'Bland'

In the latest stunning exclusive from the 'newspaper website of the year', MailOnline reveals that a woman who once won Celebrity Big Brother has been shopping for a sofa. Not only that - and make sure you're sitting down for this - but...

Hanna Flint's article begins:

Her personality is as bland as the colour of her coat.

So it comes as no surprise to see Chantelle Houghton admire a sofa in the same beige shade.

Whether someone writing about a coat and a sofa being a similar colour should be throwing around the insult 'bland' is open to question.

But if the people at MailOnline think that Houghton is so 'bland' it seems curious they've mentioned her in 131 articles this year, including 59 since 1 September.

(Hat-tip to Helen Lewis)

Did a nude motorbike passenger really receive a warning from Romanian police?

On the news pages of the Mirror website, the banner says:

On 24 April, under this banner, the Mirror published this story:

The article by 'agency staff' says:

They're the kind of bumpers that could be a serious safety hazard for other pop-eyed road users.

But when this nude pillion passenger was stopped by traffic police in Constanta, Romania, the only thing she was pinched for was for not wearing a helmet.

These pictures - taken by other motorists clearly impressed by her boot-y - were taken after she obeyed the police warning and put her crash-hat back on.

And her ample bodywork - now to be found on Facebook - could teach any motorist a thing or two about dangerous curves.

"The officer was a traffic cop and the only traffic offence she'd committed was in not wearing a helmet," explained one witness to Romanian media today.

"So he gave her a warning and a ticket and told her and her companion to ride on," they added.

The same story with the same quotes was repeated by the Metro the day after.

The Mirror's article comes with two photos of the woman on the motorbike, suitably pixelated.

However, as revealed by BildBlog, these photos were posted online on 31 October 2007 (NSFW) by someone who, ahem, clearly had a fondness for sharing (and, possibly, taking) photos of women who are naked in public.

It also appears that most of the cars in the photographs carry licence plates from the Czech Republic, which suggests the photos might not have been taken in Romania at all.

It's not clear where the quote from the anonymous 'witness' came from.

If this incident happened - and that seems doubtful given the origin of the photos - it must have happened over four-and-a-half years ago.

That's 'real news'. In 'real time'. 

(Hat-tip to Petra O)

MailOnline doesn't do research, falls for Twitter joke

Mail editor-in-chief Paul Dacre told the Leveson Inquiry on 6 February:

I'm very proud of the Mail Online...it's evolving and clearly everything can improve, but I think to come from a cold start to being the world's number newspaper internet site is an achievement that British journalism should be proud of.

Yesterday, at 12:56pm, Carol Vorderman tweeted:

Someone at Mail HQ clearly thought this was a great story, and within six hours, an article appeared under the byline of Daily Mail Reporter:

You'll be all at sea, Carol! Vorderman unveils her new yacht... although it's hardly the right weather for sailing

She's made a name for herself as a TV star with plenty of brains behind her beauty.

But perhaps Carol Vorderman wasn't quite with it when she decided to rent a huge yacht.

The 51-year-old posted a picture of the large vessel to her Twitter page, proudly announcing it was moored at the Bristol docks.

However, it's hardly the weather for a sun-drenched cruise across the bay.

In fact, it's pretty miserable across the British Isles with rain and grey skies dominating this weekend.

That won't put Carol off though, the former Countdown presenter always seem to be of a sunny disposition.

In those six hours, it appears Daily Mail Reporter didn't do any research about this yacht. If they had, they might have found local news reports about its arrival in Bristol on 13 March, and that it is set to be delivered to its new owner in the Mediterranean later this week. It's not being 'hired for the season' by Vorderman or anyone else.

A few hours later, Vorderman tweeted again:

The Mail has a little bit of form on this: it fell for a spoof Steve Jobs twitter account in 2010, and last year used a joke tweet by Jeremy Vine as the basis for a serious article about the BBC attacking Christianity.

Meanwhile, in other Vorderman 'news', the Sun has published the words of Sam Amos, a 'psychic' who has done, err, 'rumpology' readings of Vorderman's bum.

(Hat-tip to James)

UPDATE: MailOnline deleted the article on Monday. 

Ice cream

MailOnline, 10 February 2012. Woman eats ice cream:

MailOnline, 17 February 2012. Woman eats ice cream:

'News'

An 'exclusive' from today's Sun:

'News' from the Mail website: three-year-old YouTube videos

By contrast, today the Mail website has a 'story' quite prominent on its homepage about foxes on a trampoline:


The story runs to six sentences, plus the video (embedded from YouTube) and four screenshots from it.

But the video the Mail uses was originally posted on YouTube on 19 September 2008.

And this isn't a one off. Just five days ago, the Mail revealed:


The article, by Jennifer Madison, is a description of what happens in the short video and includes eight stills. The video is embedded at the end.

And this one is even older - it was posted on YouTube on 31 December 2007.

(Hat-tips to @JonathanHaynes and @j0annepsi)

Woman crosses road

The Mail website's obsession with reporting on everything that Kim Kardashian does reaches a new low with:


A close encounter with a bus? Oh no - is she OK?

The millionaire reality star - who is normally chauffeur-driven - was pictured crossing the road in Beverly Hills while coming in close proximity to a bus.

While it's not clear whether it was in motion, curvaceous Kim does have the figure and smouldering looks capable of stopping traffic.

So the Mail website has bought some photo agency pics of Kim walking down along pavement and crossing a road. One photo has a bus in the background and that was used as the basis for an article.

Daily Mail Reporter then gives us three sentences describing her outfit. But before you think this is one of the most uninteresting 'news stories' you've ever read, they exclusively reveal:

Kim...also found time yesterday to indulge in frozen yoghurt.

And it was only a few days ago that the Mail's Charles Sale was criticising the BBC for a 'ridiculous celebrity obsession'.

Star calls 'visit to estate agent' a 'sexy girlie romp'

Today's Daily Star front page says:


That's 'Ryan Giggs: Imogen's £1m babe spree - Sexy girlie romp for lover'. Got that?

As The Media Blog commented last night, it's hard to know what this actually means as it's 'just a series of tabloid buzz words'. (In response, one person suggested Thomas had bought £1m-worth of talking pigs...)

Here's Aaron Tinney's article:

Sex-gag beauty Imogen Thomas is looking like a million bucks.

Ex-Big Brother babe Imogen Thomas has shot into a different league since the Ryan Giggs storm erupted.

OK...but what's the story?

And she showed off her latest bling yesterday as she shopped around for a new pad in an area where flats start at nearly £1million.

The glamour girl spent the day draped in designer clobber worth thousands as she nipped around in a sleek Mercedes costing over £32,000.

She drove the silver SLK 200 to Greene & Co, one of London’s poshest estate agents.

The office is in Notting Hill where a two-bed apartment will set you back at least £900,000.

The Star labels this an 'exclusive' and said this happened 'yesterday'. Which is odd, considering the Mail website published the photos they had bought from two different picture agencies of Thomas leaving Greene & Co on Monday night.

The Mail claimed two-bedroom flats there will cost £884,000. The Star's article says £900,000. The front page then rounds it up to £1m.

The Star goes on to explain more of Thomas' fascinating exploits on Monday:

Then it was back to her North London pad, where she changed into another outfit with Christian Louboutin heels worth around £700 before heading out again in the Merc.

Hold the front page for 'woman goes out, goes home, goes out again'.

These pictures were published by the Mail yesterday. Yet the Star goes on to quote an anonymous 'onlooker':

One onlooker said: “She looked exactly like a WAG with the shades, crocodile bag and fancy shoes.

“But she gets to live a WAG lifestyle without the bother of being married to a footballer.

“She looks like she’s got it made.”

Given the Star have taken the whole story from articles on the Mail website, how can they have interviewed this 'onlooker'? Or is this onlooker someone in the Star's newsroom?

But what about that front page headline? 'Imogen's £1m babe spree' means 'Imogen might be looking to buy a flat worth less than £1m'.

And 'sexy girlie romp' - according to the Star - means 'visited an estate agent'.

Once again, the Star uses totally misleading front page headlines to sell papers.

'Broken leg'

The Mail website had the pathetic Mail on Sunday splash about 'the swear word that wasn't' near the top of its homepage for much of yesterday. But in the evening, a far more important story broke. So important, indeed, that the Mail website ran it as a splash across the whole width of their homepage - something it had previously done for events such as the General Election, the Japanese earthquake and the Royal Wedding.

It was:


As Martin Belam commented on Twitter:


The article repeated the headline, but included a bullet point sub-head containing a snippet of extra information:


'A broken leg' - and from the way the Mail website has presented the story, it appears to be pointing the finger of blame at 'boy band bruiser' Campbell:

Campbell, former Director of Communications for Tony Blair between 1997 and 2003, later tried to play down the row, saying it was ‘all a bit handbags’.

But Parker was later stretchered off the pitch with a suspected broken leg.

Ah - so the 'broken leg' becomes a 'suspected broken leg' further down the article.

And, according to Campbell, he wasn't even playing in the match in which Parker was injured:

What The Mail has managed to do in that lovely way it has is link this skirmish with a later incident when Tom was carried off on a stretcher. I would just like to point out that this happened in a subsequent match, in which I was not involved.

But what does Parker have to say about his 'broken leg'?

'A twisted knee'. So not a broken leg at all.

Campbell added:

So to those fans of The Wanted protesting on twitter that I broke his leg – I didn’t, and I was also pleased to learn as we left the stadium that the injury was not as serious as first thought, so nobody did.

Where would those fans of The Wanted got the idea that Campbell had broken Parker's leg?

The Mail's article first appeared at 5:45pm under the Daily Mail Reporter's byline. It included many grammatical errors ('firsts flying') as well as the factual one about the state of Parker's leg. A re-write at 2:20am by Chris Brooke corrected some of them, but several - including the reference to the 'broken leg' - remain.

Breaking news from the Mail website

MailOnline is the second most visited newspaper website in the world.

And why not - after all, this is the website that, today, brings the world such incredible news as 'woman takes off shoes':


and, err, 'woman takes off shoes':


In the words of MailOnline chief Martin Clarke:

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

No escape

The Mail website asks:


'TOWIE' refers to The Only Way Is Essex, a 'constructed reality' show that is broadcast on ITV2. In the week ending 8 May, BARB records viewing figures of 1.5m - the second most-watched programme on the channel.

Therefore, it should be fairly easy to 'escape' from the programme.

But there seems to be little escape from 'news' about the cast members of TOWIE if you ever browse the Mail website. On 24 May (at around 8pm) there were six articles about the show on the homepage.

Indeed, since the 23 May, the Mail website has published all this:


And what fascinating stuff it is, too.

Even by the usual standards of MailOnline chief Martin 'news is far more important to us than showbiz' Clarke, 22 articles in just over four days seems a little over-the-top.

But the fact that the cast are currently on holiday in Marbella means the Mail can publish even more pictures of young bikini-clad women on their website.

Of course, at times the Mail pretends to be appalled by the show. It pretends to ask, with a sigh, 'is there no escape?' while also 'reporting' on every bikini change. After it won the Audience Award Bafta earlier this week, Claudia Connell lamented:

watching shallow, vain, dim people being shallow, vain and dim is only entertaining for a few minutes. And not in a ‘so bad it’s good’ kind of way.

Then she added:

TOWIE owes its success to a youth audience, a youth vote and incredibly good PR that ensures that the Day-Glo cast are never out of the headlines, whether they’re falling drunkenly out of nightclubs or making bitchy comments about one another in interviews.

'Never out of the headlines'.

Quite.

Actor sneezes

More groundbreaking 'news' from the Mail website.

Daily Star 'news'

A fascinating piece of information from the Daily Star, which was the third highest story in their news section yesterday: model goes to same gym as Peter Andre, has never met him.

File this one alongside other Star gems such as 'model not going to be on Come Dine With Me' and 'model not going to be a WAG'.

50p coin in 'worth 50p' shocker

Non-story of the day must go to this effort which appeared in the Mail and Metro.

Here are the first four lines of the Daily Mail Reporter's article:

It's a find that could earn a student a mint - a 50 pence piece with next year's date on.

Sarah Legg was handed the coin in her change after paying for lunch at her college and noticed an unusual design.

The silver coin features one of 29 designs by members of the public created for the Royal Mint ahead of the 2012 Olympics.

Now the 17-year-old forensic science student hopes to sell it to coin collectors to help pay her university fees after she leaves Fareham College in Hampshire.

But it all falls apart in the very next sentence:

However, the Royal Mint today said the coins have slowly been released into circulation since October so people should expect to start finding them in their change now - and their value is only 50 pence.

So: teenager finds coin that's only worth its face value and has been in circulation for two months.

Stunning.

(Hat-tip to Jamie Thunder and horacegoesskiing at the Mailwatch Forum)

UPDATE: This 'story' began life in The News, Portsmouth. The News Editor there, Graeme Patfield, explains:

[The] article did not make any claims about the coin being worth 'a mint' or more than 50p. It just pointed out the student's surprise at finding a 2011 coin in circulation in 2010, a fact which is unusual and therefore might be thought of as newsworthy (or might not - it certainly seems to have got people talking anyway). Speculation about whether it might be worth more than 50p only appeared when this story was picked up by an agency and then sold on to the nationals.

Wow

Yesterday, the Mail on Sunday ran this stunning exposé, unbelievably credited to two journalists:


Yes, they really managed to squeeze 120 words out of a woman wearing her daughter's hat to Ascot.

But the website of the Telegraph - Newspaper of the Year, remember - thought it was a good enough story to repeat:


They won't be winning any prizes for second-hand stories about second-hand hats.

(Hat-tip to Jim Hawkins)