Top 10 Media blunders of 2010

2010 has seen an array of gaffes and blunders by those in and around the UK media, from accidental on-air profanity to social media faux pas. Here we present a top 10, starting at number 10:

10. Still, could be worse, she could have been singing...
Pop star Cheryl Cole is knocking on the door of national treasure status nowadays, so when she broke wind on live television during the X Factor, it probably smelled of roses.

9. With obscenity over much of the country...
BBC weatherman Tomasz Schafernaker was enjoying a joke with the newsreaders in the studio when he decided to try his hand at a little sign language. Unfortunately he was caught on camera.

8. Nigella? I've seen better...
Just this week the official @ITV_News Twitter stream told us that Nigella Lawson is not as fit as she thinks she is. Big news indeed. We think somebody logged into the wrong account.

7. 'Social media is for saddos'...
According to the BBC, everybody who uses Facebook is "a saddo". According to web developers you should always use dummy text when testing a new website and never develop on a live site.

6. Who dropped the C-bomb...
Part 1: The BBC turned the airwaves blue earlier this month when first James Naughtie and then Andrew Marr accidentally mispronounced culture secretary Jeremy Hunt's name, swiching the 'H' in Hunt for a 'C'. Part 2: During the General Election ITV News showed screenshots from Facebook of people discussing the Leaders debates. One poster in particular was no fan of David Cameron.

5. A Dyer attempt at ghost writing
Ghost written columns are a mainstay of the UK media but one went badly wrong earlier this year when Danny Dyer's advice column in Zoo went a little too far and advised a reader to take a knife to his ex girlfriend's face. Dyer was probably as surprised as anybody to see that moronic piece of advice in print.

4. Imaginary computer game causes outrage
Back in July the Daily Star wrote a totally fictitious story about a violent video game based on the final days of the murderer Raoul Moat. The source of the story had been a poor taste joke in an online chatroom. The Star later issued an embarrassing apology, admitting no attempt had been made to verify its story.

3. Ill-advised World Cup jolly...
Guardian writer Louise Taylor clearly had a wonderful trip to Qatar as the guest of the emirate's World Cup delegation. Unfortunately the one-sided piece of marketing puff which resulted from the trip brought much criticism upon The Guardian for its poor judgement in 1) publishing the piece, and 2) taking an uncomfortable length of time to admit Taylor's trip had been a jolly.

2. Ill-advised World Cup coverage...
The only team to perform worse than England at the 2010 World Cup was the ITV Sport team. From Edgar Davids' ambush marketing to Robbie Earle's disappearing ticket allocation, the broadcaster staggered from one blunder to the next. The low point however, was undoubtedly the broadcaster's failure to show England's first goal in the competition, choosing instead to show an advert on its HD channel.

1. But he said his name was Steve Jobs...
Not everything you read is true. You'd imagine the Daily Mail would know that better than anybody but one of the paper's legion of reporters was fooled this year by a spoof Twitter account in the name of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple. The Twitter account clearly admitted to be being a spoof, but when it claimed iPhones were being recalled, the Mail took the story and ran with it.

What have we missed? Think something else should have been on this list? Email us and let us know.