The Media Blog

Sun's 'Brit Muslims' story "significantly misled"

It's taken four months, but  IPSO, the newspaper industry funded regulator, has now reached the conclusion that The Sun's significantly misleading story about "1 in 5" British Muslims being IS sympathisers was indeed "significantly misleading".

(See: Sun's dodgy 'Brit Muslim' survey draws backlash, 24 November 2015)

The interpretations The Sun had to apply in order to make its research findings fit such a divisive headline were huge and glaring and IPSO has now noted The Sun "conflated important distinctions... between "sympathy" for [people going to fight in Syria] and "support" for [jihadis]."

"Significantly misleading": The Sun's divisive headline drew a great deal of criticism back in 2015 and now the industry's regulator IPSO has finally caught up.

The Sun's misrepresentation of the research drew such criticism last November that Survation, the company which conducted the research, was quick to distance itself from the paper's conclusions.

(See: Survation distances itself from The Sun, 24 November 2015)

IPSO's decision states: 

"Taken in its entirety, the coverage presented as a fact that the poll showed that 1 in 5 British Muslims had sympathy for those who left to join ISIS and for ISIS itself. In fact, neither the question nor the answers which referred to "sympathy" made reference to IS. The newspaper had failed to take appropriate care in its presentation of the poll results, and as a result the coverage was significantly misleading, in breach of Clause 1."

However, what difference IPSO's ruling, against both The Sun and its sister paper The Times - announced around midnight on a bank holiday Good Friday - will really make is less clear. The story's damage was no doubt done last year and will have lingered ever since. Furthermore, The Sun's publication of IPSO's ruling inside the paper has none of the prominence of the front page story itself. IPSO claims its committee "gave careful consideration to requiring a reference to [the decision] to be published on the front page" but in the end decided The Sun could choose where it went, as long as it was no further back in the paper than page five. The Sun opted for a single column on page two.

This was undoubtedly the biggest test so far for IPSO, which is funded by the publications it regulates, and it would be difficult to make a case for it emerging with a great deal of credit. While it no doubt had to be seen to give careful consideration to a story which drew more than 3,000 complaints, it is hard to imagine how this ruling took four months, especially when the facts seemed so plain and the story was so controversial.

Cruyff turns (into a team mate)

The Guardian got a lot of things right with its tributes to footballing legend Johan Cruyff who sadly died on Thursday. It commissioned David Winner, author of Brilliant Orange, the definitive book on Dutch football, and ran an excellent piece by Sid Lowe on Cruyff's Barcelona years. However, its good work has been overshadowed slightly by a prominent error. Unfortunately, the picture it used (right) is actually of Cruyff's team mate, Rob Rensenbrink.

The two men did look fairly similar, however, there were some clear clues it wasn't Cruyff (the most major of which being the fact it was Rensenbrink) as many people were quick to point out on Twitter. Cruyff famously wore the number 14 and a customised Adidas shirt that had just two stripes on the sleeve, rather than the usual three stripes Rensenbrink was clearly sporting. 

It seems this error may have stemmed from a wrongly captioned picture from photo library Corbis (below) which the Guardian's picture desk may have taken at its word.

How the image is described on photo library Corbis.

'Easter' ban has been greatly eggs-aggerated

The Daily Star is claiming "EASTER EGGS" have been "BANNED" so as not to offend "non Christians". By which it means it has heard there are some Easter eggs in the shops which don't have the word "Easter" on them (why should they, it's obvious what they are) and it's found a couple of try-hards willing to moan about this supposed "censorship" (one of whom just happens to be promoting his own brand of Easter eggs, of course).

Easter eggs haven't been "banned" and nor has the word 'Easter'.

A very quick look at the chocolate eggs being advertised online and in the shops clearly shows this claim to be a nonsense.

It is just the latest excuse for the Daily Star to indulge in some divisive finger pointing at "political correctness" and "non-Christians" and some free publicity for somebody peddling his own chocolate eggs. 

Boris tries to make bogus 'balloon ban' stick

Boris Johnson is doing his bit to push Britain towards the Brexit door and like many in the ‘leave’ camp he seems intent on doing it one silly lie at a time. It’s text book stuff: pick a ridiculous lie about the EU and then keeping repeating it as fact until it sticks.

At his monthly Mayor’s question time on Wednesday morning Johnson told members of the London Assembly there are EU laws banning children under eight from blowing up balloons.

It was the second time in a month he’d mentioned this law. Penning a piece for The Telegraph in February, Johnson wrote:

"Sometimes these EU rules sound simply ludicrous, like the rule that you can’t recycle a teabag, or that children under eight cannot blow up balloons."

The EU addressed the balloon claim back in 2011, when The Telegraph, Daily Mail and Daily Express first reported the supposed ban. The EU made clear back then "balloons made of latex carry a warning aiming to prevent children from choking or suffocating…This warning recommends adult supervision, it does not forbid children under 8 from inflating balloons".

It should also be pointed out Boris's teabag claim isn’t true either. ("Under EU law the UK is fully entitled, but not obliged, to impose stringent standards on the composting of household catering waste... It is also up to member states to ensure they have the treatment facilities in place to enforce their own standards").

These claims are easy to check but that won’t stop politicians and newspapers using them, because it is an approach that works. Repeated enough, a lie, even - or perhaps especially - a ludicrous one, can stick.

You can find a handy list of ‘Euromyths’ here. You may need it in the months ahead.

Cameron slated for PR puff-piece

David Cameron’s PR operation has been criticised for fobbing off local newspapers with an article attributed to the PM that was compiled with an "insert name of county here" level of sincerity and all the humanity of an automated voice menu on a telephone helpline ("To hear why David Cameron loves… Yorkshire… press 1, now").

See: How David Cameron’s PR team duped newspapers across the country with generic 'love letters' (Yorkshire Post)

The same article, with minor edits, was hawked all over the country, making clear in the process that not only had Cameron been nowhere near the copy, but also the extent to which his PR people thought they could get editors to all run any old puff-piece for them for free simply by dangling the PM's name.

From the outset, the editors will have been well aware the article wasn't really written by Cameron. Of course it wasn't. Newspapers are familiar with ghost-written columns and contributions. But there still needs to be something in it for the paper and its readers. There needs to be a quality to the article, or an exclusivity that lifts it at least notionally above editorially worthless free-advertising.

The Yorkshire Post was so insulted it chose not only to decline the article but also to publicise the reasons why, chief among them being the fact Cameron's PR people continue to ignore serious questions from the paper while still expecting them to jump at the chance of some lazy PR filler.

Express: COLDEST EVER HEATWAVE this Easter

As part of its ongoing commitment to being wrong about the weather, the Daily Express has published two contrasting forecasts for this Easter:

(Hat tips: @scottberwick; @blogdroed). 

Media don't 'smell a rat' over London 'monster'

From Sky News to The Telegraph, via The Mirror, The Metro, The Sun and the Evening Standard, UK media outlets were falling over themselves on Friday to report the find of a 'giant rat' in East London.

"Rat 'as big as a four-year-old boy' found in London", reported ITV News, where clearly nobody has ever met - or even been - a four-year-old boy.

The story was accompanied by the now obligatory 'forced perspective' photo that accompanies all such 'giant rat' articles (somebody holds the rat away from their body and close to the camera ideally at the end of a long stick to exaggerate its size as much as possible).

Friday lunchtime must have been kind to a few news desks because there was certainly no shortage of outlets repeating claims the rat weighed "25lb" and was "four-feet long". For the whole of Friday afternoon is was as if the media had turned into a pub full of boozed-up anglers whose sense of scale had been forever warped by tall tales of 'the one that got away'.

Few of the outlets that ran the story questioned the obvious forced perspective of the photo or thought it odd the gas engineer and electrician who found the rat had apparently weighed it.

"James, I’ve found a rat."

"Wait there Tony, I’ll get the scales."

Similarly nobody questioned the not-unimpressive physical feat of somebody posing for a photo while holding a "25lb" weight (11.3Kg), one-handed at the end of a stick (try picking up a 25lb dumbbell with a litter picker and holding it at arms length, see how you get on).

After the story had been all over the media on Friday, all that was left was for the Daily Star (the home of giant rat stories) to run it on Saturday's front page and claim it as an "EXCLUSIVE":

Hackney Council has been doing its bit to dispel 'giant rat' panic by pointing out how deceptive forced perspective photos can be.

@SkyNews Our pest control team are investigating. But it probably wasn't that big. pic.twitter.com/0GjfFepbJB

— Hackney Council (@hackneycouncil) March 11, 2016

Other Twitter users were also quick to get in on the fun.

Only one cat can deal with London's giant rats pic.twitter.com/xaIURl9dJs

— tom jamieson (@jamiesont) March 11, 2016

And the apparent confusion over perspective put many in mind of this classic Father Ted scene.

Details, details...

A correction published by the Guardian last week began:

"A review of David Astor: A Life in Print, a biography of the former editor of the Observer, contained a number of errors."

They say "a number of errors" and it seems plausible they struggled to count the exact number.

"In the article we suggested William Waldorf Astor was named after a hotel, when in fact his name referred to the family’s native Rhineland village. He didn’t build Cliveden, as we suggested, but bought it, and he didn’t sack the editor of the Observer for spiking his contributions... We said Katharine Whitehorn was women’s editor of the Observer when in fact she was a columnist. We said Patrick Leigh Fermor compared David Astor to Disney’s Pluto; Fermor actually compared the writer Philip Toynbee to that cartoon character. Terence Kilmartin replaced Jim Rose as Observer literary editor, not JC Trewin. During the war, David Astor didn’t merely suffer “a mild attack of dysentery” as suggested in the review. In fact he was wounded in action during a German ambush in the Ardennes..."

But other than that, they nailed it.

Normally such corrections relating to a book review, might go unnoticed, but for the fact it seems quite an achievement to get so much biographical information wrong when the book being reviewed was a biography.

Sunday Express the anti-scaremongering scaremonger

The Sunday Express has claimed the EU wants to take "control of our coasts". According to the paper:

"THE EU has drawn up plans to seize control of the British coastguard service as it creates a Europe-wide border force. Critics say it would result in the biggest transfer of sovereignty since the creation of the euro."

It calls it an "extraordinary measure" and quotes a spokesperson from the leave campaign who heaps on more hyperbole. But the article, towards the end, also quotes immigration minister James Brokenshire saying:

"Britain is not part of the Schengen area and, to be absolutely clear, we will not be part of an EU Border and Coast Guard."

So the EU won't be seizing our coast or our coast guard. It seems the headline was just a bit of anti-EU scaremongering. And this from a paper that last month branded scaremongering a "cheap tactic".

In February, a Sunday Express leader criticised what it claimed were "dire and entirely unfounded warnings" being issued by the pro-EU lobby. But obviously scaremongering from the anti-EU lobby is fair game, which is handy, because without it the Express and Sunday Express would probably struggle for content.

Well that's cleared that up...

According to today's papers we're all going to have to work until we're 75. Or 81.

The New Day: First impressions

The UK's first new national newspaper in 30 years: The New Day launched on Monday.

As I pick up The New Day it strikes me how light it is. I wasn’t expecting the Sunday Times but at 40 pages it doesn't feel like it would see a lot of people through an average commute or even a long coffee break, especially as the word count across those 40 pages is kept in check by a lot of pictures, a large font and a clear commitment to brevity.

My other initial thought is about that name. The New Day. It sounds like it should be a religious cult, living in a commune in California.

But naming a newspaper in 2016 can’t be easy, nor can launching one. However, this is no ordinary newspaper, we are told. It has no political bias, apparently and no weekly columnists (which should save a few quid). It promises more debate and discussion and has done away with a sport section at the back of the paper.

So where is the sport?

The answer to that question tells us quite a lot about The New Day and its desire to be different. There’s a smattering of sport on pages 16 and 17 where there are 18 news-in-brief pieces, each around 40 or 50 words. Even with sport making a surprise reappearance on page 26 with a slightly longer piece, there is none of the depth you’d find in other papers' sports sections. It is just a random digest of some sports stories.

But sport is an obsession well served online, on radio and on television all weekend and as The New Day looks to differentiate itself perhaps it saw little point in spending time and money on sport come Monday morning. But then, why do it at all? Do it, or don’t do it, but don’t sort of not do it. And that is a feeling I have a few times as I read the paper. There is a similar approach to much of the news coverage - a quick-fire rattling through of some stories you may have seen elsewhere, on pages two and three (much like a light version of the same pages in the i newspaper). Then there are a few more nibs dotted about.

None of this is an accident or oversight. The paper clearly states it is "dedicated to ruthlessly editing the world's events" and is deliberately trying not to "bombard" readers with too much information.

I definitely don’t feel bombarded, though all this brevity does make more room for the debate and discussion which The New Day clearly wants to focus on.

A guest article attributed to Prime Minister David Cameron addresses "Our Big Decision" – the EU referendum. (The paper does like "Big". It also has a "Big Read", a "Big Question" and a "Bigger Picture" section). Cameron's case for staying in the EU is contrasted with doubts expressed by a mum-of-two teacher from London – in keeping with the paper's up front promise to represent the views of everybody "be they the Prime Minister or passer-by on the street". The spread is well designed and supplemented with statistics and key facts. The same is true of its front page lead - a report on child carers that runs over pages six and seven inside.

It’s still a fairly quick read but it is packaged up with relevant case studies and statistics and quickly gets to the heart of matter. It’s much more than just a snapshot or an introduction to the issue but does still get to its point quickly and powerfully. It is strong and it is the most interesting thing in today's paper and deserving of its place on the front page. Leading with more of a feature rather than a story plucked from the top of the news agenda suggests The New Day will sensibly seek to be topical over timely, which is print's best chance of success.  

The format of The New Day certainly encourages people to keep scanning and keep turning the pages, with its quick fire content in snippets, rather than sections. There are some top tips and a 'news from around the web' page with tweets and the obligatory celebrity selfies and gossip. And with that the paper becomes much as you might expect from any other paper - with some weather, TV recommendations, horoscopes and a few puzzles that might give The New Day a fighting chance of filling that commute or coffee break after all. 

But whether all of this gives it a fighting chance of becoming successful is less immediately clear. It is certainly a brave move to launch a new newspaper in 2016 and I wish them well, but the paper itself isn't yet as brave as the decision to launch it. While it feels a little different in places, it doesn't yet feel different enough. However, this is only issue one and we shouldn't draw too many conclusions. In its infancy it has the freedom to innovate and change and given the tricky industry it launches into there will surely be realistic goals in place regarding reader acquisition.

But what do readers think? Greg Hallsworth described it on Twitter as being "[a] bit like the love child of the i and the Metro" and Stuart Gallagher said "it's like [the i] but with a blue logo".

Another reader, Fred Dutton, suggested the "content felt pretty thin", however, he praised the "measured, civilised tone" and described it as "refreshing". Lisa Cunningham said she appreciated a "lack of nastiness" about the paper, but Sam Boshier said "it's not for me", adding there is "not enough meat to the articles" - a comment echoed by reader Alexandra Womack.

Having tried it for free on launch day, some readers raised questions about the 50p cover price The New Day will be charging.

"No way is it worth 50p", said Joseph Begley, adding that it "makes the i look like War and Peace by comparison".

Time to 'reach out' and hit delete on inane jargon

Recently, I read a list published by Press Gazette of the most unpopular jargon terms and clichés used by PR people. Right on cue, the very next email I received from a PR person explained they were "reaching out" to me (because contacting, or emailing, or just leaving it to the recipient to recognise they have received an email that is presumably about something, clearly aren't clever enough). 

"Reaching out" was number one on a list which also featured hackneyed horrors such as "curate", "synergy", "solutions" and the ubiquitous "ecosystem" (which is probably OK if you work in the Eden Project or you’re studying the impact of deforestation or over-fishing, but otherwise should probably be left alone).

Somehow "leverage" didn’t make the top 10, nor did "traction" or "cadence" which I am hearing misused on an ever more regular basis. There are clearly now too many buzzwords being used and abused to limit ourselves to just a top 10 of the worst offenders. But it isn't just PR people mangling language so preposterously. Far from it. 

An over-reliance on meaningless buzzwords and clichés has taken root in many industries and occupations and in part seems a reaction to the cynicism faced by people trying to sell ideas, opinions, consultancy or other professional services. In occupations facing high levels of cynicism, such as advertising, marketing, politics and even journalism, inane language is all too common.

Of course, not everybody in these occupations is guilty. Again, far from it. Smart people in any occupation can overcome cynicism by speaking confidently and sensibly, with clarity and authority.

But it does appear some people, who perhaps feel insecure or inadequate in the face of cynicism, feel the need to dress up their ideas, actions, products or policies in this lexicon of the ludicrous. Some people fall for this of course, but that doesn't make it right - because lots of people don't fall for it and the nonsense merely fuels the very cynicism they were hoping to head off, or at least bore or baffle into submission. 

A Stephen Collins cartoon in The Guardian, this past weekend, brilliantly lampoons the marketing efforts of the craft beer industry and its fondness for cynicism-fuelling nonsense. 

The FT's Lucy Kellaway does a great job each year of highlighting the guff spoken in the name of big business and was front of the queue to deride the World Economic Forum's recently published list of the '36 best quotes from Davos 2016' which comprised a collection of meaningless buzzwords, soundbites and clichés which will have done little to counter the cynicism surrounding the alpine junket for the super-rich.

Will.i.am and David Cameron: Hardwiring nonsense into the Davos agenda.

For related posts, see:
Streamlining the straight talking roadmap
It's time to dump the jargon and the doublespeak
'Over-firm denial' belongs in jargon hall of fame

Ukip candidate dislikes the EU, shocker

The Daily Express on Tuesday leads with: 'QUIT THE EU TO SAVE OUR NHS'. We're told a "Top doctor says migrants are bleeding it dry".

The Express tells us "Britain should leave the EU in order to save an NHS which is being overrun by migrants, according to a top cancer specialist".

We're also told Professor Angus Dalgleish, the 'top doctor' in question believes: "Our membership of the EU is putting an intolerable strain on our NHS".

And the Express makes sure to tell us his endorsement is "a boost for the out campaign".

The Daily Mail has also picked up the story and tells us "The NHS has been left 'on its knees' by uncontrolled migration from the EU", according to Dalgleish.

But what we're not told by either the Mail or the Express is that Angus Dalgleish was the Ukip candidate for Sutton and Cheam at the 2015 general election. You'd think that was a fairly relevant detail under the circumstances.

Twitter tries to quell timeline anger

Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey has stepped in to address an angry backlash from users worried about rumoured changes to Twitter's timeline (see: 'Twitter To Introduce Algorithmic Timeline As Soon As Next Week' - Buzzfeed).

"I want you all to know we're always listening. We never planned to reorder timelines next week," he tweeted (which isn't exactly a denial, especially if you stress the "next week" bit of that sentence).

Clarifying matters even less, Dorsey added: "Twitter is live. Twitter is real-time. Twitter is about who & what you follow. And Twitter is here to stay! By becoming more Twitter-y."

So there you have it.

Of course it's up to Twitter what they do with their product. A minority of heavy users with strong opinions cannot be the only audience a business ever considers, especially if it wants to grow. But it can seem at times as if the people at Twitter are the only people not happy with how simple their service is to use. Call it tinkering, call it always striving for better. 

But having already given us the ability to follow and unfollow whoever we like and block and mute those we don’t, while making lists and using hashtags or clicking on trending topics which interest us, Twitter has provided all the power we need to decide what we see. An algorithmic timeline - like the much criticised 'While You Were Away' before it - seems an unnecessary attempt to complicate matters - something else to side step or dismiss on the way to your timeline.

This isn't about a fear of change - or certainly shouldn't be. Some Twitter innovations are great additions (personally I love the 'mute' function - so much more satisfying than blocking). But typically the innovations which are best-received seem to be those offering something new, something to make tweets more interesting, such as multiple images or streaming video, rather than the ones which impose just another way to rearrange the already ideal way we see tweets.

See also:
Streamlining the straight talking roadmap

Only 92 per cent? Why so low?

What do you do if the facts don't suit the story you want to push? Create some facts that do, apparently. Hence Friday's claim from the Daily Express that "92% want to quit the EU".

The Express claims this is a "shock poll result" but the only surprise is that the number isn't higher, given the poll in question was run by the vehemently pro-UKIP, anti-EU Express, on its own website, among its own readers. Did the eight per cent just tick the wrong box? If so, that doesn't bode well for their ability to vote in the referendum.