The Media Blog

Chile earthquake: 'Shit happens', says Guardian

It can be hard to find the right words to describe natural disasters, such as the recent earthquake off the coast of Chile which has killed more than 300 people onshore. But it's easy to spot the wrong words when they are used, such as on the Guardian website where an image appeared with what I assume was intended only be a holding caption and header while the page wasn't live.

Thanks to @badjournalism for flagging.

News Of The World baits ugly comments

The News of the World has obtained topless pictures of a girl linked to a brief fling with alleged love rat Ashley Cole back in 2004. But it seems whatever sexual dalliance may have taken place, with a footballer who at the time was unmarried, this girl's greatest crime is not to be freakishly thin or look exactly like Cheryl Cole, nee Tweedy.

Make no mistakes, the NOTW knew what it was doing when it posed this loaded question:

BRUNETTE Alexandra Taylor was the final nail in the coffin for Ashley and Cheryl Cole's marriage. Was it worth it? We'll let you be the judge.

Cue reader comments such as these, which have all made it past the moderators:

- I'd imagine thats how susan boyle looked in her 20's

- What's that he/she called that won Big Brother a few years ago?

- Ashley sure can pick chav mingers

- How big are this girls thighs

- Minger eeewwwww

Perhaps I've missed an obvious reason why it is acceptable to savage somebody for something they did six years ago, with a single man. The common defence is the "getting everything she deserves" claim, because she's "sold her story to the News of the World". For me that shows a naivety regarding the way this story may have found its way into the paper and whether she was paid or not (perhaps they'd enlighten us). A one line quote, attributed to the girl with no indication as to when she apparently spoke to the paper - or when these photos were taken (not by a NOTW photographer) - makes me think she's been set up, purely to draw the invective of News of the World readers. 

The News of the World is clearly enjoying this story. Tabloids always like to take the moral high ground of course - especially the kind of moral high ground they can illustrate with naked photos - but I can't help thinking it owes much to its 2006 libel run-in with Ashley Cole. 

Revenge is sweet. Never mind who gets caught in the crossfire.

Guardian has a Hole lotta Love

No stranger to guardians of a legal nature Courtney Love, the controversy-courting widow of former Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, joined the Guardian newspaper in its morning meeting today.

In this pic (right), half-inched from Twitter it looks as though the lead singer from Hole is handing out assignments for the day to editor Alan Rusbridger, whose body language suggests an element of reticence about this particular publicity stunt.

'Bullygate' inconsistencies unravel

Christine Pratt, the chief executive of the National Bullying Helpline is causing a stir this morning with the controversial nature of a story about alleged bullying within 10 Downing Street but also with some glaring inconsistencies in the way she is telling the story. And as the media realises there is more to this story than the instant gratification of repeating Pratt's initial claims, that inconsistency is being badly exposed. This from Gary Gibbon Channel 4 News:

"She repeated her allegation that she had also taken calls from two people who work "in the deputy prime minister's office" in "the last eighteen months". I asked if she accepted that there hadn’t been a deputy prime minister since the summer of 2007 when John Prescott stood down from the job. She seemed not to have realised that..."

Earlier in the day Pratt went to lengths during a live interview with BBC Breakfast to clarify that none of the accusations were about Brown. Then she told Sky News:

"I have... received an email that is alleging... they have issues with Gordon Brown... but we will be addressing that confidentially and separately".

Of course the greatest inconsistency in all of this is the suggestion that anything has been treated "confidentially".

Why didn't journalists look more closely at charity's 'bullying Brown' claims?

The papers, TV and radio news today are full of stories about Gordon Brown being a bully, or at least by strong implication that is the story many have run, based on unsubstantiated claims from an organisation calling itself the 'National Bullying Helpline' - though what Help such disclosure really provides to victims of bullying is already a subject for heated debate.

The organisation's chief executive  - Christine Pratt - has gone public, claiming to have received calls from within Downing Street outlining instances of bullying.

The only problem is the source of this story, its motives and agenda, are all open to question and should certainly have been more thoroughly investigated by the media before a single word of these claims was repeated.

First the obvious objection to the story: why on earth would an organisation which claims to help victims of bullying disclose any details of the cases it hears? Surely that is a gross breach of confidentiality and could easily spark a witch-hunt within organisations where bullying really is a problem.

Already alarm bells should have been ringing for any responsible journalist.

Pratt

But maybe they thought Christine Pratt simply hadn't considered this, her claims were poor judgement and the story simply too good to ignore, whatever the truth. Bad news for the charity, bad news for Pratt but good news for hard-pressed editors with gaps in their pages or schedules.

I would hope though that all journalists, like everybody else, must be aware of a basic rule of common sense: if something looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is. That rule would be doubly well-applied to 'Sunday-for-Monday' stories like this which often carry some kind of PR agenda, such is the recognised window of opportunity that Sunday represents for soft news.

So, a second possible explanation then is that Pratt thought the apparent breach of confidentiality was a price worth paying to gain some publicity for her charity and its cause and didn't think through how this story would gather momentum - and subsequently backfire - if she allowed Gordon Brown to be falsely linked to it.

She has since - somewhat urgently - repeated during a live interview with BBC Breakfast News that there were no complaints specifically about Brown bullying (so there goes the 'public interest' defence). So, even if it is true, this story could actually be about a cleaner at Downing Street, being bullied by a private contractor, both of whom could barely be more removed from Gordon Brown or the Labour government if they worked at Conservative Central HQ.

A third explanation is that Pratt has been played by 'troublemakers' - whether prank calls from the public or journalists or political opponents placing a story by stealth. Pratt can't publicly disprove that of course and nor can the media because she's already in enough trouble about diclosing confidential information as it is.

Fourth explanation is that Pratt was motivated, or incentivised to act, by either political or business influences, given the National Bullying Helpline's close links to the Conservative party and a number of commercial organisations. (You can find more about the National Bullying Helpline here.)

Best intentions

As with all details of this story, we can only speculate - whatever 'facts' we think we have seen in the papers or subsequently online. I would stress, there are no grounds to assume Pratt acted with anything other than the best, if slightly ill-judged, intentions or that her claims are genuine, if skewed by the subsequent coverage.

But there is certainly suspicion. Lots of it. And it's a sad indictment that it again took the uproar of the Twitter community to make journalists look twice at this story.

Anybody advising Pratt should certainly have second-guessed the likely accusations and the way they have overshadowed the claims she was making, irrespective of validity. And if there was the heavy hand of PR moving the chess pieces around this checkered story, Pratt would certainly have been better advised to stay quiet, or, once the cat was out of the bag, at least look a little less like a stereotypical Tory for her media appearances to dodge suggestions of political allegiance. But a failure of media training is the least of her worries now her credibility, and that of her charity are being called into question.  

All we do know is that whatever the facts, should they ever emerge, there were certainly enough grey areas and enough well-reasoned doubts about the credibility of the story to have made any journalist approach with great caution. But they rushed in irrespective and have been back-pedaling ever since.

The fact so many journalist simply churned out copy accusing anybody of bullying, without checking their facts, is a very worrying failure.

Top 10 Media Blog posts from the past week

1. Social media and the election: "If you have a Twitter strategy, it's probably shit"

2. Private Eye's success: It's the content stupid

3. What can we expect of Sunday's new look Observer?

4. Jif go inferno: Devon helps us...

5. 20 years of Photoshop: smile, the camera loves you (but with the clone tool it loves you more)

6. News 2.0: Speed the enemy of truth

7. Surely one of the greatest headlines of all time?

8. A word of caution about the iPad

9. How to lose Friends and influence people

10. 'Tears for Piers' and Campbell cries foul of media treatment

20 years of Photoshop: smile, the camera loves you (but with the clone tool it loves you more)

Photoshop, the jewel in the crown of Adobe's Creative Suite family, has reached its 20th birthday. Happy birthday Photoshop, have a drink on me. On behalf of all of us who've used your magic tools to reduce a chin in a wedding photo, to delete the red-eye of The Omen from a relation's first born or simply added a tinge of tan to a holiday snap, I salute you.

It's difficult to imagine the publishing industry without Photoshop. The program can make the difference between a successful product or a failed campaign. For advertisers, designers and photographers alike, Photoshop can make an ordinary bowl of fruit radiate with colour with just a quick tweak of the curves tool. Need a blue sky for your travel brochure? Nothing that a bit of gradient fill cannot fix. Dull looking page? Why not lift it with a cut out?

I remember Photoshop getting me out of a hole during my first job at a design agency. It wasn't so much the photographs that we took that needed work, more the pictures that were sent in: an award winner grinning away while their flies approached for landing; the company sports day showing competitors handling cans of booze and a few tabs - all became history.

Just as in the comic books, absolute power corrupts absolutely. In an effort to hide a multitude of sins, or perhaps hide sins from the multitudes, Photoshop has been turned to the dark art of misinformation. Charles Arthur, writing in the Guardian, highlighted several such cases, including a faked image of US presidential hopeful John Kerry 'attending' an anti-war rally with Jane Fonda. The photograph turned out to be a fake, but the damage had been done.

There are times when the camera may not have lied, although it may have been less than honest. Photoshop makes it easier to manipulate images, but this is nothing new. Robert Capa's image of the falling soldier, shot well away from the battlefield, is suspected of being faked. Similarly, the angle of shadow on a photo of Lee Harvey Oswald gives conspiracy theorists cause to doubt its authenticity.

In the pursuit of perfection the fashion industry can be tempted to take retouching a little too far. L'Oreal denied retouching photos from a Beyonce shoot despite what looked like radical changes in the singer's appearance. It isn't just pop stars who benefit from a brush with the clone tool, politicians seem to be getting in on the act. It appears the doughy face of David Cameron didn't quite cut the mustard, pre-Photoshop, for the Conservative party campaign posters.

Sometimes the changes made are too obvious or the retoucher's skill isn't quite up to the job. For occasions such as this there is the excellent Photoshop disasters blog. On these occasions we would do better to blame the workman, not the tools. So Photoshop, enjoy your cake, I hope you like your card and I've kept the receipt for your gift, just in case.

Neil Willis works for an international news digest

What can we expect of Sunday's new look Observer?

This Sunday an expectant public will get to meet a new-look Observer after much planning and strategising in north London on how to save the flagging title.

Word on the street, and in the tapas bars of King's Cross, is that the new-look paper has been well-received within Guardian Towers (right). Though with jobs on the line and a lot riding on the redesign, it would be a brave staffer who pipes up at the 11th hour with "I like it.... but shouldn't it be a little more OK, fused with Heat, with a more celeb and a pro-Cameron flava. And drop the sport".

It has fallen to new editor, John Mulholland to tourniquet the decline. And an internal memo signed by Mulholland, has found its way to The Media Blog. From it we learn: 

"The new-look Observer will be launching ...with four sections: News, Sport, New Review and a redesigned Observer Magazine. Observer Food Magazine, which will continue to appear monthly, starts March 14."

So, it's a case of 'foodies: as you were' but less good news for anybody who traipsed to the corner shop out of love for the Business & Media, money or travel sections.

"The 56 page, New Review, will deliver...arts and culture but also include coverage of science, nature, technology and foreign reportage, plus full seven-day TV listings...with contributions from David Mitchell, Mark Kermode, and Paul Morley."

Lest anything could ever happen in 2010 without David Mitchell being involved.

"Inside Review, a new section called Discover will provide weekly coverage of science and nature, technology and the latest digital developments..."

"The News section, which will incorporate Business and personal finance, will be home to a new six page section called The Week, offering a complete round-up of the previous week’s main news from Britain and around the world..."

'The Week'? Now that sounds familiar... can't think why.

"...and will also focus more on analysis and comment. News will continue to be home to our brilliant stable of columnists Andrew Rawnsley, Will Hutton, Barbara Ellen, Nick Cohen, Victoria Coren and Henry Porter."

BUT WHAT ABOUT SPORT!?... cry the alpha males in the room:

"More pages will be devoted to Sport...

Phew!

"...with many new elements including an entertaining new focus on global sports..."

Called 'Foreigners Do The Funniest Things', perhaps? (Maybe not). Billing anything as "entertaining" always fills me with dread in the same way that seeing the words "organised fun and games" on a company away-day agenda does. "Entertaining" is of course for the readers to decide.

And in closing:

"The Observer 's great editor David Astor (1948-75) pioneered the notion of a quality Sunday newspaper and championed the concept of a "paper of ideas". The Observer will continue to have thought-provoking, passionate, discursive journalism at its heart, offering readers analysis of, and reflection on, the world in which we live, while continuing to be a surprising and entertaining read."

In a nutshell it sounds like a case of doing the popular stuff well and hoping nobody minds too much about the content that doesn't make it, which would be a wise mantra for any sunday paper approaching a redesign. Likewise, stepping back from straight news and fleshing out analysis, comment and raising the profile of columnists is the only sensible course of action to maintain audience and relevance in the online, RSS and Twitter-enabled world.

Ultimately though the proof will be in the (fat-free) pudding. But the first bite will always be with the eye and I will be interested to see just how appetising the slimmed down edition looks in my local Londis.

Or maybe they'll just use thicker paper and hope nobody notices. Surely not.

Surely one of the greatest headlines of all time?

The Sun has not to let us down with its coverage of China's 'fury' at Obama's meeting with the Dalai Lama.

Social media and the election: "If you have a Twitter strategy, it's probably shit"

Krishnan Guru-Murthy spoke out against 'making Twitter the story' during a talk about social media's role in the UK election yesterday evening.

The Frontline Club's 'Digital Election' panel - which featured Guru-Murthy, Paul Staines (Guido Fawkes), PA's Chris Condron, Tweetminster's Alberto Nardelli and Sky News political correspondent Niall Paterson as compere - also predicted significant differences in social media's impact when compared with the US election.

Barack Obama's victory was widely seen as a milestone in social media campaigning because of his team's prolific use of online channels like Twitter. But the speakers agreed we were unlikely to see an equivalent here in the UK - mainly because Obama's team 'simply had a better product'.

So in PR terms, Obama's campaign is a classic 'product first, strategy later' example. He was significantly different from his competitors, so his campaigning could be too. Sadly, few would say the same for Cameron, Clegg or Brown.

(See the full event report here, or follow the #frontlineclub discussion on Twitter.)   

Jif go inferno: Devon helps us...

Diary dates such as pancake day provide classic fodder for local papers. Here's a picture of the mayor tossing a pancake, here are some old ladies in a pancake race... here's a schoolchild with flour on their face and a pancake on their head... what a laugh!

Pancake

Such photo opportunities help the news desks fill some pages but somebody really should have told Devon 24 - not to be confused with Devon 17, which is probably an Exeter-based electro synth tribute act - there is no real news around pancake day, whatever the press officer for the local fire brigade tries to tell them.

Toss

"Pancake fire disaster warning for Sidmouth and Ottery residents", screams the headline on the website of a stable of regional publications that includes the Sidmouth Herald and North Devon Gazette, when all that's really going up in smoke are the hopes and dreams of a journalist who once must have yearned for better than this.

(Hat tip to Lisa Gillingham)

News 2.0: Speed the enemy of truth

It is commonplace now on many newsdesks feeding the web and stuffing their Twitter channels to measure journalist performance in terms of minutes and seconds, rather than facts and accuracy. Some newsdesks have their own time limits within which something must appear online. And this is what happens:

Quite some difference - not least of all to the family's of those 20 people - yet these Tweets appeared just seconds apart. 

Private Eye's success: It's the content stupid

Well done Private Eye, the magazine has recorded its best circulation in 18 years, which is predictably being heralded as a triumph for print media.

 

It's a sign of our times that many people's reaction has been to open a new discussion about the medium at the expense of more meaningful discussion. For me there is a far simpler reason but the failure of many commenters to hit upon it highlights the problems in some quarters of the media.

 

It's the content, stupid.

 

For the first time in 18 years, it could easily be argued, Private Eye has hit upon a purple patch of great subject matter and has approached it with the same flair and crossbench disdain it's always displayed.

 

You only have to look at the success of The Telegraph enjoyed last year to know anybody who had something interesting to say on the MPs' expenses story was going to do well. Private Eye's unchallenged position in political satire made this a rich vein of comment and scandal.

 

General Election

 

Likewise we are approaching a General Election and most likely a change of Government for the first time in 13 of those 18 years. There was also the end of George W Bush's tragicomic tenure Stateside and an unprecedented interest in US politics following Obama's inauguration.

 

Combine political change, corruption and scandal with the public anger and aggression towards politicians and Private Eye's success makes a lot of sense. In fact, if Private Eye couldn't grow its circulation in 2009 questions would have to be asked.

 

If we needed any further evidence of a hunger for political satire, I cite the recent success of MyDavidCameron.com which managed to bring some much needed levity to the fears many have for the country's chances when Gordon Brown is finally put out of his misery by David Cameron and his braying pack of Old Etonian chums.

 

It could be argued it is only the potential for satire which prevents our laughter descending into tears.

 

It's no coincidence that Ian Hislop's other vehicle, Have I Got News for You, attracted 5.4 million viewers in 2009, compared to 4.3 million in 2008. That represents an increase of 20 per cent year-on-year. Private Eye's circulation meanwhile was up four per cent - suggesting this has little to do with a conversation about print v online and everything to do with content and subject matter.

How to lose Friends and influence people

So Channel 4 has finally twigged that there is nobody left on this planet who can bear to watch another repeat of Friends. Or perhaps the broadcaster has simply worn out its old tapes of the popular US sitcom, such was the regularity with which they screened them, particularly on E4.

After all, it's been a while since anybody who cared said: "I don't think I've seen this one..." or even enjoyed catching up on a favourite episode for the umpteenth time (such as the one where Ross revealed himself to be a borderline simpleton - hilarious - or the one where Ross revealed himself to be a borderline simpleton... oh...)

But this year will also see Channel 4 call time on Big Brother which provided blanket coverage for nearly three months per year in E4's under-nourished schedule, raising inevitable questions about exactly what Channel 4 will fill its schedules with.

The answer? Well, with a £1,000 prize for every five episodes - which are repeated in omnibus, at least twice, I suspect the insanely morish Come Dine With Me holds the answer. Think about it. Averaged out it must cost Channel 4 about £100 per episode and is currently carrying its own sponsor. (I've heard the crew are simply fed with leftovers).

I just hope the rest of the country enjoys fussy eaters bickering about table manners as much as I do... every Sunday... For... The... Rest... Of... Our... Lives...

Daily Mail changes headline but can't shake its Terminator nightmare

This morning, in the Metro, I saw the photo story of the world's first Arabic robotic humanoid taking his first flight on an airplane (right).

I assumed that meant the Mail had the full story and joked that "this is the Daily Mail's Terminator nightmare made real - an Islamic robot sent back from the future to wipe out the right wing Christian middle classes", but thought little more of it.

We can be a little rough on the Daily Mail here at The Media Blog, so I thought I'd let it go. After all, perhaps they'd surprise us and their readers would praise the undoubted - if inexplicably conceived - cleverness of the whole thing. 

This evening, I saw the Mail's "Air Passengers stunned..." headline and thought I detected the unambiguous shorthand of inferences of terrorism. Out of interest I scrolled down to read the comments.

Below are the five the Daily Mail saw fit to print. Three comments about security, one of which explicitly mentions a bomb, one which actually evokes the Terminator with a joke borrowed from Only Fools and Horses, that wasn't that great at the time...

...and one comment which makes no sense.

"Sorry but apart from the beard I do not see how they look the same..."

Huh? I first guessed this must refer to a comment somebody else inevitably made about either Osama Bin Laden, Abu Hamza or some other extremist, that was first approved and then removed. And yes they had, but not a reader. It was the Mail itself, whose original headline was:

"Air passengers stunned as they are joined by talking robot who bears unfortunate likeness to Bin Laden."

They all do, don't they.

Would you sell your grandmother for votes?

"It's a part of the conversation with the voter... It's a way to communicate directly one on one with a voter on a mass scale... and particularly when it's a new technique, like it is in the UK, it's tremendously effective."

So spoke Marty Stone of Stones' Phones fifty minutes into Radio 4's PM programme yesterday.

And was it Twitter he was talking about? Facebook perhaps? Or the latest campaigning-tech-craze to whip up its own storm? Err, no. It's a little-recalled concept called 'the phone call'. 

He was shedding some American light on 'robocalling' – unsolicited, automated, spam phone calls from political parties, imploring you to put your vote their way. Almost half a million Brits received them from the Labour party over the last few years, and quite a few of us, it turns out, went and had a word with the information commissioner about them shortly after.

I say 'shedding light on', but in Marty's case I probably mean 'making excuses for'. In what was probably the worst two minutes I've ever heard from a marketeer trying to explain away the use of technology in a campaign, Marty not only sold his own grandmother, but he claimed that being forced to listen to political spam was "the modern equivalent of parliamentary free speech".

Apparently we "might not be reading [our] direct mail" but, according to Marty, "everyone checks their phone". Spot on there. And the last thing I expect (or want) when I do is unsolicited spam narrated by a star from a bygone era – Labour-used Liz Dawn, aka Vera Duckworth, to make their ask.

In a last-ditch attempt to put some personality into his pleadings, Marty recounted a tale of his Grandmother receiving an auto-call from Bill Clinton, back in the day. Apparently she kept a recording of it, playing it for friends over and over again. Must have been some party. Perhaps that's how I could impress my neighbours with all those tweets I've been getting from that Stephen Fry chap...

Easyjet staffer makes media quip

Flying with Easyjet is hardly a luxurious experience - but this quip from a staffer at the end of my flight last week ensured them some repeat business (from me at least):
 
"Please make sure you take all of your belongings with you.
 
If you do leave anything of value behind - such as an iPod or a camera - please wait a few days and check for it on eBay. We'd be happy to offer you a discount.

And to all the Daily Mail readers on board: Yes, I'm joking."     

Pressure mounts on BBC over nothing news stories

The BBC has cut five words from a news story to avoid looking like idiots.

A week ago, it ran "Pressure mounts to phase out Internet Explorer 6":

A Downing Street petition is calling for the UK government to drop Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) and move to a more modern browser.

Two problems with this. Anyone can set up a "Downing Street petition", so it's hardly news that one exists (there's even another ban IE6 one with 22 signatures). And as the story itself reported at the time:

"The petition, set up by Dan Frydman of web firm Inigo, currently has just 44 signatures."

Go back to the story now, however, and those words have been removed. That sentence now says:

"The petition was set up by Dan Frydman of web firm Inigo."

Other petitions with 44 signatures

You can see why they've removed them - 44 signatures hardly counts as either news or pressure mounting when you look at some other "Downing Street petitions" that closed with 44 signatures, including:

• Ban the Practice of Giving Fish as Prizes at Fairs.
• Remove the Bail Hostel from our street.
• BAN!!! NON-SMOKERS from whining on about SMOKING in Public.
• Introduce legislation regarding the use of trampolines in gardens.

I suppose 44 is at least one more than this got:

• We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to comission a large statue of Phil Collins. 

Anyway, I support the IE6 petition, which now has 5,739 signatures - putting it in the top couple of per cent. But is even 5,739 signatures that much pressure?

Why was this story run?

So whose judgment was it that 44 people signing a petition was news?

And why has the BBC edited the story later, removing the words that reveal the story was published way too soon, without leaving a record of this change?

(Let's not even go into why I tweeted this 44 figure at 11.39am Feb 2nd according to Twitter, whereas the last update time on the story is 10.57am).

Daily Mail vs BBC - now on ITV

Apart from this clip, Dancing on Ice is a bit of a LOL-free zone. However, shows like this do tend to attract strange reactions from media outlets and their readers.

In particular, this comment from a confused Sean in Wales proves nothing puts a Mail reader off a licence-fee gripe - even if the show in question is aired on, erm, ITV:


   

Why the big pause...?

It's been a bad week for Scunthorpe MP Elliot Morley who was already having a pretty bad year. Out of a job after the next election, embroiled in the scandal over MPs' expenses and now facing criminal charges for his alleged abuses of tax payers' money.

Makes you wonder what more's got to happen to bring to an end one of the longest pregnant pauses on Twitter:

...and that was 14 May, 2009.