Mail keeps PCC and ASA busy

The PCC has published details of another apology printed by the Daily Mail:

On March 28 an article headed ‘The £450m Rothschild heiress and the ex-crack addict scriptwriter...’ referred to Sacha Gervasi, the award-winning film director, screenwriter and producer.

In fact, Mr Gervasi was never addicted to crack cocaine and never had a £200-a-day drug habit.

He met Ms Jessica de Rothschild at a stage premiere and not through pitching a film idea to her production company.

Their families are not concerned about the relationship. We apologise for any embarrassment caused.

Looking through the list of recently resolved cases on the PCC website, it seems that once again the Mail, plus its Sunday and Scottish editions are still responsible for a vast number of complaints. Of the last 30 'resolved cases', 10 are complaints about a Mail title and five are about the Sun or News of the World.

No other publication has more than two.

Yet Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief at the Mail, is still Chair of the Editor's Code Committee, which oversees the Code of Practice.

And it's not just the PCC that has to deal with them. Today the Advertising Standards Agency ruled a Daily Mail promotion for £15 holidays breached clauses on 'substantiation' and 'truthfulness'. On three counts, they found the Mail had been 'misleading'.

Like the PCC, the ASA doesn't have any meaningful powers of punishment, so the Mail has been told not to run the advert again. But since the offer ends on 10 September, it was never likely to anyway.

That'll teach them.

Cumbrian MP launches attack on the media

On 23 June, the MP for Copeland, in Cumbria, made a speech in the House of Commons about the murders committed by Derrick Bird.

Jamie Reed spoke about the community, the police and the victims. But he also was very critical of much of the media coverage and called for a:

better, enforceable code of conduct for the media

He said:

In such situations, there is no place for the media's invented exclusives, its prurience and voyeurism, its mawkish brutality and its cold-blooded pursuit of profit at the expense of the families of those most affected.

Everyone expects intense media coverage of tragedies such as that which affected Cumbria, but do people really expect the news to give way to entertainment?

I wish to talk about the behaviour of much of the media in recent weeks, and the anger and dismay that it has caused among my community.

He made clear that this ire was aimed mainly at the national media:

The media local to the tragedy - the Whitehaven News, the News & Star, the North West Evening Mail, Border television, BBC Radio Cumbria and "Look North" - reported the tragedy with a care and diligence entirely different from that of the national media.

That is because they are rooted in the area and care about the people about whom they are reporting. They understand the power of their roles and the effects of carrying them out in particular ways.

The Whitehaven News was particularlyimpressive, as just one week before, it had reported the tragic deaths of Kieran Goulding and Chloe Walker, constituents who were killed in the Keswick bus crash. Like the News & Star, the Whitehaven News understands the role that it plays in my community and how it can help the community's healing process-not the families' healing process, perhaps, but certainly the community's.

To give a parallel - I know that this is a difficult issue - certain national newspapers have elicited feelings in my community similar to those that were elicited in Liverpool by the way that the Hillsborough tragedy was reported.

He added:

The second lesson is not to seek to curb the freedom of the press or broader media, but to seek a better, enforceable code of conduct for the media.

Certain desperate, spiteful journalists have written some dreadfully inaccurate copy simply because members of the community would not speak to them on learning that they were journalists.

That reflects badly on those journalists; naming them would surprise nobody and so serves no purpose today.

It would be fair to assume that Carole Malone may well be one of those he won't name.

One price we pay for a free press is its freedom to write such misleading and opinionated bile. However, press intrusion is not a price anyone has ever agreed to pay.

Nobody ever agreed to have journalists camped on their doorsteps while they were in the immediate aftermath of bereavement; to have friends and family members offered money if they spoke to, or obtained a photo of, a distraught relative of one of those who died; or to have six-figure sums paid for exclusives, or smaller sums paid to them if they could tell the whereabouts or movements of certain individuals, even if those individuals would be going to school that day.

And Reed explained he's going to try and do something about it:

If the west Cumbrian community demonstrates just how far from being broken Britain really is, then behaviour like that from certain sections of the media demonstrates just how dysfunctional and broken the media's values are, and that their attempts to infect decent society with their values are iniquitous and wrong.

I know journalists who have had their stomachs turned by the actions of some in their fold - they are far from being all the same - but surely such behaviour cannot be sanctioned and must be stopped.

To that end, I will write to the National Union of Journalists and the Press Complaints Commission to seek meetings, and to discuss how the issue can be taken forward and how professional codes of practice can be improved significantly.

I have spent so much time talking about the media because the activities of certain sections of them have weighed particularly heavily on the community in recent weeks. They have caused particular distress, anger and concern, and I feel duty-bound to articulate those concerns today.

His intentions are good, but whether the Press Complaints Commission or the Editor's Code Committee (the latter chaired by Mail Editor Paul Dacre) will act is very doubtful.

Moreover, although Reed's comments were reported on Radio 4's Today in Parliament, it seems they have been ignored by almost every other national media outlet.

Given the strength of his remarks, perhaps that's not surprising - large sections of the media seem incapable of accepting, or even acknowledging, any criticism of their behaviour and so ignore the debate that needs to be had about newspaper regulation.

The spite - and lies - of the Daily Mail

It appears that my earlier blogpost misjudged and underestimated the Daily Mail.

I had rashly suggested that the Mail's dismal 'Girl who married Anne Diamond's husband leaves him...for a woman' was a very odd, and completely unimportant, 'story' for the front of the paper.

It didn't appear to deserve to be in a newspaper at all, let alone on the first and seventh pages.

But maybe there was, in fact, a reason for the Mail to give this 'story' - an invasion of the privacy of two far-from-public figures - such prominence.

What reason?

The man in question, Mike Hollingsworth, won £50,000 in libel damages from the Mail in May 2007 after it had printed claims that he had hit a former lover during a row.

So, far from being pointless, this appears to have been the Mail settling a score, splashing Hollingsworth's alleged marital problems on the front page as revenge for his audacity in challenging them for printing a lie four years ago.

It wasn't just a worthless piece of garbage, it was a worthless, vindictive piece of garbage.

The pettiness and spite of that - and of waiting so many years to do it - reveals much about the sheer bloody nastiness of Paul Dacre and the Daily Mail.

Still, whether newsworthy or not, at least if the Mail put it on the front of their paper, they were sure the story was absolutely correct.

Weren't they?

Err:

It was reported today that Kimberley Stewart-Mole is now in a lesbian relationship, having left her husband Mike Hollingsworth. We have been informed and accept Ms Stewart-Mole is not a lesbian or in a relationship with a woman and apologise for suggesting otherwise.

Truly, words fail.

(Hat-tip to this anonymous comment person and Kate Muggins) The above was edited slightly to add the apology which the Mail published as this post was being written.

Groundbreaking news from the Mail

Today's Mail has an absolutely fascinating news story on the right-hand side of its front page:


Girl who married Anne Diamond's husband leaves him...for a woman.

So a woman who is married to someone who used to be married to someone who used to be on telly starts a new relationship.

Astounding stuff, isn't it?

The rest of this tale of the utmost national importance is on page seven.

Just for comparison, remember the Mail's coverage of the Haiti earthquake? They never put it on the front page of the paper - which even the Daily Star managed to do - and the day after the disaster struck, the Mail's coverage was on pages 12 and 13.

But this drivel is on pages one and seven.

Mail Editor Paul Dacre gets paid well over £1m a year for making decisions like that.

'Hysterical bawlings from the sidelines'

Much has already been written about yesterday's four-pronged attack on Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg by the four newspapers most supportive of the Conservative Party, so this post will be a brief overview of these front pages and the reaction to them.

As Kevin Marsh said:

You do not have to support the Liberal Democrats or Nick Clegg or be carried along on the current poll wave to wonder, as a journalist, what was going on Wednesday in the newsrooms and editorial offices of the Telegraph, Mail, Express and Sun.

Of course, it's not exactly shocking that party spin doctor's speak to political hacks - as the BBC's Nick Robinson and the Guardian reported had happened before these newspapers appeared. Nor is it news that the media outlets have agendas and political bias.

It's hard to know if this actually was a concerted effort, but it certainly looked like it was, with all the stories appearing on the day of the second leaders' debate. The fact that each paper was focusing on a different subject suggested everything was being thrown to see what might stick.

One that didn't stick was the Telegraph's half-hearted attempt to create a scandal:


If the Telegraph thought this was a big deal, they would have published it last year with all their other expenses coverage.

Given that all the payments were declared properly, it always looked thin and the way the story slipped down the Telegraph's website homepage during the day rather gave the game away. Despite a rule-breaking attempt by Sky's Adam Boulton to bring up the story during the second debate, an attempt that has prompted complaints to Ofcom, the story sank without trace.

Forced to defend the story on his blog, even the Telegraph's Deputy Editor didn't sound convinced:

So far [Clegg] has been unable to produce an adequate explanation for them, or the paperwork to back up his justification. The likelihood must be that it is evidence of disorganisation, nothing more, but don’t know that yet.

So why not wait until the evidence is produced before rushing to print? But the paperwork did turn up during the day and that was that - although the prominence the Telegraph gave to the 'evidence' was nothing like that of the original.

Meanwhile, the Express was complaining, of course, about immigration:


But there was a bit of a disconnect between the sub-head, which focused on jobs for asylum seekers, and the article, which didn't.

Alison Little wrote:

Controversial Lib Dem plans to allow illegal immigrants to stay and work in Britain were exposed as madness yesterday as unemployment hit a 16-year high.

Nick Clegg struggled to defend allowing asylum-seekers to join the workforce when he came under attack from a panel of first-time voters.

With official figures showing 2.5 million out of work, they warned it would be unfair to law-abiding residents.

'Exposed as madness' is a complete exaggeration, and the use of 'crazy' on the front page is Express editorialising and nothing more.

But look how it goes from 'illegal immigrants' and then to 'asylum seekers' as if they are the same. This is emphasised by the 'law-abiding' comment in the next sentence, which implies that asylum seekers are not.

It's further evidence that for all they talk about these issues, there's little sense they really understand them.

The Sun was also on the attack, although their front page pun was very weak by their standards:


The Sun very publicly switched allegiance from Labour to the Conservatives last year when the Tories were substantially ahead in the polls. Following the surge in support for the Lib Dems after the first leaders' debate, there seemed to be some panic that the Sun - and the other right-wing papers - may not, after all, be backing the winner. And that's why the knives came out.

A curious incident from Wednesday illustrated not just this panic, but the contempt the Sun and its owner Rupert Murdoch has for the British public.

The Independent newspaper re-launched on Tuesday with the strapline:

Free from political ties, free from proprietorial influence.

It said:

You may not always agree with what we say, but it is spoken from the heart, and from a standpoint that's untainted by commercial or political imperatives.

In case the target wasn't obvious, a marketing campaign added:

Rupert Murdoch won't decide this election. You will.

The reaction? Former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks, now chief executive at News International, and obnoxious Rupert's obnoxious son James arrived unannounced at the Independent's office and demanded to know:

'What are you fucking playing at?'

The Guardian reports:

A bewildered [Independent Editor-in-Chief Simon] Kelner quickly ushered his visitors into his office, where they remained for what have been described as 'frank and full discussions' for another 20 minutes.

All were grim-faced as Murdoch, carrying a promotional copy of the Independent, accused the rival editor of breaking the unwritten code that proprietors do not attack each other and of besmirching his father's reputation. With his piece said and with the matter unresolved, the aggrieved media mogul left.

Bewildering is right. The arrogance of this is jaw-dropping. Murdoch and his son - like the other right-wing papers' editors and proprietors - do apparently believe they decide this election rather than over 40 million voters.

How dare they decide that the Sun's chosen candidate is not the one for them, according to latest polls. Indeed, when a poll by Sun pollster YouGov showed:

voters fear a Liberal Democrat government less than a Conservative or Labour one

the Sun decided to do the far-from-honourable thing: it refused to publish the results.

(Further insights into the Murdoch mindset come from biographer Michael Wolff and former Sun Editor David Yelland)

But perhaps the most notable of yesterday's front pages was the Mail:


So the Mail digs back through the archives and finds what it thinks, quite wrongly, is a 'Nazi slur'. Of all newspapers, you would think the Mail would be slow to accuse others of a 'Nazi slur'. In July 1934 it infamously carried the headline 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts' and then Mail owner Lord Rothermere - grandfather of the current owner - was effusive in his praise for Hitler.

And in 1933 the paper wrote:

The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage. The number of aliens entering the country through the back door is a problem to which the Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed.

Replace 'stateless Jews from Germany' with 'asylum seekers' or 'immigrants' and you could easily imagine that being said in Daily Mail now.

The 'Nazi slur' it attributed to Clegg was nothing like this. In fact, there was no 'Nazi slur' at all. The article, which was written eight years ago for the Guardian, related tales of how Germans are still subject to childish reminders about Hitler, and how many Brits still showed a:

misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war.

There was little wrong with it, although you might think you are reading a different article to the one the Mail saw and so wilfully - and woefully - misinterpreted.

The Express, not wishing to let the story go, then put a version of the Mail's 'Nazi slur' claims on its website. The headline became even more grotesque, and even further from the truth:


The original never implied that Britain was 'more guilty than the Nazis', let alone that being a direct quote, which the quote marks suggest. It's dishonest and totally misleading.

But back to the Mail, where Editor Paul Dacre seems to have become somewhat obssessed with the Lib Dems. The election section of their website contained nine anti-Lib Dem articles on Wednesday - almost to the exclusion of anything else.

Then they ran a poll at the end of the second debate asking who had won. But with the results saying the victor was Nick Clegg, they decided to start another poll asking the same question - which Cameron was then leading.

The 'Nazi slur' headline received a lot of negative reaction - including from Mail hack Ann Leslie, who said she disapproved of it on the BBC's Question Time.

But this meant that a disgusting comment in the Mail's editorial was rather overlooked. Following on from their suggestion that there was nothing British about Nick Clegg, it said, under the headline 'Damning insight into the Liberal leader':

It's perhaps unfair to point out that Mr Clegg's father is half-Russian, his mother is Dutch, and he's married to a Spaniard.

Yes, the Mail is so reluctant to bring it up (for the third time in a week). 'Unfair' isn't the word. Pathetic, stupid, irrelevant and xenophobic would be much more appropriate.

The final word should go to Kevin Marsh, who sums all this up perfectly, although his conclusion is depressing:

Scrutiny? Is this scrutiny? Really? Perhaps we've become so de-sensitised to the awfulness of some parts of the British press that journalism like this passes as scrutiny.

We - mere readers, mere voters - are left with two unattractive possible conclusions.

Either the press really does think that these stories amount to genuine scrutiny of the men who want to run the country - that this is exactly what we need to help us choose our next government. Hysterical bawlings from the sidelines on dog-whistle issues like immigration and sleaze.

Or that parts of our press are proving once again that they are totally incapable of fulfilling their most basic function - supporting our self-government with reliable, honest news and information. And that they don't care since they place their commercial and ideological interest in a particular result above the democratic process they claim to support.

The Mail is not nice to NICE

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has publicly rebuked the Daily Mail for spreading information that is:

factually inaccurate.

In Victim of a broken promise: Mother, 37, forced to sell her home to buy cancer drugs Labour pledged to fund, Daniel Martin and Christian Gysin told the story of Nikki Phelps, whose local PCT wouldn't fund a drug, Sutent, to treat her 'rare glandular cancer'.

The Mail, which dismisses NICE as a:

rationing body

goes on to say:

West Kent primary care trust refused - because NICE has not specifically approved the drug for her type of cancer.

It adds:

Labour ministers promised more than a year ago to give sufferers of rare cancers easier access to life-extending drugs.

But the rationing body NICE has since refused to approve ten such drugs. Experts say the rulings cut short up to 20,000 lives.

They even produce a little table which shows 15 (rather than ten) cancer drugs that they claim NICE have 'refused to approve':


Not so, says NICE. Its Chairman, Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, responded by writing to Mail Editor Paul Dacre, and the health spokesmen of the three main political parties, stating:

I have no knowledge of Mrs Phelp’s circumstances but Sutent, for this indication, has never been referred to us for appraisal and has no Marketing Authorisation for this indication.

So when the Mail said NICE hadn't approved the drug for Mrs Phelps' type of cancer, it's because they hadn't been asked to - which the Mail admits towards the very end of the article.

Rawlins goes on:

The Daily Mail, in the same article, also states that that 'NICE has delivered 15 rejections of cancer treatments in the past 18 months' and provides a list. This list is factually inaccurate.

He goes on to show what NICE has actually said in each of the cases, concluding:

In summary, of the 15 products allegedly rejected by NICE:

* 10 were recommended
* 4 were rejected
* 1 no appraisal has been published.

And the last of those is currently under review.

Eventhough NICE's clarification has been public since 9 April, the Mail's article has not been removed or updated to reflect their denials about the 'refused' drugs.

So will the Mail admit the error and correct the record? Or will they continue to push 'factually inaccurate' information about cancer drugs?

(Hat-tip to mr_wonderful at the Mailwatch Forum)

Mail does rubbish churnalism

The Mail is back to one of its favourite topics again - wheelie bins and fortnightly rubbish collections.

Why? Because they might expose 'families' to the plague. Sorry, in caps:


They did much the same story in May 2007, but this research is new.

So the Daily Mail Reporter dutifully goes through all the scary statistics and adds a quote from the microbiologist who did the research:

Dr Joseph Levin, microbiologist from the University of Tel Aviv, said: 'The levels of disease-causing bacteria found in the bins are at a level that I would consider to be dangerous, especially to those with a weakened immune system, such as the elderly or young babies'.

Put that quote into Google and up pops this:


The same research, with the same stats, and the same quote from Dr Levin, in the form of a press release. And Response Source say they make

life easier for journalists by quickly and efficiently putting you in touch with public relations (PR) people.

But the Mail's Editor Paul Dacre said the paper doesn't do churnalism.

Surely he wasn't (gasp) lying?

It gets worse.

At the end of the Mail article it says:

The study was carried out by University of Tel Aviv scientists using UK bin swabs on behalf of hygiene company Binifresh.

'Hygiene company Binifresh'? Oh yes:

Binifresh is the leader in automatic hygiene for wheelie bins. After 3 years of research and development Binifresh has released its first product, an automatic hygiene and odor control device that fits easily and securely to your wheelie bin, altogether creating a cleaner, healthier more comfortable environment for all.

So a company that sells a product (£14.98 plus £2.98 for refills) that claims to make bins cleaner and healthier produces research saying bins aren't clean and healthy.

Imagine that.

And the Mail, with their weird bin obsession, are only too happy to give them a free advert.

Mail's latest attack on Facebook backfires

Much has already been written about the Mail's face-off with Facebook.

David Steven has been on the case and his frequently updated post is well worth reading.

Other articles are available at the BBC from Rory Cellan-Jones, the Guardian and at 5CC who puts the story in a wider context.

In short, the Mail ran this story prominently on its website and in a two-page spread in the print edition:


It was based on some online research by former cop Mark Williams-Thomas.

But he didn't do that research on Facebook, as the Mail's headline claimed.

The description of having people trying to chat with him within 90 seconds didn't even sound like the way Facebook works.

According to Williams-Thomas, he was sent a draft of the article by the Mail but they ignored his requests for the inaccurate references to Facebook to be removed.

Mail Assistant Editor Charles Garside blamed it on 'miscommunication'.

Given that in the past the Mail has accused Facebook of giving you cancer, destroying your marriage, raising your insurance premiums, rotting your children's brains, making you fail exams, putting you in a coma, causing riots, making you commit suicide, promoting gangster culture and causing you to be stabbed and strangled that seems unlikely.

Look at the front pages from Tuesday and Wednesday:














The Mail has a bizarre, obsessive hatred for Facebook and will try and blame it for whatever it can, and in the wake of the Ashleigh Hall case, stories about teen girls 'meeting' pervy men online were the order of the day.

The website headline was soon changed, and all references to the site removed from the text. But the Mail couldn't work out how to change the URL for some time, and so the slur remained.

And, apparently, all attempts by Facebook to post correcting comments were rejected by the Mail's moderators.

With Facebook threatening to sue, the Mail added this 'clarification' to the article:

In an earlier version of this article, we wrongly stated that the criminologist had conducted an experiment into social networking sites by posing as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook with the result that he quickly attracted sexually motivated messages. In fact he had used a different social networking site for this exercise. We are happy to set the record straight.

And another clarification (not apology) was published on page four of today's newspaper:

In an article by a criminologist yesterday, we wrongly stated that he had conducted an experiment into social networking sites by posing as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook with the result that he quickly attracted sexually motivated messages.

In fact he had used a different social networking site for this exercise. We are happy to set the record straight.

Three things stand out. Firstly, note how the printed clarification blames 'an article by a criminologist' rather than an article by the Mail's Laura Topham. This feeble blame-shifting is all too common in clarifications and apologies. Why can't the Mail just admit they got it badly wrong? And why can't they just say sorry?

Secondly, although the original story was prominent on the Mail's homepage yesterday, the printed clarification can only be found by searching for 'facebook'. 'Due prominence', as the Editor's Code says, should mean it was mentioned from the homepage like the original.

Thirdly, when faced with the threat of court action by a huge worldwide company such as Facebook, isn't the Mail's back-peddling notably quick to appear.

Compare that with the member of the public who complained about Richard Littlejohn blaming Eastern Europeans for 'most' robberies in Britain, where the Mail took six weeks to reply to the PCC over the issue.

According to Channel 4 News' Ben Cohen, Facebook have rejected the Mail's apology (which it wasn't, anyway) and plan to go ahead with their legal action because of the damage to their name caused by the Mail article.

Let's hope they do, so the Mail can be properly held to account.

For once.

Is the Mail now plagiarising user comments from IMDB?

Remember Mail Online hack Chris Johnson, who wrote an article about Dick Van Dyke's appearance at an LA stage production of Mary Poppins, which had suspicious similarities to an article from an American website?

Today, he's been given the task of writing an article about Alice Eve, who appeared at the premiere of her new film She's Out of My League in a:

low-cut pink dress to show off the figure that wins her so many admirers in the movie

The headline refers to her:

her leading lady attributes.

Yes, really.

But then there's Johnson's synopsis of the film's plot:

In the film Alice plays Molly, a beautiful events planner who has a chance encounter with geeky airport security guard Kirk (Baruchel).

Kirk is smitten by Molly, but his friends point out to him that he doesn't have a chance, because he is only rated as a '5' and Molly is definitely a '10'.

However, Molly has something else in mind, because she has found that Kirk is sweet, amusing, honest, and different from the men she has been dating.

Googling the second of those sentences and the very same words pop up somewhere else - in a review on IMDB by the-movie-guy:

Molly (Alice Eve) is a sexy event planner who is delayed by a sleazy airport security guard. Another security guard, Kirk (Jay Baruchel) comes to her rescue, and passes her through to catch her plane...

Kirk is smitten by Molly, but his friends point out to him that he doesn't have a chance, because he is only rated as a "5" and Molly is definitely a "10"...

However, Molly has something else in mind, because she has found that Kirk is sweet, amusing, honest, and different from the men she has been dating.

That means there are now four Mail articles which appear to have more than a hint of plagiarism about them.

When will anyone bring them to account?

Not front pages news (cont.) or how an imaginary dog can't eat an earring

Back, again, to the Mail on Sunday's front page:


In a post yesterday, this blog suggested that a spaniel swallowing a piece of jewellery isn't really a front page news story.

And that's even more true when it's completely made up.

Here's the headline from the online version:


Hack Kate Nicholl goes on to repeat lengthy quotes from a conveniently anonymous 'friend' about how Prince William gave girlfriend Kate Middleton some pearl earrings, which were then eaten by her spaniel. And to add an eye-catching bit of detail:

when the earrings finally emerged, she realised that there was no rescuing them, they were so badly damaged and chewed up.

Prince William's girlfriend looking through her dog's poo for an earring? It sounds a bit like the Prime Minister throwing a tangerine into a laminating machine. And, like the fruit-chucking hoax, it's been picked up unquestioningly by others, including David Harrison in the Telegraph (surprise!) and several media outlets in America.

There's just one slight problem.

There is no:

beloved black cocker spaniel

called Otto.

Because Kate Middleton doesn't have a dog.

The Express' Royal Reporter Richard Palmer tweeted this:


Which has been confirmed to me by a spokesman from Clarence House.

How did Nicholl come to write this rubbish? As a journalist, she should have contacted Clarence House or some other official sources to check the story. If she didn't, that's unbelievably sloppy. And if she did, and was told there was no such dog, but ran the story anyway, that's unbelievably shoddy.

As for the Mail on Sunday, their lead about Samantha Cameron voting Labour was quickly and comprehensively denied and now their other front page 'news' story about a dog eating jewellery has fallen apart because the dog doesn't exist.

Editor Peter Wright and Editor-in-Chief Paul Dacre: you must be so proud.

Not front page news

Today's Mail on Sunday is a very good example of what not to put on the front of your newspaper:


Ignoring the cheap watch giveaway, we'll start at the top of the page, which is, ironically, also the bottom of the barrel.

Piers Morgan. Talking about celebrities. Urgh.

Morgan and inanity go together like 'Viglen' and 'dodgy share-tipping'. The only surprise is he didn't put himself as the number one celebrity who 'matters most'.

Instead, he chose Simon Cowell, which has absolutely nothing to do with Cowell being Morgan's boss on Britain's Got Talent.

Morgan says Cowell:

constantly takes risks.

Really? He came to most people's attention with Pop Idol, based on the already 'successful' format of Popstars. Pop Idol was an ITV 'talent' show where hopefuls performed in front a panel of judges and gradually got eliminated based on a public vote.

He then did The X Factor, an ITV 'talent' show where hopefuls performed in front a panel of judges and gradually got eliminated based on a public vote.

And then he took a huge 'risk' with Britain's Got Talent, an ITV 'talent' show where hopefuls performed in front a panel of judges and gradually got eliminated based on a public vote.

And that's not even mentioning his involvement in American Idol and America's Got Talent.

Morgan and Cowell's fellow Britain's Got Talent judge Amanda Holden turns up in 24th place, while X Factor tear-factory Cheryl Cole is 3rd.

It's almost as if Morgan is just trying to impress his famous friends and show how terribly important he is - if you can possibly imagine him doing such a thing.

His definition of 'celebrity' for the purpose of this list seems to be anyone who is British and famous. You would be hard pushed to class Sir Michael Caine, Sir David Attenborough and Jeremy Paxman as 'celebrities'.

He includes Attenborough at number 96. So according to Morgan, Sir David 'matters' less than Coleen Rooney (67th), JLS (59th), James Corden (41st), Susan Boyle (37th) and Jordan (28th), and only matters slightly more than Heather Mills, who he puts in at 100 because she's:

brilliantly talentless.

It is an absolutely missable read.

The main story on Mail on Sunday's front page isn't much better. David Cameron's wife 'might' have voted Labour in the past and 'might' do again this year, it says, rather incredibly. It's based on a claim made by Shadow Culture Spokesman Ed Vaizey in an upcoming Andrew Rawnsley documentary about David Cameron.

As a front page news story, it's thin gruel. And it doesn't say much for the Mail on Sunday. Either they put this on the front page without properly investigating the claim. Or they had three fairly firm denials, and decided to go ahead with it anyway.

Whichever is true, it reflects poorly on Editor Peter Wright and Editor-in-Chief Paul Dacre.

The online version contains Samantha's denial:

‘I did not vote for Tony Blair in 1997 and I have never voted Labour.’

And then Conservative Central Office's statement that as Samantha had taken five weeks off work in 1997 to campaign for the Tories, it's highly unlikely she would have then voted Labour.

And there was Vaizey himself:

'I haven’t a clue whether she voted for Blair and I would be very surprised if she did. She married David in June 1996, so of course she voted for him in 1997...I don’t think Sam ever voted for Blair.'

Of course, they all would say that, wouldn't they? But it doesn't really seem very likely and certainly doesn't seem worth splashing all over the front page of your paper.

The same is true of the other story the Mail on Sunday decided was more important than anything else going on in the world today. What is it?

Dog ate my pearl earring.

Yes, really.

Remember how the Mail newspapers never once put the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Haiti on their front page?

But a spaniel swallows a piece of jewellery?

Now that is important...

[Update: the above has been corrected, based on the comments. I'm glad to say my knowledge of crappy reality shows isn't that good.]

Apologies round-up

Associated Newspapers have agreed to pay Michael Parkinson £25,000 in libel damages (plus costs) over a Daily Mail article ironically titled 'Who's Telling Parkies?'

From MediaGuardian:

The article made a series of allegations that Parkinson had acted in a 'grossly insensitive' way toward his uncle, Bernard Parkinson, and that he had intentionally lied about having had a harmonious family upbringing in his autobiography.

'The article was both distressing and as inaccurate as it was damaging,' said Parkinson in a statement.

Some of his other comments are worth repeating:

'Where defamatory allegations have been published about me, I have always until now turned a blind eye. However, I decided that the Daily Mail had crossed a line by a long way'.

The Mail? Surely not? And:

Parkinson added that he considered it standard practice and a 'matter of common decency' for a newspaper to apologise publicly and promptly when a mistake is made.

'In this case, it should not have taken nine months nor been so difficult for the editor to apologise promptly,' he said.

'Moreover I believe that the persistent delaying tactics of the Daily Mail were both unattractive and unworthy of a national newspaper.

What's staggering is that someone who's been around as long as Parky seems to have rather high expectations of the Mail and its Editor Paul Dacre.

The Mail took over a month to respond to a complaint made to the PCC about Littlejohn's false claims that Eastern Europeans commit most of the robberies in Britain. They ignored an email from an American journalist accusing them of plagiarism.

Persistent delaying tactics when facing complaints seems to be the Mail's default position.

Meanwhile the Sunday Mirror has apologised for using a photo of the wrong woman:

Last week, to accompany an article about Ashley Cole cheating on Cheryl with Vicki Gough, 30, we mistakenly pictured Vicky Gough, 19 (above). We wish to make clear that the Ms Gough we pictured has no connection whatsoever with Ashley Cole and offer our sincere apologies for any distress and embarrassment caused to her.

Over at The Sun, there's an apology for Dr Mohammed Asha:

An article on 10 August 2009 "Terror case doc works in casualty" reported that, following his court acquittal on terrorist charges, Dr Asha was working for the NHS.

Some readers may have understood the article to mean that Dr Asha is a terrorist suspect and a threat to national security.

This was not our intention and it is untrue.

We wish to make clear that The Sun stands by the jury's verdict and does not suggest he is involved in terrorism.

We apologise to Dr Asha and his family for any embarrassment and distress caused.

Not our fault, guv, it's our readers taking our headlines literally. It's an apology, but the wording really is appalling. As Septicisle accurately pointed out at The Sun - Tabloid Lies:

You really have to love the 'some readers' formulation; it's you morons that misunderstood it, not us for being about as subtle as a brick and implying that this completely innocent man must still be a threat just because he was tried for terrorism offences. Apologising while not apologising really takes some doing.

Also from The Sun, an apology for accusing a footballer of being involved in a 'sex scandal':

A report on December 12 stated that Colin Kazim-Richards had been transfer-listed by Fenerbahce due to his involvement in a sex scandal.

We now accept that this agency report was untrue and that he was not involved in any such scandal.

The player has since happily left the club by agreement for football reasons.

We are happy to set the record straight and apologise to Mr Kazim-Richards for any embarrassment caused.

So that one wasn't their fault either - it was agency copy to blame this time.

More claims of plagiarism against the Mail

The constant media hounding of Jonathan Ross eventually led to him quitting the BBC. Having claimed his scalp, they're now going after his wife for her involvement in the upcoming action film Kick-Ass.

The Sunday Times began this piffle with Jon Ungoed-Thomas' ill-informed article Jonathan Ross's wife Jane Goldman spawns girl assassin, 11. Unsurprisingly, the Mail were quick to join in the attack, with the suspiciously similar Jonathan Ross's wife Jane Goldman causes outrage with film featuring a foul-mouthed 11-year-old assassin, which they placed very prominently on their website.

Two things need to be pointed out immediately.

One: Goldman is only a co-writer of the screenplay. The other co-writer, Matthew Vaughn, is also the film's director - yet he is hardly mentioned in either story.

Two: the film is based on a comic book by Mark Millar. He invented the character of Hit-Girl, the foul-mouthed, eleven-year-old assassin, but the Mail doesn't even bother to mention him.

So references to 'Goldman's film' and her 'spawning' the character aren't exactly accurate.

As for the so-called 'outrage', it's as mythical as you might expect. The New York Times published an article about the film's red band trailers (ones that have swearing and violence in), based on the concerns of one person, who writes her reviews under the title Movie Mom.

Both articles quote Frank Furedi, a professor of sociology at Kent University, but he seems to be making a generic point about about movie violence and doesn't mention Goldman at all.

So a bit of manufactured outrage used to attack another member of the Ross family. What a surprise.

But on reading the Mail's version, the resemblance to the Sunday Times' article is too strong to be coincidental. As the Mail article says Furedi 'told the Sunday Times' his view, it's reasonable to assume the broadsheet article must have existed first.

Sunday Times:

Mail:

Sunday Times:
Mail:

Sunday Times:

Mail (with spelling mistake):

Sunday Times:
Mail:

Sunday Times:
Mail:

Sunday Times:
Mail:

It doesn't look good, does it?

And this isn't the first time a Mail article has looked suspiciously similar to another story from another paper.

On an earlier post about yet another claim of plagiarism against the Mail, an anonymous comment pointed out these two articles:

Exhibit A - AC Transit bus brawler has video past by Angela Woodall in The Oakland Tribune.

Exhibit B - Bus assault pensioner, 67, starred in second YouTube altercation last August... when he was Tasered by police published on MailOnline.

I emailed Woodall about the claim. She said they had used her work without attribution and confirmed that she had written an email to the Mail about their 'strikingly similar' story, but which they had ignored. She also sent me a copy of her email to them.

Here's a section from Woodall's article:


And from the Mail's version:



And with these articles following on from the claims made against the Mail's Chris Johnson for plagiarism, is anyone going to call the Mail and its editor, to account?

Dacre says Mail doesn't do churnalism. Oh really?

When Paul Dacre, Editor of the Daily Mail, gave evidence at the 'Press standards, privacy and libel' hearings, he was asked about 'churnalism' - journalism which is simply reheated press releases and wire copy, churned out with little/no journalistic talent.

It 'applies to some newspapers' he said, pointing the finger at the local press and Richard Desmond. But he said:

'I refute that charge of the Daily Mail'.

And he went on to say the Mail and some of its 'worthy competitors' are 'not guilty' of the charge.

Got that? Good.

So let's look at Daily Mail Reporter's If you thought your name was bad, spare a thought for Barb Dwyer, Paige Turner, Stan Still and Terry Bull from 26 February 2010. It says:

Next time you introduce yourself or sign your name, spare a thought for Barb Dwyer and Paige Turner. They are among those honoured with having the most bizarre and embarrassing names in Britain, according to a survey. Researchers spent a month scouring the UK's online phone records to find those for whom meeting new people or showing their credit card in a shop is likely to be an ordeal.

It goes on to quote Stan Still, who says:

'My name has been a blooming millstone around my neck my entire life. When I was in the RAF my commanding officer used to shout "Stan Still, get a move on!" and roll about laughing. It got hugely boring after a while.'

At which point, Mail anoraks might think they've heard that anecdote before. They'd be right.

Because one year and one day ago, in the Mail, Luke Salkeld's At least no one will forget you Justin Case: The most unfortunate names in Britain told the same story. Exactly the same story:

Perhaps their parents had a wicked sense of humour. But for the children saddled with a comical name, the joke can wear a little thin. Stan Still, 76, said his name 'has been a blooming millstone around my neck my entire life'...Mr Still, a former RAF man from Cirencester, Gloucestershire, said yesterday: 'When I was in the RAF my commanding officer used to shout, "Stan Still, get a move on" and roll about laughing. It got hugely boring after a while.'

Hugely boring indeed.

So have the hacks at the Mail been looking through old papers for noteworthy anniversaries and thought this story was good enough to use again?

Who knows. But what we do know is that these stories are definitely churnalism.

Both articles say these names have come from a study conducted by The Baby Website. Their press release 'Silly Names' was written in February 2009.

It begins:

Next time you sign your name spare a thought for Justin Case, Barb Dwyer and Anna Sasin. The incredibly unfortunate names emerged in our study of the most bizarre names in Britain today.

And the Mail's 2010 article begins:

Next time you introduce yourself or sign your name, spare a thought for Barb Dwyer and Paige Turner. They are among those honoured with having the most bizarre and embarrassing names in Britain, according to a survey.

Hmm. The press release:

When the parents of some of those people mentioned named their children, many probably didn’t even realise the implications at the time.

There must be tremendous embarrassment every time they have to introduce themselves to anyone, especially to a crowd. Even their teachers must have had to hold back their smiles sometimes.

On the positive side, anyone wanting to become well-known would have an added advantage… No-one would forget a name such as Justin Case, would they?

Parents really do need to think carefully though when choosing names for their children.

The Mail in 2009:

A spokesman for www.thebabywebsite.com, which compiled the list, said: 'When the parents of some of those people mentioned named their children, many probably didn't even realise the implications at the time. 'There must be tremendous embarrassment every time they have to introduce themselves. Even their teachers must have had to hold back their smiles sometimes. 'On the positive side, anyone wanting to become well known would have an added advantage. No one would forget a name such as Justin Case, would they?'

The Mail in 2010:

A spokesman said: 'There must be tremendous embarrassment every time they have to introduce themselves to anyone, especially to a crowd. 'Even their teachers must have had to hold back their smiles sometimes. Parents really do need to think carefully when choosing names for their children.'

An anonymous spokesman who doesn't really exist, but is used to regurgitate whole chunks of a press release? Imagine that.

Although the press release doesn't include the Stan Still story, they borrowed (ahem) that from the BBC website.

So not only is this classic churnalism, but it's reheating a year-old press release that they actually covered a year ago and which has no 'new' info in at all.

What was that about 'refuting that charge' of churnalism again, Mr Dacre?

(Hat-tip Iain Stuart)

Reactions to the 'Press standards, privacy and libel' report

The Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee has published its long-awaited report on Press standards, privacy and libel today. (Full coverage at MediaGuardian)

It is an extremely wide-ranging report and has many very good recommendations for changing the Press Complaints Commission, including several that have been supported by this blog. (The attempt to ban newspapers from printing for a day for serious transgressions is a very poor recommendation, however).

On the issue of fines, the Committee recommends that:

in cases where a serious breach of the Code has occurred, the PCC should have the ability to impose a financial penalty.

On the placement of apologies:

Corrections and apologies should be printed on either an earlier, or the same, page as that first reference, although they need not be the same size.

That would mean front page apologies for front page stories which are wrong. This change should be implemented immediately because the 'due prominence' wording in the current Code of Practice clearly is not working.

On sacking Paul Dacre as Chair of the Code of Practice Committee:

We further recommend that there should be lay members on the Code Committee, and that one of those lay members should be Chairman of that Committee.

Absolutely. However, there is a shocking quote in the report from Dacre. He told the Committee:

"It is a matter of huge shame if an editor has an adjudication against him; it is a matter of shame for him and his paper. That is why self-regulation is the most potent form of regulation, and we buy into it. We do not want to be shamed."

Firstly: bollocks. Secondly: Dacre and the Mail have shame?

The MPs added that lay members should be a majority on the decision-making Commission, which should also include journalists, rather than just editors:

We recommend that the membership of the PCC should be rebalanced to give the lay members a two thirds majority, making it absolutely clear that the PCC is not overly influenced by the press.

This, the Committee says, would:

enhance the credibility of the PCC to the outside world.

Which is, of course, urgently needed. The MPs add:

However for confidence to be maintained, the industry regulator must actually effectively regulate, not just mediate. The powers of the PCC must be enhanced, as it is toothless compared to other regulators.

It's all pretty damning about the PCC, but things will only improve if these changes are implemented to give the regulator those much-needed teeth.

It was also highly critical of the Daily Express, which several years ago refused to pay its subscriptions to the self-regulatory system. The MPs called this action:

deplorable.

From Peter Hill and Richard Desmond, that shouldn't be surprising.

But the report was especially damning about the News of the World over their illegal phone-hacking activities. The report says these were not restricted to one 'rogue reporter':

Evidence we have seen makes it inconceivable that no-one else at the News of the World, bar Clive Goodman, knew about the phone-hacking....[which] went to the heart of the British establishment, in which police, military royals and government ministers were hacked on a near industrial scale.

Moreover, the MPs are brutal in their judgements about the News of the World and News International employees who came before them:

Throughout our inquiry, too, we have been struck by the collective amnesia afflicting witnesses from the News of the World.

And:

Throughout we have repeatedly encountered an unwillingness to provide the detailed information that we sought, claims of ignorance or lack of recall, and deliberate obfuscation. We strongly condemn this behaviour which reinforces the widely held impression that the press generally regard themselves as unaccountable and that News International in particular has sought to conceal the truth about what really occurred.

Ouch.

For a clear example of this amnesia, look through the oral evidence and the exchanges between Philip Davies MP, current News of the World Editor Colin Myler and Tom Crone, the Legal Manager at News Group Newspapers (Q.1411-1418).

Davies was trying to find out who authorised the payments to Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, the bin-rummager who did the phone-hacking, which was paid after their release from prison. As if they was being paid to shut up, or something...

Q1416 Philip Davies: Just while we are on the theme, has any payment been subsequently made to Clive Goodman?

Mr Crone: I am certainly not aware of it.

Mr Myler: Again, likewise, I am not aware of any payment.

Q1417 Philip Davies: If a payment had been made, would you be aware of it?

Mr Crone: Not necessarily. Mr Kuttner would.

Q1418 Philip Davies: So this is a question for Mr Kuttner?

Mr Crone: I would say so.

And when Stuart Kuttner, the News of the World's Managing Editor, came before the Committee later that day:

Q1578 Philip Davies: We are obviously not going to make any further headway there. Have you made any payments to either Glenn Mulcaire or Clive Goodman since they were convicted of their offence?

Mr Kuttner: So far as I know agreements were made with them. I have no details at all of the substance of those agreements and so I cannot go beyond that.

Q1579 Philip Davies: Could you tell us who can because when I asked Mr Crone the same question he seemed to think that you were the person to ask.

Mr Kuttner: Well, in which case that is simply not so.

So Crone said Kuttner would know. Kuttner said he didn't know and he didn't know who would know.

Given that Kuttner has been Managing Editor of the News of the World for 22 years 'collective amnesia' seems a rather generous description.

Needless to say, News International were not happy with the report. They issued a ridiculous statement (pdf) which whined that the Committee had failed to act without:

bias or external influence.

This comes after Crone (Q.1329) had tried to get Labour MP Tom Watson kicked off the Committee (he was suing The Sun at the time - and won) and Kuttner wanted Davies removed from it too (Q.1572).

'External influence' indeed.

The statement went on to complain about the Committee's:

innuendo

and

exaggeration

and said it had

repeatedly violated public trust.

For the publishers of the Sun and the News of the World to accuse others of those things is almost beyond parody.

The Sun's article on the 167-page report ran to just five paragraphs, which consisted of how the report had been 'hijacked' by Labour MPs. Had it really? Tom Watson said not:

570 clauses agreed unanimously, 4 were voted on, 3 of them opposed by a single MP.

That's some hijacking. As if to prove they had something to hide, the Sun were not taking any comments on this story on their website.

Their editorial was equally pathetic and designed to make petty political points, categorically failing to engage with the substance of the report:


Note 'unfounded claims' by the Guardian. Well, the Guardian's exposing of the News of the World's payment to Gordon Taylor wasn't unfounded. And if News International think it's all unfounded, why not sue?

Of course, the report did include many pages of insight and recommendations on privacy, libel and the McCann case.

But because the MPs dared take on the Sun's sister paper, its work was deemed 'worthless'. How grown up.

More astonishing was the reaction of Sky, which is in the same Murdoch stable as the News of the World, and which tried to pretend nothing had happened.

Here's the BBC's teletext news headlines this morning:


Second story. And on Sky Text it was here:


Oh rather, wasn't here. Still at least Sky News had it prominently on their website:


Oh no, it wasn't in their top 15 stories by early afternoon. Surely they wouldn't just bury it below some photo gallery of a pop star and a footballer:


Ah they would.

And even then it doesn't concentrate on the libel recommendations, or the reform of the PCC or the McCanns, that the Sun was complaining about. No, they've made it deliberately party political by referring to it in terms of 'Cam's man', as former editor Andy Coulson now works for David Cameron.

And on Tuesday night, during the Sky News press review, the News International line was already clear. They were faced with this:


What to do? Journalist Mark Seddon began to talk about the inquiry and the claims against the News of the World. Sat next to him was a journalist from the Times (also owned by News International), who butted in to say the phone-hacking had been looked at over and over and it's a non-story now.

Well, if the News International people would tell the truth for once, there wouldn't need to be constant enquiries into the sordid affair.

But at this point Anna Botting, the Sky News presenter, spoke over everyone to dismiss this whole story as a 'vendetta' from a 'left-leaning' newspaper which was aimed at Andy Coulson solely because he now works for the Tories. And she made clear that was the end of that discussion. It was dreadful.

And it clearly highlights the dangers of too much media being in the hands of too few people. The biggest selling daily newspaper and one of the two main TV news channels are all owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the News of the World.

And when not claiming some mythical political plot (the Chair of the Committee, incidentally, is a Conservative MP), they have decided the stick their fingers in the ears, shut their eyes and shout 'la la la', instead of telling their viewers about some important proposals to improve the press in this country.

The Guardian reports the Mail has done a short article, mostly avoiding the phone-hacking claims. The Telegraph has written more in general, but ignored the phone-hacking stuff. The Independent has given lots of coverage to News International's pathetic sound and fury.

So today we've seen parts of the media refusing to engage in a debate or admit to their own failings, while other parts try to intimidate and smear anyone who dares criticise.

How are things ever likely to change?