'I didn’t find the card'

On 7 December, @Cheesyhel tweeted a photo of a birthday card for 13-year-old girls that she found in a local newsagents:

The card says:

If you had a rich boyfriend he'd give you diamonds and rubies. Well, maybe next year you will - when you've bigger boobies!

The Mail reported on the outrage that followed:

The article says:

American novelist Maureen Johnson was travelling though [sic] the UK when she came across the card. She took a picture and posted it to Twitter with the message: 'Dear @HallmarkPR, SERIOUSLY???? #letsmessgirlsupearlywithcards'.

The card sparked outrage across the social media service and by Saturday evening, her message had been re-tweeted more than 1,000 times.

It is not known which shop the author was in when she came across the card, but Hallmark UK claimed to be surprised that it was still on sale.

But this isn't true. American author Maureen Johnson had sent a tweet that included @Cheesyhel's pic - the latter's Twitter handle is revealed on opening the photo in Johnson's tweet.  

Today, Johnson tweeted what happened:

She then revealed the contact she'd had with Mail reporter Niamh O'Doherty:

On Saturday, December 8, 2012, Niamh O’Doherty wrote:

Hi Maureen,

My name is Niamh O’Doherty and I’m a reporter from The Daily Mail. We’re just writing a story about the Hallmark Card you found yesterday, and were wondering if you’d like to comment on it. Would you also be able to tell us in which shop you picked up the card?

Thanks so much,

Niamh

From: Maureen Johnson
Sent: 09 December 2012 04:26
To: Niamh O’Doherty
Subject: Re: Query from the Daily Mail

Niamh,
I didn’t find the card. It was found in the uk by someone else. I had surgery this week and was not traipsing about! I think HuffPo reported it that way, but I have no idea why.
Best,

mj

Niamh O’Doherty
Dec 9 (1 day ago)
to me
Thanks Maureen, appreciate it. Here’s to a speedy recovery!

Update: Given the Mail article was published online on 8 December, and Maureen's reply was not sent until the 9th, it seems the Mail ran the article without waiting for her reply, based on a misunderstanding of her original tweet. However, at time of writing, two days on from being told the truth by Maureen, the Mail has not corrected the story.

MailOnline publishes another fake photo it found on Twitter

MailOnline reports on looting in the wake of Superstorm Sandy:

The article, written by Adam Shergold and Emily Anne Epstein begins:

Several brazen thugs have robbed their neighbors and their local shops of everything from basic food stuffs to expensive electronics and they are taking to Twitter to broadcast their spoils.

'Check out this laptop I scored,' SevenleafB tweeted earlier today. 'It's easy just reach out an grab it.'

It appears the looters are organizing through the hashtag #SANDYLOOTCREW.

It then publishes one of the tweets in question - the one referred to in the MailOnline headline:

However, if you search Google Images for that photo - which doesn't take long - it pops up in a July 2010 story from California's Oakland Tribune.

Indeed, several of the images used by the 'brazen thugs' on #SANDYLOOTCREW are old - some date from 2005 and 2008.

It seems the folk at MailOnline didn't check out the photo beforehand. As they didn't with a photo posted on Twitter during Hurricane Isaac in August. And as they didn't with a photo posted on Twitter of the 'Essex lion'.

MailOnline fooled by fake Isaac photo

MailOnline reports on the progress of Tropical Storm/Hurricane Isaac:

The first photo they use to illustrate their article is certainly dramatic. But is it genuine? And is it Isaac?

They have credited it to 'Twitter/Seven_marine'. But that Twitter account has not been updated since March 2011.

A quick search of Google Images finds that photo used on many blogs before Isaac, including this one from August 2010 and this one from 2008.

According to Bay News 9:

the photo has been around for many years and seems to pop up every time a severe weather situation arises.

"It is a Photoshopped picture of a supercell thunderstorm that seems to pop up with a new foreground every time there is a hurricane threat anywhere," Bay News 9 Meteorologist Josh Linker said.

"I've seen versions of that photo since at least 2005," Bay News 9 Meteorologist Brian McClure added.

Yet, according to the caption on 'newspaper website of the year' MailOnline, the photo is:

Ominous: Tropical storm Isaac gathers pace as it barrels towards the Gulf coast, where it is expected to hit by Wednesday - the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

Journalist Jonathan Haynes says:

Cannot believe how many news websites see something on Twitter and publish it without basic checks on its validity. Utterly depressing. 

(Hat-tip to Jonathan Haynes).

UPDATE: MailOnline updated their article and removed the fake photo at 7.11pm, less than an hour after a link to the above was posted on Twitter. 

Too insensitive and too touchy-feely

Mail, 4 August 2012:

Mail, 6 August 2012:

So in two days, the BBC has gone from 'lacking sensitivity' to too 'touchy-feely' over their Olympic interviews. It is almost as if the BBC can't win in the eyes of some at the Mail...

Today's article talks of 'unhappy viewers' and says 'many have complained'. Yet the article is based on four (yes, four) comments that the anonymous author has found on Twitter and BBC messageboards.

The article ends with the rather telling line:

But others praised reporters for calming the athletes down, such as when [Phil] Jones brought Ennis back from the verge of tears as she celebrated her gold.

Yet none of these 'others' are quoted.

Moreover, the vast majority of the 800+ comments on the article are critical of the Mail's sniping.

Fake Twitter accounts have 'fooled other people' says MailOnline publisher

Martin Clarke, the publisher of MailOnline, gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry today. He was asked by David Barr about the monitoring of Twitter for stories:

A. We monitor the Twittersphere and quite often Twitter will alert you to a story that you weren't otherwise aware of. Sometimes the tweet will be the story. If somebody tweets a comment, then obviously very often we will -- the fact that somebody's tweeted that comment is the story. Obviously you have to be careful that it is genuinely the tweet from the person you think it is, and there have in the past been rogue tweets with fake accounts that have fooled other people on the Internet, but Twitter now takes steps to make sure that celebrity accounts are who they say they are, they verify it, so you know if an account is the person it claims to be. Quite often the tweet will be the story.

Q.  Can I have some idea of the level of checking that your organisation goes to before publishing a tweet-based story?  Will you contact the maker?

A.  It depends.  If it was a celebrity who tweeted a picture of themselves and a comment attached and that is -- then that is the story, and providing we know from previous experience that that tweet account is genuine, then the story is checked. That's it.

If the tweet was alleging something contentious, then obviously you would have to check it out in the normal way to normal journalistic standards. It depends.

Q.  What steps do you take to ensure that tweets really are from who they say they are?

A.  Unless they're verified accounts, then we treat them with huge suspicion. 

Unfortunately, Barr did not then present Clarke with an example of MailOnline being fooled, which happened just last Saturday and was revealed by The Media Blog. MailOnline reported, in a now-deleted article:

(pic from The Media Blog)

The tweet in question had in fact come from the fake Twitter account @MissKatiePriice, not Katie Price's real account (which Price used to criticise the Mail's 'poor journalism').

And that wasn't exactly a one-off. In June 2010, the spoof Twitter account @ceostevejobs was the source for a Mail story, despite the clear announcement:

'Of course, this is a parody account'

Interesting, then, that Clarke, in saying 'there have in the past been rogue tweets with fake accounts that have fooled other people on the Internet', tries to pretend these things happened 'in the past' and only to 'others'. 

And it's not just spoof accounts, but joke tweets mistaken for genuine news. In the case of Jeremy Vine getting special permission to play hymns on BBC radio, and Carol Vorderman renting a luxury yacht, MailOnline hacks completely failed to get a joke. Not exactly 'check[ing] it out in the normal way to normal journalistic standards'.

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. 

Mail reports joke as fact

On Tuesday, Radio 2 presenter Jeremy Vine tweeted:

Followed by:

Apparently missing that the first comment was tongue-in-cheek, the Mail rushed into action with a 'bash-the-BBC, Christianity-under-attack' classic:

At time of writing, however, the Mail's article has disappeared, quietly deleted from the Mail's website as it realised Vine's comment may not have been entirely serious.

Why?

Well, the Express published the story in Wednesday's paper, on page five:

BBC presenter Jeremy Vine sparked a row yesterday after claiming he had to ask bosses for “special permission” to play a Christian hymn on his show – for fear of upsetting other religions...

It is understood permission had to be given by BBC bosses in case playing a Christian hymn was seen as promoting one religion over another.

But skip to the end of the Mark Reynolds' story and there's this:

Last night a BBC spokeswoman said the presenter had not been serious on Twitter. She said: “Jeremy tweeted a light-hearted remark to highlight the fact he doesn’t normally play hymns in the show. Of course he did not need approval to play the hymn.”

How Reynolds 'understood' why permission had to be given when it didn't isn't entirely clear. And why would he need permission, if they are 'keen' to find the nation's favourite?

The Mail's website has not printed the BBC's comment, or clarified why their article was deleted. But their version of the story has already spread across the internet.

Tabloid complains about 'perving' over Pippa

Today's Daily Star Sunday front page looks like this:


The 'story' at the top of the page shows it isn't just the Mail that is obsessed with The Only Way Is Essex. This being the Star, the headline seems to imply that Jordan is to 'join' the show. In fact, she just happens (ahem) to be on holiday in the same place as some of the TOWIE cast.

In the Star's article, it includes the 'news' that:

Reports claimed Amy was set to quit the show to star in her own reality series about her life in the spotlight.

And where did those 'reports' appear?


Ah. Still, at least the Star has 'exclusively' revealed the truth:

But she exclusively told us: “I’m not leaving and I love being on the show.”

And by 'exclusively', they mean, she told her 300,000 followers on Twitter she wasn't leaving. Five days ago.

That tweet was picked up by the MailOnline's regular Twitter-watcher Georgina Littlejohn, who leapt into action to produce 'I'm not leaving': Amy Childs denies reports she has quit The Only Way Is Essex. So someone denying an untrue story in one paper becomes a story for another media outlet.

Georgina, who coincidentally works for the same news outlet as her dad Richard, explained:

Amy Childs has come out in defence of reports that she has quit the show after a bust-up with Mark Wright over hogging the limelight at the awards.

'In defence of reports'?

Anyway, back to the Daily Star Sunday's front page, and their lead story Pippa pervs: Sick German's target Royal sister. The article explains:

Royal sister Pippa Middleton got the Pip last night after an undie-Hans attack by a kinky German snapper.

And the paper is so appalled by this disgraceful behaviour, it reveals exactly where you can see the photos:

Pictures revealing her panties were spread across Germany’s biggest selling Bild newspaper yesterday and all over its website, which can be accessed by British readers.

The article continues:

The briefs encounter – proudly dubbed the “Panties Blitzer” by the newspaper – shows Pippa revealing all as she gets into a car in London last week.

“When the 27-year-old beauty on Wednesday in London rose in her car, she accidentally granted a glimpse of her panties,” leers the paper in its English language version.

Imagine that? Surely no British newspaper would be so 'sick' as to 'leer' over Pippa Middleton?

Well, the Daily Star has referred to 'perky Pippa' and 'Her Royal Hotness', and called her 'sexy' and 'queen of the hotties' with a 'banging body' and the 'phwoar factor'. They've said her bum is her 'biggest ass-et' and have at least twice published pictures just focussing on her bum, including one that was on the front page. The latest was this one which came attached to an article that included a suspiciously anonymous quote:


And it's not just Bild's 'perving' that the paper is (not really) outraged about:

And the mangled caption continues: “With their unwanted Panties Blitzer, Pippa to its reputation as ‘Her Royal Hotness’ fair – not only the British are very excited about her sexy appearance.”

The caption is 'mangled', of course, because the Daily Star Sunday hack has simply clicked Google Translate and copied and pasted that translation.

And who is the hack responsible for this lazy, pathetic, hypocritical nonsense?

It's ex-News of the World Royal Correspondent, and former jailbird and phone-hacker Clive Goodman.

Who better to complain, in a Sunday red-top, about such an invasion of privacy?

Houses that look like Hitler, pet-killing poltergeists and saucepans that cause the menopause

There have been some eye-catching headlines in the papers over the last week.

Yesterday the Metro came up with:


Someone took a photo of the house and posted it on Twitter. Jimmy Carr saw it and passed it on to his followers. Some papers then ran the photo, making it yet another 'news story' originating from Twitter. But the Mail added the all important question:

Do you know a house which looks like someone famous? Phone the Daily Mail tnewsdesk [sic] on...

The Sun, meanwhile, didn't need to ask a question in this headline because it was sure that this happened:


Somehow, there have been seven articles (so far...) in the nationals about this nonsense, each one including a video which claims to be evidence of the 'poltergeist' moving a chair. It's not.

The Sun ran a story under the 'Staff Reporter' byline on 28 March and then a follow-up by Gary O'Shea the next day. Today, O'Shea reported that Derek Acorah had 'banished' the poltergeist, who was called Jim.

The Mail has, as usual, been quick to, ahem, 'borrow' these stories from the Sun and run their own not-very-sceptical versions of them. The Mirror and Telegraph have also covered it.

And finally, there was this headline:


It could, of course, only be from the Daily Mail. The article by David Derbyshire begins:

Gender-bending chemicals found in non-stick pans and food packaging are linked to early menopause, scientists say.

And then, mid-way through:

Dr Sarah Knox, who led the research...stressed that the study had not shown that higher PFCs actually cause earlier menopause.

Oh.

NHS Behind the Headlines give their verdict:

The Mail’s focus on saucepans may give the impression that saucepans or other household objects were analysed in this study. However, the study actually assessed levels of PFCs in people in the US whose drinking water may have been contaminated with high levels of the chemicals...

These findings do not prove that PFCs cause early menopause, and they need to be interpreted with caution. The study has several limitations, and further, high-quality research is required to assess whether PFCs affect human female hormones.

And:

The findings of this large cross-sectional analysis should be interpreted with caution. It is not possible for this kind of study to prove that PFCs cause earlier menopause. As the authors point out, it is possible that the findings are due to “reverse causation” and that PFC concentrations were higher in postmenopausal women because they are no longer losing blood through menstruation. This possibility is supported by the fact that women who had had hysterectomy had higher-than-average levels of PFCs compared with those who had not (although as the authors say, this might still be cause for concern).

In addition, the information about the menopause came from survey data carried out by a separate company. The data was not independently confirmed.

The researchers only looked at whether women had gone through menopause, and they categorised these women into one of three different age brackets they belonged to at the time of the survey. As such, the study cannot tell us how old the women were when they reached menopause and whether those who had early menopause (i.e. before the age of 40 or 45) were associated with higher PFC levels.

Another newspaper falls for spoof Twitter account

The Mail and the Express were both caught out last year, and now it's the Independent that has been forced to apologise for being fooled by a fake Twitter account:

In yesterday’s Independent, Ian Herbert attributed quotes to the ITV football analyst Andy Townsend which suggested that he had made sexist comments on Twitter as part of the Andy Gray/Richard Keys story.

Those quotes originated from a spoof Twitter account. We apologise for any embarrassment caused to Mr Townsend, who has no connection to the @AndyDTownsend account.

Has the Independent not learnt the lesson of 'Wanky Balls' yet?

Express apologises for publishing quotes from fake Twitter account

This apology appeared in the Express on 13 November:

On 24 May 2010 we published an article headed “Sophie Dahl: I’m no weight watcher” containing personal comments that we said had been taken from Sophie Dahl’s twitter page.

We now accept that Sophie Dahl does not have an active twitter page and the comments were invented by hoaxers. The page has now been removed from circulation.

We are happy to make this clear and apologise to Sophie Dahl for any distress and embarrassment our article has caused.

(Hat-tip to Regret the Error)

The Mail website and 'sleazy pics'

The Mail's celebrity-and-sex-obsessed website is currently running this story:


The Daily Mail Reporter article begins:

Courtney Love has always been provocative but she has taken it too far by posting pictures of herself half naked on Twitter.

The shocking photos show the 46-year-old singer posing in just underwear with her hands covering her breasts.

In another photo she wears tights and knickers but no skirt as she bends over near a mirror.

This is followed by the two 'shocking', 'sleazy' pics in question. Just so you can see for yourself how she has 'taken it too far'. Sigh.

However, the Mail has managed to squeeze yet another story from a photo that someone famous has posted on Twitter, and have tried (but failed) to take the moral high ground over a so-called 'sleazy' pic that they are only too happy to publish.

Mail publishes article based on spoof tweet, thinks it's real

1. Someone sets up a spoof Twitter account for Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

2. They send some tweets.

3. A lazy Mail hack called Richard Ashmore sees one of the joke tweets.

4. He ignores the bit which says: 'Of course, this is a parody account'.

5. Thinking he's got a story, he writes an article based on said tweet.

6. The article gets published.

7. Twitter, people leaving comments on the Mail site and several bloggers (Media Blog, Phil Bradley, Angry Mob) point out Ashmore's error.

8. Mail removes article within a few hours.

9. Onlookers shake their heads, unsure whether to laugh at the incompetence, or cry at the quality of journalism at the Mail.

Ban Twitter users from voting, says Mail columnist

Last week, Amanda Platell wrote about the non-existent Government immigration 'plot' in her Mail column. She said:

Thanks to newly revealed documents, we learn it was a deliberate act to make the country more multi-cultural (and thus more likely to vote Labour).

Platell complaining about immigrants coming here to affect the outcome of elections? Seems odd, given she's an immigrant from Australia who was an advisor to William Hague and worked to get the Conservatives elected in 2001.

But you don't really go to Platell for common sense or intellectual rigour.

And this week, she surpassed herself:

A survey purports to show that many more people would vote in a General Election if they could do so on Twitter. In a civilised democracy, the idiots who use Twitter should be banned from voting altogether.

Yes, because everyone knows that the mark of civilised democracies is that they arbitrarily ban thousands of people from voting for no reason whatsoever.

How much do the Mail fork out for such dim, juvenile observations?

Previously, she had dismissed Twitter as:

the domain of the inane, the insane and the desperate.

Platell - like all Mail columnists - has to be a professional hater. Everything's crap, everyone needs to be criticised, nothing is ever any good.

Particularly Twitter, because a) it's modern; and b) it was all nasty about Jan Moir boo hoo hoo.

Never mind that the Mail constantly uses Twitter for celebrity gossip and other stories.

Never mind that people such as Oscar-nominated Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci uses Twitter. Let's not celebrate his achievements. Let's call him an insane idiot who should be disenfranchised instead.

Still, good job the newspaper Platell writes her drivel for is above all this Twitter nonsense.

And to see exactly how much they hate it, go to their Twitter feed at @mailonline.

Links

Who knew?

Migrationwatch are advertising for a Director of Research. An opportunity to earn £45,000 for emailing press releases to the Mail explaining how there are too many evil immigrants in the UK, it sounds like very easy money.

Anton Vowl's application is here. 5CC can always be relied upon to take apart Migrationwatch's 'research'.

Some personal favourites from this blog: the stupidly worded poll (makes that polls), the million failed asylum seekers joining the NHS queue (which was plucked out of the air), and the amazing assumptions behind 'Each illegal immigrant to cost us £1m'.

Migrationwatch say they are:

recognised as the leading source for independent expert commentary on matters relating to migration into and out of the United Kingdom.

Apart from by themselves and the tabloids, who 'recognises' them as that?

Also from Anton, the Express gets into a 'fury' about @dianainheaven on Twitter. Good.

Over at Angry Mob, Uponnothing reveals how the Mail changed a headline on an anti-Gordon Brown story when the comments turned against them; and another classic example of the Mail choosing to highlight crime based on race.

The Daily Quail looked at Melanie McDonagh's unbelievable defence of Jan Moir, whose infamous column about Stephen Gately was, apparently:

off-message but factually truthful.

This despite the fact the coroner had said the death was natural and Moir said it wasn't. Still can't blame McDonagh for missing that news - the Mail buried it at the bottom of page 36.

Also worth reading is a post on the Beer Blog of Pete Brown (via Jeff Pickthall) - a look at how the media distorted figures on children and alcohol.

Meanwhile, 5CC has looked at why the Mail seems to have fallen out of love with Julie Spence.

Talking of the Mail and love: look - it's Kim Kardashian wearing two dresses in one night.

That article included yet another example of 'look what [insert name] has posted on Twitter', which the media seems to lazily rely on for celebrity gossip these days.

A particularly curious example of this was when The Sun took a jokey tweet from pop singer Katy Perry and turned into an actual article about her 'skipping work to watch porn'. But they hid some of what she said with this exceptionally cryptic bit of censorship:

*** ***** *****

Any guesses?

Back to the Mail and their oh-so-consistent coverage of swine flu continued with this article:

It's official, the swine flu 'pandemic' is over (shame it cost us £1billion and scared thousands witless)

'Scared thousands witless'? Good job the Mail wasn't involved in any of that. Oh:

How swine flu could be a bigger threat to humanity than nuclear warfare

That was another gem from Michael Hanlon, the Mail's Science Editor, who also produced this astonishing piece of scaremongering nonsense:

Killers in your kitchen: Gender-bending packaging, exploding floor cleaners and toasters more deadly than sharks...

'Gender-bending packaging'? Really?

Over on the evil Facebook, Hugh has created a list of all the things the Mail says give you cancer, from bras to chips, peanut butter to talc, and, of course, Facebook itself.

Another Mail obsession is ageism. When Arlene Phillips was replaced as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing, the Mail was delighted to bash the BBC over claims of ageism and wrote lots of supportive articles about her.

Until she dared go outside without make-up on. Then she looked:

washed out

and:

ensured she looked her 66 years.

With friends like that...

In Amanda Platell's unsurprisingly useless review of 2009, she called Alesha Dixon, Phillips' Strictly replacement, 'Clot of the Year'. She wrote she was:

Nicknamed 'Ditto' Dixon because of the hopeless way she drearily parroted her fellow judges' comments

Dixon was, of course, nicknamed 'Ditto' by, err, Platell. That doesn't really count.

And Platell's unjustifably nasty attacks on women (and they almost always are on women) continued into 2010, when she turned on Andy Murray's mum for no apparent reason at all:

Of course I'll celebrate if Andy Murray wins tomorrow's Australian Open final, but does he really have to grimace like a savage?

You wonder what makes a young man so full of ugly, uncontrolled rage - and then you see his fishwife mother screaming from the sidelines.

Charming.

(Hat-tip to the contributors of the Mailwatch Forum)

Mail uses story from 2007, claims it's new

At the end of January, news that one Tesco store in St Mellons, Cardiff had asked shoppers not to wear pyjamas was widely reported.

It was also widely implied that this was a nationwide dress code, rather than being limited to one store. Take this Mail headline, for example:


Tesco said they had received complaints from customers and so asked that all shoppers wear footwear, and that nightwear was not permitted. Hardly seems unreasonable to expect people to get dressed and put on shoes when they go out, but it caused a bit of a fuss.

A few days ago, Anton at Enemies of Reason blogged that 'glamour model' and Big Brother race row participant Danielle Lloyd had been 'targeted' by Tesco after she had gone into one of their stores in a tracksuit that was mistaken for pyjamas.

One question leaps out: why the hell is the Telegraph printing such trivial garbage?

But the other question - which Anton raised - is if St Mellons isn't Lloyd's local Tesco (it isn't) and the dress code isn't nationwide (it isn't), then how did this happen?

Surely it's isn't at all possible that Lloyd was just after a bit of publicity?

The Telegraph story is dated 5 February. They probably got it from The Sun, which published it the day before, under the only-in-The-Sun headline 'Tesco in jim jam Dan ban'. But at the end of the article by Brian Flynn is this:

Tesco said staff remembered her coming into the store but did not recall trying to stop her.

Which could, of course, be them covering their arses. Or it could be the story just isn't true.

Flynn's article begins:

Model Danielle Lloyd told yesterday how she was barred from Tesco after staff mistook her designer tracksuit for PYJAMAS.

But that is wrong because 'yesterday' would have been 3 February. In fact, Lloyd actually 'told' of this incident on Twitter on 31 January:


Maybe it happened as she said, maybe it didn't. It's not really important. One thing that did happen though - Lloyd got lots of free publicity, and every article seemed to have been based solely on her one Tweet.

That's quality journalism for you.

And it got better. On the same day as the Telegraph published that drivel about Lloyd, the Times Educational Supplement wrote a story on whether teachers approved of parents turning up to school in pyjamas. They mentioned:

Joe McGuinness, head of St Matthew's Primary School in Belfast, was so fed up with semi-clad parents dropping off their children at school in the morning that he sent a letter home with pupils.

Note 'was'. Past tense...

Unfortunately, the Mail didn't note that, as it stole the story to link it to the Tesco one:


Later in the article, author Laura Clark says:

EU law prevented [the Head] from banning mothers from wearing pyjamas to his school, St Matthew's Primary in Belfast.

So the headline isn't right. There was no ban. Is the story any more accurate? Clark begins:

Schools are following Tesco's example and taking a stand against parents who turn up at the gates wearing pyjamas.

They are chastising parents for dropping children off - and collecting them in the afternoon - without first changing out of their nightwear and slippers.

One head has written to parents warning that their failure to get dressed for the school run is 'slovenly and rude'.

The first word 'schools' is also wrong - it actually only has one example: Joe McGuinness at St Matthew's Primary in Belfast.

Clark went on:

The moves comes [sic] after a Tesco store in Cardiff took the unprecedented step of banning customers from shopping in their nightwear.

Except that's not exactly true either. It has nothing to do with Tesco. Why not?

Because McGuinness' letter to parents about their clothes was written before the Tesco dress code incident.

How long before?

Two years and eight months before.

In June 2007.

When the Times and BBC reported it.

(Hat-tip to mr_wonderful at the Mailwatch Forum for the school story)