MailOnline Showbiz Awards deserve award for hypocrisy

Ladies and gentlemen, it's the awards you have been waiting for. No, not the Baftas or the Oscars, but the inaugural MailOnline Showbiz Awards 2012.

The idea is explained perfectly in the intro:

Just like you the readers, the activities of particular celebrities deserving of praise, and those not so deserving have been named in our own non-exhaustive list of recipients for the inaugural Mail Online Showbiz Awards.

We're then given the details. First: best bikini body. Cynics might suggest this is just an excuse to publish ten photos of scantily-clad female celebs - and they'd be right. There's also a 'rear of the year' award, illustrated by ten celeb arses.

To try and demonstrate that the MailOnline Showbiz Team are not totally in thrall to celebs, there's also a 'Put it away, love' category.

Curiously, Rihanna comes second in that category, depsite being 'awarded' 5th best bikini body and 4th best rear. Helen Flanagan also appears in the 'Best bikini body' and 'Put it away, love' categories.

The winner of the 'Put it away, love' category is Courtney Stodden. MailOnline has written 95 articles about Stodden in the last 18 months. Many of these are about her not wearing much: showing off acres of flesh in skimpy Halloween costumes; wearing a lacy crop-top and barely-there skirt; wearing towering see-through heels and a short red dress; wearing bikinis and stripper heels and so on and on and on. They even used the phrase 'All grown up at last!' when she turned 18.

The suggestion that they actually want her, or any of the other women they named, to cover up is utterly hollow, given the relish with which they have published photos of them all wearing so little.

Indeed, one week after suggesting Flanagan should 'put it away, love', MailOnline published five photos from a photo shoot it described like this:

In the 'Flab to Fab' category - and make of that name what you will - the top ten is missing a 5th, 6th and 8th placed person, which does nothing to dispel the idea this was a rush job.

Two other categories are worthy of note: Pointless Celebrity Tweeter and Vainest Celebrity Tweeter. The MailOnline Showbiz Team named Maria Fowler - who appeared in The Only Way Is Essex - as 'winner' of the former category.

If you search MailOnline for 'Maria Fowler Twitter' you get 138 results.

In this article, her tweets were so 'pointless' that members of the MailOnline team transcribed seven of them and took screenshots of six.

In this article, they included three more of her tweets and there were four more in this one, which also included three photos she had posted on Twitter.

There were two more of her tweets, and three more of her Twitter pics, in this piece, one tweet here, one pic here, two pics here, one tweet here, two here, three here, four here, and two tweets and three tweeted pics included here.

And that's just going back to 20 August 2012. 

If the MailOnline's hacks believe Fowler's Twitter feed is so 'pointless', why are they so keen to repeat so much of what she posts on it?

The Mail v Big Fat Quiz of the Year

The Mail has been desperately trying to create 'Sachsgate II' over a few jokes broadcast - after the watershed - on The Big Fat Quiz of the Year:

Originally, Ofcom received only a handful of complaints by people who appeared to have actually watched the programme. After several days of campaigning by the Mail, that number reached 165. Not, exactly, the success they were clearly hoping for:

Ofcom had received five complaints by last night, but that number could quickly grow – in Sachsgate, an initial two complaints rose to nearly 45,000.

The Mail said it made:

no apology for voicing concerns shared by an overwhelming but seldom-heard majority.

So seldom-heard, indeed, that even after days of trying to get a negative reaction, only a fraction of the people who saw the programme, or had read the jokes in the Mail, bothered to make themselves heard. 

The majority of comments on the online versions of the articles were critical of the Mail's stance. When the Mail needed some 'angry' comments to back its position, it chose the 'worst rated' ones from its own website.

Ofcom told the Independent that:

the vast majority [of complaints] were made in response to the negative media coverage.

Yet when defending Jan Moir over her nasty Stephen Gately article at the Leveson Inquiry, Mail editor Paul Dacre downplayed the 22,000 complaints sent to the PCC. He said:

You keep using the phrase "a lot of people" complained about this. You realise that these are all online complaints and this is an example of how tweetering can create a firestorm within hours...Most of those people conceded they hadn't read the piece.

But the Mail expresses no such concerns about the Big Fat Quiz complaints:

it was revealed that complaints to Ofcom and the broadcaster had now reached 165.

At least 80 viewers have complained to Ofcom about the show, which featured puerile sexual jokes and innuendo just minutes after the 9pm watershed. Some 85 have complained directly to Channel 4.

Some of the Mail's anger was specifically aimed at Jonathan Ross, who the paper has targeted since Sachsgate. Ross appeared on Big Fat Quiz and his production company made it. An editorial on 2 January said:

the Mail is quite happy to be accused of being reactionary when it wonders how many more of society’s broader problems are exacerbated by such creeps as Ross.

It also argued:

It cannot, surely, be fanciful to draw a connection between the explicit four-letter outbursts of such TV role models and the epidemic of vile, coarse ‘sexting’ in our schools.

But the paper provided no evidence for such a connection.

The Mail has repeated the (what it calls) 'vile' jokes again and again - including embedding video of 'one of the controversial jokes' on its online articles. It claimed that it had to publish all the jokes so people could make up their own mind about whether they were suitable for broadcast. It said the same when it repeatedly published dozens of images and videos of scantily-clad singers on The X Factor.

The Sun, however, was more coy. It said a joke about the Queen was:

too coarse to be repeated in a family newspaper.

Oddly, the Sun positioned this story and this claim on page 3, next to a topless female model. This is also the very same 'family newspaper' that on both the 28 October 2011 and 11 November 2011 ran full page ads for 'Triple-X DVD blockbusters'.

This morning, the lead story on MailOnline was this:

The headline was clear: Jack Whitehall could be dropped as a presenter at the National TV Awards. But deep in the story, there was this giveaway sentence:

A spokesman for the awards last night said the comedian had been booked and would be presenting an award as planned.

Despite that, MailOnline decided to run it as a major story implying the opposite.

The Independent revealed a few hours later:

Kim Turberville, creator and executive producer of the NTA, told The Independent: "Contrary to spurious reports earlier today, I would like to confirm that there has been no crisis summit over Jack Whitehall’s invitation to present an award at this year’s National Television Awards."

"We are very much looking forward to welcoming him on January 23 for our live show.”

The final word, for now, should go to the Mail, which said - apparently without irony - in its 2 January 2013 editorial:

Indeed, a New Year seems an appropriate time to take stock of what is deemed acceptable in popular culture – and ask what effects a constant diet of filth, misogyny and casual contempt for the vulnerable may have on impressionable young minds.

'Supplanting reality' with Melanie Phillips

Melanie Phillips, 18 November 2012:

fabrications, fantasies and falsehoods take on a life of their own  and can come to represent a settled view which, despite being without any foundation whatever, starts to supplant reality altogether.

Melanie Phillips, 26 September 2011:

Christmas has been renamed in various places ‘Winterval'.

When the Sun identified an innocent man as a paedophile...

From Private Eye, Issue 1327:

"Fury erupted last night after it emerged ex-director-general George Entwistle will get a £450,000 payoff," seethed the Sun.

"The blundering boss managed to negotiate a year's salary in lieu of notice when he quit on Saturday, despite his contract only entitling him to six months."

Entwistle's payoff is small change compared to the £7m pocketed by the Sun's own blundering boss, chief executive Rebekah Brooks, when she belatedly resigned over her role in the company's dliatory and deceitful reaction to phone-hacking allegations.

While the paper has never mentioned the "fury" aroused by her reward for failure, an editorial made it very clear what it feels about Entwistle: "there was no way BBC Director General George Entwistle could have survived after the Newsnight paedophile scandal."

In fact there is a precedent Entwistle could have cited had he chose to hang on. Back in March 2003, the Sun printed a photograph of a man it claimed had been convicted of sex offences against children, under the enormous headline "FACE OF KID BAN PERVERT" - only to find that he was an unrelated and innocent man who had to leave his home and was put under police protection.

By coincidence the paper had only been edited by Rebekah Wade (as she then was) for a couple of months. Did she take responsibility and immediately resign? Er, no - not even when the Sun was forced to print two apologies, pay damages and take out adverts in the local press where the man lived to asssure neighbours of his innocence. 

(Via Primly Stable) (See also the BBC's news report)

MailOnline and the 'womanly curves' on a 14yo girl

Yesterday, MailOnline published an article about the 14-year-old actress Elle Fanning and the costume she was wearing for Halloween.

The headline was:

One day later, the headline was changed to:

This appears to have been a reaction to criticism on Twitter, and in the comments below the article:

Just want to add to the chorus of comments: She is 14, she is a child, stop talking about her as if she is a piece of meat! The only point of this article is to point out how she is hitting puberty and to sexualise her and that is just incredibly wrong.. please stop sexualising her and other young girls.
- Isabel, Wolverhampton, 2/11/2012 0:56

i actually can't believe 'womanly curves' on a child as been written.
- rebecca , newcastle, 02/11/2012 00:32

One of your creepiest ever headlines, DM - just plain gross.
- boredwiththemall, justhere, 1/11/2012 23:27

Totally inappropriate headline. She is 14 years old, please stop sexualising young girls.
- Earlybirrd, Cheshire, 1/11/2012 21:12

It wasn't just the headline that was changed - several parts of Leah Simpson's story were removed. So:

The 14-year-old took to Instagram to share a photograph of her Halloween outfit and wasn't afraid to flaunt her curves for the camera

became:

The 14-year-old took to Instagram to share a photograph of her Halloween outfit.

And:

Elle was a posing professional as she wore a metallic maxi dress which looked rather demure at first glance.

Although it covered up her chest area and thighs, the design featured a high split which allowed her to pop her leg out of the side.

When she turned around, flesh was on show as the cut-out material scooped to just above her derriere and featured clasps which fastened at the centre of her neck.

became:

Elle was a posing professional as she wore a metallic maxi dress.

This sentence remain unchanged, however:

The model and fashion week regular has definitely got a knack for parading her best angles.

Elle Fanning is 14 years old. 

In September, MailOnline published four creepshots of schoolgirls of unknown age.

The Mail, Mail on Sunday and Pippa's party book

On 30 October 2011, a 'Mail on Sunday Reporter' wrote an article stating that Pippa Middleton was:

close to signing a book deal on how to be the perfect party hostess.

But, the paper warned:

The sisters' parents, Carole and Michael, were widely criticised for appearing to promote their party business on the back of the Royal Wedding earlier this year.

Pippa's advisers will also be careful to avoid the pitfalls of Paul Burrell, Princess Diana's former butler, whose book on hosting parties, Entertaining With Style, was published in 1999.

Mail columnist Peter McKay thought the venture 'distasteful'. Under the headline 'For your sister's sake, don't cash in, Pippa!', he wrote:

In a perfect world, it would be preferable if Pippa Middleton did nothing whatever that was reliant on being the sister of the future Queen Consort. But we, the reading public, have a degree of responsibility for that. Don’t buy it, if she does. Publishers obviously think that, in large numbers, we’d purchase anything by Pippa....

There is an alternative. She’ll always be Kate’s sister. Why not simply be proud of that, avoiding anything that appears to exploit this happy stroke of fortune?

A month later, the Mail on Sunday's Katie Nicholl reported that a £400,000 deal had been signed for the book.

Then, Mail columnist Jan Moir tutted her disapproval:

Pippa Middleton seems a lovely girl, but not the sort who could teach anyone very much about anything. And I can’t imagine the Queen will be best pleased that the ambitious sister of the Duchess of Cambridge has trousered £400,000 for her first book, a manual on entertaining. But never underestimate the Pippa!

A sneak peek of her hostess with the mostest party tips tome reveals the following nuggets: 1. To be a social hit, make sure you have the right equipment: a lovely big sister. 2. Get her to marry the heir to the throne. 3. Remember, bumpkins, it’s napkins, not serviettes. 4. Serve the peanuts before the pud.  5. Is there a hyphen in cash-in?  6. Can I have my money now?

Months later, Amanda Platell attacked the Middletons who, she said:

have an unsettling air of snootiness about their behaviour.

She added:

Why, for example, were Pippa and her brother James in the royal box at Wimbledon last week? Not because of their party-planning and cake-baking credentials, that’s for sure.

Pippa is now about to release her own party-planning guide, for which she’s said to have secured a £400,000 publishing deal. If it wasn’t for the royal connection, she’d be lucky to be writing recipes for the Bucklebury parish magazine.

In July, the Mail published an article (headline: 'Gold medal for cashing in goes to...' etc) about the Middleton's company Party Pieces, claiming it may have been in breach of Olympic advertising rules. When they were given the all-clear, the Mail failed to update its readers. This followed attacks on Party Pieces for their Jubilee merchandise ('could they have been a bit less tacky?') and for 'cashing in' on the Royal Wedding.

However, in yesterday's Mail on Sunday:

Exclusively in this weekend’s Mail on Sunday, you’ll find the first part of Pippa Middleton’s glorious guide to simple, creative entertaining, from her sensational new book – Celebrate: A Year of British Festivities for Family and Friends. This weekend we have 24 glossy pages of magical Hallowe’en tips and brilliant bonfire night ideas.

The Mail on Sunday may have thought it 'glorious' by the Mail's Peter McKay was still not impressed:

Can Her Royal Bottomness really have received a £400,000 advance for this tripe?

And how much more did she receive from the Mail on Sunday?

MailOnline publishes 'creepshots'

On Saturday, the Guardian published an article on creepshots - photographing women without their knowledge (often 'upskirt' photos) - and revenge porn. Early in Kira Cochrane's article, she wrote:

Erin Gloria Ryan, a writer for popular women's website Jezebel.com, was alerted to the [creepshots] forum by concerned Reddit users who are trying to get it closed, partly because some of the pictures appear to have been taken in schools.

A day later, MailOnline's Michael Zennie wrote an article about Reddit and creepshots:

Zennie wrote:

Campaigners are fighting to close an online forum that promotes the photographing of unsuspecting women for users' sexual gratification.

The message board on the popular website Reddit was explicitly created by users who wanted to ogle candid photos that were taken without the subjects' knowledge.

The sub-forum is called 'CreepShots', featuring images of ordinary women on the street, in the gym or even at school who are caught unawares by stealthy 'creeps' with cameras.

Most shots focus on the buttocks or breasts of non-consenting women going about their daily lives - and users admit that 'at least 40 percent' of the images are of underage girls.

Someone at MailOnline then decided to illustrate the article with FOUR of the creepshot photos the article is complaining about.

There is no justification for publishing any of these images. Indeed, MailOnline has now removed all the photos from the article - albeit, some 15 hours after it was first published - a clear indication it knew this was a serious error.

Two of the photos were upskirt shots of schoolgirls whose faces were not shown. There was simply no way for the MailOnline to know how old they were. In one caption, they said:

Another image in a school tries to capture an 'upskirt' of a pupil.

In the other:

Online voyeurism: A large number of the 'Creep' forums are 'upskirt' images, apparently taken in school.

'Online voyeurism' indeed. It's not that unusual for the Mail and MailOnline to display such hypocrisy - as with The X Factor final, it can froth about sexualised images while simultaneously revelling in such material.

But in this case, MailOnline has gone further. It admits the photos were taken 'without permission' and yet deems them suitable to publish. It refers to the fact that many of the images are apparently of 'underage girls', yet deems them suitable to publish. Given the faces are covered, MailOnline has no idea how old any of the girls are, yet deems them suitable to publish.

Mail editor-in-chief Paul Dacre told Leveson he was "very proud of MailOnline." It won newspaper website of the year at the 2012 Press Awards. MediaGuardian recently named MailOnline publisher Martin Clarke as the 38th most powerful media figure.

* This is the article before the photos were removed - this blog has decided to censor the images:

UPDATE 1: During writing this post, and one hour after removing all the pics, MailOnline edited the article and re-published the first photo.

UPDATE 2: An hour after that, another photo re-appeared, but it was now partly censored with a black box.

(Hat-tip to Simon)

'Ghouls'

MailOnline yesterday:

MailOnline yesterday (article has four photos, including one of the body):

MailOnline yesterday:

So while MailOnline thinks people who take photos of traffic accidents are 'ghouls', it doesn't reveal what it thinks of websites that publish such photos.

(Hat-tip to Safe_Timber_Man and Arnold at Mailwatch Forum)

'World's worst role model' but great for attracting web traffic

On MailOnline today, a rant about Kim Kardashian:

Also on MailOnline today:

 

 

 

MailOnline has published 97 articles mentioning Kim Kardashian since 1 June.

'Calm down'

The front page of today's Express contained a response to the queues that had been seen at many petrol stations over the last few days:

The article by Macer Hall and Dana Gloger began:

Britain was last night urged to calm down and stop the petrol panic

Calm down and stop the panic. Wise words. If only it hadn't come after the paper had already written this:

And, particularly, this:

(Big hat-tip to Dan Hollinsworth)

Do as we say, not as we do

From the Guardian's Media Monkey on 26 January:

"How Beeb downplayed its use of private eyes", thundered the Daily Mail on Thursday, as it accused BBC News of virtually ignoring evidence from director general Mark Thompson to the Leveson inquiry that the corporation had spent £310,000 on private investigators in six years. 

Strangely, when the Mail covered the inquiry on 5 December – when Lord Justice Leveson heard how the names of journalists had been found at private investigator Steve Whittamore's Hampshire home – it described the "veritable treasure trove" of material, yet failed to mention that it topped the list of title's using Whittamore's services, with 952 requests, involving 58 of its journalists. 

And in the Mail's Leveson coverage on 12 January, towards the end of a page 8 story "How Hugh Grant got his facts wrong, by the Mail's legal chief" were a few paragraphs about Mail on Sunday editor Peter Wright's use of Whittamore. So no downplaying the use of private eyes there, then.

Un-Dressed to Kill

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:

• Victoria Silvstedt's white bikini barely contains her ample curves as she struggles to position herself on a sunlounger (with 20 pictures)
• How does she do it? Jessica Alba shows off amazingly toned abs in tiny bikini just four months after giving birth (12 pictures)
• Yummy mummy! Myleene Klass shows off her famous bikini body as she holidays in Barbados with her two daughters (12 pictures)
• She's all white! Maria Menounos shows off her incredible figure in flirty light bikini in Miami (11 pictures)
• Legally blonde (and curvy!) Reese Witherspoon shows off her enviable figure as she holidays with her children in Hawaii (6 pictures)
• Now that's more like it! Michelle Keegan finally strips to her bikini as she sets sail with fiancé Max George (16 pictures) 

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)

'A proper crack-down'

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)

MailOnline churns press release, uses CE

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)

'Taboo'

A headline on the Mail's website today asks:

'Is nothing taboo?' For the Mail, certainly not 'death' because elsewhere on their website today - and for much of the day, placed quote prominently on the homepage - was this story:

The website happily posted the photo of two dead bodies hanging from a bridge - given the size of the picture, the 'graphic content' warning was utterly pointless.

And in the article, not only did the photo appear again, but the Mail decided to add an 'enlarge' button so you could see this couple's bloodied bodies in greater detail:

But, as the Telegraph's Tom Chivers pointed out, when it came to repeating the message that was written alongside the bodies, the Mail suddenly became worried about what we might see:

Next to the battered bodies was a sign reading: ‘This is going to happen to all those posting funny things on the internet, You better (expletive) pay attention. I’m about to get you.’

Yes - in the sentence above the 'graphic' picture of the tortured, disemboweled victims, they decide to censor a swear word.

It's not the first time the Mail's website has published such pictures - indeed, in June it ran four photos of two other people killed and hung from a bridge in Mexico.

In May, the Mail was highly critical of the BBC for discussing assisted suicide and for an episode of Inside the Human Body which showed the death of a man named Gerald. The paper said:

BBC bosses are facing huge controversy over the decision to show the death of Gerald, whose full name has not been released...

Critics said last night said the the BBC had gone too far in choosing to broadcast Gerald's death and that it was a cynical attempt to boost ratings.

Presumably, then, the decision of the Mail's website to post such images - and full CCTV footage of the 'horrific execution of man in New York' - is not a cyncial attempt to attract visitors to its website.

(The Mailwatch Forum includes a thread on the Mail's obsession with images of death)

Churnalism to sell coffee machines and a 'sleazy' app

Yesterday, the Mail reported:


This app is so 'sleazy', Daily Mail Reporter and the photo caption writer managed to mention the name of it eight times in the 600-word online article.

A shorter version appeared on page 13 of the print edition. But despite the 'sleaziness', both versions include a detailed desciption of how the app works, which makes it sound as if it has been copy-and-pasted from a press release:

The app, which caters to men and women of all sexual preferences, gives users access to a real-time ‘passion map’, a list showing the location of ‘compatibles’ – other users with similar interests or profiles – in the area.

They are then able to contact each other directly and propose a meeting. Recipients must approve an ‘interaction request’ first, and can also choose to hide their real location.

It uses GPS-style software to provides users with a real-time list of 'willing' singles in the immediate area. The system means users can check how many singles are in a given place - such as a bar, nightclub, or city centre - before heading out.

Also in yesterday's Mail - placed prominently on page 5 - was an article with the headline:


This utterly transparent bit of 'research' was also covered in the Express:

Britons spend an average of £450 each on their favourite high street coffee every year, more than their home’s annual electricity bill...

Research shows we spend £430million a week on 511 million cups. The annual bill per person, £452.28, is higher than a typical electricity bill of £424.

And who produced this 'research' (based, as usual, on survey of 2,000 people)?

A company that makes espresso coffee machines.

What possible interest could they have in showing people how much they (apparently) spend in coffee shops?

The Daily Mail decides it's time to move on from phone hacking

Today's Mail editorial runs under the headline:

Never mind phone hacking, what about the real issues facing Britain?

So the Mail has decided it's time to move on. Is it because it hopes that people will move on before more questions are asked about the Information Commissioner's What Price Privacy Now? report which revealed the Daily Mail was the newspaper buying most personal information from private investigator Steve Whittamore? Operation Motorman identified 58 Daily Mail journalists completing 952 transactions with Whittamore (compared to the News of the World's 228 transactions).

The Mail says other stories are more important, including the financial crisis in the Eurozone, unemployment, bank loans, mortgages and economic growth.

In a sane world, politicians would be working round the clock to help rectify these dire problems. But sadly, they are far too busy enjoying a frenzy of vengeful score-settling against the Murdoch press.

Even though the News of the World has been closed, the BSkyB takeover bid withdrawn, and Rupert Murdoch has promised to co-operate with the judicial inquiries, the bloodlust – orchestrated by a vastly subsidised BBC – continues.

There's the obligatory attack on the BBC, despite the widespread coverage of the hacking issue across all media, including Sky News. Where is the evidence that the BBC is 'orchestrating' this story? The editorial continues:

The stink of schadenfreude from Britain’s chattering classes is overpowering...

The least [politicians] can do is give their full attention to the all too worrying problems that afflict real people in the real world.

So how has the Mail covered phone-hacking over the last couple of weeks? Have they stayed out of what they call a 'frenzy'?

On 5 July, they covered the revelations about Milly Dowler's phone on the front page (although not the main story) and on page 5. It was the same the following day - front page picture, page 5, plus a lengthy editorial about this 'most squalid and shameful saga'.

It was the main front page story on 7 and 8 July and in the latter, it was also on pages 4-9 and the entire editorial was devoted to the issue. The Eurozone crisis coverage was less than a quarter of page 12.

Andy Coulson's arrest made the front page on Saturday 9 July, which also included coverage on pages 6-9 and in a Stephen Glover column.

On 11 July, the Mail again covered the story on pages 6-9, plus comment pieces by Melanie Phillips and Peter McKay. The Eurozone story took up around half of page two.

It was the front page lead on 12 July, when Richard Littlejohn wrote about it too. It was on the front page (not the lead) and pages 6-9 and the main editorial comment on 13 July. It was on pages 6-9 again on 14 July, accompanied by an editorial and another Stephen Glover op-ed piece, whereas the Eurozone stories were on page 12.

Even today, as the editorial complains about the amount of time politicians are spending on the issue, the paper devotes pages 8-9 to the story and Littlejohn, unusually, devotes his entire column to this one story.

So if the other stories the Mail mentions today are more important, why hasn't it led the way in giving them the prominence they think they deserve? If the Mail is so concerned about the Eurozone crisis, why hasn't it put it on the front page in the last ten days?

No - it's the phone hacking story that's also had the Mail's 'full attention'.

And that's not the only example of 'do as we say, not as we do' in the Mail's editorial today.

The final three sentences mention a spat between House of Commons Speaker John Bercow and MP Tim Loughton:

Children's Minister Tim Loughton takes offence at being castigated by Commons Speaker John Bercow for laughing in the chamber when he was supposed to be silent.

So does he come up with a witty riposte? No, he resorts instead to a stream of sneering insults against the diminutive Speaker on Twitter.

Could political debate in the home of Lloyd-George, Churchill, Bevan and Foot sink any lower?

So that's the Mail, complaining about someone resorting to a 'stream of sneering insults' against Bercow.

The Mail seems to have forgotten running this headline on 17 June 2009:


In which Bercow is referred to as:

a strange, bumptious little man, an unconvincing piece of work.

Or this from Letts on 2 July 2010:

Mr Bercow is an ostentatious changeling, a steaming, confected, self-polishing jobbernowl who makes the Chair look and sound foolish.

And in the Spectator in April 2011, Letts referred to Bercow as a:

preening, sycophantic, short-tempered and grotesque

Letts has also said:

Rancour, partisanship, a figure whose political philosophy dodges round the place like a bouncy ball: yes, folks, the House of cheats and nodding oil derricks just got its perfect Speaker.

And:

There he stood in the big green chair, puffed up like an amphibian that had scoffed too many volauvents.

And frequently refers to him as:

Little Squeaker Bercow.

Apparently, the Mail is upset at others indulging in 'sneering insults' aimed at John Bercow because that's the job of one of their highly-paid columnists.

(More on the Mail's editorial from Angry Mob)

Putting upskirt photos on the front page, with the Daily Star

On 29 May, Richard Desmond's Daily Star Sunday took a stand against a 'sick' German newspaper that had published upskirt shots of Pippa Middleton:


'Pippa pervs' the front page roared as it criticised an:

undie-Hans attack by a kinky German snapper.

And here's Saturday's Daily Star front page:

Pot, meet kettle

Today, the Mail's Charles Sale wrote:

Making an impression

Impressionist Alistair McGowan may do an excellent impersonation of Andy Murray but 5 Live employing the comedian on their reporting team attending Wimbledon press conferences is another example of the BBC’s ridiculous celebrity obsession.

It's the latest feeble attempt by a Mail journalist to knock the BBC.

But is someone whose work appears on the Mail website - which last month published 22 articles about The Only Way is Essex in four days - in the best position to accuse another media organsation of having a 'ridiculous celebrity obsession'?

Daily Star: 'shamelessly looking to cash in'

From 6 June to today, the Daily Star has put the word 'Giggs' in its main front page headline every single day (this excludes the Daily Star Sunday, which has stuck with Pippa Middleton for the last two weeks). The first twelve of these front pages are available on the Media Blog.

Yet on 17 June - the 11th day - the paper's editorial was criticising the people involved in this tawdry story for forgetting there are:

little children at the centre of this scandal.

And for:

shamelessly looking to cash in

Indeed.

Today, the 14th front page claims that 'Sex addict Giggs gets therapy':

It's another story that the Star calls an 'exclusive' and states that Giggs is in some kind of therapy. Is he?

Here's how Jerry Lawton begins his article:

Manchester United have signed up God to keep bedhopping stars like Ryan Giggs on the straight and narrow.

God?

Club chaplain Rev John Boyers revealed his job now involves teaching players about “sexual ethics”. The morality lessons come after the club has been rocked by a series of sex scandals...

Now club bosses want Rev Boyers to lecture rising stars on sexual morality in a bid to stop future scandals.

So Giggs isn't actually 'getting therapy'. The Star's 'exclusive' is that Manchester United FC has a chaplain. But this isn't really an 'exclusive', or even news, as Boyers has been doing that job since 1992.

But the Star tries to pretend there's something new here. Lawton says Boyers is 'now' teaching about 'sexual ethics' 'after' recent 'sex scandals' - as if this is somehow linked to the Giggs case.

It isn't.

He quotes Boyers saying:

“I do some work with the academy teaching them life skills – situations in life they may encounter and how they might cope.

“Things like friendship, sexual ethics, bereavement, bullying and prejudice, racism. I try to help them prepare for adult life.

But compare that to something Boyers wrote in a June 2010 article called 'Prayers for the players' (pdf):

I do some educational work with younger academy players. SCORE has some ‘Life-skills’ teaching material which looks at issues such as friendships, bereavement, bullying, sexual ethics, decision making, prejudice, privilege and responsibility etc.

Lawton goes on to quote Boyers saying:

“I also do general pastoral support and spiritual support work right across the club...

“We’ve had many situations in football ranging from drugs scandals to financial scandals and behavioural scandals which show there is real worth in having a chaplaincy.’’

And compare that to a quote from Boyers found in an Independent article from November 1995:

"Clubs are seeing the value of the chaplaincy as a pastoral and spiritual safety net...

"We've had many situations in football ranging from drugs scandals to financial scandals and behavioural scandals which show there is real worth in having a chaplaincy."

It could be the Boyers has said the same things then and now. But it appears that Lawton is copying previous statements from Boyers that he's found on the internet and is making them out to be both new and related to Giggs.

Lawton adds:

The minister will not discuss individual cases.

Which sounds a bit like the Independent's:

Rev Boyers won't discuss individual cases...

Lawton then relies on the anonymous sources he's so fond of using, claiming:

But club sources say Giggs has come under his wing during his 21-year career with Manchester United.

“I guess some people heed advice more than others,’’ the source said.

“Rev John is a highly regarded member of the team and does his best to help set our young players along the right path. Handling fame and all that goes with it is not easy.’’

Note that the 'club source' doesn't actual back up the contention made in the sentence before it.

So the story is nonsense, dubiously assembled and almost completely fictitious.

And so have most of the Star's front pages 'stories' about Giggs over the last few weeks, including the 'sexy girlie romp' that turned out to be a trip to an estate agent and the joke that was treated as fact. And many of them carry the byline of Jerry Lawton, the man behind the infamous Grand Theft Auto: Rothbury article.

For example, yesterday's front page stated:


The 'lover' in question is not Imogen Thomas, who is pictured in her underwear, but Giggs' sister-in-law Natasha. 'Sex romp revenge' sounds like a set of random Daily Star buzzwords, thrown together to sell papers. It's also an 'exclusive'. It says on the front page:

Ryan Giggs's sister-in-law lover will romp with EIGHT celebrity hunks to make the footie love cheat jealous.

This shows, of course, that the Star is deeply concerned about the:

little children at the centre of this scandal.

Lawton's article goes on to reveal:

Natasha, 28, has revealed to Facebook pals the names of eight stars she drools over.

So: woman tells friends that she fancies some celebs. It's not quite the same as saying she 'will romp' with them all in some 'sex revenge plot'.

Saturday's front page story claimed:


'I dressed a French maid', plus the word 'exclusive' and the photo all make it appear as if this was an interview, or at least an actual statement from a woman involved (Natasha, again).

The article by Lawton and Aaron Tinney began:

Ryan Giggs liked his sister-in-law lover to dress up as a French maid.

The Star's 'proof' for this claim:

Naughty Natasha, 28, donned a pink frilly micro-skirt and black G-string with white spots to thrill him.

And she was so proud of her cheeky look she showed it off on her Facebook site. Although her snap showed only her bottom she assured friends it was hers.

Pals said the fantastic figure she reveals in the photo explains why married Manchester United legend Ryan, 37, was tempted to play away from home for eight years.

So: woman posts picture of her bum on Facebook. Neither the anonymous pal who is quoted nor anyone else says anything about dressing as a French maid - except Lawton.

The day before, the paper was claiming 'another great Daily Star exclusive':


Once again, the headline makes it sound as if this is something that has actually been said. In this case, by Kym Marsh. 'Giggs bedded babe in my home'? Well, here's Lawton again:

Coronation Street beauty Kym Marsh fears Ryan Giggs romped in her bedroom with his sister-in-law... Kym, 35, and partner Jamie Lomas, 31...believe the lovers got it on in their posh pad.

So no actual proof then? And did Marsh actually say that?

One of Kym’s pals told the Daily Star: “Kym believes they could have been using her bedroom for their affair."

Ah, of course - another anonymous pal, who reveals that someone thinks something might have happened in their house before they moved in but since they weren't there don't really have any idea whether it did. Or not.

That's 'another great Daily Star exclusive'.

The day before that, the Star came up with this 'exclusive':


A 'baby bump'. 'Who's the daddy'? Here's Jerry 'the Pulitzer's coming soon' Lawton again:

Ryan Giggs was in shock last night after his sister-in-law lover flew home proudly sporting a mummy tummy.

Since Giggs isn't quoted, there's no way of knowing if he's 'shocked' or not. That's assuming she's even pregnant:

Natasha Giggs, 28, sparked speculation she might be pregnant as she jetted back to Britain looking rounder than normal.

Since she's only been in the public eye a few weeks, it's hard to know how the paper can claim to know what her 'normal' shape is.

But 'sparked speculation she might be pregnant'? That's a bit different to a definite 'baby bump'. Who was speculating?

One onlooker said: “The terminal was buzzing with talk that Natasha is pregnant again. She might just have been comfort-eating but if she is expecting, it will be yet another nightmare for Giggsy.”

So the speculation is from the all-seeing anonymous 'onlooker' who may or may not be someone in the Daily Star 'newsroom'.

The Mail website carried the same photos of Natasha Giggs at the airport. They didn't mention any 'speculation' and their pictures don't really show any noticeable 'baby bump'. But claiming someone is pregnant when they aren't is something the Star has done several times before.

Despite churning out this inaccurate, misleading, utterly tedious drivel day after day, the Daily Star still manages to be the fourth best-selling daily newspaper in the UK. But is the 15.9% fall in sales between April 2010 and April 2011 a sign that their readers are getting tired of being treated like fools?