The Media Blog

Updated: @bootsmealdeal's disgust with the police: the real deal?

UK Uncut protestors outside Boots in London were gassed with CS spray earlier - which prompted the @BootsMealDeal twitter account to tweet: "We at Boots are disgusted by police behaviour today" (screenshot).

The twitter account is now deleted - so was it a fake that's been removed or has Boots panicked about what their social-media employees are up to? (Some more surreal tweets certainly support the idea it's a fake but if anybody has followed the random ramblings of @BetfairPoker it could be argued that all bets are now off on what companies may try to entice social media followers.)

The account's not new - it's been around 18 days according to Topsy.com. And here's a recent tweet on another contentious subject (saved here): "Cannot believe what Melanie Phillips has written about the 'homosexual brainwashing power' of a Boots Meal Deal", which was quickly followed by an apology (and a reply of "The boss deemed it too edgy. :(" to someone who asked why it was deleted), which could add fuel to speculation it may have been genuine, or may simply have been a double bluff. Similarly the account did also claim to offer £10 Boots vouchers for Retweets at one point.

There's certainly no mention of using Twitter on the Boots website that I can find. But Boots is using social media according to this NMA article:

Jane Lefevre, Boots’ online communications manager, said that although the company was already engaging with consumers online, it needed an agency to help the different departments.

“Social media is a fast-expanding area and therefore important that we keep up to date,” she said. “We have a few teams that use it but there has to be a more formal process.”

But there is also no shortage of case studies too of companies who have hit some very real bumps in the road when rolling out a genuine social media strategy. (See KLM, Vodafone (twice), ITV News etc).

(Ed note: Updated - Boots has come out and said the account was not "owned or run by Boots UK". No real surprises there perhaps but it does raise the question as to why, if the account wasn't genuine, a company with the size and resource of Boots didn't move more quickly when the account started to offer Boots vouchers for retweets - something which could have seriously harmed customer loyalty? Similarly, why would they not have registered, even defensively, a Twitter account such as BootsMealDeal?)

What a difference a weekend makes

On Thursday the Guardian was widely criticised, mocked and spoofed for some over-eager trailing of a "major" football exclusive that it would unveil at 5.30pm that day to an expectant world.

Unfortunately the "exclusive" turned out to be mere speculation, with no quotes or named sources, that footballer Gareth Bale, who has previously been linked with big clubs such as Inter Milan and Real Madrid, may, come the summer be a transfer target for big clubs such as Inter Milan and Real Madrid.

The only detail the Guardian appeared to have added to this far-from-exclusive was an apparent price tag of £40m.

However, today the Guardian's sister paper the Observer offers up the best of the transfer news from the tabloids, including a mention for a Mirror story that negates even what little news the Guardian's "exclusive" may have contained.

And the Mirror has quotes.

So in the space of just three days the Guardian's "major exclusive" has become a minor non-story in the Mirror, smuggled, perhaps by way of a correction, into the back pages of the Observer.

"She has beautiful eyes, and her hair smells like cinnamon"

'Scientific' research from the US has claimed, among other things, there is a point where female newsreaders become too sexually attractive for some men to fully digest the stories they are reporting.

Researchers from Indiana University claim:

"The sexual attractiveness of female news anchors distracts from memory formation for news content."

In short, stick an attractive anchorwoman on the news and she might as well be speaking a foreign language as far as the majority of men are concerned.

But it doesn't matter, because they'll probably still tune in anyway, right?

The 'science' behind this revolved around one woman dressed up in two different outfits reading out the same news broadcast. The difference between the outfits appears to be the tightness of her clothing and the amount of make-up and jewellery she wore.

Hence the inverted commas around 'science'.

The researchers then randomly assigned just 400 subjects, both men and women, to watch one of the broadcasts and answer questions about the content.

Lo! and behold men were better than women at remembering what the dressed down newsreader said but became gibbering wrecks faced with the dolled up newsreader and could barely remember their own names.

I paraphrase.

Did a poorly timed challenge prove a 'career ender' for Andy Gray?

Last week, when news broke that Sky football pundit Andy Gray was the latest name to be linked with legal action against The News Of The World, we suggested it may prove a 'career threatening challenge' by Gray.

Now it has been announced that Gray has been sacked, less than a week after that story broke. However, it should be stressed his sacking is reportedly for comments which have come to light since last Saturday, described by Sky as "unacceptable and offensive".

Sky of course may soon be wholly-owned by News Of The World proprietor Rupert Murdoch. As such it is easy to imagine Gray's legal action must have at least ruffled a few feathers within Sky's senior management.

But this isn't to promote a conspiracy theory.

Gray was sacked, we are told for comments he made of his own volition.

Yes, the video that Sky News released revealed colleagues had repeatedly solicited Gray's opinions on female assistant referees while the camera running.

Similarly, it remains unclear how the original recording of Keys and Gray's sexist comments found their way into the public domain so quickly.

But nobody made the presenters make the comments they made and if there were moves afoot to publicise their outdated opinions or even engineer Gray's sacking then more fool either of them for making the comments.

Greenslade jumps gun on 'silent' Sun

Guardian media watcher Roy Greenslade was certainly very quick to flag - or perhaps even anticipate - The Sun's reticence to cover the sexism row which has errupted around Sky football presenters Andy Gray and Richard Keys. But now all that remains of his briefly-aired blog post, titled 'The Sun scores an own goal over the Sky sexism story' is a ghost of it on Google:

 
 
Doubtless Greenslade was expecting - perhaps not unreasonably - a Murdoch three-line whip to silence The Sun but while the red top did appear to hold back a little longer than others, it has subsequently gone after Gray and Key quite wholeheartedly.

Although The Sun fluffed its lines slightly by apparently confusing a story about sexist television pundits with an entirely unnecessary and gratuitous opportunity to splash a scantily clad pic of the victim over its front page with a misleading headline, The Sun's first edition did hit the news stands several hours before Greenslade's critical post appeared.

UPDATED: To give the normally impeccably correct Greenslade credit he has blogged again, apologising to the Sun for his hastiness:

"How does one eat humble pie? With a spoon, or a knife and fork? It certainly involves a red face. Mine has been hot for hours today after doing what I so often criticise others for doing - rushing to judgment based on a prejudice."

Read more here.

Sky shows red card in sexism row

Sky's Andy Burton has reportedly been suspended for at least one match following his part in the growing sexism row that threatens to engulf the broadcaster. According to the Guardian Burton has been "hauled off air" and will miss this week's Carling Cup semi-final after he was shown instigating an off air conversation with Gray that ended in the pundit making disparraging remarks on camera about the appearance of assistant referee Sian Massey:

You dirrty old maaan!

You can say what you like about Andy Gray but he does a mean Old Man Steptoe impression, as seen below... just look at the poise, the trademark grimmace, he's got it all:

 

Seven years on: Piers Morgan protests 'fake photo' sacking via Twitter

Former Mirror editor, now star turn on CNN, Piers Morgan has today Tweeted a link to an article outlining alleged abuses of Iraqi prisoners by members of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, along with accompanying comments suggesting he's not quite ready to move on from the moment his career on the Mirror ended. 

The abuse of Iraqi soldiers is a subject close to Morgan's heart - and career. Such alleged abuses were behind Morgan's sacking by the Mirror in 2004, when the paper ran photos it claimed showed abuses of Iraqi prisoners by UK troops (right).

But questions were quickly raised at the time about the authenticity of the pictures - some of which looked, even to the untrained eye, as though they may have been faked. Further detailed investigations revealed a series of flaws which weren't all fully explained.

Believing it and its editor may have been the victim of an elaborate hoax, the Mirror issued a full apology and Morgan left the paper "with immediate effect".

However, it seems the former Britain's Got Talent judge still, seven years on, hasn't given up the fight to clear his name over the scandal as he suggested this latest round of allegations make his claims over the pics all the more credible.

Touché.

Melanie Phillips' Quiz of the Day

Following Melanie Phillips' latest column for the Daily Mail we've mocked up this fun quiz, allowing you the opportunity to pits your wits against Phillips on one of her pet subjects: 

 

 

Daily Mail: 'Penguins will make kids gay'

Melanie Phillips, writing in today's Daily Mail, has shared with the world her fears that a gay conspiracy is trying to take over the world. And it's got something to do with penguins:

"Mad as this may seem [you said it!], schoolchildren are to be bombarded with homosexual references... In science, they will be directed to ­animal species such as emperor ­penguins and sea horses, where the male takes a lead role in raising its young."

So fathers who bring up their children are gay? Who knew...

From that moment on it is seems Phillips may simply be losing the plot. But rather than send her copy back to her with the number of a good psychiatrist attached - or at least the suggestion she take a few days off - her editors have allowed the whole car crash to play out spectacularly on their pages:

"Alas, this gay curriculum is no laughing matter."

Sorry, do continue...

"Absurd as it sounds [You said it...again!], this is but the latest attempt to brainwash children with propaganda... It is an abuse of childhood. And it's all part of the ruthless campaign by the gay rights lobby to destroy the very ­concept of normal sexual behaviour."

...such as sex between a male and a female penguin which still should not be mentioned in the classroom because the male then keeps the resulting egg warm until it hatches, the godless abomination. (That said, there have been a lot more penguins on TV over the past few years. And that dancing one in Happy Feet was definitely gay. So maybe Phillips could be onto something here).

"As the old joke has it, what was once impermissible first becomes tolerated and then becomes mandatory."

Ah, the old jokes are still the best...

Actually, I don't get it. Phillips appears to be suggesting that if we're not careful schoolchildren will actually be forced to have gay sex, but that's not funny, that's just crazy.

She follows this non-sequitor with, some may say ironically, a point about wronged Catholics:

"Catholic adoption agencies were forced to shut down after they refused to place ­children with same-sex couples. Marriage registrars were forced to step down for refusing to officiate at civil unions... Penalising religious people for speaking and acting in accordance with their beliefs is neither liberal nor tolerant. It is behaviour more commonly associated with totalitarian dictatorships."

Because the Daily Mail would never penalise people for speaking and acting in accordance with their religious beliefs. Unless they were Muslim of course.

I could go on. Almost every line of Phillips' article includes a ludicrous non-sequitor, a selective choice of supporting arguments, an unsourced or ubstantiated claim or a piece of wild speculation and scaremongering dressed up as fact. But I fear if our minds really are so impressionable that watching a penguin hatch an egg could turn a child gay, then staring at Phillips' words for any longer than I already have could turn me into a hateful and narrow minded individual.

Compare and contrast...

A former Guardian technology journalist, Bobbie Johnson, has fired off an angry Tweet this afternoon flagging what he suggests is a case of plagiarism between rival newspapers.

Certainly the two articles Johnson highlights, both about a book (Alone Together by Sherry Turkle) which criticises the effect of social networks on human relationships, are very similar, though other explanations could include some verbatim repurposing of spoonfed press releases by both parties of course.

Either way, at least one publication has been cutting (and pasting) some corners. We can rule out coincidence.

The Telegraph article, by far the shorter of the two and not bylined, has a time stamp of 1:14pm on 23rd January. The Observer piece written by Paul Harris, has a time stamp of 9pm on 22nd January as it appears on the Guardian website. 

You can compare them for yourselves below where we've highlighted selected passages from both articles:

 

"Women don't know the offside rule": Sky Sports duo spark sexism row

Tuning in to Sky Sports' Goals on Sunday programme this morning I was struck by the rather patronising lengths the presenters, Chris Kamara and Ben Shephard, went to praise assistant referee Sian Massey who officiated over Liverpool's win against Wolves.

"She really knows the rules," was the obvious and entirely unnecessary assessment of the female official who wouldn't have landed such a job if she didn't.

But it now seems likely this may have been their clumsy attempt to make up for a more malicious and sexist moan about Massey - and female officials in general - by their fellow Sky Sports presenters Richard Keys and Andy Gray. 

During the same game, the pair's microphones picked up the following conversation [listen here] which is now circulating via Twitter:

Keys: "Somebody better get down there and explain offside to her."
Gray: "Yeah I know, can you believe that, a female linesman! This is exactly what I'm saying, women don't know the offside rule."
Keys: "Of course they don't... this is not the first time is it, didn't we have one before?"
Gray: "Yeah."
Keys: "Wendy Toms... the game's gone mad. Did you hear the charming Karren Brady complaining about sexism? Yeah, do me a favour love."

Nice fellas.

Earlier this week Andy Gray joined the list of names taking action against the News Of The World for alleged phone-hacking. It's easy to imagine that move will have ruffled some feathers within Sky which is part-owned of course by News Of The World proprietor Rupert Murdoch. As such Gray might have been better off keeping his sexist opinions to himself this week and doing nothing to anger or further embarrass his paymasters. 

Jan Moir channels Monty Python for skiving student rant

Everybody's favourite scribe, Jan Moir, has offered up another rallying call to readers of the Daily Mail.

Perhaps sick of attracting comment-thread bile, Jan has changed tack and appealed to the public's love of Monty Python by skilfully weaving a narrative about Education minister and part-time Pob-a-like Michael Gove's plans to cut the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA).

Using the Python's famous Four Yorkshiremen sketch for inspiration, Moir's article is subtly headlined Stop whingeing you spoilt little brats – and get a paper round!

Here, our sixth formers and school-going under-18s are outraged that they might have to pay for their own beer, ciggies and Pret A Manger sandwiches. What do we want? Crayfish and mayo. When do we want it? Now! On toasted ­wholegrain please. And throw a bag of crisps in while you’re at it, serf.

Indeed, when Moir was a student she was a shampoo girl in a hair salon, a waitress, a shop assistant. An observation that may be lost on all current students (like the skiving ones pictured above) who, presumably, have never heard of a part-time job, couldn't guess the price of a loaf and and are probably out wearing tie-dye t-shirts while planning their next gap year.

Moir may have a point. I remember when I was a student; I would study by candlelight, eat handfuls of hot gravel, work 27 hours a day and pay for the privilege. When I handed in essays a lecturer would burn my work, slice me in half with a bread knife and dance on my grave singing Hallelujah – if I was lucky.

More power to Jan. She remains committed to flogging a dead parrot.

Taxi for Huggers

Erik Huggers the BBC's director of future media and technology, has announced he is leaving the Beeb to take a job at US tech giant Intel.

An internal email from BBC director general Mark Thompson said Huggers "has been a dynamic and inspiring colleague and I wish him all the best with his new role at Intel". Huggers joined the BBC in 2007 before taking over from Ashley Highfield in 2008 as the driving force behind the corporation's multi-platform technology push, from the continued success of iPlayer to the launch of its iPad app.

Expenses 

Highfield joined Microsoft in 2008 after a brief spell as CEO of Project Kangaroo, a cross industry video-on-demand platform for the UK broadcast industry. And so it is another large US tech company has poached Huggers, this time Intel. Huggers will move to Silicon Valley to head up the chip giant's bid to be an integral part of the 'digital home' of the future.

Huggers will also be remembered for some eyebrow raising expenses. Last year it was revealed he had claimed $1,900 for just two taxis, taken on consecutive days during a US business trip.

When is a "surge" not a surge?

A good spot here by the team over at FullFact.org who were clearly, perhaps inevitably, tempted to double check the Express's front page claims today that the UK is set for a house price "surge".

The article claimed:

"Property prices are heading for a spring surge according to the country's leading experts..."

In case you're wondering "the country's leading experts", for the purposes of this story, are the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and here is a quote from them, as used by the Express to support its claims.

"Although bad weather hit the housing market during December, sales levels have remained stable and sentiment does appear more positive for the coming months."

OK, so maybe it's not quite a "surge" by any definition of the word we may recognise, but we can perhaps forgive the Express a little artistic licence. Or at least we could if the full quote issued by RICS hadn't actually read:

"Although bad weather hit the housing market during December sales levels have remained stable. While lack of supply, and more importantly demand continues to impact heavily, surveyor sentiment does appear more positive for the coming months."

"The key issue now is mortgage finance. However, with commentators suggesting lending constraints are unlikely to be eased, it is hard to envisage a meaningful increase in sales levels in the near term."

So the Express actually read about the poor demand in the housing market and saw the words "hard to envisage a meaningful increase in sales" and thought 'oh well, what the hell do they know, they're only "the country's leading experts" and our main source for this story, we'll just delete that bit, say there's going to be a sales surge anyway... and stick it on the front page".

Perhaps they assumed their readers wouldn't want to be troubled with such details as the economics of supply and demand or what the source of the story had actually said.

In this instance it seems it was particularly easy to catch out the Express because RICS had actually issued a press release containing the full quote.

The problems with this story don't even end there. You can read more over at FullFact.org. 

Daily Mail misses Facebook privacy about-turn, might not care

The Daily Mail has leapt on the story of Facebook's latest privacy changes, which allowed developers of third party applications access to some users' addresses and phone numbers.

 
"Internet security analysts and privacy experts are now advising people to remove their phone numbers and addresses from the site" says the story.

Good advice... Had Facebook not reversed its decision early this morning.

Something The Daily Mail seems to have missed:

 

More 'dog on beach' news...

One of the most powerful rights a journalist has is the right to protect their sources. And when that means they can break stories like this, below from the Mirror, substantiated only by comment from anonymous sources, we should all be grateful:

"Back-from-the-dead" canoeist John Darwin has been spotted walking a dog on the beach where he faked his death. The former prison officer, who has been released from jail, was seen strolling on the sands of Seaton Carew beach, Hartlepool, on Sunday, it was claimed.

"His former neighbour... who would not give his name, said: "He's been up and down the beach already, walking a dog."

Really makes you stop and think doesn't it.

Related news:
Story of the day: Dog goes into the sea, comes out again...
A sad and sinister turn of events...

 

A sad and sinister turn of events...

OK, so this is pretty sinister. No sooner had I published a post about seals reportedly luring dogs out to sea and killing them, when I see a very sad story, just seconds later, with the headline: Hundreds of dead seals found in Labrador.

I fear it has now become a full on war between the dogs and the seals.

 

Story of the day: Dog goes into the sea, comes out again...

It used to be said that 'dog bites man' isn't news. However, as any journalist writing for a nation of dog lovers will tell you, 'dog does anything' is very much news, such as this gem from the Norwich Evening News:

"A dog got into trouble off the Norfolk coast while chasing a seal.

"...It is believed the dog was playing on the beach at Happisburgh when it started to chase a seal and swim out to sea.

"The dog's owner alerted the coastguard but moments later the dog swam back to shore."

Good news! But reading on there is a reader comment below the story itself which surely warrants further investigation by the Evening News:

"I was there... The dog went into the sea where the seal was and as the seal swam out, the dog followed... Apparently seals have been known to entice dogs into the sea and have killed them. Dog owners need to be wary of this ... and perhaps parents should be too before a child is lured in."

Scary stuff.  

Taste no obstacle to Jobs speculation

The many hundreds of journalists covering Apple CEO Steve Jobs' latest medical leave of absence have all found themselves restricted by a very succinct announcement from Apple. More frustratingly, many of the people they might approach for comment are off work for Martin Luther King Day in the US.

So what can media outlets do to differentiate their coverage from the competition?

Well there's always wild speculation.

This from Business Insider, where they already have six articles up about Jobs' leave of absence:

Apple has not elaborated on the reasons for Steve Jobs' medical leave...

So, that's that then? Time to move on to the next story? 

As a result, those who care about ...Steve can be forgiven for wondering how serious Steve's condition is...

You see, they have no choice but to speculate, because they care.

In this vein, in our opinion, the wording of one sentence of Steve's email to Apple staff is not encouraging: "I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can."

In our opinion, those ...words.. read like the tragic, heartfelt sentiments of someone who thinks he might never be coming back.