' Daily Mail Reporter begins:

An Islamic cleric living in Europe has said that women should not be close to bananas or cucumbers, in order to avoid any 'sexual thoughts'.

The unnamed sheikh was quoted by el-Sawsana news saying that if women wish to eat these food items, a third party, preferably a male relative, should cut the items into small pieces and serve.

The cleric said that these fruits and vegetables 'resemble the male penis' and could arouse women or 'make them think of sex,' in a story reported on Egyptian news website Bikya Masr.

And here's how the original article, published on 6 December by Bikyamasr.com, begins:

An Islamic cleric residing in Europe said that women should not be close to bananas or cucumbers, in order to avoid any “sexual thoughts.”

The unnamed sheikh, who was featured in an article on el-Sawsana news, was quoted saying that if women wish to eat these food items, a third party, preferably a male related to them such as their a father or husband, should cut the items into small pieces and serve.

He said that these fruits and vegetables “resemble the male penis” and hence could arouse women or “make them think of sex.”

Very similar, isn't it? Eventhough Daily Mail Reporter has acknowledged Bikyamasr.com, the article is a shameless cut-and-paste job.

Except for one key sentence, which appears in the original but has been left out of the Mail's article. It says:

Bikyamasr.com cannot independently verify the accuracy of the news item at time of writing.

Why would the Mail leave that out? Instead, they run a story that cannot be verified about an unnamed person in an unnamed country without expressing any apparent doubt about its accuracy.

Moreover, the Mail has also failed to update its readers on a follow-up post written by Joseph Mayton, the Editor of Bikyamasr.com, on 11 December:

As Editor of Bikyamasr.com, I am disappointed that I did not catch and hold this piece. The “Islamic cleric bans women from touching cucumbers, bananas for sexual resemblance,” article should not have run when it did. Arguably, it should not have been run at all. We should not have published about an “unnamed sheikh” in an unnamed European country unless we were able to garner more information on the issue, both on the sheikh himself and the news website the information was gathered from, independently.

We realize that as a growing news organization with a growing reputation and readership, we have an increased responsibility to not only verify our own material at the highest levels, but further investigate the quotes and articles of other news organizations before referencing their work.

This is our error. We apologize for the poor judgment on the matter. It is inexcusable. While the exact quote reported by Assawsana.com may well have been exactly what it was reported to be by that website, without a name and location behind this person and comment, it is difficult to find the information credible.

We recognize our pitfalls and their repercussions. The fact that this story was quoted by a large number of news organizations across the globe shows that our error in judgment can have serious, detrimental effects. For this, we would like to apologize to our readers for the inadequate editorial judgment I, as Editor and Founder, made in this instance.

He adds:

We will continue to push for more information on this story, from Assawsana.com and other sources, in order to interrogate the accuracy of their original article. If we cannot uncover more information, then we take it as our duty to make this clear and do everything in our power to spread that revelation to those who have sourced and quoted us this past week.

But will the Mail be listening?

Mail apologises to the Mayor of Gila Bend

2011-12-12T19:23:00.000Z

In November, several newspapers reported comments from Ron Henry, the Mayor of Gila Bend, Arizona who had spoken about Prince Harry's imminent arrival at a nearby airbase for a helicopter training course.

The Sun and the Mail quoted Henry saying:

"There are probably some fathers here in Gila Bend who would go to extremes to protect their daughters. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and we have some very pretty girls here. Some of the dads won't take too kindly to a Prince fornicating the night away and drinking into the small hours. It is a very quiet town with a lot of good Christian people. This isn't a party town."

Soon after, Henry issued a statement, accusing the Mail of 'a rogue and fabricated story':

“On behalf of the Town of Gila Bend, I’d like to extend a warm welcome to Prince Harry and his fellow pilots as they conduct training at the Barry Goldwater Air Force Base...

“I am deeply saddened that comments written by the Daily Mail were not only taken out of context but also, total fabrications. In fact, the negative comments were the words of the reporter, who chose to sensationalize and fabricate a story, rather than report the truth. I would never make such outlandish comments. We have tremendous respect and adoration for Prince Harry and the Royal Family. We are excited, proud and honored to have him in our community, and we would like extend every courtesy to make his stay as comfortable as possible.”

Yesterday, the Mail published the following clarification:

In an article of 8 November we carried in good faith a news agency report that said Mayor of Gila Bend, Ron Henry, had warned Prince Harry not to ‘fornicate the night away’ whilst on an army posting to the Arizona town.

We would like to make clear that Mr Henry did not make this statement and apologise to him for this error.

The Sun's article still carries the 'fornicate' line, however. It also claims:

options in Gila Bend are somewhat more limited — the town boasts just one bar and no hard liquor licence.

According to International Business Times:

Several British tabloid reports claimed that the town boasts just one bar, one restaurant, and one hotel (themed to look like a space rocket). These reports are simply not true.

Gila Bend boasts five hotels, an assortment of restaurants and bars and is an epicenter for renewable energy, particularly solar.

A representative for the town of Gila Bend laughed hysterically when she heard the tabloid descriptions of her town, but said Tuesday morning that they are "no longer commenting on the incident."

'May have left the impression'

2011-12-11T10:54:00.001Z

An apology from the 'Corrections and clarifications' column in today's Mail on Sunday:

Last Sunday's article 'Kate's crimpers go to war' may have left the impression that Richard Ward, proprietor of the Richard Ward Hair & Metrospa salon in Chelsea, was jealous of James Pryce, a former employee, who styled the Duchess of Cambridge's hair on the day of the Royal Wedding. The article might also have suggested that Mr Ward was trying to capitalise on the salon's Royal links. We accept that Mr Ward has always given full credit to Mr Pryce for his work and that Mr Ward behaved in a totally proper manner with regard to any publicity before the Royal Wedding. We apologise for any embarrassment caused.

It says the story 'may have left the impression' the proprietor was 'jealous' of a former employee.

How is it that the article 'may' have given that 'impression'?

Perhaps the full headline from the original (now deleted) article can explain:

Kate's crimpers go to war: It's curling tongs at dawn as Royal hairdesser cuts and runs from 'jealous' salon boss.

PCC upholds complaint about MailOnline's 'Knox guilty' article

2011-12-09T23:51:00.001Z

The Press Complaints Commission has ruled against MailOnline for their 'Guilty: Amanda Knox looks stunned as appeal against murder conviction is rejected' article, which included invented details about an event that didn't happen.

To recap:

In addition to the overarching complaint that the article had reported the wrong verdict, the complainants also drew the Commission's attention to: the inclusion of quotes attributed to prosecutors, apparently reacting to the guilty verdict ("justice has been done" although "it was sad two young people would be spending time in jail"); a description of the reaction in the court room to the supposed verdict ("Knox...sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears"; Meredith Kercher's family "remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family"); and the claims that Ms Knox was "taken out of court escorted by prison guards and into a waiting van which took her back to her cell" and would be "put on a suicide watch".

The Mail's response was:

The newspaper apologised that the wrong verdict had been published on its website for around 90 seconds. It explained that - in high-profile cases such as this - it was standard practice for newspapers to prepare two stories in advance. There had been confusion in the court as the judge had initially found Ms Knox guilty of slander; he had then found her not guilty of murder. As a result, several news sources had initially published the wrong verdict. The quotations had been obtained from the prosecution in advance of the trial, to be published in the event that the appeal was rejected. In addition, the Italian authorities had advised the reporter that all those found guilty of murder were placed on suicide watch as a matter of course.

The newspaper said that the individual responsible for the error had been disciplined. Moreover, it had published an explanation online apologising to its readers for the error. The correct verdict had been reported in its print edition the following day. The newspaper also made clear that it had launched an immediate internal inquiry to examine its procedures in the light of the complaint. As a result, ‘set and hold' stories would now be commissioned to include only the basic verdict and factual background material: there would be no colour and no quotes based on possible outcomes.

The PCC - rightly - upheld the complaints and said:

the Commission was particularly concerned about other aspects of the report, especially the account of the reaction by those in the courtroom to the apparent verdict, and to the subsequent actions of Ms Knox. In the Commission's view, the article had sought to present contemporaneous reporting of events (describing, in colourful terms, how individuals had physically behaved) which simply had not taken place. This was clearly not acceptable.

The Commission did not see any difficulty in newspapers writing ‘set and hold' articles. It understood that there were, at times, pressures to ensure that readers were informed of current affairs at the earliest opportunity. However, it is also vitally important that descriptions of events, especially trials, are published in a manner which complies with the Editors' Code. Describing reactions and behaviour that have not taken place, in a factual manner as if they had, must always raise a breach of Clause 1 of the Code.

The punishment for MailOnline? They have to publish the full adjudication on their website:

Mo Farah responds to Sun article

2011-12-09T22:34:00.001Z

Today's Sun claimed that Mo Farah had 'told' sportswomen who hadn't made the shortlist for Sports Personality of the Year that they are 'wasting their time moaning':

The quotes they then attribute to Farah have him explaining how he felt when he was left off the list last year:

"It's one thing feeling like you should be nominated but actually getting nominated is another. I was disappointed last year. I had a great year and felt I should have been nominated. But I wasn't. I just said to myself 'I'll keep training and next year I'll make sure I'm there'."

On his official Facebook page, Farah has responded to the Sun's presentation of the article:

I would like to correct what was written in The Sun newspaper today. When asked about the people who missed out a SPOTY nomination I tried to explain that it is disappointing not to be nominated when you had a good year, as was the case with me last year. At no point did I say or imply anything negative towards the men or women who missed out.

The phrases “…a dig at women….and wasting their time moaning….” are completely made up by the journalist. There were some excellent female sporting performances this year, some of which deserved to be in the top 10.

(Hat-tip to Sheri)

Mail exaggerates 'church fury' over McDonald's

2011-12-08T10:30:00.000Z

Here's a classic Mail headline:

Christmas. Muslim. Church fury.

The article begins:

Church leaders have hit out at a branch of McDonald's which is to open on Christmas Day.

Which 'church leaders' are in a 'church fury' according to the article?

Parish Rvd Wayne Stillwell said the decision to open the branch showed 'the continuing decline of Christendom in this country' and his reaction was 'one of great sadness'.

So he's 'sad' rather than in a 'fury'. Who else?

Well, the only other 'church' leader quoted in the story is the Dean of Derby, who says:

"Families and friends should come together at Christmas, and if they want to do that in McDonald’s then who is the Church to object?"

So one 'church leader' is a bit sad about McDonald's opening on Christmas Day, a rather more senior church leader says he has no objection. The Mail spins that as 'church fury' by 'church leaders'.

At the end of the article, a McDonald's spokesman reveals:

"We expect there to be about 60 stores in the UK that remain open this year."

That begs the question: why has the Mail decided to highlight this one store where a 'Muslim manager' has been 'drafted in'?

The 'gangsta salute' that wasn't

2011-12-08T10:05:00.000Z

When reporting on Mark Duggan's funeral on 9 September, the MailOnline's initial splash headline said: 'Gangsta salute for 'a fallen soldier'' (hat-tip to The Media Blog). This appeared to be based solely on photos that emerged of mourners reaching out towards Duggan's coffin.

However, as the Guardian reported on the day:

As mourners prepared to set off from the house, the bishop called them to stand on the pavement beside the wooden carriage... He urged the mourners to stretch their arms towards the carriage as he prayed.

The next day, the Express - never shy of echoing what has been reported by the Mail - repeated the claim, adding that the 'gangsta salute' (that wasn't) was 'chilling':

The Media Blog commented on this at the time and noted that the Mail did eventually 'tone down' its headline.

Yet according to the PCC, it was only yesterday - three months later - that a clarification appeared on the Mail's website:

An earlier version of this article suggested that mourners lining the streets as Mark Duggan’s body was carried to his funeral made “gang-style” salutes. We have been informed that the salute pictured above referred to a call by Bishop Kwaku Frimpong-Manson at an earlier service for mourners to “stretch [their] hands towards the casket and thank God for Mark’s life as he begins his heavenly journey”. We are happy to clarify this and regret any confusion or distress caused.

As usual, the clarification tries to turn a definite statement into a mere suggestion, and tries to turn 'gangsta salute' into '"gang-style" salutes'.

But as the Mail did 'tone down' their headline within a day or so, why has it take them so long to admit their error?

And will the Express - which has withdrawn from the PCC - follow the Mail's lead, or will they continue to mislead about the 'gangsta salute'.

Mail reports on 'backlash' from 'outraged' BBC viewers

2011-12-07T10:09:00.001Z

The Mail's fondness for making a 'news story' out of a few critical comments on Twitter or the BBC Messageboards remains undiminished.

Yesterday, the Mail reported on this 'outrage':

Yes, apparently viewers were 'outraged' that the presenter of a documentary filmed over more than one day was not wearing the same clothes every time she was on screen.

It is questionable whether such a question would have even arisen had the presenter been a man.

The Mail's John Stevens states:

many viewers appeared to have found it hard to concentrate on the show as several lingering shots showed Miss Maitlis striding through the sunny streets of California and Facebook’s headquarters.

Found it hard to concentrate? Really?

So what do these 'outraged viewers' have to say?

‘Think I learned more about Emily Maitlis’ wardrobe than about fb or Zuckerberg,’ one poster wrote on Twitter.

Another wrote: ‘I thought it was a docu about Emily Maitlis wandering about looking hot and occasionally stopping to chat to folk.’

While another viewer posted: ‘Did you catch the Facebook prog on BBC2 last night? More shots of Emily Maitlis in sunglasses than interview time with Mark Zuckerberg.’

It's not the most convincing display of 'outrage' ever. And at the end (of course) the BBC spokesman explains why:

The Corporation has received four official complaints about the documentary, but none have been out Miss Maitlis’ wardrobe.

A similar non-story emerged in the Mail after a da Vinci documentary presented by Fiona Bruce aired at the end of October. Once again, it was made up of what a few people had tweeted.

Today, Paul Revoir, the Mail's chief BBC-basher, reveals a new viewer 'backlash' - this time regarding audience cheering on Strictly Come Dancing:

Revoir says:

Strictly Come Dancing has been attacked by fans over the ‘cheering’ and ‘screaming’ from spectators during its broadcasts, which critics claim seem ‘stage-managed’.

A prime-time light entertainment show with 'stage-managed' cheering? Surely not...

He goes on:

After fans vented their frustrations on the BBC’s online discussion pages, the Corporation admitted it had received more than 30 complaints about the issue.

So once again we see Mail hacks scouring the BBC's own messageboards for any criticism it can blow up out of all proportion.

Still, 'more than 30 complaints'. How many more than 30? The BBC spokesman says (at the end of the article):

‘There have only been a total of 31 complaints since the series began three months ago, which is a very small amount given the show has been achieving peak audiences of more than 11million each week.’

31 complaints, over three months, out of 11 million viewers each week.

What was it Richard Littlejohn said yesterday about a 'phoney furore'?

Quote of the day

2011-12-06T15:51:00.001Z

Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn wrote about the Jeremy Clarkson controversy today:

I can’t believe the phoney furore over Jeremy Clarkson is still rumbling on, just because he joked that public sector strikers should be shot. The plot has well and truly been lost. Where does all this puerile hair-trigger outrage come from?

Complaining about 'phoney furore' and 'puerile hair-trigger outrage'?

In the Mail?

Churnalism to sell pomegranate-extract capsules

2011-12-06T14:35:00.000Z

When former Daily Star reporter Rich Peppiatt gave evidence at the Leveson Inquiry last week, he referred to the 'huge influence' of PR on tabloid 'stories':

There are more PRs than there are journalists. You get into your inbox every day dozens upon dozens upon dozens of press releases from various companies all trying to get in the paper, get their brand mentioned.

And many of them do get into the paper. Every day there are numerous 'stories' in the papers based on surveys of 2,000 people (so we're told). But, said Peppiatt:

the veracity of where that survey has come from -- is it representative, how many people were asked -- are simply not questions you're encouraged to ask. You know, you just take it at face value: "Yeah, I'm sure that will do for us." Because as I say, it's not about necessarily finding the truth of something; it's simply sort of filling the hole.

If it's not based on a survey, it's based on academic or scientific research. For example, a few weeks ago, this press release was repeated by the Express :

The paper's Nathan Rao stated:

Now a study shows an extract of it taken regularly could slow down the deterioration of the body’s DNA cells, which in turn can delay the ageing process.

Later in the article, he reported that it was an 'industry-funded study'.

The press release was designed to sell pomegranate-extract capsules PomeGreat PurePlus. The Express mentioned the product:

Commercial versions of the extract are already available in the UK from the Pomegreat PurePlus company in a capsule form or as a juice drink.

They also mentioned that the 'study' had been untaken by Dr Sergio Streitenberger at 'Spain’s Probeltebio laboratories'.

What the paper didn't say was that Streitenberger is:

head of research

at ProbelteBio - and ProbelteBio just happens to be:

the manufacturer of PomeGreat® PurePlus.

The Mail's Tamara Cohen also wrote up the press release uncriticially.

'A bit cheeky'

2011-12-02T20:51:00.001Z

In the wake of Jeremy Clarkson's comments about strikers on The One Show, the Mirror asked:

'No' said Mirror columnist Tony Parsons. The 'yes' argument was outlined by Dave Gorman. But Gorman was a little surprised to see his remarks in the paper:

Gorman elaborated on his blog:

I was surprised because I hadn't written anything for the Mirror....If the words are familiar to you, that'll be because you read my last blog.

As did someone at The Mirror. Who then cut and pasted it into the paper. Odd.

Apparently someone on the Radio 2 breakfast show was talking about how I'd written a piece for The Mirror on the whole Clarkson thing too. I don't imagine many of those who read it thought that it wasn't written specifically for the paper.

Which is a bit cheeky of them to say the least.

(Hat-tip to Laura)

The People apologises to Charlotte Church

2011-11-29T20:56:00.001Z

Three weeks after the event but, coincidentally, one day before she appeared at the Leveson Inquiry, the People published an apology to Charlotte Church over the false claim that she had drunkenly proposed to her boyfriend:

On November 6, 2011, we said Charlotte Church had proposed marriage to Jonathan Powell at a boozy karaoke night at the Robin Hood pub in Cardiff. We were misinformed.

On the night in question Ms Church and Mr Powell were performing a gig at studios in Pentyrch, Cardiff and Ms Church did not propose that night or at all.

We are happy to set the record straight and we apologise for our mistake.

However, in her evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, Church and her lawyer made clear this wasn't necessarily the end of the story. Church said:

we didn't just want a normal run-of-the-mill apology because it's just not good enough

David Sherborne added:

What Ms Church was saying, though, was that with the apology -- and it was a unilateral one, and that's obviously a matter that's of wider interest to the Inquiry in terms of what the appropriate form of redress is -- the apology she was seeking in agreed terms was also the answers to a number of questions which are rather similar to those questions Ms Patry Hoskins had put about how it was this story was written and how there are quotes from Ms Church and her partner, given that this is all entirely fabricated.

Church also raised the issue of how her statement denying the story was treated by the media:

I gave a statement saying that it was a complete fabrication and that this was a case -- you know, this was an exact reason why this Leveson Inquiry is happening and how it's out of control and it simply shouldn't be allowed to happen, and part of my statement which was basically the denial was printed in a few publications.

Most of -- most of the rest of it, the stronger parts of the statement, were just totally ignored and in one instance -- I think it might have been the Press Association who basically wrote back when we'd given the statement, saying, "We can't print this whole statement because our consumers don't like to hear anything negative about us or our conduct."

Desmond gets his figures wrong

2011-11-29T17:17:00.001Z

As Richard Desmond unveiled his new printing plant in Luton yesterday, he was asked by the Press Gazette:

why he was making the investment at a time when print newspaper circulations in general are declining.

He replied:

“My newspapers haven’t declined over the last 11 years. The Daily Star was selling 400,000 when we bought it, it now sells around 800,000. Eleven years ago there wasn’t a Daily Star Sunday, it now sells more than 800,000 every Sunday. The Daily Express and Sunday Express are in line with the market.”

He is right that sales of the Star haven't declined overall. But only just - and his figures are completely wrong.

The Daily Star was actually selling 627,317 in November 2000, when he bought it.

Not 400,000.

Based on the October 2011 ABCs, it now sells 658,690 copies per day.

Not 800,000.

The Daily Star Sunday doesn't sell 800,000 every Sunday either.

The figure, from the October ABCs is 688,058. It has benefitted a lot from the closure of the News of the World as back in June it was selling only 305,978 copies every Sunday.

And the Daily Express? When Desmond acquired it, it had a daily circulation of 985,523.

The October 2011 ABCs show a daily circulation of 614,534.

A decline of 370,989 copies per day.

So he wasn't correct to say there has been no decline over the last 11 years. But at least he didn't repeat the claim he made in June when he said sales of the Express had 'increased dramatically'.

Express: 'every criticism we levelled against the EU has been justified'

2011-11-27T09:59:00.001Z

On Wednesday 23 November, Patrick O'Flynn of the Daily Express penned an article that ran under the optimistic headline 'A year in and our EU crusade is on course for victory'.

Flynn told his readers how wonderful the Express' campaign to withdraw from the EU has been so far and he said:

Over the course of the past year every criticism we levelled against the EU has been justified...

Every criticism justified.

Five days before, the Express front page carried the lead headline 'EU says water is not healthy'.

In fact, the ruling by the European Food Standards Agency was about water and dehydration and not about whether water is 'healthy' or not. Indeed, the word 'healthy' doesn't appear anywhere in the EFSA's 7-page ruling. But the Express knew that because at the end they included this:

EU spokesman David D’Arcy said last night: “Of course drinking water is essential for health and the commission is not stopping anyone from saying so."

(More on this story from Richard Laming, Martin Robbins and Tim Fenton)

Also at the end of Giles Sheldrick's article on water was this 'criticism':

The EU has a long history of passing bizarre regulations...last year attempts to regulate the use of root vegetables in Cornish pasties sparked chaos.

But this claim isn't 'justified' either. It was the Cornish Pasty Association that had applied for:

Protected Geographical Indication to request that only Cornish pasties made in Cornwall and to the traditional recipe and manner are called Cornish pasties.

As the Association pointed out in response to inaccurate media reports at the time:

the European Commission (EC) does not dictate ingredients or names of ingredients

It's also not clear what 'chaos' was sparked by this.

In October, the Express joined other newspapers in claiming 'Now Euro killjoys ban children's party toys' which forced the EC Representative in the UK to explain the story was 'nonsense':

"Brussels" has not banned balloons or any of the other things mentioned.

Was the Express 'justified' in claiming the University of Northampton had been fined £56,000 for not flying the EU flag?

No. The response from EC regional spokesman Tom van Lierop:

"you don't have to wave a big flag above a project: that's nonsense...We're not fining anyone...We don't want to be flying the EU flag above any kind of project...these stories are total lunacy."

This wasn't the only 'EU flag' story that the paper got wrong. In May the Express front page said 'Now we must fly EU flag on our public buildings'. The article added that there was:

a swingeing fine from Brussels threatened for those that disobey

Jonathan Scheele, Head of European Commission Representation in the UK and Michael Shackleton, Head of European Parliament Information Office in the UK wrote to the Express:

only 2 buildings in the UK are expected to fly the European flag for Europe Day and the Commission would not fine countries that did not do so...No other public building has to fly the flag on 9 May.

The Express' decided not to publish this letter but chose instead to publish three readers' letters that repeated the original claims, despite the paper being aware they were false.

But remember:

every criticism we levelled against the EU has been justified.

A few days before that one, another front page headline claimed: 'EU wants to merge UK with France'. The Arc Manche network was set up in 1995 for co-operation between southern British and northern French regions. But this is clearly not the same as 'merging the UK with France'. 'Absurd' and 'untrue' said the EC in the UK.

Also in May, an Express front page stated: 'Ban shopping bags says EU'. As with the healthy water headline, the Express used 'says' when they meant 'haven't said'.

The European Commission had launched a public consultation:

asking the public how best to reduce the use of plastic carrier bags

There was a question about whether a ban was needed, as there were questions about charging for bags and other possible options. The EU has not said 'ban plastic bags'.

Is the EU 'employing 33 people to help boost the EU’s profile in Fiji'? No. Although based in Fiji, the delegation:

covers the entire South Pacific region. It carries out countless development projects on behalf of the EU as well as foreign relations and political work.

Do 'Cars face ban from all cities' as part of 'another plan forced on us by crazy EU'? No:

the European Commission is not considering an EU level ban on cars in city centres by 2050. Cities are of course best placed to decide their own transport mix.

As O'Flynn specified 'the past year' it would, of course, be unfair to mention earlier stories such as 'EU says: hammer British drivers' (once again, they hadn't said this) or 'EU’s plan to liquify corpses and pour them down the drain' ("The EU has no competence in this matter and to suggest otherwise is wide of the mark").

It would be wrong to mention their July 2010 front page headline 'France votes to ban burkha' which came a month after their front page headline 'You can't ban burkha, says Eurocrats' (again, they hadn't said this).

It would not be 'justified' to mention the Sunday Express' claim that the EU was spending '£670million on making explicit films' was overblown. But it was, perhaps, understandable - after all, Richard 'pornographer' Desmond doesn't want too many rivals in the 'explicit film' business, does he?

And it would be best to forget the Express story 'Euro meddlers rule we can't have milk jugs'/'EU spouts off...about our milk jugs'. This took research from a Spanish university and claimed it was evidence that the EU wanted to ban 'our milk jugs'.

Similarly, in October 2011, the Express labelled 'scientists from the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM)' as 'Eurocrats'.

These are just some of the Express' anti-EU stories covered by this blog and others over the last couple of years and which have been inaccurate, misleading and wrong.

With the Express newspapers being outside any form of regulation, there is no way to challenge these stories. As shown on the flag issue, when the EU tries to deal with the paper, the Express ignores them and carries on repeating untruths.

Yet to O'Flynn, the paper's Chief Political Commentator:

every criticism we levelled against the EU has been justified...

'There is absolutely nothing in our study to support these kinds of conclusions'

2011-11-22T23:28:00.001Z

'Looking at Page 3 makes you brainy' claimed the Sun on Monday:

The article by Emily Fairbairn - which includes one picture and two videos - begins:

Admiring The Sun's Page 3 lovelies can speed up your mental reactions, scientists say.

So Page 3 can make you 'brainy' and 'speed up your mental reactions'? Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?

In fact, the scientists didn't look at Page 3 or whether looking at naked people made people brainier:

Recent event-related potential studies have shown that the occipitotemporal N170 component - best known for its sensitivity to faces - is also sensitive to perception of human bodies...

In two experiments, we measured N170 responses to nude bodies, bodies wearing swimsuits, clothed bodies, faces, and control stimuli (cars). We found that the N170 amplitude was larger to opposite and same-sex nude vs. clothed bodies...

We conclude that the early visual processing of human bodies is sensitive to the visibility of the sex-related features of human bodies and that the visual processing of other people's nude bodies is enhanced in the brain.

This blog emailed one of the researchers, Jari Hietanen from the University of Tampere, to ask for his response to the Sun's article (he said: "thanks for your e-mail. Nice to see that there are people who read what we really reported").

The paper wrote:

"And their results showed that it takes less than 0.2 seconds to process the image of a naked body — much less than when models are fully clothed or wearing swimsuits."

Jari says:

No, we didn't say this. All these stimulus categories produced a certain brain response roughly at the same latency...The important finding was that this brain response was larger for nude vs. swimsuit vs. clothed bodies.

So what about the Sun's claim that:

"The team's findings are good news for advertisers who use scantily-clad stunners to boost sales."

Jari replies:

I find it difficult to make this conclusion. If we had shown that nude bodies attract visual attention more efficiently than clothed bodies, then perhaps this sort of interpretation would have been justified. By the way, there are studies by other research groups which have shown this.

And how does Jari respond to the overall thrust of the Sun's piece - that his study suggests looking at Page 3 makes you 'brainy' and 'can speed up your mental reactions'?

This is the worst...There is absolutely nothing in our study to support these kinds of conclusions. We recorded brain responses (not mental reactions) which reflect how the visual system of the brain works.

These results showed that, at certain pretty early levels of processing (the visual processing is considered to form a "hierarchy" of different processing levels) nude bodies are processed more efficiently than clothed bodies.

(Many thanks to Jari for his reply.)

'Dismissing on-pitch racism'

2011-11-20T16:05:00.001Z

The back page of Thursday's Daily Mail ran the headline 'Blatter's blunder as Suarez charged' above a report about comments made by FIFA President Sepp Blatter on racism in football:

Asked directly by a CNN reporter if racism exists on the pitch, Blatter denied it and said such incidents should simply be settled by a handshake at the end of the match.

The Mail called this a 'blunder' and said Blatter was:

dismissing on-pitch racism with an astonishing response.

But the Mail seemed less concerned about 'dismissing on-pitch racism' last month, when Steve Doughty, the Mail's 'Social Affairs Correspondent', wrote:

Things may not be perfect but, at the end of the day, Gary, there are worse things to complain about.

So, Mr Evra and Mr Ferdinand, I know you feel insulted. But perhaps in this case you could just put up with it and get on with the game.

Sorry we said you had criminal record

2011-11-16T11:50:00.001Z

Today's Daily Star published the following apology to Garry (brother of Cheryl) Tweedy:

In Court yesterday the Daily Star apologised to Garry Tweedy for an article published on 13 April in which we incorrectly reported that Mr Tweedy had admitted on his Facebook profile that he had been to prison a few times.

We accepted that Mr Tweedy did not post this comment nor has he ever been charged or convicted of a criminal offence nor been sent to prison. We apologised to Mr Tweedy for this error.

Not only has the Star apologised, but they have agreed to pay damages and legal costs to Mr Tweedy. It adds to a long line of recent libel payouts by Richard Desmond's Express Newspapers.

Heat magazine will also pay damages and apologise, after they first published the false claims. The Guardian explains:

Heat's front page article on 12 April, headlined "Cheryl's family from hell", featured a photograph of Tweedy with the caption "[Garry Tweedy] reveals prison past on Facebook".

An article inside that edition of the weekly was headed "US dream in peril thanks to Cheryl's family misfortunes" and made a number of false statements about Tweedy, his solicitor Steven Tregear said in a statement read out at the high court on Tuesday.

The Daily Star falsely claimed in an article published on 13 April, headlined "Cheryl in peril", that Tweedy had admitted on Facebook that he had been in prison a few times. "The Facebook profile [the Daily Star] relied upon was a fake," Tregear said. "[Tweedy] did not post the comment and he has never been charged or convicted of any criminal offence or sent to prison."

The Express and the weather

2011-11-15T10:08:00.000Z

Daily Express, 8 October 2011:

By Nathan Rao:

Britain is braced for an Arctic blast which will bring record low temperatures within weeks, forecasters said last night...

Britain is likely to be hit by temperatures as low as minus 20C – perhaps even lower – and widespread heavy snow as early as the start of next month.

Daily Express, 2 November 2011:

By Nathan Rao:

Britain faces a sudden shivering end to the exceptionally warm late autumn with temperatures plunging towards Siberian levels.

Winter weather will arrive with a vengeance with temperatures well below zero within the next fortnight.

Daily Express, 14 November 2011:

'NOT Matt Willis from Busted'

2011-11-14T18:28:00.001Z

Yesterday's Sunday Mirror reported that ex-Busted singer Matt Willis was suing 'trip-hop star' Tricky over unpaid management fees:

The Guardian and NME soon repeated the story but they have now deleted their articles. Why? Because the Matt Willis involved in the case is not the one who used to be in Busted.

Willis tweeted:

And this was posted on Tricky's Facebook Wall:

(Hat-tip to James McLaren)

UPDATE: James has now covered the story for BBC Wales Music.

Mail on Sunday clarifies 'green tax' claim

2011-11-13T13:09:00.001Z

In the 'Clarifications and corrections' column in today's Mail on Sunday, the paper admits:

Last week we incorrectly referred to The Queen as the Duchess of Cambridge’s mother-in-law. Her Majesty is, of course, the Duchess’s grandmother-in-law.

Oops. They have also published this:

On September 18 and on October 29 we said the Government’s 'green stealth taxes’ are costing families an average of £200 a year – an increase of 15 – 20 per cent on typical domestic power bills. In fact Ofgem estimates that environmental costs account for 7 per cent, or £100, of the average domestic power bill.

The dates of the original articles is noteworthy because the Daily Mail had corrected the same figures - which it had repeated several times - on 7 September.

The Sun's 'exclusive' on a new Rooney baby

2011-11-13T10:44:00.000Z

Following on from speculation about whether Princess Kate is pregnant or not, the Sun published this story on page three last Tuesday:

The 'exclusive' by Jen Blackburn stated:

Glowing Coleen Rooney has sparked rumours that she and hubby Wayne are expecting their second child.

The TV star and designer, 25, has stopped drinking alcohol and pals believe she will have a sister or brother for son Kai around May next year.

A source close to Coleen told The Sun: "Coleen has always wanted more children and she is absolutely glowing at the moment.

"No one has seen her touch a drop of booze for weeks and she is really looking after herself."

There doesn't appear to have been much effort to contact Coleen, who took to Twitter to say:

But what of the source - who the Sun described as 'close to Coleen' - and the claim she hasn't been seen drinking for weeks?

Today's corrections

2011-11-11T16:41:00.001Z

The Sun has published the following correction on page two of today's paper:

We reported on October 18 that 'more than 40 per cent' of all knife crime involves juveniles. In fact, this was an estimate by local police for the London borough of Enfield. The most recent Ministry of Justice figures show the proportion is just under 20 per cent in England and Wales.

This comes after Full Fact looked into the original article and complained to the PCC that the figures were inaccurate. They say:

The correction - within a month of the original article - is welcome, even if it does come after the claim was used by elected representatives when pressing particular policies from the Government.

It highlights how important it is for newspapers to take as much care as possible not to publish inaccurate figures, particularly on crucial matters of policy.

The Mirror has also published a correction today thanks to an investigation by Full Fact:

In our article “Cheating up 30% in 3yrs” we stated the figure for benefit fraud had reached £22billion a year. In fact this figure is an estimate for the total of all fraud and error, and includes mistakes made by the Government and claimants, and fraud which is unrelated to benefits.

Today's Mail corrections are:

Two commentary articles about psychic Sally Morgan in September stated that it is 'illegal in this country to claim to be a medium'. It has been pointed out to us that mediums are in fact legal in this country, although like other businesses they are subject to consumer protection legislation.

*

In our coverage of Joe Frazier's death on Wednesday, we said that Muhammad Ali had had only one comeback fight before facing Frazier in 1971. He had in fact fought twice before that bout, facing both Jerry Quarry, as we stated, and Oscar Bonavena.

Earlier this week, the the Mirror published this apology and correction:

On August 3 this year the Daily Mirror published an article regarding the death of Miss Catherine Zaks, aged 21, in Krakow, Poland.

The article contained claims that Miss Zaks, from Robertsbridge, East Sussex, abused drugs and had engaged in casual sex following the break-up of a long-term relationship.

Miss Zaks’ parents have pointed out that these claims are entirely false and that their daughter was much loved, and of good character.

We are happy to set the record straight and apologise for any distress caused.

Mail admits 'Winterval did not rename or replace Christmas'

2011-11-08T14:43:00.000Z

On Monday 26 September, Melanie Phillips wrote a column in the Daily Mail that appeared under the headline 'Our language is being hijacked by the Left to muzzle rational debate'.

In it, she repeated false claims about the BBC's position on BC/AD. And she also said:

The pressure on Christians, however, is merely part of a far wider onslaught on Western culture through the hijacking or censorship of language.

Thus Christmas has been renamed in various places ‘Winterval'.

The Winterval myth has been repeated every year for over a decade as revealed in Kevin Arscott's excellent 2010 essay on the use and abuse of the term Winterval.

As Steve Baxter writes:

Winterval was the politically correct way of referring to Christmas; it was taking Christ out of Christmas; it was part of the PC killjoys' attempts to de-Christianise Britain and bring us all into an Iron Curtain world of secularist misery. The myth kept on coming back -- every year, at Christmas time, or before.

James, a regular reader of this blog, decided to contact the PCC about Phillips' claim. He had tried to make a complaint last year when the term appeared in the Express, but when Richard Desmond withdrew his newspapers from the PCC, they decided to drop the complaint.

Winterval had been used by couple of people in 2011 prior to Phillips, including fellow Mail writer Nigel Jones who said 'Christmas becomes Winterval'. But his column only appeared online. James wanted the Mail to admit in print that Winterval was not what the Mail and other papers had been claiming for years.

So he emailed the PCC on 25 September after Phillips' article was posted online. Once again the Mail took over a month to respond, but a letter signed by Executive Managing Editor Robin Esser finally arrived on 27 October. It began with an apology for the delayed reply and then said:

I am unsure what the complainant has to do with the piece about which he is complaining.

Does the PCC consider it is a matter of accuracy, as he does?

And that tone continued for much of the rest of the letter:

The nit-picking suggestion that the term "Christmas" refers only to Christmas Day cannot be supported by anyone with a modicum of common sense. And Phillips did not say the term was intended to replace Christmas Day.

This is a bizarre statement, given that it is denying an accusation that wasn't made. It's true that Phillips never said the 'term was intended to replace Christmas Day' - but James never said she did.

Then, on the substance of the complaint, the Mail said:

there is plenty of evidence to show that the term "Winterval” has been bandied about as a replacement for Christmas, as Ms Phillips says, in various places...

There were complaints at the time from Christian leaders that this was a politically correct attempt to avoid talking about Christmas and thus to destroy the Christian association with the season.

Subsequently, lt became commonplace in the media to refer to the replacement of Christmas by 'Winterval'.

The Mail was trying to argue that references to Winterval in the media backed up Phillips' claim that Christmas had been renamed in 'various places'. They enclosed a clippings file of such stories, none of which provided evidence for what Phillips had said.

The letter concluded:

I would urge the Commission to take a rational view of this complaint and reject it.

In response to a complaint pointing out Christmas has never been renamed Winterval, the Mail dismissed James' interest in the story, and strongly implied he was nit-picking, lacking in common sense and irrational. In his reply, he made very clear that he objected to the Mail's 'unhelpful' attitude. He also spent some time pointing out what Winterval was and how the myth had been debunked by people such as Mike Chubb, who actually coined the phrase.

The next reply from the Mail was markedly different. They repeated that when Phillips referred to 'various places' she wasn't talking about actual places, such as Birmingham, but 'various places' in the media. This seemed a stretch, especially in the context of her column, which was about the meaning of words. But even if you accept she did mean 'various places' in the media, that still isn't true. But this time Esser said:

we have no wish to fall out with the complainant and I would be sorry to see the temperature rising on this matter.

May I suggest the complainant offers us a succinct letter setting out his view of “ Winterval” and, subject to the Editor accepting that, we will also attach it to the cuttings to warn about the future use of the term.

James said he hoped the Mail would mark the cuttings anyway, but declined to write a letter. He argued that it would carry no weight and that the Mail should admit its error in the new 'Clarifications and corrections' column. That is what it is there for, after all.

A few days later, the Mail offered to publish this:

We suggested in an article on 26 September that Christmas has been renamed in various places Winterval. Winterval was the collective name for a season of public events, both religious and secular, which took place in Birmingham over the Christmas period in 1997 and 1998.

James argued it was a good start, but didn't go far enough. He wanted 'suggested' (the trick they always try in corrections) replaced with 'stated'. He wanted 'over the Christmas period' removed. And he wanted a clear statement from the Mail that would show they were admitting their mistake and, hopefully, ending the Winterval myth once and for all. So he asked for this to be added at the end:

We are happy to make clear that Winterval did not rename or replace Christmas.

Somewhat surprisingly, especially given their original response, the Mail agreed to this wording and so, today, the Mail's 'Clarifications and corrections' column published this:

We stated in an article on 26 September that Christmas has been renamed in various places Winterval. Winterval was the collective name for a season of public events, both religious and secular, which took place in Birmingham in 1997 and 1998. We are happy to make clear that Winterval did not rename or replace Christmas.

This is excellent news and long overdue. It means that any future repetition of the Winterval myth by the media can now be easily challenged. If the Mail - the Mail - admits Winterval wasn't about replacing or renaming Christmas, there's no good reason other media should claim otherwise.

Is this the beginning of the end of the Winterval myth?

(For more, see Winterval: the unpalatable making of a modern myth by Kevin Arscott)

Sun clarifies story on Elliot Morley

2011-11-08T14:08:00.000Z

Two days ago, the Mail on Sunday published the following correction:

An article on August 7 said the former MP Elliot Morley, who was jailed for his role in the MPs expenses scandal, was said to have been roughed up by a fellow prisoner, frogmarched to his cell and forced to hand over a £3,000 Rolex watch. We quoted sources at Ford Prison. In fact, Mr Morley suffered only a minor theft when his room key and ID card were snatched from his lanyard. He has never owned a Rolex. There was no ‘lockdown’ of the jail.

Now the Sun has published an almost identical correction on page six of today's paper:

On August 9 we reported that former MP Elliot Morley, who was jailed in May, had been assaulted in Ford Prison, marched to his cell and forced to hand over a £3,000 Rolex watch.

In fact, Mr Morley has never owned a Rolex watch and suffered only a minor theft when his room key and ID card were snatched from his lanyard. He did not lose a watch or any other valuable. There was also no "lockdown" of the jail.

The Sun appears to have repeated the Mail on Sunday's article, without checking it, two days later. Now, it has repeated the correction two days later, too.

'Claims were so quickly reported as fact'

2011-11-07T19:44:00.000Z

One day in May, the Mail's website led with the story of Ian Faletto:

(image from Angry Mob)

The Mail wasn't the only media outlet to cover the story. In the Express, Richard and Judy said it was:

another health and safety loony tune

In the Telegraph, Jenny McCartney wrote:

A sad story from our railways: Ian Faletto, an award-winning stationmaster at Lymington Pier, Hampshire, saw a shopping trolley on the railway lines, which had the potential to cause an accident. He requested that the power be turned off, and then jumped on to the lines in protective shoes to remove the trolley.

A week later, a district manager saw the incident while reviewing CCTV footage, and found that the power had not, in fact, been turned off. Mr Faletto was subjected to a disciplinary hearing and given the sack...

Unless there is some other aspect to the case which South West Trains is not willing to reveal, it would seem that Mr Faletto's very enthusiasm has made the authorities uneasy. The rest of us, however, could do with many more public employees like Mr Faletto, who appear – within sensible limits – to be even more concerned about other people's safety than their own.

But South West Train's side of the story was never fully revealed. As the BBC reported:

A South West Trains spokesperson said an employee had been dismissed for a “serious breach of safety” but refused to officially explain what this was.

“This action was taken following a full and thorough internal investigation and the decision was also upheld at an appeal hearing,” he said.

This didn't stop the Mail and others deciding South West Trains were definitely in the wrong. It was 'all down to elf 'n' safety' and an over-reaction from 'Elf 'n' safety tyrants'.

The latter was a headline on a comment piece by Richard Littlejohn, who said:

The sacking of Mr Faletto is beyond disgusting. Whoever runs South West Trains should be thoroughly ashamed.

He should be reinstated immediately with a grovelling apology.

And that was that. The media moved on.

A tribunal to consider Faletto's claim of unfair dismissal was to be heard on 1 November. The Mail, Telegraph, Express, Star and Sun haven't updated their readers on what happened. But the Guardian has:

A railway worker who claimed he was sacked for removing a shopping trolley from the track has withdrawn his claim of unfair dismissal.

Ian Faletto alleged he was sacked after 27 years of service by South West Trains for removing the trolley at Lymington railway station in Hampshire...

But after he was presented with new evidence, his counsel advised him to drop his claim, prompting a strongly-worded statement from SWT. It described the allegations by Faletto as "fictitious, Walter Mitty-style claims" and the company stressed he was not paid off.

The statement from SWT Director Jake Kelly is, indeed, strongly-worded:

''We are pleased that Mr Faletto has finally withdrawn his case, which proves definitively that there was never any substance to the claims he made.

''However, we remain angry at the way these fictitious Walter-Mitty-style claims were so quickly reported as fact. It is also doubly upsetting that many well-meaning people in community were so misled.

''This was a matter of principle and integrity and we were fully prepared to outline the truth to the employment tribunal.

''We are confident that they had heard all of the evidence, they would have found in our favour. For the avoidance of doubt, we have made no payment to settle this case and nor have we ever considered doing so.

''As we have maintained all along, this case involved a serious breach of safety. The fact is that there is no evidence to show that there was a trolley on the track, as Mr Faletto claimed, and the safety of our passengers was not compromised at any point.

''The only safety risk was caused by Mr Faletto's foolhardy actions in knowingly stepping down onto an area of live track for no justifiable reason.

''No 'trolley' incident was recorded in the station log or reported to management at the time - or even when Mr Faletto was first questioned by management.

''There was no evidence either of any call to a signalman or station.

''We are not interested in a box-ticking or jobsworth approach to these issues and the decision to dismiss Mr Faletto was not taken lightly.

''It is very sad that an individual who was recognised by the railway has acted in this way.''

Mr Faletto does, however, stand by his version of events.

The BBC, Guardian and Mirror all reported that Faletto withdrew his unfair dismissal claim and quoted Kelly's statement. Given that that happened several days ago, it looks unlikely the papers who did so much to champion Faletto six months ago are going to update their readers on the case.

(More from Zelo Street)

Charlotte Church calls 'marriage proposal' story a 'complete fabrication'

2011-11-07T18:23:00.000Z

On Sunday, The People reported:

Charlotte Church has proposed to her boyfriend Jonathan Powell during a boozy pub karaoke night.

The star belted out The Ronettes’ Be My Baby then slumped in a chair next to her man and gave him a huge kiss. She told him: “That was for you because I want you to be my baby. Will you marry me?”

He replied: “Yes but I don’t want to be known as Mr Church.”

The pair, both 25, then ordered bottles of champagne “one each” and celebrated into the early hours of last Saturday morning at the pub, the Robin Hood in Cardiff.

A friend said: “Jonathan was thrilled and Charlotte was very happy. She was singing I’m Getting Married in the Morning as we helped her to the taxi afterwards.”

The story was quickly picked up by other media outlets. The Sun published it on page 11 of today's paper, under the headline 'Charlotte pops the question', adding another element to the story:

Charlotte Church FORGOT she had proposed to her boyfriend after drunkenly popping the question at a karaoke night.

The singer and TV host told pals it wasn't until sobering up the next day that she remembered publicly asking Jonathan Powell to marry her.

The Mail's website churned out its own version, repeating the 'too drunk to remember' line:

But the Sun's online article has been replaced by a 404 Error and the Mail's story has vanished. Instead, the Mail is now reporting something else about Church - her denial of the story:

"This story is a complete fabrication. I have not proposed to my boyfriend, drunkenly or otherwise. It is embarrassing for me (and him) for our families and friends to read that I have.

I was not in the pub they mention on the night they allege this happened. I haven't been there for 5 months. At the time that I was apparently drunkenly proposing I was in fact performing in a completely different town with a large public audience.

There is literally not one shred of truth in this story, and it is still alarming to me that lies of this scale can be printed. This is not journalism. It's a perfect example of why this out of control tabloid industry needs regulation immediately."

The Mail's new article, however, fails to admit its role, referring instead to 'reports' and a 'story in the Sun'. It also fails to include Church's quotes about 'lies of this scale' and an 'out of control tabloid industry'.

Peanut paste and the 'royal baby'

2011-11-06T19:49:00.000Z

On 27 April, the Daily Star proclaimed:

But when they said 'Royal baby on way' what they actually meant was 'Andrew Morton's got a book coming out and he thinks Kate might get pregnant within a year'.

Forward to July and the People asked:

The paper said:

The warning comes after reports that Kate, 29, is due to meet her gynaecologist Alan Farthing in the next few weeks to receive fertility advice.

But experts last night told The People that they would urge Kate to pile on the pounds to increase her chances.

On Friday, the Sun had the latest:

A pregnancy riddle, eh? And what's the Sun's evidence for this speculation:

The Duchess of Cambridge was at the centre of a pregnancy riddle last night after refusing to eat peanut paste during a royal engagement.

Kate, 29, turned down the protein snack as she and hubby William joined the Danish Crown Prince and his wife at a famine relief depot. For years government experts urged mums-to-be to avoid peanuts, fearing a link to allergies.

For years they did, but that advice was changed in 2009.

So, she didn't eat some peanut paste. Is that it? Well no, there's an anonymous 'onlooker' too:

One onlooker said: "The Duchess does not have a nut allergy, nor is it like her to appear rude. The only explanation is that she is pregnant and has been told — like many expectant mothers — to avoid nuts."

The 'only explanation'? Not according to the 'senior Palace source' quoted two sentences later:

"Pregnancy is not the only explanation. The Duchess is still new to appearing in front of the cameras at official events.

"It is perfectly plausible that she may not yet feel comfortable eating while the cameras are focused on her. This is not the first time she's turned down food while under the spotlight."

MailOnline repeated the Sun's story on Saturday, and then added an extra detail on Sunday:

The 29-year-old was seen patting or holding her stomach at least a dozen times during a two-hour visit to an aid centre in Copenhagen.

Despite all the cameras, the Mail has only published one photo of her doing this.

Still, perhaps the Sunday papers could shed some light. The Daily Star Sunday said:

Despite the headline, the article stated:

Kate and Wills have chosen a posh palace as the dream home for their prospective baby...

The official announcement of their change of address adds to speculation Kate, 29, is pregnant – or will be soon.

But The People was adamant: Kate is not pregnant:

Prince William and wife Kate Middleton have decided against having their first child until after the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, The People can reveal.

Speculation that Kate, 29, is pregnant after refusing to eat peanut butter during a royal engagement in Demark was firmly quashed yesterday.

And The People can confirm the couple have put off plans to have children until after June 2012 because they do not want to overshadow the Jubilee celebrations.

So she might be pregnant. Or she might be not be. Once she is, it's likely we're going to find out officially. Do we really have to have endless speculation until that time?

Wine and breast cancer

2011-11-06T18:37:00.000Z

Daily Express, 1 October 2011:

Daily Express, 2 November 2011:

(See also the Mail's versions of the same stories)

Star apologises to hair clinic

2011-11-06T18:36:00.002Z

On Wednesday 2 November, the Daily Star published the following apology:

In yesterday’s Daily Star, we wrongly stated that Wayne Rooney’s hair transplant was carried out at a clinic run by Dr Bessam Farjo and that Dr Farjo had treated Wayne.

We accept that this was wrong. Wayne has never had any treatment carried out by Dr Farjo or any clinic run by him.

His transplant was carried out at The Harley Street Hair Clinic, to whom we apologise unreservedly.

This appeared on page 3, the same page as the original article, which ran the day before.

According to Farjo:

I had originally provided comments on the subject for another interview regarding the rise in popularity of hair transplant surgery since celebrities, like Wayne, have spoken so candidly about their experiences in the national press...

While it’s great to see the media taking such an interest in my field of work, I was disappointed to see that the journalist [Aaron Tinney] had mistakenly named me as the surgeon responsible for Rooney’s new hairline.

'Misleading and alarmist'

2011-11-05T08:47:00.002Z

The front page of Thursday's Express contained yet another health scare:

'Britain on alert for new super-flu: Killer virus could spread in 24 hours', it screamed.

Jo Willey's article begins:

A new strain of killer flu which could spread to Britain within 24 hours is “one of the biggest biological threats of our time”, experts warned.

The alert comes after people started to fall victim to seasonal flu and the more virulent swine flu at the same time.

The Mail followed it up with the article 'Fears of new deadly super-flu which 'could spread to Britain within 24 hours''.

The 'could' is important because the 'deadly' 'new super-flu' - which Britain is 'on alert for' - isn't known to exist.

Secondly, the people who have 'started to fall victim' to seasonal and swine flu at the same time, are two people who fell victim in 2009.

In Cambodia.

As the NHS Behind the Headlines report explains:

The research the news was based on was actually a small, but important study that had examined a Cambodian patient who became unwell during the swine flu pandemic of 2009. Examining the man and four of his contacts, scientists determined that two of the five subjects were infected with both swine flu and a seasonal flu virus that was circulating in the environment at that time. None of the five infected individuals required hospitalisation and all made a full recovery.

This is valuable research in the light of the very real public health threat faced by flu pandemics; particularly as co-infection also offers the possibility for different viruses to combine their genetic material and produce new strains. However, such a ‘super-flu’ or ‘killer-flu’ has not been found, and is merely a possibility.

So what of the Express' front page headline?

Although news coverage has reflected the findings of this study accurately and quoted flu experts, the overall emphasis of reports has been misleading and alarmist. Their headlines suggest that a “deadly super flu” has been found and is ready to spread to the UK...[but] these are laboratory findings from five people infected in 2009 with swine flu and/or seasonal flu. None had severe illness or required hospitalisation, and none died from a ‘deadly new super-flu’.

Five months on, Mail corrects front page splash

2011-10-31T10:26:00.000Z

On Friday 27 May, the Daily Mail claimed the 'UK doles out more aid than any other country'. They were so sure of this 'fact' they put it on the front page:

At the time, Full Fact questioned the accuracy of this claim:

While the UK is the most generous G8 economy in international aid relative to GNI, it does not give the most aid of any country in the world, neither relative to GNI or in absolute terms.

And today, in a two-sentence correction at the bottom of page two, the Mail admits:

A front-page article on 27 May said that Britain spends more on aid as a percentage of national income than any other country in the world. In fact it spends more than any other G8 country as a percentage of GDP and is second in the world behind the US in cash terms.

Despite the Mail's headline and article being shown to be untrue by Full Fact on the day it was published, it has taken the paper five months to admit it got it wrong.

UPDATE: The Mail's correction was the result of a complaint from Full Fact. Their description of the process makes for very interesting reading, particularly the attempt by the Mail to unilaterally publish a correction two days before the PCC was to adjudicate. Despite the PCC saying the original article was 'sloppy' and contained a 'significant inaccuracy' they did not agree with Full Fact that a front page correction was necessary.

Mail apologises to Carole Caplin

2011-10-26T11:15:00.000+01:00

On 18 September 2010, the Mail's front page looked like this:

'Will Carole Caplin lift the lid on Blairs' marriage?' it asked. The article ran on page 13, under the headline ‘Carole’s £1m question: Will she tell all about Blairs’ sex secrets?’

The article began:

She once turned down the offer of £1million for the story of her ten years as lifestyle guru to Tony and Cherie Blair.

But Carole Caplin might now be forced to think again following the failure of a gym she set up to offer massages and health consultations to the wealthy...

The Blairs have always been worried that the former exotic dancer might 'push the nuclear button' and write a book about her extraordinary association with them.

Caplin launched a libel action against the Daily Mail's publishers, Associated Newspapers in which she argued that the article could be read to mean:

there are strong grounds to suspect that the Claimant will now disclose their sex secrets for substantial financial reward

The Press Gazette reported:

According to the writ, no proper effort was made to put the claims to her before publication. It alleges that although the paper contacted her representative, there were no questions about financial difficulties, a book, the Blairs, or sex secrets, and the conversation was solely about her gym...

The writ says that the Daily Mail has refused to apologise or retract the claims, and that the website story remains online.

At a hearing in June, where Associated tried to have the case struck out, their lawyer accepted:

that some of the headlines and captions and the first third of the article in particular could foster a suspicion in isolation that the Claimant might be planning to disclose things about the Blairs that she knew from her friendship with them. But she submits the court should not adopt a "broad brush" approach or focus simply on the headlines. She accepted during the course of argument that none of the various rhetorical questions which are posed are ever answered in the negative, but says neither they nor the hypothetical scenarios which are addressed in the article are ever answered in a positive way either...

David Price QC, for Caplin, argued:

the article poses the same question in a variety of forms: "Will Carole Caplin lift the lid on Blairs' marriage?", "Carole's £1million question: Will she tell all about Blairs' sex secrets?", "Is Carole Caplin set to blow the lid on Tony and Cherie Blair's sex secrets?". The question he says is only worth asking if there are solid grounds to suspect that the Claimant will disclose the information. In the light of the presentation and content of the article (and putting it at its lowest) a jury could, without perversity, understand the article to suggest that there are strong grounds to suspect that she will do so.

The Hon. Mrs Justice Sharp ruled:

I have concluded that read as a whole, and applying the relevant principles to the issue as it arises now, the article is capable of conveying the suspicion that the Claimant will "lift the lid on the Blairs' marriage" and their "sex secrets" for substantial financial reward.

Today, the Mail has published the following apology:

An article about Carole Caplin on 18 September 2010 ‘Carole’s £1m question: Will she tell all about Blairs’ sex secrets?’ suggested that Ms Caplin might reveal intimate details about Tony and Cherie Blair in a book for a substantial sum, which might lift the lid on their marriage and finish the Blairs. We accept that Ms Caplin would not disclose such matters and that there was nothing improper about massages she gave Mr Blair. We apologise to Ms Caplin.

'Just put up with it'

2011-10-25T19:33:00.000+01:00

The Mail's Steve Doughty - who repeated the 'BBC drops BC/AD' myth a week after it had been denied and debunked - has turned his attention to the issue of racism in football.

In the last week or so, two footballers - Patrice Evra and Anton Ferdinand - have claimed they were racially abused by opposition players. In both cases, the accused have denied the accusation.

Here's Doughty's advice:

Things may not be perfect but, at the end of the day, Gary, there are worse things to complain about.

So, Mr Evra and Mr Ferdinand, I know you feel insulted. But perhaps in this case you could just put up with it and get on with the game.

He adds:

Every club seems to be promoting a kick racism out of football campaign, beyond the point of boredom.

And that campaign has responded to Doughty:

Show Racism the Red Card is appalled by Steve Doughty’s article...

It is ludicrous to suggest that players should simply “put up with” racist abuse.

Racism should never be tolerated – unless we want to return to the days where widespread racist abuse was a weekly feature of football, ‘putting up and shutting up’ is not an option. We cannot achieve equality by ignoring racism, equality is something that we must continually strive towards. This is something that football clubs clearly recognise through their ongoing support of anti-racism initiatives, such as the work of Show Racism the Red Card. The steps that have been taken to remove racism from the game are numerous and include: improved legislation, education, fans’ campaigns and bans for racist supporters; these combined actions have all had a positive impact on reducing levels of racism within stadia.

Doughty argues that football clubs are “promoting a kick racism out of football campaign, beyond the point of boredom.” It is revealing that Doughty sees anti-racism campaigns as tedious, as if he believes racism to be a thing of the past, a topic we no longer need to address.

(Hat-tip to Brett)

Mail 'sets the record straight' on another Littlejohn column

2011-10-25T18:57:00.000+01:00

On 5 August, Richard Littlejohn wrote:

From time to time I may have written about both asylum seekers and wheelie bins. But never before in the same sentence. Until now.

Six illegal immigrants have been detained by a border patrol in Calais. The four men and two women, all from Vietnam, were discovered hiding in a consignment of wheelie bins bound for Britain. They were detected stowed away in the back of a Polish-registered lorry by a vigilant sniffer dog called Jake.

Asylum seekers hiding in wheelie bins in a Polish lorry. What a perfect metaphor for modern Britain.

On 16 August he returned to the same story:

Another snapshot of modern, multicultural Britain, coming hard on the heels of the story about those Vietnamese asylum seekers caught hiding in wheelie bins in a Polish lorry.

There was no evidence these six people were asylum seekers, having been caught in France before they reached the UK. The UKBA news report certainly never called them asylum seekers but 'would-be illegal immigrants'.

But Littlejohn called them 'illegal immigrants' and 'asylum seekers' interchangeably. The PCC's guidance on refugees and asylum seekers states that journalists should be:

mindful of the problems that can occur and take care to avoid misleading or distorted terminology.

A complaint was made to the PCC asking that they look into Littlejohn's use of these terms. It was sent on the evening of 15 August, after Littlejohn's second article had been posted online.

By 19 September the complainant had received no reply from the PCC or the Mail. So he contacted the PCC again, asking what was happening.

On 23 September - nearly six weeks after the original complaint was made - the Mail finally responded with a letter from Managing Editor Alex Bannister.

The Mail had acted to correct the error, replacing 'asylum seekers' with 'illegal immigrants' in each article, and marking the archive with a note. Bannister said he had reminded 'Littlejohn and our other reporters' of the need to avoid such 'confusion'. He also apologised for the delay in replying, but gave no explanation for it.

The complainant said he would like some explanation for it and also asked for the Mail to admit in print it had corrected the articles.

Bannister's reply came through on 7 October. He said he had been away on annual leave and then had much to catch up on his return but admitted this was 'no excuse'. He also offered to print a clarification.

The complainant accepted the wording of the clarification that was offered and said he looked forward to seeing it in the Mail's new corrections column soon.

On 18 October, around 6pm, the Mail sent a revised wording to the PCC which was sent on to the complainant.

Before he could reply, he received another email at 7:46pm, in which the Mail explained it was hoping to run the clarification on Wednesday and they had changed the wording again.

Fifteen minutes later, another email from the Mail and yet another amendment to the wording.

The complainant agreed to this and so on Wednesday 19 October, the Mail published this:

Commentary articles on 5 and 16 August referred to six individuals apprehended in France who were attempting to enter Britain in wheelie bins on a lorry as asylum seekers when they should have been described as illegal immigrants.

We are happy to set the record straight.

By this time, the Daily Mail's 'Clarifications and corrections' column had been running for three days and this was the second clarification for something Richard Littlejohn had written.

It is also the second time this blog has covered a complaint about a Littlejohn column that has been met with a month-long silence from the Mail.

Oh deer

2011-10-22T11:38:00.000+01:00

Daily Mail, Monday 17 October:

The tiny deer that causes 42,000 crashes every year

They are just two foot long and as cute as Bambi but soaring numbers of muntjac deer are causing at least 42,000 road accidents a year, a study has found.

Daily Mail, Tuesday 18 October:

The doe-eyed destroyer: They may look cute but these tiny deer last year caused 42,000 road accidents, destroyed countless gardens - and they're breeding faster than ever

Daily Mail, Thursday 20 October:

An article on Monday claimed that muntjac deer cause 42,000 road accidents a year. In fact, this is the number of accidents caused by all deer and not just the muntjac.

Express misleads on EU poll results

2011-10-22T01:21:00.000+01:00

The front page of Saturday's Daily Express claims:

'75% say: 'Quit the EU now''. That's the way the Express has summarised a poll conducted by YouGov.

But the article by Alison Little makes clear this isn't what the poll really shows. Indeed, her first sentence says:

An overwhelming 75 per cent of Britons would vote in a referendum to quit the EU or renegotiate the terms.

The 'or renegotiate the terms' bit is important because, as the Express reveals five paragraphs from the end, if a referendum included three options about the UK's relationship with Europe:

15 per cent would vote for the status quo, 28 per cent would vote to leave the EU and 47 per cent would vote to renegotiate membership terms.

So the '75%' saying 'quit now' actually includes 47% who don't actually want to quit if renegotiation is an option.

The poll was conducted by YouGov for the campaign group Vote UK out of EU and their press release on these results makes clear that:

75% of those surveyed would vote to change the current relationship between the UK and the EU.

'Change the current relationship'. Not 'quit now'.

What if the referendum gave a more straightforward 'in or out' choice? The Express states:

Given a choice to stay in or get out – without the option to renegotiate – 52 per cent would quit, 31 per cent would stay in, while the rest are “don’t knows”.

According to this poll, if it's in or out, 52% say quit. If it's in, out or renegotiate, 28% say quit.

So why has the Express claimed '75% say quit now' in the headline?

Two 'substantial' payouts in two days for the Mail

2011-10-19T15:31:00.001+01:00

On 19 September, the Daily Mail published the following apology to Osmond Kilkenny:

On March 27, 2010, in an article headlined ‘Family at war over Subo’s millions’, we reported concerns of Susan Boyle’s family about her then manager Mr Kilkenny. We did not intend to suggest that he was likely to manage Miss Boyle’s finances dishonestly and accept this is untrue. We apologise to Mr Kilkenny for this suggestion.

Today, the MediaGuardian reports that the Mail has now agreed to pay 'substantial' damages to Mr Kilkenny:

The article, which was later removed from the Daily Mail's website, was headlined "Family at war over SuBo's millions". It suggested that because of doubts over his trustworthiness Kilkenny was unsuitable or unfit to handle Boyle's affairs.

The Daily Mail has now accepted this was untrue and apologised to Kilkenny. Associated Newspapers has agreed to pay him substantial damages plus legal costs.

Nicholas Armstrong, of the solicitor's firm Charles Russell LLP, acting for Kilkenny, told the high court in London on Wednesday the allegations were "an unwarranted slur on his character and professional reputation".

This follows the news yesterday that the Mail was paying 'substantial' damages to Lady Kristina Moore.

Daily Mail to pay 'substantial' damages to Lady Kristina Moore

2011-10-18T12:12:00.000+01:00

In March, the Press Gazette reported that Lady Kristina Moore, wife of Sir Roger Moore, was 'demanding damages' from the Daily Mail over a diary item by Ephraim Hardcastle on 8 October 2010:

"Playboy Taki Theodoracopulos, 74, says a great love of his life was Kiki, a gorgeous Swede with whom he lived at the Hotel du Cap in 1958. Their affair ended when he found she had been given 'a fortune in French francs' by a 'disgusting' 90-year-old Frenchman.

"His story [in The Spectator] is bound to send the famously-mobile eyebrows of The Saint and James Bond actor Sir Roger Moore into overdrive.

"A 'stunning' Swedish beauty called Kiki - 'even Gianni Agnelli gave her a whirl' - who went on to marry a rich man?

"Surely Taki isn't referring to Sir Roger's fourth wife, the former Kristina Tholstrup, pictured? Lady Moore, 71, is known as Kiki, did knock around the French Riviera in her youth and did end up 'very well off' (after marrying three rich men, including Sir Roger)."

And so:

Lady Kristina Moore, who is known as Kiki, claims the story suggested she had an affair with Taki Theodoracopulos in the 1950s then left him because a wealthy 90-year-old Frenchman offered a fortune to sleep with her.

According to a writ filed at the High Court, the story also claimed Lady Moore behaved in a “meretricious and promiscuous manner” by “knocking” around the French Riviera chasing wealthy men.

It continues:

She is seeking aggravated damages, citing the highly offensive and damaging nature of the allegations and stating that no effort was made to check the story with her first.

If the paper had checked with her, or with Theodoracopulos, it would have discovered the claims were completely untrue, the writ claims, as the woman referred to as Kiki in the story was someone completely different...

In addition, the writ says, the paper has published a statement from Theodoracopulos confirming the allegations were false and that he was referring to a different Kiki.

And according to the writ, the response of the Mail was:

the paper has refused to accept the story was defamatory of her, or to admit liability, let alone apologise for the distressed caused to her.

Today, the Daily Mail agreed to pay Lady Moore 'substantial' damages:

"The allegations published by the newspaper on 8 October 2010 are completely untrue and seriously defamatory of Lady Moore," Catherine Rhind, of Harbottle & Lewis, said in a statement in open court.

"The true position is that Lady Moore was 18 in 1958 and was living in Sweden with her mother and father and at that time had never visited France," Rhind added.

"She could not therefore have been the person to whom Taki was referring as has indeed since been confirmed by Taki who has acknowledged that he was in fact writing about somebody entirely different."

Rhind said that the Daily Mail had not checked the accuracy of the story with Moore before publication, "despite the serious nature of what was claimed". After Theodoracopulos made clear that he was not referring to Moore, the paper published another Ephraim Hardcastle diary item admitting it had been wrong to make the suggestion.

This admission came four days after the original was printed. They admitted they were wrong to make the suggestion, but apparently did not apologise for doing so.

Therefore:

Associated Newspapers had agreed to pay Moore an undisclosed substantial sum in damages plus costs, and also agreed not to repeat the allegations.

A lawyer acting for Associated Newspapers told the high court: "The defendant acknowledges that the allegations made against Lady Moore are untrue and is happy to give the undertakings referred to. As the claimant's solicitor has confirmed, the Daily Mail corrected the matter in the Ephraim Hardcastle column at the first available opportunity. The defendant apologises for the distress and embarrassment caused to both Lady Moore and Sir Roger Moore."

UPDATE: The Mail has apologised in Wednesday's 'Clarifications and corrections' column:

The Daily Mail apologised in court yesterday for wrongly identifying, in a one-paragraph item in the Ephraim Hardcastle column, Lady Moore, the wife of Sir Roger Moore, as the subject of a Spectator column by Taki about a Swedish beauty who had courted rich men on the French Riviera in the 1950s.

We accepted that Lady Moore was not the person to whom Taki was referring and have agreed to pay damages and costs.

Why the need to say it was only a 'one-paragraph item'?

After three months, Mail corrects '£32 loaf of bread' story

2011-10-18T00:00:00.000+01:00

In today's 'Clarifications and corrections' column, the Mail finally admits that the claims it (and others) published in July about the NHS spending £32 per loaf of gluten-free bread were not true.

The Mail says:

An article on 19 July reported, in common with other newspapers, that the NHS paid £32.27 per loaf of gluten-free bread for patients with coeliac disease.

In fact, this was the price for an average prescription of several loaves; the price per loaf was around £2.82.

The original stories were shown to be rubbish within a day of publication. The Sun corrected it a month ago. So why has it taken the Mail three months (in total) to put it right? And after all that time, why haven't they apologised for getting it so badly wrong?

The Mail's first corrections column

2011-10-17T22:55:00.000+01:00

The Daily Mail has followed in the footsteps of its Sunday sister paper and published its first 'Clarifications and corrections' column on page two of today's paper.

It begins:

The average issue of the Daily Mail contains around 80,000 words - the equivalent of a paperback book - most of which are written on the day under tremendous pressure of deadlines.

Huge efforts are made to ensure our journalism meets the highest possible standards of accuracy but it is inevitable that mistakes do occur.

This new column provides an opportunity to correct those errors quickly and prominently.

The first clarification is aimed at Michael Levy:

On 26 September we reported that barrister Michael Levy had been arrested on suspicion of “carousel” fraud. Whilst HM Revenue & Customs confirmed the information to us at the time, we now understand that Mr Levy was arrested on suspicion of irregularities in his personal tax position, which he denies.

This appears on the Mail's website. But the other three clarifications do not. The next is:

An article on 9 September reported a World Economic Forum survey which ranked UK schools 43rd in the world for maths. We are happy to clarify that the survey was based on the opinions of business leaders about teaching in their own countries.

There's no sign of this on the original article or anywhere else.

Then:

An article on 27 September, 'Tesco wins opening skirmish as price war catches out rivals', quoted the price of a Sainsbury's shopping basket at £26.26 against the Tesco equivalent of £19.04. While the Sainsbury's basket remained more expensive than the other supermarkets surveyed, the correct figure should have been £23.51.

There's no sign of this online either, but the original article has disappeared from the Mail's website.

Finally, and perhaps inevitably, they correct something Richard Littlejohn wrote:

A reference in Richard Littlejohn's column reported the allegation that Dacorum Borough Council in Hertfordshire had ignored six letters and as many phone calls from a resident requesting additional assistance in caring for her incapacitated mother before finally making a hone visit and refusing her request. In fact the complaint concerned Hertfordshire County Council.

There's no sign of this online, but the original column as been corrected, although with no note admitting this.

So the Mail on Sunday's clarifications were all published on MailOnline, although the original articles were not corrected and didn't have the clarifications added. Today, the Mail has published only one of the four clarifications online.

Hopefully, in future, all clarifications will appear on the website and there will be some note on the original article (if it still exists) about those corrections.

(Hat-tip to The Grim Reaper blog)

Churnalism to sell curry

2011-10-16T17:57:00.002+01:00

According to reports in several papers, Rochelle Peachey has just been crowned 'Britain's curry queen' after eating curry 'for her last 29,565 meals'.

The Daily Star said:

Red-hot Rochelle Peachey has eaten curry for her last 29,565 meals.

The Mail said:

The mother of one, 49, from Gants Hill, Essex, has just been crowned the country's curry queen - after eating the spicy food for her last 29,565 meals.

It was National Curry Week last week and so some curry-related churnalism was to be expected. And here it was, produced by a well-known brand of curry sauce. Oh, and Peachey just happens to run a dating website which gets mentioned in most of the articles too.She's also written books about dating in which she appears to reveal that she eats a lot of seafood salad.

But 29,565 currys to the exclusion of everything else? Really?

Well, according to Peachey's comments in the Mail:

'I eat three curries a week and if I've got left overs I'll eat it for breakfast the next day.'

How can having it for 'her last 29,565 meals' equate to 'three a week'?

Indeed, if she was eating three curries a week, it would take 189 years to reach 29,565.

The Metro's version of the story claims instead that it is actually 29,565 'spicy meals' rather than just curry. But that wouldn't be so good for National Curry Week, would it?

When asked to confirm if she really had eaten that many currys, Peachey replied:

Indians?

But she had been linking to the Mail and Star stories on Twitter. Asked then if anything in the story was accurate, or just a PR stunt, she replied:

It's not the most convincing response ever, is it?

And a comment on the Mail's article from a person named Rochelle states:

'Corrections must be given more prominence'

2011-10-16T13:55:00.002+01:00

On 18 July 2011, Paul Dacre told a committee of MPs:

The PCC already has the right to place a correction or adjudication in a paper. Where it goes in the paper has to be agreed by the director of the Press Complaints Commission. It is one of the great myths of our time that newspapers somehow bury these things at the back of the book, as 80% of the corrections carried by newspapers are either on the same page as the original offending article or before that page.

Yet last week, when giving a speech at a public seminar organised by the Leveson Inquiry, Dacre said:

I believe corrections must be given more prominence. As from next week, the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and Metro will introduce a "Corrections and Clarifications" column on page two of these papers.

If he now believes corrections 'must be given' more prominence, why did he claim only a few months ago it was 'one of the biggest myths of all time' that they are buried?

The decision to introduce these columns is to be welcomed although, as Steve Baxter pointed out, Dacre has been editor of the Daily Mail since 1992. Why has it taken so long?

But it's better late than never and it is quite a concession - especially given the start of Dacre's speech was given over the attacking the 'current furore over the press'. Yet this 'current furore' appears to have led Dacre to realise a corrections column would be a good idea.

So, today, the Mail on Sunday's first 'Corrections and clarifications' column was published. Here's the first item:

Last Sunday we said some 3,200 families of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder were believed to have been given cars under the Motability scheme. In fact that total is the combined figure for two categories of recipients of the Higher Mobility component of the Disability Living Allowance and includes other behavioural disorders. Recipients choose whether or not to spend their allowance on a Motability car; generally about 30 per cent do so. Also, we described the qualification for the Lower Mobility component, rather than the Higher Mobility component required to claim a car, for which individuals must be declared virtually unable to walk.

This article was originally debunked by Full Fact but, as they point out, the original article remains on MailOnline with no correction. The claims were also repeated by Littlejohn in his column on Tuesday. Will the Mail be correcting that too?

The next correction says:

Bath licensee Ashley Van Dyck points out that he did not support police use of an airport-style scanner to check people on a night out for knives and drugs. Our article of September 25 repeated a quote to the BBC by Mr Van Dyck, chairman of Bath Pubwatch, saying only that he welcomed extra police officers being deployed to curb anti-social behaviour.

The original article, again, still remains live and uncorrected. Oddly, that article quotes Megan Van Dyck, chairwoman of Bath Pubwatch and not Ashley Van Dyck, chairman of Bath Pubwatch - and it is Megan who is quoted in the BBC's article.

Next:

On September 18 we published a photograph of Dr Angela Kikugawa, an assistant director at the UK Border Agency, competing at the Civil Service Sports Council Games at Loughborough University. Dr Kikugawa has asked us to clarify that she attended the games at her own expense and did not take part in any of the partying and other activities later in the evening.

This is in response to an article headlined: 'Paid to party on your tax: How civil servants were given time off work for drunken sports day hours after voting for a mass strike'. Again, the correction has not been added to the original story.

And finally, there's this:

Last week we printed the Union Flag incorrectly in a tea towel promotion. The thick white lines of the St Andrew’s Cross should have been above the red St Patrick’s Cross on one side of the flag and below it on the other.

Not something you'd imagine the Mail on Sunday is particularly happy to have got wrong - especially when the Mail has criticised others for the same error before.

So while the column is a welcome addition, and it's refreshing to see articles corrected within a few weeks, MailOnline should still update the original articles to include the clarification.

'The celebrity stuff drives the site'

2011-10-16T13:10:00.000+01:00

As this blog has pointed out once or twice before, MailOnline publisher Martin Clarke told the Press Gazette in 2009:

News is far more important to us that showbiz. News is what drives our site.

But last week, Simon Heffer - editor of the RightMinds section of MailOnline - admitted what most of us knew already. He told the Guardian:

The celebrity stuff drives the site.

Just take a look at the MailOnline's most read articles in the last 30 days. At time of writing, these are stories about Jodie Marsh (x2), Zara Phillips, The X Factor (x2), Amanda Knox, Pippa Middleton, Cheryl Cole (x2) and Rihanna.

'A proper crack-down'

2011-10-14T14:00:00.001+01:00

The main editorial comment in today's Daily Star takes a stand against obesity:

FAT'S SUCH A LETDOWN

The smartest minds in Britain have spent months looking for a way to end the country’s obesity crisis.

And last night they revealed the incredible solution: eat less.

Well, you don’t have to be Einstein to work that out.

Next they’ll be telling us to drink less to avoid a hangover.

As taxpayers we are footing the massive NHS bill for treating people with obesity-related illnesses.

What we need is a proper crack-down on the problem, with more education on how to get healthier.

Suppliers of unhealthy food also need to take more responsibility.

Simply telling people to eat less is not enough.

And it makes a laughing stock of our Government to say it.

That's all on page 6.

But on the front page...

(Hat-tip to Mark)

No EU 'ban' on blowing up balloons

2011-10-13T10:16:00.000+01:00

On Sunday, MailOnline reported:

The story ran in Monday's papers under headlines such as 'Brussels bans toys' (Mail), 'Now Euro killjoys ban children's party toys' (Express) and 'Children to be banned from blowing up balloons, under EU safety rules' (Telegraph).

Have children been 'banned' from blowing up balloons by the EU, as all the papers claimed? No. The stories refer to the Toy Safety Directive and what the explanatory guidance to that actually says is:

For latex balloons there must be a warning that children under 8 years must be supervised and broken balloons should be discarded.

It's about an 'age suitable' warning on the packet. It's not about the EU 'banning' something.

How, exactly, do these papers think such a ban, if it did exist, would be enforced anyway?

In response, Antonia Mochan of the European Commission Representation in the United Kingdom said:

The EU rules can regulate how things are put on the market, but not how they are used in the home. So they recommend supervision for use of balloons etc that children could choke on, but don’t ban children from using them.

The official statement from the Representation's office says:

Several newspapers have claimed that “Brussels” has imposed new rules on the UK banning children from blowing up balloons or using party whistles. This is wholly untrue.

EU legislation on toy safety aims to protect young children from death and injury and reflects expert medical advice – and simple common sense.

Balloons and other toys placed in the mouth can and do cause death and injury.

The EU rules referred to date from 1988. They state that ballons made of latex must carry a warning to parents that children under eight years should be supervised. Stronger plastic ballons do not need to carry this warning.

They also state that all toys aimed at children under three should be large enough to prevent them being swallowed.

Despite this, the claims were repeated by former Express editor Peter Hill:

There are certain types of public official in this country who make it their life's work to think of things to ban.

They are only happy when making other people's lives a little less free and a little less rich.

Now they've teamed up with others of their ilk in obscure offices of the EU, whose latest fatuous decision is to ban children from blowing up balloons and playing penny whistles.

Can anyone recall a case of a child being killed doing either? It's interfering for interfering's sake.

There's a certain type of journalist who make it their life's work to report on things being banned when they aren't really. Since there is no such 'ban' in this case, it's Hill who is being fatuous.

And he asks if anyone can recall a case of a child being killed blowing up a balloon. The parents of Clarice Harron can - their daughter choked to death while blowing up a balloon in 2009. And in 2008, the Mail reported that a 5-year-old had died after choking on a burst balloon.

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC):

Of all children's products, balloons are the leading cause of suffocation death, according to CPSC injury data. Since 1973, more than 110 children have died as a result of suffocation involving uninflated balloons or pieces of balloons. Most of the victims were under six years of age, but the CPSC does know of several older children who have suffocated on balloons.

Indeed, the Child Safety Protection Act, effective in the US since 1 January 1995, states that balloons must carry the following warning:

WARNING

CHOKING HAZARD - Children under 8 yrs. can choke or suffocate on uninflated or broken balloons. Adult supervision required.

Keep uninflated balloons from children. Discard broken balloons at once.

So the warning outlined by the EU's Toy Safety Directive is much the same as the one that has been used in the US for 16 years.

It wasn't just the facts about balloons that the papers got wrong. The Mail's article states, at the start:

Many traditional filler toys are being banned because they do not conform to tough regulations imposed by Brussels.

Party blowers...are among the favourites deemed too dangerous.

But towards the end, that changes to:

Party blowers...are categorised as unsafe for under-14s under rules governing toys that children put in their mouths. EU officials claim bits of blower could come off and cause choking. They can no longer be sold unless they pass strict new tests.

So not actually banned either, the article eventually admits. Just subject to safety tests - as all toys that kids put in their mouth are - and given an 'age suitable' warning.

Is trying to make toys as safe as reasonably possible really such a strange thing to want to do? It seems unlikely that the papers would be so misleading, or take the same snide tone, if this didn't involve the EU.

(More from Full Fact)

'Wonder diet'

2011-10-11T23:03:00.000+01:00

On 23 June, the front page of the Express revealed the 'secret' to losing weight. It was: eat fruit and veg and cut down on crisps and sugar-sweetened drinks.

On 2 August it revealed the 'secret to a longer life' which was:

not smoking, regular exercise, not being overweight and eating a Mediterranean-style diet.

On 17 September, the front page explained the was a 'miracle diet' that could 'stop heart disease'. The 'miracle' was:

Taking more exercise, eating more fruit and vegetables, reducing alcohol intake and slashing the amount of saturated fat in our diet

On Wednesday, the front page says:

Yes, this latest health 'wonder' is that eating fruit and veg is good for you. Some 'wonder'. And while the research suggests fruit and veg can help reduce the risk of heart disease in people with 'specific genetic risk factors', that's not the same as a 'cure'.

But why would anyone have got the impression fruit and veg wasn't good for your health?

(Hat-tip to Nick Sutton for the 'dangers' front page)

(Post updated with NHS Behind the Headlines link)

They eat horses, don't they?

2011-10-09T17:45:00.003+01:00

On 27 September, The Sun reported:

The story was based on a Freedom of Information request from the paper and followed up by the Telegraph and the Mail.

The Sun's 'exclusive' by Tom Wells began:

Whitehall chiefs paid a PR firm £45,000 to teach gypsies about an EU rule asking people to promise not to EAT their horses.

However, while the Sun and Mail articles are still live, the Telegraph's has been deleted. Why?

Well, it might have something to do with this statement put out by the 'Whitehall chiefs' at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

Myth bust: Marketing campaign on Horse Identification rules

The myth: The Sun and Daily Telegraph have suggested that Defra funded a marketing campaign to ask travellers not to eat their own horses.

The truth: It was nothing to do with eating horses. The campaign explained changes to EU rules which meant owners needed to have their foals and any previously unidentified horses micro-chipped when they applied for horse passports. This was to improve disease control and help prevent the export of contaminated meat. No part of the campaign involved asking the owners to promise not to eat horse meat.

Mail health story doesn't cut the mustard

2011-10-07T21:09:00.001+01:00

An article on the bottom of page 3 of Friday's Mail carried the headline 'Mustard, a must for muscles'. Online, the headline was:

The article, which included pictures of Popeye, spinach and a well-known brand of mustard in the online version, began:

Fitness fanatics looking to build muscle should consider reaching for the mustard, a study has found.

It seemed pretty clear from the Mail's reporting that this study was saying good things about eating mustard.

However, the NHS Behind the Headlines assessment says:

The word ‘mustard’ actually appears nowhere within the research paper.

Oh. And, moreover:

Despite what the Daily Mail reports, this study has no current application to humans. Although this chemical may occur in mustard seeds and other plants, this research used the chemical in its concentrated form and mustard was not used in any part of this experiment. It is not known whether the same effects would be seen in humans and, if they were, how much food containing homobrassinolide we would need to eat to get similar effects...it cannot be assumed that eating mustard will have any effect on muscle growth...

Most importantly, the safety of humans eating high concentrations of plant-derived steroids is completely unknown.

MailOnline churns press release, uses CE

2011-10-07T20:36:00.002+01:00

Yesterday, the Leveson Inquiry team held a public seminar on the 'competitive pressures on the press and the impact on journalism'.

At this event, Mail on Sunday editor Peter Wright said:

"You can never start from the assumption that something is wrong...You never send a reporter out to go and prove something, you send them out to examine if something is true. You very often start with a gut feeling about a certain event about which you only have partial knowledge and the job of the reporter is to find out what really is going on."

This is the editor of the newspaper that, over the last two weeks, has repeatedly claimed that the BBC has 'dropped', 'jettisoned' and 'replaced' BC/AD with BCE/CE, despite the fact that isn't true and the BBC told his reporter it wasn't true.

It seems the job of his reporter was to go and find what was really going on, but then the paper decided to publish the assumption/gut feeling anyway.

And that myth still refuses to die. On 5 October, the Mail's Simon Caldwell reported on 'a front page editorial in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper':

"The BBC has limited itself to changing only the description, rather than the computation of time, but in doing so, it cannot be denied that it has made a hypocritical gesture...an act of enormous foolishness."

So the Mail on Sunday writes a bogus attack on the BBC, and both it and the Mail keep the lie going by pretending it's true, and by reporting on the reaction of people who believe their stories.

Caldwell then writes:

The new guidance from the BBC asserts that the abbreviations for Before Christ and Anno Domini (the Year of the Lord) infringed its protocols on impartiality.

It instructs employees to instead replace them with the non-religious phrases BCE and BC – Before Common Era and Common Era.

This is clearly not true, given what the BBC has said about it being up to indivduals to choose - a statement relegated to the end of the article, after Caldwell repeats all the criticisms made by people who think the terms have indeed been 'dropped'.

But what's this?

Angry Mob points out that in an article published under the 'Daily Mail Reporter' byline last night, there's this sentence:

It had been up on MailOnline for hours, but the subs acted within 30 minutes of Kevin's post being published. And, not for the first time this week, they acted a little too fast:

In the rush to hide their hypocrisy, they mistakenly changed CE to BC. Seven minutes later, they changed it again:

So how did this happen? As Michael King pointed out, the article was a lazy cut-and-paste job from this press release from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. They said:

A thousand years ago, a brilliant beacon of light blazed in the sky, shining brightly enough to be seen even in daytime for almost a month. Native American and Chinese observers recorded the eye-catching event. We now know that they witnessed an exploding star, which left behind a gaseous remnant known as the Crab Nebula.

The same object that dazzled skygazers in 1054 C.E. continues to dazzle astronomers today by pumping out radiation at higher energies than anyone expected.

And the original MailOnline article said:

A thousand years ago, a brilliant beacon of light blazed in the sky, shining brightly enough to be seen even in daytime for almost a month.

Native American and Chinese observers recorded the eye-catching event.

What they were witnessing was an exploding star, which left behind a gaseous remnant known as the Crab Nebula.

The same object that dazzled skygazers in 1054 C.E. continues to fascinate astronomers today by pumping out radiation at higher energies than anyone expected.

Unsurprisingly, analysis from Churnalism.com shows that 96% of the MailOnline article is straight from the press release.

(Huge hat-tips to Kevin, Tim Miller and others)

That darn cat!

2011-10-06T19:06:00.000+01:00

After two years and one political spat, the claim that a cat saved a man from deportation refuses to go away.

It dates back to a Sunday Telegraph article from 17 October 2009 which had the headline 'Immigrant allowed to stay because of pet cat'. The following day, the Mail, Express, Sun and Star all ran the story, the Express going with the headline 'Got a cat? OK, you can stay'.

The story was then repeated by columnists including Richard Littlejohn, Amanda Platell, Sue Carroll and Eamonn Holmes, who stated:

If you are an illegal immigrant facing deportation from the UK then don't worry - just tell the authorities that you have a cat and they will let you stay.

Except, they won't, because - as Dominic Casciani makes clear - that isn't what happened. The Telegraph's Tom Chivers explains:

There never was someone who could not be deported because he had a pet cat. It goes back to a Bolivian student (not an illegal immigrant) who applied to stay in this country. In his application, he does indeed mention a pet cat. But he was granted leave to remain in Britain as "the unmarried partner of a person present and settled in the United Kingdom", not as the owner of a British cat. Under UK Border Agency rules (not the Human Rights Act), if a couple has lived together for two years in "a genuine and subsisting relationship akin to marriage", they have a right to stay, regardless of whether they're married.

Yet the cat has popped up occasionally since 2009. In March 2011, a text to the Daily Star made a 'joke' of it. It was mentioned again in the Star on 14 July, in the Mirror on 13 June and in a Daily Mail editorial on 20 June.

And on Tuesday, Home Secretary Theresa May said:

“We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act...The illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because – and I am not making this up – he had a pet cat.”

As Kevin Arscott noted, she was right to say she wasn't 'making this up' - instead, she was repeating something that wasn't correct that had appeared in several newspapers.

But it had been debunked. The lawyer in the case, Barry O'Leary, was quoted saying the cat was 'immaterial' - including on on Radio Five Live - but this was either ignored or overlooked.

As Adam Wagner of UK Human Rights Blog, writes:

Put it this way. If I had a client who was facing deportation and I wanted to show that the simple fact that he had a cat meant that he should stay, and I tried to use the Bolivian cat judgment as a precedent, I would be laughed out of court.

Following May's speech the Judicial Communications Office reissued their two-year old statement which pointed out:

"This was a case in which the Home Office conceded that they had mistakenly failed to apply their own policy - applying at that time to that appellant - for dealing with unmarried partners of people settled in the UK.

"That was the basis for the decision to uphold the original tribunal decision - the cat had nothing to do with the decision."

But that didn't stop today's Daily Mail claiming it had the 'truth':

A judge allowed an illegal immigrant to dodge deportation because he feared separating him from his cat risked ‘serious emotional consequences’, it emerged yesterday.

The human rights ruling, obtained by the Daily Mail, vindicates Home Secretary Theresa May over the ‘cat-gate’ row with Justice Secretary Ken Clarke at the Tory Conference.

She claimed that the cat, Maya, was a key reason behind the decision to let the man, a Bolivian national, stay in Britain

They were so sure of their version of events, they put it on the front page.

Yet on page 17, even their own columnist wasn't even convinced. Stephen Glover said May was:

partly misinformed as well as uninformed

Back to the front page article, however, and there was the inevitable clarification towards the end, in which the Mail admitted:

the Bolivian – whose name is blacked out in the court documents – won on different grounds at a later hearing which found the department had not followed its own rules.

Today, Barry O'Leary has issued a lengthy riposte to the Mail and others. He says:

The Judicial Office has already made a statement in this matter and I wish to give my support to that statement.

The case referred to was not decided on the basis of ownership of a cat. It was decided on the basis of a Home Office policy which the Home Office themselves had failed to apply. This was accepted by the Home Office before the Immigration Judge. The Home Office agreed the appeal should be allowed. The ownership of a cat was immaterial to the final decision made. Any press reports to the contrary are not based on fact.

The Mail claimed:

Yesterday it was revealed that the Bolivian not only argued that he would suffer from being separated from his cat, but also that his pet’s quality of life would be affected.

But O'Leary replies:

I stress that it was not argued at any point by this firm, nor by my client, that he would 'suffer from being separated from his cat' nor that 'the pet's quality of life would be affected.' Our arguments were based on the long-term committed nature of the couple's relationship. Their ownership of a cat was just one detail amongst many given to demonstrate the genuine nature of their relationship.

He continues:

It was, in fact, the official acting on behalf of the Home Secretary who, when writing the letter of refusal, stated that the cat could relocate to Bolivia and cope with the quality of life there. This statement was not in response to any argument put forward by this firm or my client (and was, frankly, rather mischievous on behalf of the official).

The appeal against the refusal was successful and, when giving judgment, because the reasons for refusal did refer to the cat the judge commented on the couple's cat. It was taken into account as part of the couple's life together. However, it was not the reason for allowing the appeal. The appeal was allowed because of the couple's relationship, and the judge also relied on the Home Office policy that had not been applied.

There is one further problem with the Mail running this story today. When the paper mentioned the cat on 20 June, a complaint was made to the Press Complaints Commission. The complainant stated that as Mr O'Leary had already made clear the cat was 'immaterial', the article breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code of Practice.

As the complainant was a third party, the PCC contacted Mr O'Leary who told them that his client did not want to make a complaint about the article. Without the participation of the subject of the story, the PCC did not feel able to adjudicate on the complaint.

But in its conclusion, it said:

The Commission fully acknowledged the concerns raised by the complainant in regard to the accuracy of the article...

While it emphasised that the complainant’s concerns were indeed legitimate, it did not consider, in the absence of the participation of the Bolivian man or his representative, that it was in a position to investigate the matter, not least because it would not be possible to release any information about the outcome of the investigation or resolve the matter without the input of the man.

That said, it recognised that the complainant had raised concerns which had a bearing on the accuracy of the claim made in the article and, as such, it trusted that the newspaper would take heed of the points raised in the complaint and bear them in mind for future coverage.

Today's Daily Mail goes to prove how much the paper 'takes heed' of what the PCC says.

(More from Channel 4 Fact Check, Full Fact, David Allen Green, Alan Travis, Adam Wagner, Alex Massie, Ed West and Minority Thought)

Express takes 'enormous leap of faith'

2011-10-05T22:17:00.001+01:00

The headline on the front page of today's Express says: Daily pill to cure diabetes: New drug brings hope to millions:

The continuation on page nine carries the headline 'It works, without side effects'. But as usual with the 'miracle cure' stories that the Express splashes all over its front page with such tiresome regularity, the facts are rather less eye-catching.

As the first line of Jo Willey's story states:

A daily pill which could treat or even cure diabetes is a step closer after scientists discovered how to reverse the condition.

'Could treat or even cure'. What we have is some research that involved injecting mice with a naturally occurring chemical.

So contrary to what the front page claims, there's no 'new drug' and no 'pill'.

Towards the end of the article, there's a quote from Dr Iain Frame from Diabetes UK, who says:

"The research is at a very early stage and has shown some benefit in female mice with diabetes and less benefit in male mice. Whilst promising, it would take an enormous leap of faith to assume a new pill will soon be on the market."

But Diabetes UK have a slightly longer version of Frame's reaction. The sentence that's not included in the Express' article is rather important, in the context of their front page splash:

"The idea that Type 2 diabetes will be cured or prevented by taking a simple pill is not supported by this paper. The research is at a very early stage and has shown some benefit in female mice with diabetes and less benefit in male mice. Whilst promising, it would take an enormous leap of faith to assume a new pill will soon be on the market for people with, or at high risk of, Type 2 diabetes."

The NHS Behind the Headlines verdict is:

The news coverage by the Daily Express was quite sensationalist and may have overemphasised the significance of these findings for humans. For instance, the report says that “the groundbreaking finding effectively means that the obese and those at risk of getting type 2 diabetes could one day take a tablet to stop the condition developing”.

This and other statements may give the impression that a diabetes pill is just around the corner, which is not the case. This research was in mice and did not test the effect of a pill on humans. It merely represents the very first stage of a long process.

Sorry we said you begged for sex

2011-10-05T19:24:00.000+01:00

The Sun, 16 August 2011:

Man U ace begged me for sex at 5am (even though he's dating Page 3 Emily)

Footie rising star Tom Cleverley begged a girl for sex after taking her to a B&B - despite dating a Page 3 beauty.

The Sun, 5 October 2011:

Tom Cleverley - apology

An article on 16 August reported that Manchester United footballer Tom Cleverley had begged a girl for sex after meeting her at a night club, even though he was dating a Page 3 model. In fact, entirely unknown to the girl it now transpires that the man involved, who looked like Tom Cleverley, was impersonating him. We apologise to Mr Cleverley for any embarrassment caused.

Along with the apology, the Sun has agreed to pay 'a substantial sum in damages'. The Guardian reports:

According to [a] statement...read by David Price QC, acting on behalf of Cleverley...the article alleged that Cleverley "had met a girl in a Blackpool nightclub and bombarded her with text messages offering her sex"...

"Most seriously, the article then alleged that he repeatedly badgered her for sex, despite her saying no"...

The lawyer added that Cleverley had never met the girl involved and on the night of the alleged incident he was at home with his girlfriend in Manchester...

It is understood that the Sun did not contact Cleverley before publishing the story.

This is the third time this year that a Sun 'story' about the late-night antics of a footballer has resulted in a clarification and apology.

(Hat-tip to Patrick Casey)

MailOnline makes up events, quotes from Perugia

2011-10-03T22:20:00.000+01:00

As Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox were hearing that their appeal against their convictions for the murder of Meredith Kercher had been successful, this article by Nick Pisa appeared on MailOnline:

It is unsurprising, perhaps, that a media outlet would prepare two versions of a story where the result was expected but unknown. Unfortunately for the Mail's website, they posted the wrong one. A cock-up, then.

But half way through the article, there's this:

And later, this:

As the appeal was successful, it's clear none of this happened.

Putting up the wrong article is one thing. But filling it with completely invented reactions and descriptions of events that haven't happened is something else entirely.

(Hat-tip to Chantelle Osili and all who highlighted this)

'Dumbfounded'

2011-10-03T21:51:00.000+01:00

It appears there is still no end in sight to the myth that the BBC is to stop using BC/AD.

In yesterday's Mail on Sunday, there were two further articles repeating the claim. The headline on Chris Hastings' follow-up said: Government to save Year of our Lord from BBC's 'Common Era'.

'BBC's 'Common Era'' - as if it is something they have invented or they alone use.

There is also a comment piece from former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey. It begins:

Dionysius Exiguus would be dumbfounded at the attempts by the BBC to issue guidelines that amount to ditching the well-known terms in our calendar, BC and AD.

Remember the BBC stated last week:

The BBC has issued no editorial guidance on date systems.

Curiously, Carey then states:

I always try to be fair to those whose views challenge my own, so let us listen to what the guidelines say

Well, it's not being 'fair' if you say something is a guideline when it's not, and it's not being 'fair' if you pretend the BBC hasn't said something it has. If he had listened to what the BBC had said, he wouldn't need to make this assumption:

So why does the BBC wish to challenge and, we assume, discard this ancient usage?

The BBC stated very clearly that on this issue:

the decision rests with the individual editorial and production teams.

Yet Carey says:

I would like to think that the BBC might rethink the guidelines it has sent out to its programme directors

It is also worth noting that the story has, once again, been denied - this time by the BBC's Head of Religion and Ethics, Aaqil Ahmed. On Friday, he wrote:

The story, suggesting we had dropped AD (Anno Domini) and BC (Before Christ), was quite simply wrong. We have issued no editorial guidelines or instructions to suggest that anyone in the BBC should change the terms they use. The BBC, like most people, use BC and AD as standard terminology.

But we recognise that it is possible to use different terminology, and that some people do: that is what is reflected on our Religion website. Even though we told the newspaper this, they ran the story anyway.

Just for the record, for our religion and ethics programming on BBC television and radio we generally use AD and BC. It is a shame that people seeking to make mischief should cast a shadow over the wonderful celebration of our Christian religious heritage that is Songs of Praise.

(Angry Mob has also written about Carey's article, while Five Chinese Crackers has awarded the Mail and Mail on Sunday his 'Tabloid Bullshit of the Month Award' for this story.)

The Mail on coffee

2011-10-01T14:27:00.000+01:00

On 27 September, the Mail reported:

But?

But it isn’t entirely beneficial – and you can have too much.

Scientists have also shown that can raise the blood pressure and increase the heart rate.

And pregnant women are advised to drink no more than two cups a day to reduce the likelihood of a miscarriage or their babies being underweight.

'Fight'

2011-10-01T08:41:00.000+01:00

The front page headline on today's Daily Star says:

This might lead readers to think that the cover story is about The X Factor judge Tulisa Contostavlos speaking about her 'fight' with Cheryl Cole. But here's what she actually says in the article:

“I can 100% reassure fans that I will be sitting in that judge’s chair in the final. These stories? I know they are a load of rubbish. I know for a fact from the conversations I’ve had with Cheryl that it’s all a load of rubbish.”

She added: “Me and Cheryl?

“I hate it when people say ‘Oh my God we’re new best friends and that I’m morphing into her’.

“We do talk. It’s as simple as that. I haven’t spoken to her for a bit because she has been out in LA but we will meet up when she gets back.

“We are just cool. That’s the word for me and Cheryl.

“We sat down and had ‘the conversation’ at her birthday party.

“We said ‘It’s gonna go crazy’ and ‘People are going to make up rumour after rumour’.

“It has been intense. We don’t pay any attention.”

Not much of a 'fight', is it?

And, of course, Littlejohn...

2011-09-30T16:43:00.000+01:00

It was something of a surprise that Richard Littlejohn didn't mention the BBC BC/AD non-story in his column on Tuesday. But he just couldn't resist.

Today, under the headline Whatever the BBC say, Britain is still mainly white, Christian and straight (has the BBC ever said the opposite?), Littlejohn proclaims:

Only this week the BBC announced it was scrapping references to AD and BC because it didn’t want to offend, or discriminate against, non-Christians.

And here, again, is what the BBC actually 'announced' 'this week' about this issue:

It is incorrect to say that the BBC has replaced date systems BC and AD with Before Common Era (BCE) and Common Era (CE). Whilst the BBC uses BC and AD like most people as standard terminology, it is possible to use different terminology, particularly as it is now commonly used in historical research. The BBC has issued no editorial guidance on date systems, and the decision rests with the individual editorial and production teams.

So: did Littlejohn know his statement was untrue, and wrote it anyway, or did he not bother to check his facts, and so wrote out of complete ignorance?

And how many more times is the Mail going repeat something that it must know is not true?

(Thanks to all who got in touch about Littlejohn's remark)

And on it goes...

2011-09-29T03:40:00.000+01:00

The BBC BC/AD saga rumbles on.

Two days ago, the BBC published a response to the complaints it had received on the issue:

It is incorrect to say that the BBC has replaced date systems BC and AD with Before Common Era (BCE) and Common Era (CE). Whilst the BBC uses BC and AD like most people as standard terminology, it is possible to use different terminology, particularly as it is now commonly used in historical research. The BBC has issued no editorial guidance on date systems, and the decision rests with the individual editorial and production teams. It should also be noted that for every BCE or CE reference, there are still a great many BC and AD references used across the BBC.

But the Mail's Steve Doughty has decided to completely ignore this and repeat the original lie. In today's paper, he writes:

The finding that the nation remains overwhelmingly Christian comes days after it emerged that BBC programme-makers have been put under pressure to stop describing dates as BC or AD.

Instead, they have been told to use the non-Christian alternatives Before Common Era and Common Era.

To Doughty, 'no editorial guidance' and 'decision rests with the individual editorial and production teams' means 'programme-makers have been put under pressure' and 'have been told'.

Hopefully, Full Fact will now include this in their complaint to the PCC on this issue.

(Hat-tip to build_a_fire)

More cross-promotion from Richard Desmond

2011-09-27T23:02:00.000+01:00

The Wednesday editions of the Daily Express and Daily Star can hardly contain their excitement about the launch of the new Health Lottery:

Despite the fact it has only launched today, the Express article by Padraic Flanagan explains that it is:

Britain's biggest lottery

Of course, it was to be expected that these papers would give the lottery such glowing, prominent coverage. Why?

Because the Health Lottery is being run by Northern and Shell - the Richard Desmond-owned company that also owns...the Daily Express and the Daily Star.

One thing the papers probably won't mention is the criticism levelled at the Health Lottery for giving 20.5p of every £1 ticket to good causes, compared with the National Lottery's 28p.

'Rich and thick'

2011-09-27T11:36:00.002+01:00

Mail diarist Ephraim Hardcastle, 14 June 2011:

The Queen doesn't have any horses running at Royal Ascot this week, but her new in-laws Carole and Michael Middleton are hoping they will.

They own a share in the highly-rated Sohraab, which is expected to race on Saturday. The horse is also part-owned by David Cameron's mother Mary and trained by the Middletons' good friend Hughie Morrison – son of one of Scotland's wealthiest landowners, the late Lord Margadale.

Morrison, 50, is endearingly nicknamed Ambrosia after the Devon-based pudding manufacturer which describes its produce as 'Rich and Thick'.

Mail diarist Ephraim Hardcastle, 27 September 2011:

My apologies to racehorse trainer Hugh Morrison for referring facetiously to him being ‘endearingly nicknamed Ambrosia’.

We accept this is quite untrue.

Sportingly he has asked me to make a donation to Racing Welfare.

My just desserts.

The 'BBC drops BC/AD' lie continues to spread

2011-09-26T19:38:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, the Mail on Sunday's front page story claimed that the BBC had 'dropped' the abbreviations BC/AD and ordered that BCE/CE be used instead. The former had been 'replaced' and 'jettisoned', it said. The BBC had 'turned its back on the year of our Lord'.

There was much in the article that proved this wasn't true. The examples where both had been used. The quote from a BBC presenter saying he'd continue using BC/AD. And, most importantly, the relegated-to-the-end-in-the-hope-no-one-sees-it quote from a BBC spokesman which stated:

'The BBC has not issued editorial guidance on the date systems. Both AD and BC, and CE and BCE are widely accepted date systems and the decision on which term to use lies with individual production and editorial teams.'

In case there was any doubt, the BBC also told the Guardian's Reality Check:

Whilst the BBC uses BC and AD like most people as standard terminology it is also possible for individuals to use different terminology if they wish to, particularly as it is now commonly used in historical research.

So BC/AD is used as 'standard' but the BBC allows people to use BCE/CE, based on personal preference.

Knowing that is the case, why did the Mail on Sunday decide to run its 'BC/AD dropped' story? And why have other newspapers and columnists continue to repeat the 'ban' lie as if it is true?

On Sunday, the Telegraph's website churned out a quick news story that repeated the claims despite also including (at the end, of course) the BBC's quote denying them.

In the Mail's RightMinds section, James Delingpole said of the BBC:

No longer will its website refer to those bigoted, Christian-centric concepts AD (as in Anno Domini – the Year of Our Lord) and BC (Before Christ)...All reference to Christ has been expunged.

This depite the BBC's denial - which he doesn't mention - and despite the fact there are many references to BC and AD on the BBC's website.

Either Delingpole knew this, and wrote that the terms had been 'expunged' anyway, or he didn't check, and wrote it without knowing for sure. It's very poor practice either way. And that's not a first for Delingpole - he also repeated the £32-loaf-of-bread nonsense a day after that first appeared, despite it being completely wrong.

On Sunday evening, RightMinds ran another column on the subject, this time from Reverend Dr Peter Mullen, who once 'joked' about tattooing homosexuals with health warnings. It begins:

No one should be surprised that the BBC has stopped using the abbreviations all us have always known: BC for Before Christ and AD for Anno Domini - the years of our Lord.

Since they haven't, it's not the best start. And it doesn't get any better:

Because the BBC is the very vanguard of the secularizing tendency which has declared itself as wanting to obliterate Christianity from public life and the public discussion of important moral and political affairs.

This hatred of our Christian heritage...

To be honest, I don't think the BBC's undoubted loathing of our Christian heritage is the main issue.

They just loath anything that smacks of tradition and value and Englishness, of all that most of us were brought up to respect.

Like Stalin or Pol Pot, the BBC would like to abolish all reverence for the past

Mullen's rant was published at 6.27pm on Sunday night - less than an hour after BBC1 broadcast 30-minutes of hymns and tradition in Songs of Praise: 50 Amazing Years. Earlier in the day, BBC Radio 4 had broadcast Sunday Worship. Every weekday the same station broadcasts Prayer for the Day, Thought for the Day and the Daily Service. Is this the BBC's 'undoubted loathing of our Christian heritage'?

Moreover, thirty-five minutes into Sunday's episode of Antiques Roadshow expert John Axford used both BC and AD. This was two hours after Mullen had told everyone the BBC had 'stopped using' the abbreviations.

It was somewhat inevitable that Melanie Phillips would also mention it in her column in Monday's Daily Mail. She said the BBC:

has decided that the terms AD and BC (Anno Domini, or the Year of Our Lord, and Before Christ) must be replaced by the terms Common Era and Before Common Era.

Either she hadn't read the BBC's statement - or even, as a journalist, spoken to the BBC for clarification on the matter - or she decided it was worth ignoring.

She says:

One of the most sinister aspects of political correctness is the way in which its edicts purport to be in the interests of minority groups.

This is despite the fact that, very often, they are not promulgated at the behest of minorities at all, but by members of the majority who want to destroy their own culture and who use minorities to camouflage their true intentions.

The latest manifestation stars once again that all-time world champion of political correctness, the BBC.

But then she adds:

It so happens, however, that along with many other Jewish people I sometimes use CE and BCE since the terms BC and AD are not appropriate to me.

Do as she says, not as she does. If the abbreviations are not 'appropriate' to her, why should they be 'appropriate' to everyone who works at the BBC? Phillips also refers to the BBC's 'edict' on this matter but the 'edict' is, as the BBC has made clear, 'use whichever terms you want'.

She then points to some examples of BCE/CE being used - not ones she has found through any research, but ones highlighted by the Mail on Sunday:

the terms CE and BCE are now increasingly finding their way onto news bulletins and on programmes such as University Challenge or Melvyn Bragg’s Radio Four show In Our Time.

Thursday's edition of In Our Time is already being trailed on the BBC website:

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Etruscan civilisation.

Around 800 BC a sophisticated civilisation began to emerge in the area of Italy now known as Tuscany.

Phillips wider argument is that language is being 'hijacked' and so:

debate becomes impossible...words...have come to mean the precise opposite of what they really do mean.

But what about the BBC's words? How can a debate be possible on this topic when the Mail on Sunday, Delingpole, Mullen and Phillips refuse to take on board what the BBC has said and what it actually does? How does:

Whilst the BBC uses BC and AD like most people as standard terminology it is also possible for individuals to use different terminology if they wish to

become, to Phillips:

AD and BC...must be replaced by the terms Common Era and Before Common Era.

Words have indeed come to mean the precise opposite.

(Moreover, Phillips uses her column to claim 'Christmas has been renamed in various places 'Winterval'' despite the fact it hasn't been renamed Winterval in any place.)

And Phillips wasn't the only one in today's papers taking the same line. In the Telegraph, Mayor of London Boris Johnson said:

...it now turns out that some BBC committee or hierarch has decided that this nativity – notional or otherwise – can no longer be referred to by our state-funded broadcaster...

You know what, I just don't think this is good enough. This decision by the BBC is not only puerile and absurd. It is also deeply anti-democratic...

Johnson appears to believe in the myth of some centrally-issued edict that is banning the use of BC/AD at the BBC. But what he's actually calling 'deeply anti-democratic' is a position that says 'individuals can do what they wish'. Indeed, Martin Robbins argues that it is the Mail's view - 'It's not enough that the BBC allows staff to use AD, they must use it, always' - that is the more problematic.

As well as the columns by Johnson and Phillips, there have been further 'news' articles in today's papers. The Express' headline - 'Atheist' BBC drops year of Our Lord' - was very similar to the Mail on Sunday's. The article stated:

Bosses advised staff to replace Anno Domini – the Year Of Our Lord – and Before Christ with terms Common Era and Before Common Era.

The Mail and Telegraph both quoted BBC presenters who maintain they will be sticking to BC/AD yet both papers still refer to a 'diktat' and 'guidance' that the terms are 'barred'. The Mail's article puts the BBC's denial earlier in the story than the Mail on Sunday managed, yet it still carries the headline: Andrew Marr says he will ignore BBC diktat to stop use of BC and AD.

At the time of writing, there are 900 comments on Johnson's article, over 100 on Phillips' and over 1,500 on the original Mail on Sunday story. The vast majority are attacking the BBC for some 'edict' that they haven't, actually, issued. The story has been repeated on countless blogs, websites and forums and been linked to by outraged people on Twitter.

The BBC's position - BC/AD is standard, but people can use whichever they want - has generally been forgotten or ignored.

To quote Phillips again:

The result of this hijacking of the language is that debate becomes impossible because words like...truth and many more have come to mean the precise opposite of what they really do mean.

(Hat-tips to Mark Burnley, Jem Stone and Martin Robbins)

'Nobody'

2011-09-26T16:15:00.000+01:00

On 21 September, MailOnline ran this headline and story:

'Nobody has seen a creature quite like this one before.'

Not so. Just over half an hour after the first comment was left on the article, Jamie from Wisbech pointed out it was a cuscus.

There then followed dozens more comments identifying the 'mystery creature' as a common spotted cuscus.

How did they manage that, given 'nobody has seen a creature quite like this one before'?

(From Darryl Mason)

BC and AD not 'jettisoned' by BBC

2011-09-25T00:02:00.000+01:00

Last Sunday, Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens wrote:

The BBC’s Chief Commissar for Political Correctness (whom I imagine as a tall, stern young woman in cruel glasses issuing edicts from an austere office) was hard at work again last week.

On University Challenge, Jeremy Paxman referred to a date as being Common Era, rather than AD. This nasty formulation is designed to write Christianity out of our culture.

One week on, and his paper has decided this observation is worthy of the front page lead:

The article by Chris Hastings begins:

The BBC has been accused of 'absurd political correctness' after dropping the terms BC and AD in case they offend non-Christians.

The Corporation has replaced the familiar Anno Domini (the year of Our Lord) and Before Christ with the obscure terms Common Era and Before Common Era.

'Jettisoned'. 'Dropped'. 'Replaced'.

But skip to the statement from the BBC - inevitably relegated to the very last paragraph of the story - and we're told:

The BBC said last night: 'The BBC has not issued editorial guidance on the date systems. Both AD and BC, and CE and BCE are widely accepted date systems and the decision on which term to use lies with individual production and editorial teams.'

So the BBC uses both. Indeed, Hastings' article proves BC and AD haven't been 'jettisoned' when he points out:

The terms are not confined to religious output and have also been used in news bulletins. Some reports add to the confusion by switching between both terms in the same item.

He goes on to quote several people unhappy with the BBC, who seem to believe BC and AD have, indeed, been 'dropped' (probably because that's what Hastings told them when he asked for their reaction). But he also gets a quote from Today and Mastemind presenter John Humphrys who says:

"I will continue to use AD and BC because I don't see a problem."

Despite this Hastings believes his story is true and he knows what's behind it:

This is not the first time the BBC has caused controversy over its use of alien language to promote a politically correct, Europhile agenda.

It's not clear why CE and BCE are deemed 'alien' or 'Europhile'. It's not as if the terms are new - the Mail on Sunday includes a box which dates them back to the mid-nineteenth century. It also says they are becoming 'particularly common in the United States'.

In the article, Simon Schama says he's been 'familar' with BC and BCE 'since the Fifties'. And, as Hastings points out, it's not even as if the BBC has only just started using the terms - one example he highlights dates from March 2010:

Last year, Northern Ireland correspondent William Crawley referred to the construction of the Temple of Solomon in about 950 BCE.

So Hastings has the BBC quote denying the terms have been dropped. He has a prominent BBC presenter saying he's going to keep using the BC and AD. And he has his own evidence saying BBC journalists are 'switching between both terms'.

Yet Hastings still writes the article in this way, and the Mail on Sunday still splashes it all over the front page.

UPDATE: James Delingpole has a comment piece on this in the Mail's RightMinds section. He apparently sees this 'news' as evidence of a:

Marxist plot to destroy civilisation from within

He says:

No longer will its website refer to those bigoted, Christian-centric concepts AD (as in Anno Domini – the Year of Our Lord) and BC (Before Christ)...All reference to Christ has been expunged

If only the BBC website didn't prove him wrong.

Mail reports joke as fact

2011-09-24T12:20:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday, Radio 2 presenter Jeremy Vine tweeted:

Followed by:

Apparently missing that the first comment was tongue-in-cheek, the Mail rushed into action with a 'bash-the-BBC, Christianity-under-attack' classic:

At time of writing, however, the Mail's article has disappeared, quietly deleted from the Mail's website as it realised Vine's comment may not have been entirely serious.

Why?

Well, the Express published the story in Wednesday's paper, on page five:

BBC presenter Jeremy Vine sparked a row yesterday after claiming he had to ask bosses for “special permission” to play a Christian hymn on his show – for fear of upsetting other religions...

It is understood permission had to be given by BBC bosses in case playing a Christian hymn was seen as promoting one religion over another.

But skip to the end of the Mark Reynolds' story and there's this:

Last night a BBC spokeswoman said the presenter had not been serious on Twitter. She said: “Jeremy tweeted a light-hearted remark to highlight the fact he doesn’t normally play hymns in the show. Of course he did not need approval to play the hymn.”

How Reynolds 'understood' why permission had to be given when it didn't isn't entirely clear. And why would he need permission, if they are 'keen' to find the nation's favourite?

The Mail's website has not printed the BBC's comment, or clarified why their article was deleted. But their version of the story has already spread across the internet.

'We accept that she does not have cancer'

2011-09-22T13:59:00.000+01:00

The following apology was published by the Daily Record in Scotland today. It is not currently available on their website:

Dr Helen McGlone

In our article of 29 April "I'm too skint to pay the bill for cancer", we reported that Dr Helen McGlone had "begged a judge for help as she cannot afford expensive radiology which could help her fight the disease."

Dr McGlone has asked us to make clear neither she, not her advocate, Andrew Smith QC, begged the court for help.

We accept that she does not have cancer and therefore does not require radiology treatment.

We are happy to make her position clear and offer her our apologies.

(Hat-tip to Scott)

Sun corrects '£32 loaf of bread' story

2011-09-21T16:24:00.001+01:00

On 19 and 20 July, several newspapers reported that the NHS was purchasing gluten-free bread for £32.27 per loaf. The Mail, Mirror, Express, Sun and Telegraph all carried the story. It appeared that none of the journalists bothered to check the facts - if they had, they would have found the cost for a single loaf was closer to £2.82.

To its credit, the Express ran its correction the day after it published the original.

Yesterday - two months later - the Sun finally published its correction:

Price of coeliac loaf is £2.82
We reported on July 19 that the NHS paid £32.27 per loaf of non-gluten bread, given on prescription to sufferers of coeliac disease. In fact, the cost per loaf is around £2.82, £32 being for an average prescription of several loaves. We are happy to make this clear.

At the time of writing, this does not appear on the Sun's website. The original article and the accompanying editorial, are both still on there, however. Neither has had the correction added.

The correction ran on page six of yesterday's paper whereas the original article appeared on page nine. But compare the prominence of the original:

with the size of the correction:

Yes, it's the smallest headline and shortest article on that page.

Given that the story was proved to be wrong within a day of its publication, it's not clear why it took the Sun two months to correct it.

It's also unclear when the Mirror, Mail and Telegraph will correct their versions - all of which remain live.

Sorry we 'suggested' you were dishonest

2011-09-19T09:13:00.003+01:00

The Mail has published the following apology today, eighteen months after the original article appeared:

Osmond Kilkenny

On March 27, 2010, in an article headlined ‘Family at war over Subo’s millions’, we reported concerns of Susan Boyle’s family about her then manager Mr Kilkenny.We did not intend to suggest that he was likely to manage Miss Boyle’s finances dishonestly and accept this is untrue. We apologise to Mr Kilkenny for this suggestion.

Express reveals another 'miracle'

2011-09-17T02:49:00.000+01:00

Here we go again:

Yes, it's another Express front page headline about health that promises to reveal some great secret. The sub-heading sounds promising: 'Experts develop a miracle diet that is key to saving lives'.

And what is this 'miracle'? Well:

Taking more exercise, eating more fruit and vegetables, reducing alcohol intake and slashing the amount of saturated fat in our diet

This may sound a tad familiar. In August, the paper revealed that 'experts' had found the 'secret' to a longer life. It was:

Not smoking, regular exercise, not being overweight and eating a Mediterranean-style diet.

And in June, the Express claimed there was an 'easy way to lose weight' and this 'secret' was being revealed just in time for summer. The secret?:

eat a lot more “natural” foods, such as fruit and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and yogurt, while avoiding anything processed...cut out fizzy, sugar-sweetened drinks...Exercise reduced weight, while alcohol added.

Today's front page about heart disease is attached to an article written by Jo Willey. She begins:

The secret to fighting heart disease was revealed by experts last night.

'Last night'? Did people really not know that exercise, fruit and veg were good for your heart before 'last night'?

Willey goes on to explain that this 'miracle diet' is actually a 'healthy living plan' called 'Ultimate Cholesterol Lowering Plan', which has been produced by the charity Heart UK.

But their press release on the Plan is dated 1 September. So not only are the general tips very well known, the specific plan is actually two week-old news.

And that is what they Express has decided to lead on.

Unfortunately, they haven't explained where the 'free chocolate mousse' fits into this 'miracle diet'.