Tuesday 23 March 2010

More recommended reading

An excellent post by Anton at Enemies of Reason about this disgraceful Express front page:

The story also appeared in the Mail.

As Anton says:

Let's not pretend, please, that the Express would have put this on its front page, had it not involved immigrants.

Moreover, since all burglary charges were dropped, it's not clear that they stole anything. Certainly not a house.

Anton again:

This week there'll be plenty of times when people who aren't immigrants will be up in the dock for criminal damage - and worse - but will they get reported on the front page of the Express? I really doubt it.

Over at Angry Mob, Uponnothing has looked at one of the Mail's latest attempts to attack the BBC for no reason at all. Apparently, BBC1 showed some sport on a Saturday. Shocking, eh?

Today, they're trying to claim there's a story in the fact some people on the BBC messageboards (a favourite source of Mail stories about viewer 'fury') were complaining about an expert on the Antiques Roadshow having less than spotless fingernails.

Essential stuff from the Mail.

Talking of essential, the Mail was publishing 18-month-old stories on its website yesterday, as highlighted by Will Sturgeon at the Media Blog. Remember the one about the Welsh road sign that had an out-of-office reply printed on it?

Apparently, no one at the Mail did, despite the fact they covered it at the time.

The story appeared on the 'most read' list of the BBC website over the weekend (yes, using the BBC site for a 'story', again) and without checking the date, the Mail mindlessly copied it.

5 comments:

  1. Rofl, I like how the Antiques' Roadshow story has backfired on the Mail website. The comments are unusually glorious.

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  2. From the Express: "But a neighbour said: “Whatever happened to the notion that an Englishman’s home is his castle?

    “What sort of country has it become when someone goes to work and has to worry about whether he will find a family of immigrants living in his home when he returns?"

    Well, quite. I hardly dare to leave home nowadays due to the overwhelming anxiety that a family of immigrants will move in in my absence. Happens all the time, apparently. I blame the Government.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Just to let you know, a really terrible agency story about migrants eating swans came down to our news room in Peterborough today. It had a quote at the bottom from an RSPCA person so looked almost almost like it could be possibly true, after all, the RSPCA know about these things.

    I rang them to confirm and they said a bottom of the rung operative dealing with an injured swan had been caught off guard by a random person asking questions who turned out to be a "journalist." He then made up a lovely "quote" for her.

    They have issued a big statement to whoever asks for it, stating categorically that it's not happening.

    I wonder how many of the tabloids will run with it in the morning without checking the facts?

    It did read like a Mail / Express wet dream.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous - they already are running it and I was just blogging about it. Do you have any more info you could share - by email if you prefer tabloidwatch [at] googlemail [dot] com.

    Many thanks

    ReplyDelete
  5. Some dim-witted commenter back at our blog maintained that the rise of the BNP is the fault of the left as well as the rhetoric and policies of New Labour people like Harriet Harman.

    To me, instead each time there's a headline like this, its impact is 450 stronger than a half-baked word uttered by Harman or the words "equal opportunities" printed on a council application form (which have allegedly "pissed off" the "white working classes" to the extreme, in the make-believe world of the right-wingers).

    I've said and repeated like a broken record. What the tabloids have done in the last decade is by far the main culprit of the rise in xenophobia and the anti-imigration obsession.

    Indeed, it's a miracle that the BNP or even the NF aren't any stronger, considering the relentless tabloid bombardment on the subject.

    ReplyDelete

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