Mail on Sunday columnist calls Moir 'homophobic, repulsive'

It looks bleak for Jan Moir.

Mail - and Mail on Saunday - columnists are distancing themselves from her deeply offensive views. Is the paper preparing to sack her, or are they hoping publishing critical comments will dilute the anger?

Janet Street-Porter says she was:

astonished to read in Jan Moir's column last Friday that his death 'strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships', and 'under the carapace of glittering hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see'.

She points out that she disagrees with Moir, saying she:

didn't think that Stephen Gately's death was sanitised, as Jan claims.

Then she asks something many of us have wondered:

What exactly was bothering Jan?

The fact Stephen was gay, the fact he was in a civil partnership, or the fact that he or his partner might have enjoyed sex with someone they had just met?

But that was as nothing compared to what columnist Suzanne Moore had to say. Her article is damning, although conveniently - and rather cowardly - avoids referring to her by name.

But from the headline 'Whatever killed Stephen, it wasn’t being gay' it's not hard to know who she's on about. She begins:

Let's get just one thing clear: the cause of Stephen Gately’s death was not gayness...

Those who pruriently pick over the circumstances of Gately’s death will find that no doctor signed a certificate with cause of death ‘homosexuality’.

Which is exactly the implication that so angered so many people about Moir's vile column.

Moore continues:

What has been so offensive to many are the insinuations that his death is connected to the death of comedian Matt Lucas’s ex. How is it?

Or that these tragedies are somehow the result of civil partnerships – as though ‘straight’ marriages are non-stop heaven.

Again, she is giving voice to what so many people were asking on Friday. And then:

A man was kicked to death in Central London recently by two teenage girls because he was gay.

So while many of us could not care less, homophobia is alive and kicking. It is repulsive to see it repeatedly kicking the corpse of a popular young guy.

Oof. So there it is.

Moore calls Moir offensive, prurient, homophobic and repulsive.

Of course, for someone who writes for the Mail newspapers to complain about homophobia just because there has been this outcry is a little like shutting the stable door.

As Paul Dacre is Editor-in-Chief of the Mail group titles, it is likely he will have approved these two columns.

But it's still not an apology.

And, as far as we know, Moir will be writing her bile again this week...

Will the Mail react to Moir as it expected the BBC to react over 'Sachsgate'?

The obnoxious way in which the Mail tried to occupy the moral high ground over the Sachsgate affair should come back to haunt them in the wake of the Jan Moir article about Stephen Gately.

Take this quote from a Mail on Sunday editorial on 25 October 2008:

It is astonishing to discover that this torrent of verbal sewage was pre-recorded, approved by a nameless 'senior executive' and then deliberately allowed to go out on the air.

Quite so. So would the Mail like to name the 'senior execuitve' who gave the go-ahead to Moir's torrent of written sewage?

Moir, of course, has issued a feeble 'response' but there was no hint of an apology from her. Or from the paper. Surely the Mail wouldn't accept a failure to apologise if others caused offence?

Many of us would much enjoy the sight of Mr Ross and Mr Brand offering a five-star grovelling apology, with BBC Director General Mark Thompson at their side.

Change the names for Moir and Paul Dacre, the Mail Editor, and yes, we'd very much enjoy that sight, thanks.

Mail columnist Stephen Glover was also up in arms, asking:

How could a man of such high morals preside over the BBC's descent into the gutter

Is he equally worried about the Mail's descent into the gutter under Dacre who regards himself as highly moral, despite the filth his newspaper all too often spews out?

Of the BBC DG, Glover added:

His statement was certainly everything one might have wished for, referring as it did to 'a gross lapse of taste that has angered licence payers', but it had to be wrung out of him.

Obviously there will be no such trouble extracting such an admission from Paul Dacre over Moir's 'gross lapse of taste that has angered readers', or Glover will surely be the first to complain. Won't he?

He also wrote:

The BBC still pumps out many programmes that offend against decency and taste, and are often particularly offensive to women.

Now who could quibble with this slight change to that sentence:

The Mail still pumps out many articles that offend against decency and taste, and are often particularly offensive to women.

Anyone? No, thought not. No doubt Glover will be taking exactly the same line in his media column in the Independent on Monday...

Of course Richard Littlejohn also weighed in:

This was the week decent people stood up and cried, like Peter Finch in the movie Network: 'We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it any more.'

We don't have to take it lying down. This has been a stunning victory for common decency over the self-appointed, self-obsessed, metropolitan narcissists who control so much of our public life.

At last, the secret people of England have spoken.

We will wait with baited breath to see if he thinks the same thing happened yesterday.

On 30 October, a Mail editorial gloated:

It's been a painfully slow business, but yesterday the BBC finally woke up to the huge offence it has caused by broadcasting the puerile obscenities of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand.

The long-overdue decision to suspend the pair, followed by Brand's resignation, was a small victory for decency - and for licence-fee payers whose feelings the Corporation has insulted for far too long.

So how long before the Mail - which aside from the Moir statement has said nothing - finally wakes up to the huge offence it caused? Will it suspend Moir, who so many people think has insulted common decency?

This is, after all, reportedly the most complained about article in British newspaper history. That's some achievement and not one to be brushed off lightly.

In those circumstances, how can Dacre continue to Chair the Editor's Code Committee, which oversees the Code of Practice policed (ahem) by the PCC. He must be made to consider his position there, or it makes the PCC an even bigger joke than it already is.

The same editorial suggested:

Now he has finally broken off his holiday, Director-General Mark Thompson must address these questions with all urgency.

To which we ask - where is Paul Dacre and when is he going to address the questions raised by Moir's column?

The Mail also claimed:

when grotesque mistakes are made, nobody takes responsibility.

Moir certainly didn't take responsibility, choosing instead to lash out at mischievous gay activists who hadn't read her hateful article in full. So who at the Mail will?

The following day, another Mail editorial delighted in action taken by the BBC Trust:

After a week of prevarication, the BBC faced up to its responsibilities yesterday.

Well, that's one day of prevarication from the Mail, and counting...

The Mail added:

Lesley Douglas, the Radio 2 controller who recruited Brand and was ultimately responsible for the broadcast, rightly resigned.

So the person who was ultimately responsible did the right thing and resigned? Over to you then, Mr Dacre...

Corrections round-up

The Daily Star has published a staggering apology today:

On 29 September we stated, in an article headed “Blues are on the ball” that Chelsea football stars flirted with various Coronation Street and Hollyoaks actresses at the Sex and the City Ball while John Terry, Ashley Cole and Didier Drogba enjoyed “girly pampering treats” while they were staying at the Lowry Hotel in Manchester before a recent game.

We now accept that the players did not attend the ball and the story was therefore untrue.

We unreservedly apologise to Chelsea and to the players for making these allegations for any distress and embarrassment our article has caused.

The mind boggles as to how the original story was concocted, but given the revelations coming from the Starsuckers film, which shows the newspapers printing any old sleb crap without checking if it is, actually, you know, true, then it is not surprising apologies like this appear.

The Star does make up stories quite often. The Press Gazette reported yesterday that Peaches Geldof is to sue the paper over its front page story which heavily implied she was a prostitute ('Peaches: Spend night with me for £5k'). They apologised for that back in March but it seems Geldof wasn't satisfied with a page two apology for a front page lie. And rightly so.

Meanwhile, the People has apologised - and made a charitable donation - for an article about Justine McGuinness, a PR expert involved in the McCann case. The paper claimed she had overcharged the Madeleine fund to the tune of £20,000 and then been forced to resign. McGuinness disputed that and Mirror Group Newspapers were forced to back down:

MGN Limited had accepted that the allegations were incorrect and apologised. It agreed to make a donation to an undisclosed charity of Ms McGuinness's choice.

MGN's solicitor, Holly Mason, apologised for the distress and embarrassment caused.

What Jan Moir said about Peter Mandelson

A couple of weeks before she became (in)famous for the dreadful bigoted tripe she wrote about Stephen Gately, Jan Moir came up with some bizarre imaginary attraction between Peter Mandelson and George Osborne.

Is it just me or is there a volcanic sexual tension bubbling under the crust of the fraught relationship between Lord Mandelson and Shadow Chancellor George Osborne?

Once again, it's just you, Jan. She continued:

So as they both clip-clop up this Brokeback Mountain of mutual political desire, my fanciful homoerotic narrative buried deep and unknown in their respective saddles, we can be sure of one thing. It will all end in tears.

George Osborne, it should be noted, is married. But frankly, what the hell is she on about?

But when she turns to describing Mandelson in detail, those 'undertones' (ahem) of homophobia raise their head again:

Mandelson seems more ebullient than ever before, intoxicated with himself and his own fabulousness.

With his blue suede shoes, his peach mansion and his green tea devotionals, he is like a rock star camping it up on a farewell tour.

'Fabulousness'! Green tea'! 'Camping it up'! Because he's gay!

And then, in a phrase she probably found in the same book as Amanda Platell's 'chocolate labrador' remark:

It is as if, after all these years of clawing his way up the soil pipe of politics, the psychologically astute Mandelson has suddenly realised that lots of people don't like him.

'Soil pipe of politics'! Because he's gay!

That's the work of the same Jan Moir who denies being homophobic or a bigot. Thankfully, today she has been exposed.

Jan Moir: homophobic bigot

Reading Jan Moir's hateful, homophobic rant about Stephen Gately's death on the Mail website this morning was one of those totally jaw-dropping, lost for words moments that the tabloids still manage to inflict.

As Anton and Jamie and many, many others quickly pointed out, the problems with the article began with the headline:

Why there was nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gately's death

Of course, the coroner said he died of natural causes: fluid on the lungs. But the use of natural, in quote marks, was for no other reason that to point out Gately was gay. It's saying: his death wasn't natural because he wasn't 'natural'.

But Moir's article was just as vile as that headline. She wrote:

Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this.

So even when the coroner says 'natural causes', medical expert Moir says it can not be a natural death. Amazing.

And then there was the key passage:

Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.

Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.

Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately's last night raise troubling questions about what happened.

Let's be clear about this: the death of Gately says absolutely nothing about civil partnerships and it's an utter disgrace to suggest otherwise. Would Moir attack marriage because Harold Shipman or the Wests were married?

Of course not.

And notice how the second paragraph is phrased. 'Gay activists' makes it sound like heterosexual people don't call for 'tolerance and understanding about same sex relationships'. Moir proves she doesn't.

And then:

Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael. In many cases, that may be true.

'They say' and 'in many cases that may be true'? Clearly Moir doesn't agree that all gay men are not like George Michael. Why would one man be representative of everyone? That's as clueless as yesterday's Express front page where all Muslims are tarnished because of the beliefs of a few.

Those gays are all out for cheap thrills in public toilets, she's saying.

To Moir same sex relationships, which she claims to support, are just not the same as heterosexual ones, because homosexuals just aren't quite the same. They aren't quite 'natural'.

And why the need to drag in the suicide of Kevin McGee? It is completely irrelevant to Gately's death unless you are trying to make some cretinous point that same sex civil partnerships are somehow a danger to your life. She appears to be saying Gately died of being gay.

That's why at the end of the article she refers to a:

very different and more dangerous lifestyle

Unsurprisingly, Twitter went beserk. Jan Moir became the trending topic. Stephen Fry weighed in. A Facebook campaign began. Then the Mail's advertisers started to get targetted. Did they want their products on the same page as Moir's bile?

Marks and Spencer's said no thanks:

"Marks & Spencer does not tolerate any form of discrimination," said a spokesman for the retailer. "We have asked the Daily Mail to move our advertisement away from the article. This is a matter for the Daily Mail."

The MediaGuardian story added:

Nestlé added that it contacted its media buying agency MindShare to investigate having its ad removed, but the Daily Mail had already stripped the web page of advertising.

That is wonderful. A brilliant example of how reader power in the new media age can hurt newspapers.

The Mail also decided to change the headline to:

A strange, lonely and troubling death . . .

'Lonely'? It's an odd choice of (replacement) word given how much Moir is intent on telling us that there were two other men in his apartment when he died.

But that change completely fails to repair the damage - the main hate is in the article. Changing the headline is re-arranging deckchairs on the Titanic.

Charlie Brooker wrote an excellent piece; the story became the lead on MediaGuardian.

The PCC were bombarded with over 1,000 complaints which caused their website to crash. And their response was to suggest that unless there is a complaint from Gately's family, they'd ignore everything else.

Apparently, a general outcry over homophobia isn't good enough to warrant considering a complaint.

Which is why people using Twitter or Facebook are going to increasingly take direct action against newspapers in this way - targetting advertisers and online campaigns, for example. The PCC is simply not up to the job of keeping them in line, and dole out the most ineffective and feeble punishments for transgressions.

And then Jan Moir weighed back in with a 'response' - defiantly not an apology - of such crassness, it makes it all even worse. She doesn't even say sorry for the hurt she may have caused Gately's family. She begins:

Some people, particularly in the gay community...

See? It's those gays again, causing the trouble. She goes on:

However, the point of my column-which, I wonder how many of the people complaining have fully read

Which is a totally obnoxious response. We have all read it, that's why we're all so pissed off.

She went on to repeat that there's is clearly something dodgy about Gately's death:

Yes, anyone can die at anytime of anything. However, it seems unlikely to me that what took place in the hours immediately preceding Gately's death - out all evening at a nightclub, taking illegal substances, bringing a stranger back to the flat, getting intimate with that stranger - did not have a bearing on his death.

'Anyone can die ay anytime of anything'? That's weird, because in the actual article, Moir stated quite clearly:

Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again.

But now they can?

And on the civil partnerships point, argued:

I was suggesting that civil partnerships - the introduction of which I am on the record in supporting - have proved just to be as problematic as marriages.

Well that's not really what you meant, is it Jan? Because that's not what you said. That's how we all came to misunderstand you. You were saying that two people in civil partnerships have died recently and tried to make the point that something about their lifestyle was to blame.

She ends:

In what is clearly a heavily orchestrated internet campaign I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones.

It's an interesting use of the word 'undertones'. The homophobia and bigotry was there for all to see. Undertone doesn't even begin to describe it.

And for someone from the Mail - architect of the whole Sachsgate affair - to complain of a 'heavily orchestrated campaign' would be funny if Moir wasn't being so unpleasant. But the reaction was an entirely natural response to what was an awful, awful article. This is something everyone could read for themselves. It's not like, say, getting people riled up over a radio show from two weeks before that none of them had heard.

Of course, it was Moir who wielded the poison pen, but let's not forget that other people at the Mail must have OK'd the column before publication. Indeed the Belfast Telegraph reports that the piece did not appear in the printed Irish version of the paper. Was this an admission by Mail executives that they thought it was likely to be inflammatory?

And Mail editor Paul Dacre must seriously consider his position as Chair of the Code of Practice Committe. His paper has been responsible for what looks to be the most complained about newspaper article in PCC history. How can he possibly continue to sit on the Committee that oversees the Code, let alone Chair it?

Incidentally, on Sachsgate, Moir wrote:

They fatally underestimated public taste, values and our strong sense of British fair play.

Something Moir now knows all about.

News of the World makes liar deputy editor

Victoria Newton is to become Deputy Editor of the News of the World.

Editor Colin Myler commented:

'I am delighted to welcome Victoria to the News of the World. She is one of the brightest journalists of her generation'.

Hmm. Really? Perhaps he should take a look at the wonderful Vickywatch blog, which proves what a hopeless, lazy and dishonest plagiarist she actually is.

But then, the paper is trying to get over the phone-hacking scandal, where everyone was suddenly struck by a very convenient collective amnesia and no one seemed quite able to tell the truth. She will surely fit in very well.

All Muslims are the same, to the Express

So today's Express front page ramps up the Islamophobia with a headline about Sharia Law.

Notice the use of the word 'Muslims' however.

The 'Muslims' in question are in fact a group called Islam4UK, who are led by favourite tabloid hate-figure Anjem Choudry.

But the phrasing of 'Now Muslims demand' makes it sound as if all Muslims are saying the same thing. And that's clearly no accident - it's exactly the impression the Express wants to give.

The story, by Martyn Brown, claims:

The fanatical group Islam4UK has ­announced plans to hold a potentially incendiary rally in London later this month...

Plans for the demonstration have been delivered to the Metropolitan Police and could see up to 5,000 extremists marching to demand the controversial system.

Going by figures from last week's Pew report, which said there were 1.6million Muslims in Britain, the 5,000 equates to 0.3% of the Muslim population.

And that is even assuming the shameless self-publicist Choudry can get 5,000 people along, which seems highly unlikely. In using the words 'could see up to 5,000' the Express admits as much.

So the Express is claiming this is what 'Muslims demand' eventhough it is what less than 0.3% of British Muslims are calling for?

As if to prove that point, buried deep in the Express story is the following:

A spokesman for the Islamic Society of Britain said: “99.999 per cent of Muslims despise these people. This only serves to fuel racial ­tensions.”

And the Muslim Council of Britain have issued a statement saying:

The overwhelming majority of British Muslims want nothing to do with such extremists...The Muslim Council of Britain deplores the proposed march by Islam4UK, a front organisation of extremist fringe group al-Muhajiroun, as a deliberate action to provoke hatred and division in the society.

They add:

The MCB is also appalled at the amount of coverage given to the fringe group’s call by the Daily Express which has wrongly characterised their demands as those of Muslims generally.

Quite. Why is the Express - and indeed other papers - obsessed with covering every obnoxious utterance of Choudry? Because they know they can push their anti-Muslim agenda. It's easy, and no doubt Choudry relishes it.

But more importantly, it's nothing short of disgraceful that the Express uses the headline to give the impression this is all Muslims, when it is in fact such a miniscule minority.

What is noticeable is that since the front page appeared last night, Islam4UK's website had been completely inaccessible with a 'database error'. They can't even get that right.

Littlejohn and Editorial Intelligence - not mutually exclusive shock

Your starter for ten is to fill in the blank:

Richard Littlejohn has won an award. It was ________ of the Year.

Any guesses? Here's a clue: the missing word begins with 'P'.

And no, it doesn't rhyme with 'brick'.

In fact, he's been named Poison Pen: Polemicist of the Year by the Comment Awards run by Editorial Intelligence.

Clearly, there's a limit to their 'intelligence' if they're giving awards to such appalling, ill-informed, repetitive writers as him.

It comes after his unreserved apology for falsely claiming most robberies are committed by Eastern Europeans, making up a dog story, claiming £8 billion could pay off a £800 billion debt many times over, stating there are nearly three times more illegal immigrants in the UK than most academic researchers, knowing no offence was given in a conversation he hasn't heard, knowing better than a jury what the outcome of a trial should be when he hasn't attended any of it, claiming someone has been granted asylum when they haven't, attributing an MP to the wrong party, attributing a town to the wrong county, and - of course - mistaking humans for labradors.

And all that's just since the start of September.

Brilliant.

Today's column begins with a repeat of yesterday's Mail story:

Britain is the worst place to live in Europe, according to a new survey.

Except the survey only took into account very specific factors in 10 western European countries, rather than all of Europe. It was the best bit of free advertising authors uSwitch ever had.

Still that allows Littlejohn to bemoan the state of Britain, with its bins, and speed limits, and fear of paedophiles. Surprisingly, he doesn't blame immigrants, Muslims or the gays, and doesn't mention elf'n'safety or Nazis, but does seem to think global warming is behind it somewhere.

And what is his obsession with polar bears? He seems to mention them every time he writes about global warming.

In fact, he reveals just how lazy he is when he goes through the list of recent 'problems':

Yesterday, for instance, brought a number of prime examples of the onslaught of state interference in our lives...

On the same day it was also revealed...

It also emerged yesterday that...

It was also reported yesterday that...

All within a few paragraphs. Is that really prize winning writing?

He then turns his attention to the sale of government assets announced a day or so ago. You probably won't be surprised where he goes with this...

The Dartford River Crossing is being flogged off to cut Britain's debts.

Let's hope we get a better deal than when Gordon Brown sold our gold reserves at car boot sale prices.

As this blog noted on 2 October, when Littlejohn last used that exact same phrase, it's a phrase he has used repeatedly - namely in June, March and September 2008. He has referred to the gold sale (which was over half, but not all, the reserves) on at least four other occasions too.

Of course, Littlejohn has made his career out of repeating the same old crap over and over ('you couldn't make it up' - although he does - 'mind how you go', 'com-pen-say-shun' etc) but he includes the asset sale story for no other reason that to mention the gold reserves. Again.

The others winners of the Editorial Intelligence awards were probably thinking they had achieved something half-decent. When they found Littlejohn had won one too, they must have been gutted.

(Hat-tip to Anton for news of the award)

No oppression under the Nazis, says idiot comment on today's Littlejohn column

In the comments section of today's Littlejohn column, there is the following exchange:

John, Bristol, 12/10/2009 23:08:

You keep referring to stories about the policies of isolated councils or groups of councils, and suggesting that that means the entire country is subject to state oppression. It simply isn't so. If you had lived under a regime like Zimbabwe or Communist Russia or Nazi Germany you would know what real state oppression is, and you would realise how totally inappropriate it is to suggest that that is anything close to the reality of life in Britain today.

Pete, Essex, 13/10/2009 9:12

John Bristol - "If you had lived under a regime like Zimbabwe or Communist Russia or Nazi Germany you would know what real state oppression is"" And you have lived under these regimes have you? No, I thought not. Clown.

John, Bristol, 13/10/2009 10:03

Right, Pete, Essex, so no-one has any knowledge of what it is like to live under real state oppression unless they have personally experienced it, do they? We have to ignore the testimony of the millions of witnesses who have, do we? Why do you even bother to read newspapers if that is what you think? There's only one clown here, Pete, and this message is addressed directly to him.

Pete, Essex, 13/10/2009 10:55

John, Bristol - Yes that is right. You really haven't got a clue have you or are too blind/naive to see what is happening in this country. Oh and the last time I looked the Nazi''s were voted into power by a democratic election so that is hardly oppression is it?

The Mail's obsession with Kim and Suri continues

The Mail website's ludicrous obsession with Kim Kardashian hits a new low.

She has made two appearances there in the last few days. On 9 October, she went outside wearing clothes. This was so important the Mail had to report on it. They didn't even care that two of the four pictures used were out of focus. They were using them anyway.

Two days later she was out at some awards event and so they included a pic of her - and other dressed up celebrities - in their important coverage.

But today's excuse to get Kim Kardashian into any story going really is a jaw-dropper:

Is Kym Marsh turning into Kim Kardashian?

Errr, no, probably not. The infamous Daily Mail Reporter continues:

As Kym Marsh filmed court scenes for Coronation Street yesterday, her outfit couldn't have been more demure.

But the black polo neck and knee-length skirt couldn't disguise the va va voom effect of newly single Kym's post-surgery figure.

Her hour-glass shape is as impressive as that of famously curvy U.S. reality TV star Kim Kardashian.

And that is it. There is no other mention of La Kardashian in the article, which is mainly about Kym Marsh having bigger boobs.

It's just a totally gratuitous mention of a woman they keep gratuitously mentioning because they know she boosts their website traffic.

And that can only be the reason they are following the every move of another person - Suri Cruise.

Yesterday, the three-year old girl was walking down the street with her mum, wearing a pink dress and carrying an empty coffee cup. The Mail wanted everyone to know.

Before that, she was playing hide and seek in 'a green patterned maxi dress and red shoes'. The Mail wanted everyone to know. Twice.

On 10 October, she was on the film set where Tom Cruise was shooting his latest movie. The Mail wanted everyone to know.

Two days before, she was out getting an ice cream. Three year old wants ice cream! The Mail wanted everyone to know.

The day after that, she was snapped outside, dressed in clothes. The Mail wanted everyone to know.

In that article, Mail journalist Richard Price called her a

strikingly pretty toddler

but warned:

rather more disturbingly, she is wearing lipstick. Of course, all little girls are fascinated by make-up, so perhaps this was a one-off treat for a child desperate to imitate her glamorous mother.

Yet Suri has been routinely wearing nail polish for well over a year now. Fast forward to another recent shopping trip and the lipstick has gone.

So the lipstick was there, and then it wasn't. Big news indeed.

What's really 'disturbing' is the Mail's obsession with a three-year old girl. Of course, given her parents, she's going to get attention, but six news-free stories in seven days is beyond belief.

But Suri Cruise, like Kim Kardashian, adds traffic from America. As website editor Martin 'news is far more important to us than showbiz' Clarke knows all too well.

Mail thinks Belarus is nicer than Britain

Britain is the worst place in Europe to live, screams the Mail.

This may surprise people who might think that living in Belarus, the last dictatorship in Europe, might be a bit worse. President Lukashenko brutally suppresses any free speech, free media or dissent. For the 2006 Presidential election:

Lukashenko later claimed that he had rigged the election results against himself to obtain a majority more typical of western countries. Although the results showed to him gave him 93.5 percent of the vote, he directed the government to announce a result of 86 percent.

But the Mail has form on doing these stories which make Britain seem the worst place in the world to live, while at the same time claiming it's a paradise that all immigrants want to get to.

So who has made the claim? Well it's from a new study of quality of life in ten western European countries.

Ah, so not worst in Europe then, because forty countries weren't included.

Hmm. The measures used - salary, holiday days, hours of sunshine, life expectancy - are areas you might expect in such a study.

But the Mail adds:

rising food and fuel bills

And a quote from the spokesman of the firm that produced the report says:

We earn substantially more than our European neighbours, but this level of income is needed just to keep a roof over our heads, food on the table and our homes warm.

Why the fascination with fuel prices and keeping homes warm?

Surely it's nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the survey was produced by uSwitch, a price comparison website with focuses, among other things, on making sure people get cheap fuels deals.

The story has been picked up by almost every newspaper, so no doubt uSwitch's press release team can pack themselves on the back for a job well done.

The newspapers - not so much.

Raising the temperature on immigration

Here's the last sentence of a Mail on Sunday article by Christopher Caldwell:

Discussing immigration and its consequences openly is not rude. It is necessary to lower the temperature of the debate.

And here's the headline to the very same article:

Immigration made America strong - but it threatens to ruin Europe.

Yeh, that's good. Really 'lowering the temperature' there.

And here's another reasonable, calming contribution to the immigration debate:

Europe opened the door to mass immigration in the Fifties and discovered - as the United States did before it - that it is impossible to open that door just a fraction. Immigration, though intended as a solution to a short-term labour crisis, has become, without anyone particularly wanting it to be, a permanent feature of the landscape.

Read that again:

Immigration...has become, without anyone particularly wanting it to be, a permanent feature of the landscape.

Who exactly has he asked to make the statement that no-one particularly wants immigration to be a permanent feature of European life?

It must be everyone in Europe for him to be able to make such an extraordinary claim.

He is dishonest in other ways too. When talking about the Pew report about the number of Muslims in the world, he writes:

According to the report, there are now 1.6billion Muslims, a quarter of the world's population.

And they are distributed in surprising ways - there are more Muslims in Germany than in Lebanon, for example. Recent projections by the British Government show the population rising to 71 million within 20 years, due mainly to migration.

It's a clever trick - he goes from Muslims to overall immigration within the same paragraph, as if trying to make the case that if the British population does hit 71 million, it's all down to Muslims. And that's who you need to fear.

Caldwell, who works for the right-wing Weekly Standard in America, has written that Muslims are:

conquering Europe's cities, street by street

and noted:

Of course minorities can shape countries. They can conquer countries. There were probably fewer Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917 than there are Islamists in Europe today.

So you can see he's exactly the sort of person who can 'lower the temperature' of an immigration debate.

He wheels out that old canard of 'you can't talk about immigration any more' in the middle of a lenghty article in the Sunday paper with the second biggest circulation in Britain. And then claims:

But if you can't talk openly, people will lack information. People who lack information fear the worst. People who fear the worst act irresponsibly.

And, for once, he's right. Just not in the way he thinks.

For someone to complain in the Mail newspapers about people 'lacking information' and thus 'fearing the worst' on immigration issues is just too bizarre for words.

Doesn't being a Health Editor mean you need to know about science?

The Sunday Express has issued an apology (of sorts) and clarification over last week's Jab 'as deadly as the cancer' story.

It was an article of dreadful, groundless scaremongering and staggering journalistic ineptness. And the author was the newspaper's Health Editor.

Here's the apology:

Last Sunday we incorrectly suggested that the cervical cancer vaccine Cervarix could be as deadly as cervical cancer and that the vaccine is ineffective. We now accept that there is no evidence to suggest that this is the case and that Cervarix in fact provides protection against the viruses that cause 70% of cervical cancers. We are happy to set the record straight and apologise for causing undue alarm to all those women and teenage girls considering vaccination against cervical cancer.

So they're not sorry for completely misrepresenting the views of the doctor who was 'quoted' and not sorry for printing blatant lies that were seen by many millions of people - not just Sunday Express readers, but anyone who saw it in a newsagent or supermarket.

Shockingly, the apology has not been posted on the Express website. As the original story appeared on the website, there is no question the PCC should force the paper to publish the retraction there too.

And speaking of where the apology should be published, three sentences on page two is simply not adequate for a front page headline. The PCC should make it a set rule that any apology should appear on the same page, or an earlier one, and never further back in the paper. If that is the front page, then so be it.

This followed Ben Goldacre's column on Saturday, where he outlined the actual views of Dr Diane Harper, who the Sunday Express so completely misrepresented. Here's what she told Goldacre:

I fully support the HPV vaccines. I believe that in general they are safe in most women. I told the Express all of this... I did not say that Cervarix was as deadly as cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix could be riskier or more deadly than cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix was controversial, I stated that Cervarix is not a 'controversial drug'. I did not 'hit out' – I was contacted by the press for facts. And this was not an exclusive interview.

And there were other errors:

Harper did not "develop Cervarix" but she did work on some important trials of Gardasil and also Cervarix. "Gardasil is not a 'sister vaccine' as the Express said, it is a different compound. I do not know of the side effects of Cervarix as it is not available in the US." She did not say that Cervarix was being overmarketed. "I did say that Merck was egregiously overmarketing Gardasil in the US – but Gardasil and Cervarix are not the same vaccines."

So how does the Sunday Express and journalist Lucy Johnston take:

I fully support the HPV vaccines...I did not say that Cervarix was as deadly as cervical cancer.

And turn it into:

Jab 'as deadly as the cancer'

Or take the sentiment behind this:

I did not say that Cervarix could be riskier or more deadly than cervical cancer.

And decide she meant this:

Dr Harper, of the University of Missouri-Kansas, said she believed the risks – “small but real” – could be worse than the risk of developing cancer itself.

Dr Harper has also sent a complaint to the PCC. Hopefully the PCC will not meekly decide that as the paper has already published an general apology, that the case is closed.

Goldacre points out that Lucy Johnston has some form on hopeless, evidence-free science stories, and highlights this front page:

The story begins:

The spate of deaths among young people in Britain’s suicide capital could be linked to radio waves from dozens of mobile phone transmitter masts near the victims’ homes.

If it wasn't so serious, you might laugh.

Ben Goldacre wrote two excellent articles on this. In the first he found that Johnston's expert - 'Dr Roger Coghill' - isn't a doctor, and he doesn't sit on a 'government advisory committee', as the paper claimed.

And here is what Coghill believe about AIDS:

The idea that AIDS is caused by a virus is a well-protected fiction. The possibility that immune deficits, both mild and serious, can be acquired through over-exposure to non-ionising electromagnetic fields is, however, real, and proven in the laboratory.

A statement which should send any half decent science journalist running as far away from him as possible. But 'half-decent' and 'journalist' clearly don't apply to Johnston.

Except in the twisted world of Express Newspapers, where she's the Sunday Express' Health Editor.

No, really.

But back to Coghill and that's both AIDS and suicide that he is blaming on electromagnetic fields. Which is handy because, Goldacre reveals:

Readers worried by the front page story on Mr Coghill’s inaccessible research may have visited his website for more information. There they could buy his electromagnetic field protection equipment at competitive prices, and a £149 device called the Acousticom for 'finding out if your home is being exposed to microwaves from e.g. cellphone masts'.

In the second article, Goldacre tried to find out more about Coghill's research on the phone masts and suicides:

Sadly Dr Coghill still does not wish to tell me what figures he collected, what analysis he did on them, what “average” he compared them with, what the results were, and what interpretation he makes from these results. This baffles me.

He claims online that he has offered to let me inspect his data but that I declined. This baffles me too, because he also explains – in a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission about me harassing him – that he will not give me his data, as he considers it “sensitive”.

And this man is the Sunday Express' only source for a front page health scare story.

Of course, the Express papers carry on with their pathetic, churned front pages from press releases on health scares and miracle cures. And neither the Sunday Express Editor or Health Editor are disciplined or sacked for their serious transgressions.

(Hat-tips to Anton Vowl, Roy Greenslade and Ben Goldacre)

TaxPayers' Alliance: the media's friend

Hat-tip to Jamie for highlighting the Guardian's coverage of the TaxPayers' Alliance.

They point out that one TPA director, Alexander Heath, lives in France, spends only two weeks a year in the UK and doesn't pay tax in Britain. Oops.

Clifford at The Other TaxPayers Alliance, who has long campaigned to have the TPA reveal who funds it, has more.

But one stat from the Guardian is worth repeating:

In the last year the Daily Mail quoted the TPA in 517 articles. The Sun obliged 307 times, once bizarrely on page 3 when a topless Keeley parroted the TPA's line against energy taxes. The Guardian mentioned the group 29 times.

That certainly fits with the (very short) 'audit' this blog did in August. But for one paper to use one source 517 times in a year is lazy beyond belief.

Clearly, the Mail have taken Clifford's guidelines on Reporting the TaxPayers' Alliance to heart.

Mail invites readers to look at 'sickening' attack on schoolgirl

The Mail's latest attempt to link Facebook to the end of civilisation as we know it comes with the story of a so-called 'happy slap' attack by a school bully on a fourteen year old girl, which was filmed and posted on the site.

But here's the headline:


'Sickening footage'? So sickening, the Mail doesn't post the actual video.

Just six all-action screenshots:

Sickening indeed.