All we care about is how a singer looks, not how they sound

Alexandra Burke, winner of last year's X Factor, has switched on Manchester's Christmas lights. The Mail, always keen to report on totally unimportant and uninteresting sleb gossip, is on the case. But rather than Daily Mail Reporter, we have a named journalist - Chris Johnson - writing the article. He begins:

Alexandra Burke certainly knows how to please a crowd.

Oh so she sang well then?

The X Factor winner dazzled during a live performance in a tiny little black dress which showed off her incredibly long legs.

OK, but how was her singing?

She was in Manchester to turn on the city's Christmas lights - but despite plunging temperatures the singer braved the chill in the revealing outfit.

In fact, there isn't a single mention of what she sang or how well she sang it. But they do include an upskirt photo, of the type more often found on the front of the Daily Sport.

And inevitably, the (moderated) comments are mostly about her looks too:

she is the ugliest winner yet, in my opinion and is distracting us with her legs.
- bob, wirral, 14/11/2009 8:53

They are not never-ending legs, someone like Gisele has perfect legs, these are stumpy and chubby, put them away love!!!
- Alycia Channelle, London, 14/11/2009 0:36

CHUNKKKYYY!!
- kriss, fort william, 13/11/2009 23:43

She has horrible legs, too muscly.
- Kate J., london, 13/11/2009 23:22

she looks a bit like a man in drag!
- ?, ?, 13/11/2009 20:31

not flattering at all. she's not got the face or body for the entertainment industry.
- roleen, hertfordshire, 13/11/2009 20:25

Why do so many people feel the need to leave comments like these? And why do the mods feel the need to publish such nasty and unbelievably inane comments?

Especially that last comment from 'Roleen'. Talent doesn't matter - it's only about how the face and body looks. But is that any surprise when that is all the Mail ever focuses on?

One other comment says:

Thought she was supposed to sing. Silly me.
- Keith Spencer, Derby, 14/11/2009 7:47

She is singing. The mic in her hand is a bit of a giveaway. But Keith, like Johnson and the Mail and many, many others are only interested in judging her on how she looks, not on what she's doing.

Can a Sun columnist really complain about the 'early sexualisation of young girls'?

Last week, Nadia Saint commented on a Jane Moore column about 'the early sexualisation of young girls', in a paper where 'Rosie, 18, from Middlesex' is a Page 3 regular. But look at what the Sun say about Rosie:


If she is 18 now, and made her 'debut' nearly sixteen months ago, she must have been 17 then. Yet the 2003 Sexual Offences Act raised the legal age for topless modelling from 16 to 18.

So either the Sun broke the law then, or it is lying about Rosie's age now in order to make her seem younger than she actually is.

Which doesn't look good either way.

And for Moore to happily take the Murdoch shilling and then criticise the 'sexualisation of young girls' makes her seem a bit of a hypocrite.

But you get a lot of hypocrisy at The Sun these days...

Recommended reads

An interesting article from Greg Mitchell about media coverage of the Fort Hood killings. When the Times used the headline The mother who brought down the Fort Hood killer, Roy Greenslade wrote:

I really thought we had got beyond the stage of describing women in such terms.

Now it appears that Sgt Mark Todd, not Kimberly Munley, may have been the person who actually shot Maj Hasan, thus stopping his rampage. Mitchell asks:

Just coincidence that a white woman got the credit over a black male?

Elsewhere, following on from the Express' bizarre front page about tea, where research funded by the Tea Council came to the staggering conclusion that tea is good for you, Nadia spotted a similar story in the Telegraph about eggs. Turns out, British Lion Eggs are saying eggs keep women trim. Must be true then.

Nadia has also mentioned a grotesque request from the Daily Mail for 10-14 year olds with body hang-ups to get in touch for a feature. This from the same paper that just a few days ago was - as Angry Mob pointed out - snidely remarking that Beth Ditto is not stick thin. And is always making fun of people if they are either too thin or too fat.

Also at Angry Mob, Uponnothing highlights that last week, Littlejohn used two of his favourite devices again - comparing events to a TV show, and the 'hilarious' imaginary conversation. He really is worth every penny.

Sun apologises, Gaunt disappears

The Sun have apologised for getting Jacqui Janes' name wrong on their website:

(via Rhodri Marsden)

They have not, however, corrected any of the errors on Jon Gaunt's 'daily' blog, including the incorrect spelling of Wootton Bassett.

And it's certainly an interesting use of the word 'daily' when today is Friday and Gaunt's last post was on, errr, Monday.

The Sun learns about glass houses

After several days of attacks on Gordon Brown over his handwritten letter to Jacqui Janes, the whole story appears to be backfiring on The Sun.

Roy Greenslade is reporting on a backlash from the public and from other newspapers - including those very hostile to Labour.

Here's what The Sun wrote two days ago:

Blundering Mr Brown left war hero Jamie Janes's grieving mother in tears by sending her an error-filled letter of condolence in which he even mis-spelled their name.

The hand-written note to heartbroken Jacqui JANES about her 20-year-old son, began: Dear Mrs JAMES.

Good job the paper is on hand to make sure Mrs Janes' name is always correct. Oh wait:


Still, the paper - which promotes itself so heavily on its backing for 'Our Boys' - wouldn't misspell Wootton Bassett, the Wiltshire town which has held 98 repatriation ceremonies for dead soldiers:


Hmm. But at least they didn't illustrate the death of a British soldier with a picture of some grinning broadcaster:


Some people might call mistakes like those 'bloody shameful'.

(Hat-tip to fisher1980 and Harry's Place for first and third images)

Gaunt gives Brown an English lesson

The Sun's Littlejohn-wannabe Jon Gaunt has been churning out a daily blog on the paper's website. His weekly column in the printed paper was dropped by new editor Dominic Mohan so we get a dose of his ignorant, 'I ain't no racist but...'- type views online instead.

His Monday blog attacks Gordon Brown over the letter to a dead soldier's mother. At time of writing, it is noticeable that the story is well down the Sun's homepage. The Guardian are reporting the Sun's political editor was unsure about the tone of the coverage and the comments left on the story by readers are more sympathetic to the Prime Minister than the Sun probably hoped.

Gaunt begins his outburst by calling him 'Brown Pants Brown', a woeful attempt to ape the woeful nicknames Littlejohn gives people. He refers to Brown as 'unelected' twice, which follows on from his Friday blog when he called him, errr, 'unelected'. Littlejohn also uses repetition instead of original thought and frequently calls Brown 'unelected'. And Littlejohn's column today also included an attack on the Prime Minister...

Brown is well known for suffering serious problems with his eyesight and having poor handwriting as a result. Gaunt says it was insult to all British troops that he was:

scribbling a note that even a five year old could have bettered.

Of course, Gaunt's blog is the absolute pinnacle of brilliantly written, grammatically correct English. Oh, no it isn't:

If they had spent as much time working out how we were going to finish this and the Iraq war as they did spicing up the dodgy weapons of mass destruction dossier perhaps less lads would be coming home in body bags.

'Less lads'?

Then there's this paragraph, about The X Factor:


Spot the missing apostrophe, the missing 'd', the missing capital 'T' and an erroneous capital 'T'. Like the rest of the blog, a few commas would help too.

However, hopefully that is a firm promise to go underground if 'Jedward' release a single. Because they surely will and then we could be spared Gaunt's tedious blogs and radio shows.

Oh, and his numerous errors, such as:
and:
and:
Would a five year old be able to better Gaunt's use of capital letters? Let's not forget, Gaunt is meant to be a journalist. He's meant to be able to write.

He also berates Brown for his spelling, saying he couldn't even:

be bothered to check the spelling of the lad's name.

Of course, Gaunt thoroughly proof-reads everything and would never, ever get any spelling wrong when it relates to dead soldiers. Would he?


'Wootten Basset'? Doesn't he mean Wootton Bassett? And surely it should be 'in' not 'at' Wootton Bassett.

Towards the end of his rant, amid a series of insults ('disrespectful buffoon', 'unelected, deluded fool') he adds that Brown:

has always exhibited disdain for our troops as emphasised by the 46 seconds he spent talking about them during his party conference speech.

He's criticising Brown for not talking about Afghanistan enough. Clearly Gaunt would never do such a thing. For example, in the 11 days since his blog began he has written about Afghanistan three times, and - being charitable - on two other occasions he's talked about poppies.

But that would be a lot less than the eight times he has written about something he clearly regards as more important: The X Factor.

Indeed, the Monday blog post has his views about Brown and Afghanistan sandwiched between two pieces about the tedious 'talent' show.

The Sun broke this story and has run with it - with help from their friends at Sky - so it was inevitable that their 'star' columnists would have their say.

But isn't it ironic that Gaunt accuses Brown of bad writing and spelling errors, while his own blog is so appallingly written?

Fancy a cuppa with that press release?

On Saturday, the Express front page was a typically inept, news-free zone and even included the word 'TAT' spelt out down the left hand side. How very appropriate.

The main headline was yet another health story and revealed new research that caffeine is good for you and you should be able to devour eight cups of tea or four cups of coffee per day without any adverse reaction. Unless, of course, it's piping hot, in which case you might get cancer. The Express noted:

The research even suggested that people who cut out tea and coffee from their diet in a bid to be healthy may be doing more harm than good.

The story also appeared in the Mail and Telegraph.

The research was conducted by Dr Carrie Ruxton. If the name sounds familiar, it might be because she was behind research reported in May 2009 that Three cups of tea a day 'can cut heart attack risk by 70%'.

A few months before that - in February - she popped up to claim traditional tea was as good for your heart as green tea.

In December 2008 she was saying tea stopped tooth decay. Two months earlier her research claimed that Four daily cups of tea 'prevents heart attacks'. In February 2008 she was pushing the 'cognitive and performance-related benefits' of tea.

In May 2007 she was suggesting tea is healthier than water. The same conclusion as she reached in August 2006, when she was advising everyone to drink three cups of (guess what?) tea per day.

All of which smacks of dismally lazy churnalism.

And yet, who is Dr Carrie Ruxton? Who is this 'expert' who keeps popping up in the newspapers to tell us how great tea is?

Coincidentally, she's a member of the Tea Advisory Panel. The what?

The Tea Advisory Panel is supported by an unrestricted educational grant from the UK Tea Council, the trade association for the UK tea industry.

Hmm. And the UK Tea Council?

an independent non-profit making body dedicated to promoting tea & its unique story for the benefit of those who produce, sell & enjoy tea.

So the body dedicated to promoting tea gives grants to a panel which comes out with research about the enormous benefits of drinking tea. Imagine that.

And certain newspapers then receive a press release with those findings in and publish them without question.

Is this what Peter Hill thinks is the 'vastly improved standards of writing' at the Express?

Glass houses

A week ago, the Mail criticised the BBC for using 'damming' rather than 'damning' in a News at Ten caption. The same day, a Mail story about The X Factor contained four grammatical errors. Oh dear.

And then, first thing this morning, the top 'Femail today' article on the Mail website:

Oops. Again.

Platell: still a hypocrite and just unbelievably lazy

If it's Saturday, it must be another feeble column from Amanda Platell in the Mail.

What does she write about today? Sex education in schools (covered in the Mail on 6 Nov), Fern Britton doing a religious chat show on BBC (covered in the Mail on 5 Nov), Drew Barrymore in a frock (covered in the Mail on 5 Nov), the U2 Berlin concert (covered in the Mail on 6 Nov), an attack on Helen Goodman over expenses (covered in the Mail on 6 Nov), Wayne Rooney celebrating the birth of his son until 6am (covered in the - gasp - Sun on 5 Nov), a sex discrimination case (covered in the Mail on 4 Nov), Gordon Ramsay's viewing figures (covered in the Mail on 5 Nov), an attack on Obama over Fort Hood (which appears to be straight from Fox News) and something about Slavica Ecclestone and the Dalai Lama (covered in the Mail on 4 Nov).

The only bit of her column that hasn't appeared somewhere else in the last three days is praise for Margaret Thatcher. And that can hardly be called 'new'.

Does she have an original thought in her head? And that doesn't include the lies. Any moron could flick through the papers, find a few stories to re-heat and add some unamusing insults.

And clearly, any moron does.

Let's start with Gordon Ramsay. She writes:

Ramsay's celebrity The F Word attracted just 1.8million viewers, with even BBC2's science series Horizon beating him with an aptly titled show called Who's Afraid Of A Big Black Hole? - into which we can all now hope the foulmouthed Ramsay will finally disappear.

If she feels that strongly about stopping media exposure for Gordon Ramsay, she should complain to the newspaper that just yesterday published five recipes from his latest 'brilliant book'. That would be the same newspaper she writes for.

On to her comments about Barack Obama, who she clearly hates. In recent weeks she has said he has no charisma and criticised Michelle for hula-hooping. And now? This about Obama's press conference - a few hours after the event and without all the facts - on the Fort Hood shootings:

He seemed very slow to react and spent much time initially ignoring the tragedy, thanking staff for organising a conference in Washington that he'd been attending.

It was only some time later that he spoke of the 'horrific outburst of violence'. His performance reminded me of President Bush's numb response when he was first told that two jet airliners had flown into the Twin Towers on September 11.

Now this is what really happened. He was indeed at a conference, as the BBC reported:

The first annual White House Tribal Nations Conference brings together one delegate from each of the 564 federally recognised American Indian tribes.

It is the first time in US history that they will all meet a sitting president.

So when Obama got up to speak he wasn't 'ignoring the tragedy' but thanking the organisers and attendees for this historic event. He gave a shout-out to a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient who was there, and gave a 'solemn guarantee that this was not the end of a process but the beginning of a process' on Native American rights.

What Platell calls 'much time' before he addressed Fort Hood was in fact - wait for it - 113 seconds.

When she claims it was 'only some time later that he spoke of the 'horrific outburst of violence'' was in fact 31 seconds into his remarks on the shootings and within three minutes of beginning his speech.

Not that the events on 11 September and at Fort Hood are comparable but Platell seems to forget Bush carried on reading 'The Pet Goat' for seven minutes after being told of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center. And then he went...where?

Is she really so pathetically biased that she thinks those two reactions are the same?

As usual, there are also some bitter attacks on women who are more successful and popular than she is. She refers to Fern Britton as:

The Big Fat Fibber

who was:

so unpopular with viewers that ratings for ITV's This Morning have soared since she was replaced as a presenter

Yes, the Mail (who else?) did report viewing figures have risen by 150,000 but how much of this is down to a new presenter and re-launched programme? And if she was 'so unpopular', how come she was presenting the show for eight years, and still managing to pull in nearly a million viewers?

But maybe with unpopular fibbers, it just takes one to know one...

And then there is a nasty and gratuitous attack on Drew Barrymore:

Drew Barrymore's appearance, wearing Posh's purple £1,750 Giral dress, made her look like a leading lady all right, but not the A-lister she hoped - more the poisonous cross-dressing Rosa Klebb in the James Bond movie From Russia With Love.

Aside from the factual error of calling Klebb a 'leading lady', this is what Drew looked like:


And this is Rosa Klebb:


Identical, as you can see.

The Mail, a few days earlier, had said Barrymore looked 'stunning' at the same event, although that might be to make up for stupidly saying she looked like a lapdancer the last time she was at a premiere.

But remember last week when Platell complained about Frankie Boyle's Rebecca Adlington joke as:

cruel, unfunny - and, above all, unjust.

Apparently, comparing the 34-year old Barrymore - whose recent directorial debut has been very well received - to a notoriously unattractive, 65-year old, poisonous, cross-dressing assassin, is totally just and completely hilarious.

Poisonous indeed.

From the 'world's greatest newspaper': a front page about tea

When it could be reporting on the Fort Hood shootings or a speech by the Prime Minister on Afghanistan or any other really important news story, the - ahem - 'vastly improved standards of writing' at the Express are put to use with a front page about tea being good for you:

Plus - a lot of cut-price junk.

It's almost beyond parody now.

A shooter's religion is only relevant when he's Muslim

A shooting at an office block in Florida comes one day after the shooting at an army base in Texas. Here's how the Mail is currently covering the two stories:

So while the religion of the first shooter is considered so important it makes the headline, the religion of the second is not mentioned at all.

Presumably, they don't think 'Jason Rodriguez' sounds like a Muslim name. And therefore, they don't give a damn what religion he is.

Peter Hill actually believes the Express is the 'world's greatest newspaper'

Ciar Byrne has a two page article about the Express and its Editor Peter Hill in the latest Press Gazette. As a former media correspondent at the Guardian and Independent, Byrne has produced a very disappointing piece which doesn't challenge Hill on his coverage of Diana and Madeleine McCann or the horrendous, biased and very often fictional coverage of immigration, Muslims and other minorities.

She writes:

Hill does not wish to give a 'set-piece interview' at present, but he is happy to defend the Express and its management against their critics.

Which implies she was restricted in what she was allowed to ask. In which case, ignore him. If he can't answer questions about the stream of lies his paper puts out, the racist propaganda, the huge court payouts, the ludicrous conspiracy theories, the adverts-as-editorial for which the paper has been rebuked four times, the fact so much of his dreadful paper is now advertising and the fact he and his proprietor are liars, then why bother talking to him at all?

What he does say is rubbish such as:

I believe the standards of writing have vastly improved

and isn't challenged on it. Most of the time, the question about any Express story is not whether it contains a good standard of writing (it usually doesn't) but whether it's even true (it often isn't). Exercise is good for you, it's going to be warm for a few days and the puppy who wasn't stamped to death have all been on the front page in the last week or so. This is a vastly improved standard of writing and journalism?

Apparently so. Hill is also allowed to say about the Express:

It's the world's greatest newspaper. That's what it says on the front. It must be true.

Yeh, like those 90 consecutive McCann stories which were all completely accurate. Or the puppy and EU income tax fictions.

But here's the thing - how can the Express write 'THE WORLD'S GREATEST NEWSPAPER' in caps on the masthead every day? It must surely rank only slightly above the Star and Sport as the third worst newspaper in Britain, let alone the world. It's not the greatest on sales, or on awards (unless that is libel awards, paid out...), or by any other criteria.

The ASA say it is not advertising so it can't do anything. Is it even worth asking the PCC...?

How the Mail and Sun reported the Nick Griffin court case

On Monday, the Daily Mail was reporting on the case of Tauriq Khalid, who was in court accused of racially abusing and threatening to kill BNP leader Nick Griffin. It appeared in the first section of the Mail website homepage, as one of their top stories, like this:

On the actual article, in the blue bar at the top of the screen, the 'court hears' bit is missing. Moreover, the headline has been changed to:

Yes, it's partly in quote marks - a favourite tabloid get-out to attribute to someone else a statement they believe - but there is still something very definite about the phrasing. Probaby because in the toss up between a Muslim and a white racist, the Mail would always side with the latter.

Khalid said he called Griffin a 'fucking wanker' and aimed a V-sign in his direction.

Griffin said Khalid called him a 'white bastard', made a gun with his fingers and, according to the BNP leader:

He shouted out, "Griffin, you bastard. I am going to..." but I didn't at the time catch it. But I took it as to "kill" or "shoot you"

So he admitted in court he didn't actually hear the alleged death threat.

The jury took a whole 45 minutes to find Khalid not guilty. Which means a court has listened to something Griffin had to say and didn't believe him. Imagine that.

But how did the Mail react to the news that Khalid was cleared of racist abuse?

Firstly, they couldn't even be bothered to give a named journalist the assignment. Rather than James Tozer, who wrote the original story, 'Daily Mail Reporter' did it instead.

Secondly, the story has not been on the Mail homepage at all today and wasn't last night either - in complete contrast to the high positioning of the 'claims'.

Thirdly, the headline on the article is this:


Notice how the possibly guilty 'Muslim' from the original has become an innocent 'Asian'. In fact, the word 'Muslim' is not used once in the entire article about the verdict. Can the Mail not bring itself to think a Muslim man might not be guilty of something? Or is it that Khalid is not in fact Muslim? None of the other newspaper stories about the verdict identify him as such - in which case why did the Mail claim he was in the original headline?

The differences between the two articles and the prominence given to them is stark. And, sadly, unsurprising.

Still, at least they covered the end of the case in some form. On the Sun's website, Griffin's claims were reported, but the verdict hasn't been mentioned at all.

Here's the details of some TV sex you shouldn't watch, says Mail

The Mail's latest 'ban this sick filth'-type article comes in the form of a rant against HBO vampire series True Blood. Olivia Lichtenstein - who else? - writes:

True Blood is a shocking tale of depravity, explicit sexuality (bordering on pornography) and vile language. Even before the opening credits have rolled in the first episode, we see a young woman pleasuring a young man while driving her car.

That's just before a picture of the two leads having sex. Just so you can see how depraved it is. She continues:

There's oral sex, overt discussion of genitalia, graphic sex scenes bordering on the deviant, and foul language. We see a man having sex with a woman while watching a video of the same woman having sex with a vampire. The excitement engendered in the pair leads to rough sex and results in her murder.

Blimey! How outrageous! This is something that should never be seen! Oh:

it airs on one of our terrestrial channels at 10pm on Wednesdays.

The three mentions of Channel 4 make sure no one can possibly miss an episode now that our concerned journalist has told everyone when and where it is on and all the juicy details about what is in it. But Lichtenstein adds, apparently with no self-awareness:

I can't help but worry that children will find their way to this programme

Yes, they will now.

In fact, last week's episode of True Blood received just over one million viewers, so it's not exactly pulling in a huge audience. And this is the Mail - whose website has made it a priority to include as many pictures of half-naked slebs as possible. Indeed, its lead picture story this morning involved a pornstar.

The rant widens out into an attack on the state of television in general:

But a glance at our schedules reveals that sex, violence and vulgar language have become the staples that make up the British TV diet.

A 'glance' at 'our schedules' for tonight reveals no such thing: Watchdog, New Tricks, Question Time, The Restaurant, Defying Gravity, The Culture Show, Emmerdale, The Bill, Coronation Street, The Schoolboy Who Sailed the World, football and Location, Location, Location.

Of course, there are programmes with sex, violence and/or swearing but for every The Sopranos there's a My Family. And really, who would rather watch the latter? Why must adults be force-fed cookery, property and reality shows and soaps?

Frankly, it is highly unlikely that you will watch something with lots of sex, violence and swearing by accident. If you don't want to watch such programmes, turn them off. This faux outrage about television and films for grown-ups is incredibly boring.

Look at the most watched TV of 2008 - there's not one show there that wouldn't be classed as fairly safe family viewing.

But it doesn't end there. Lichtenstein's problem is with the internet too:

instant recording facilities and the internet, it's increasingly difficult to monitor children's viewing. Worryingly for parents, one quarter of 12 to 15-year-olds watch television or film content via websites (such as BBC iPlayer, Sky Player or ITV Player).

Does she really think teenagers with internet access in their bedrooms who are looking for a bit of sex are going to go to 4OD to watch True Blood (and, of course, risk seeing Noel Edmonds)? Of course they won't given what they could find on the web.

Then, in a statement along the lines of 'I'm not racist but...', she adds:

I am far from being a prude, but I find myself longing for the days when, in a movie, if a couple were kissing or lying on a bed, they had to keep one foot on the ground.

Yes, if only she had made Don't Look Now instead of Nic Roeg.

Of course, this is the same Olivia Lichtenstein who, back in March, watched a load of porn, just to say how disgusting it was. She included this paragraph, which was clearly imperative to her argument:

a man orders two 'take-away bimbos' over the telephone. They arrive, a specifically requested unmatched pair, one blonde, the other brunette, and under his gaze fondle and undress each other like automatons, mouthing filthy words of encouragement and pleading with him to join in. He does.

The article, which complained about the exploitation of women, included several screenshots of porn, including three girls kissing, a woman in the shower, and two bums in thongs.

She appears to be the go-to person when the Mail wants someone to look at representations of sex and say how awful and corrupting they are - she's also written about cybersex, internet porn addiction and erotic magazines for women.

Yet, strangely enough, she keeps accepting assignments which exposes her to more of the stuff. Could it possibly be that all this 'depravity' isn't as bad as she makes out for Mail readers? That grown-ups can watch grown-up material without being eternally damaged?

Or is it that people such as her can watch it, but you shouldn't?

Express front page - not only pointless, but untrue

Remember this story from last week?

At the time this blog suggested that it seemed a bizarrely insignificant story to put on the front page of a newspaper, yet coming after the fictitious EU income tax and the 'it's going to be warm for a few days' ones, it seemed to fit with the Express' desire to be as pointless and uninteresting as possible.

'What has happened to our country?' the paper thundered, as it reported on a puppy that had been viciously stamped to death by thugs.

It wasn't the only media outlet to report it, but the only one to give it such prominence. It's as if certain newspapers are willing to believe anything that makes Britain seem violent, out-of-control, awful.

So what has happened to our country?

Apparently, not much:

An inquiry into the "kicking to death" of a 10-week-old puppy has ended after police found the animal had died from a virus and showed no sign of injury.

Oh.

(Hat tip to James)