The Media Blog

New Statesman criticises Times for parental bias

The New Statesman has criticised The Times for turning a blind eye to negative comment about its News Corporation stablemate, satellite broadcaster Sky. In a blog post entitled 'Murdoch-owned "paper of record" fails to report BBC director general's comments on Sky', The New Statesman says:

"Mark Thompson's MacTaggart lecture impressed many with its effective rebuttal of James Murdoch's earlier address and its principled defence of public service broadcasting.

"A significant chunk of the speech was devoted to Sky, who the BBC director general criticised for not investing enough in original British programming. Thompson also warned that, if successful, Rupert Murdoch's bid to take full ownership of BSkyB would lead to a "concentration of cross-media ownership which would not be allowed in the United States or Australia".

"But you wouldn't know it if you only read the Times. The News Corp-owned paper reported on Thompson's speech but somehow glanced over his remarks on Sky and its parent company."

As the New Statesman points out, it's not as if The Times didn't find the Edinburgh International Television Festival (EITF) newsworthy it's just that its coverage was distinctly partisan.

The Daily Mail: Your 'one-stop-shop' for upskirt, down top, crotch shots and VPL

The Daily Mail appears to be exceeding even its own impressive track-record of loosely-justified 'up-skirt', 'down-top' and 'crotch shots'. 

On the Mail's website today there is a side menu to excite even the most casual voyeur or amateur stalker (right). 

Cleavage

Readers can get an eyeful of Kelly Brook and Alesha Dixon's cleavages, Christine Bleakley's visible panty-line, Kym Marsh touching another girl's bottom and Fergie's crotch and buttocks.

Pulses must be racing right across Middle England, all the way from Tunbridge Wells to Moreton-in-Marsh!

Heads up...! (The Alan Partridge Remix)

File this one under 'It shouldn't happen to a German sports presenter'. Poor Jessica Kastrop was doing a pitchside piece to camera for the viewers back home when this happened...

Cat puts woman in bin, now THAT's news!

Hats off to the topical japesters at Mercia radio - "Made For Coventry and Warwickshire" - for this topical skit on a recent news story...

Media law survey: Please help

We've received an email from reader Judith Townend, formerly of Journalism.co.uk, now studying for an MA, asking if she could enlist some help from fellow Media Blog readers. 

We'll let Judith explain. She writes: 

For many trained journalists, working for well-resourced organisations they might be able to consult an in-house lawyer when occasion rises. But for independent online publishers and bloggers who also play an increasingly big part on the UK news scene there's unlikely to be the money for legal advice. 

So what happens when there's not an in-house lawyer on hand to answer questions? Do bloggers without journalistic accreditation find it difficult to access certain information? What UK media laws should an online publisher consider - and do they need reform? 

It was issues like these that I want to address in my MA project (the findings of which will influence my forthcoming MPhil / PhD research at City University London's new Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism). 

As part of my research I have set up this short survey. If you're UK-based and write for a small - or your own - site, please take five minutes to answer some questions. 

So go on, take a few minutes to help Judith out, and we're hoping, if we ask nicely she'll share the findings with us here.

Ginsters, Cameron and a cat in a bin break the slumber of silly season

The late August slumber of the annual silly season was broken yesterday by two stories fitting the nation's mood of reduced productivity. One story involved a celebrity baby, one was an animal yarn different from the smallest/biggest/fattest variety that generally abound (see exhibit A: giant rats).

The first story to make readers choke on their muesli was that of the birth of the Cameron’s fourth baby, a girl, during their holiday to Cornwall. Although it seems not everyone was happy with the news, as this rather po-faced comment on the Mirror website suggests:
 
"Congratulations to them. But I wonder, will their child be going hungry like other British children undoubtedly will after his welfare cuts. Probably not eh?"
 
The birth may signal the end to the procession of sugary photoshoots of David and SamCam, like the one on the Guardian site (above), but probably not in the Spectator. It may also see SamCam, as it seems most wives of political leaders, defined by something other than her clothes; then again probably not, as the Guardian, with tongue firmly in cheek, reported:

The Camerons ...looked happy and relaxed when they posed for an official photocall ...Wearing a yellow dress, a green cardigan and a battered old pair of sandals, Mrs Cameron's bump was clearly visible. Cameron, for the record, wore jeans and a dark blue open-necked shirt, and was captured looking solicitously at his wife's tummy.

A flurry of goo-goo photos is sure to follow, as well as a possible starring role for MiniCam on Webcameron. The race to guess the name of MiniCam, as noted in the Telegraph’s story David Cameron's baby could be Lucy, Daisy or Samantha, say bookies, is also well under way.

Of course the Camerons are free to choose any name they wish, be it Dweezil or Moon Unit. An early frontrunner on the @NewStatesman Twitter feed was ‘Margaret’ – perhaps the baby is not for turning? Dave did drop a hint when he announced the baby’s middle name may honour the county of her birth. Welcome then Margaret Ginsters Cameron.

The second ‘big’ story of the day can be filed under ‘Britain: nation of animal lovers’, with most papers and news sites carrying CCTV images of a woman knocking a cat into a bin. Most rational human beings – and Jan Moir – realise that animal cruelty is not something to be commended. At the very least it's a bad PR move given cats make up 48% of all web content (the remaining capacity is shared between porn, poker and the occasional useful site).

The race to identify the feline recycler narrowly edged the call for her to be punished. With hanging presumably too good for this type of person, demands for her to be killed; her bones ground into dust, put into a rocket and fired into the heart of the sun are as yet unsubstantiated.

To manage a repeat of yesterday’s news feat will take something astounding. If you have a press release it may be worth waiting a few days. Unless said press release contains a reference holiday favourites such as Jesus’ face appearing in foodstuffs, or an X-Factor scandal ...oh, hang on.

Top 10 MediaBlog posts from last week

Our top 10 this week has a distinctly 'silly season' flavour to it. Bear with us while we all wait for the media world to right itself in a few weeks time, and in the meantime, why not enjoy these again...

1. Rain with a chance of obscene gestures: BBC Weatherman gives anchor the finger

2. The week ahead: In pictures

3. Kelly Brook naked? There's NOT an app for that

4. Reporter vs ice sculpture: Fail or fake?

5. So... what happened in the BT ad?

6. Great Times paywall deal: pay £1 for a page you can read for free...

7. Big Chill? "Wanky Balls" more like

8. Crumbs! FT journos aren't very mouseproud

9. iPad: Is the honeymoon over?

10. We Herts letters pages

We Herts letters pages

Thanks to Stuart Dredge for flagging this absolute gem of a reader's letter ('Humble pie?') from his local newspaper, the Herts & Essex Observer:

I must also say, the previous letter has me more than a little intrigued. Not enough stories finish "...hence the maggots".

It's ladies night and the grades are right

As predicted: A-Level results are out today and you'd be forgiven for thinking it was once again an all-female affair with only photogenic young ladies pictured collecting their results.

The New Statesman has also picked up on this media preference for A* star totty, citing the Telegraph's front page. But it's true almost right across the board, whether The Guardian (right, top) or Daily Mail, and almost every outlet in between. The Guardian however also gets extra points for creativity with its 'jumping for joy' shot (below), though the more observant - or any amateur foot-fetishists - will notice even this arty shot is ladies-only.

  

Who said this...?

"I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time... I mean we really have to think about these things as a society."

That's right, it was Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, worried about the amount of information others can find about us online.

A bit rich?

He certainly is.

So... what happened in the BT ad?

A frankly jaw-dropping 1.6 million people* have voted to decide that Jane, a character in an interminable series of BT adverts, is indeed pregnant:

*I have rarely felt so disappointed in my fellow man.

...what is it about weathermen?

Following yesterday's BBC blunder, a deluge of clips of swearing weathermen has come to the fore. This one is probably the subtlest... listen carefully and you can just about make out this Fox weatherman swearing as he trips over his words.You have to admire the way he then styles it out... not for him the clumsy backtracking of the 'Shafernaker Shuffle':

The week ahead: In pictures

As news hits the BBC that a fish has died (you read it here first!) it has become inescapably clear that the UK media is about to enter the slowest days of the 'silly season'.

What that now means is that over the coming two weeks we will be left in no doubt about at least three things:

1) A-Level exams appear predominantly to be taken by young photogenic females. And they're getting easier. (The exams, that is.)

2) Basking sharks visit the coast of Britain to provide the most predictable photo story of this or any other year (including the obligatory 'Great White' scare story which runs a day or two before we all realise it must have been a basking shark after all and breathe a huge collective sigh of relief).

3) The Prime Minister visits the coast of Britain to provide the second most predictable photo story of this or any other year. (Depending on the weather we may also learn he likes to swim in the sea... now, where's that shark?)

Hold onto your hats people, it's going to be a rollercoaster ride...

Rain with a chance of obscene gestures: Weatherman gives anchor the finger

As handovers go from weatherman to news anchor, you'd have to go a long way to beat US newsman Ernie Anastos's "keep fucking that chicken" remark for inappropriateness, but the good old BBC has given it a go this morning. 

How's this for a "...now back to you in the studio" gesture* from Tomasz Schafernaker, live on air this morning... (thanks to Deborah Lee for flagging).

 
*We should stress, Schafernaker clearly didn't know the camera was on him when sharing this gesture with the newsreaders. You can tell by how quickly he tries to cover his tracks in this clip.

Kelly Brook naked? There's NOT an app for that

Pictures of Kelly Brook ("The UK's Hottest Export"... apparently) disrobed for Playboy have been doing the rounds on the internet this week.

Anybody wanting to catch an eyeful of Kelly Brook naked has easily been able to do so on sites such as Holy Moly, after pictures from the September edition of Playboy made it onto the web.

Despite the publicity the pics have received you might imagine this is bad news for sales of the magazine.

But perhaps not as bad as the impact on downloads of Playboy's iPhone app, following an announcement that there will be no nudity on the app. This is in order to conform with Apple's strict content guidelines.

Playboy

Fair play to Apple - their phone, their rules - but surely a Playboy app is either a Playboy app - with all that entails - or it's not.

Perhaps Playboy staff have heard it so many times from their own customers that they've actually started believing people really do "buy it for the articles".

The Mirror: An imitation of a national newspaper?

An unfortunate, if not uncommon, typo on the The Guardian's website suggests that Mirror journalists are merely 'aping' their counterparts on the nationals. Harsh.

Crumbs! FT journos aren't very mouseproud

Heartfelt thanks to The Guardian's always excellent Media Monkey for alerting us to a serious problem over at the Financial Times, and without doubt the week's big media story... the FT has got mice. 

And we're not talking about the computer peripherals, we're talking rodents - furry little critters (right).

It seems the hard-working hacks at the FT barely have time to step away from their desks to snack or take lunch. 

Crumbs!

And the habit of eating at their desks is resulting in crumbs lying around, which in turn is attracting mice and rats into the office for an easy feed.

In a very 'of our times' crackdown on 'fat cattery' (let us be the umpteenth to crack that most obvious of puns) the powers that be within the FT have decided against employing a moggy to discourage their night-time raiders.

"Thanks for all the cat suggestions last time," wrote FT managing editor, Lisa MacLeod in an internal memo. "It was agreed that having a cat eating half-poisoned mice might not be sensible. And some people are allergic to cats."

"Half poisoned"? You would have thought an organisation such as the FT would understand the obvious false economy there.

Of course, if the mice had any sense of self-preservation they'd go all 'Tailor of Gloucester' on the FT and the paper's hard-worked hacks would come in to the office to find their copy already written for them. But no.

Can trees stop road deaths and PR nightmares?

If you were, for example, a UK county council and you had, let’s say, just released news of increased redundancies at about the same time that, I don’t know, you’d been accused of paying for mentally ill people to join dating sites and go on holidays to, let’s see, Tunisia, what would you do?

I know what I would do. I’d put out a story about how an unapproved, experimental project I was running meant that I was planting trees that will not only save the environment (win), but will also stop road deaths (win) and remove the need for evil speed cameras (win).

Then I’d probably get a full page in the Independent on Sunday. And maybe even a story in The Australian!

What would you do?

Great Times paywall deal: pay £1 for a page you can read for free ...

Would you pay £1 for something you can read for free? An advert in the Times newspaper last week encouraged readers to sign up for thetimes.co.uk, now locked away behind a paywall.

According to the advert, for just £1 you get 30 days access to the site. And to demonstrate what you get, they have a picture of the thetimes.co.uk/needtoknow page - which shows the burning issues of the day in a colour coded form (the pinker the box, the hotter the issue).

Only ... you can actually access thetimes.co.uk/needtoknow whether you've paid £1 or not, as it's outside the paywall.

So probably not a great reason to pay for content online. Here's the advert. 

 

And here are 11 more ways to get free content from the Times, despite the paywall ...

Should shoddy journalism carry a 'health warning'?

A nice idea here from Tom Scott: warning stickers, of the kind we're used to on cigarette packets and CDs, but for stories in the media. All too often now we see bogus medical science stories, articles attributed to anonymous "sources" (which for all we know are works of fiction) and information sourced from Wikipedia with no other fact-checking.

As Scott explains:

"It seems a bit strange to me that the media carefully warn about and label any content that involves sex, violence or strong language — but there's no similar labelling system for, say, sloppy journalism and other questionable content." 

  
Click here to see all of Scott's stickers.