The Media Blog

Of tabloid editors and football managers

Here's the Express's sports columnist John Dillon, back in 2007, discussing one of the biggest problems affecting the smooth management of football clubs – the issue of meddling owners:

"Will the infatuation of the man with the money escalate until he wants to pick the team? And, maybe, buy himself a centre-forward... These are the critical questions about patience and the influence of new owners in the dressing room facing all Premier League clubs.

"It takes belief in a good manager, who is given patience and left alone to do his job."

It's a good point. Can you imagine trying to get on with your job while your boss kept interfering, telling you what you should or shouldn't be doing and making your important decisions for you.

Why, it would be like being a newspaper editor whose proprietor wants his 'Health Lottery' on the front page of your paper:

          

The keener-eyed among you may also wonder whether the launch of a health lottery is the right platform for a free chocolate biscuit give-away.

Johann Hari hasn't returned £2,000 Orwell prize

It has emerged that disgraced Johann Hari has not returned the £2,000 he won as part of his Orwell Prize. 

The award itself was returned by Hari though it was due to be taken from him anyway. However, he is clinging onto the cash prize according to organisers of the prestigious journalism award. They have issued a press release, from which we have learned:

Hari was definitely set to be stripped of the award:

"The Council of the Orwell Prize would like to clarify ... the Orwell Prize for Journalism 2008 would have been vacated in any case."

The Independent did not co-operate with the Orwell Prize investigation:

"On 30 June 2011 the Council said that it would be investigating the basis for allegations made about Hari's work. This included writing to Johann Hari and to the (then) editor of The Independent, with a number of questions. Hari responded; the editor did not, either to this or a subsequent set of queries."

Hari was a guilty of plagiarism in their eyes:

"The Council considered one article submitted by Hari in 2008, 'How multiculturalism is betraying women' ...The Council concluded that the article contained inaccuracies and conflated different parts of someone else's story ...The Council ruled that the substantial use of unattributed and unacknowledged material did not meet the standards expected of Orwell Prize-winning journalism."

Hari returned the award but kept the cash:

"On the afternoon of 14 September, a courier returned the plaque which had been awarded to Johann Hari on winning the Orwell Prize for Journalism 2008. There was no note of explanation. The prize money (£2,000) has also not been returned." 

Hari's dishonesty has held back more deserving journalists:

"The Council of the Orwell Prize ..have decided not to re-award the 2008 Prize, despite the high quality journalism on that year's shortlist. The Council would like to apologise to those who entered the Journalism Prize 2008."

Mail reported to PCC over 'dategate'

The Mail On Sunday and Daily Mail have been reported to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) by FullFact for a series of misleading articles about the BBC, which tried to convince readers that the Corporation had imposed a "politically correct" ban on the use of BC and AD when reporting historical dates.

You would hope most readers would see through such obvious nonsense, but among those fooled by the Mail's articles was London Mayor Boris Johnson.

As Full Fact points out the Press Complaints Commission Code of Conduct clearly states "the Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information."

Of course, one of the Commission's most senior members is Peter Wright, editor of the Mail On Sunday, whose paper first reported the fictitious 'ban'. So don't expect any action from the PCC any time soon.

For more on this story, see:
The Daily Mail's 'whodunnit' journalism
Daily Mail admits BBC claims were wrong... but repeats them anyway
Boris wades in to BBC 'dategate'

Beware the interwebs?

According to The Metro "a massive 78 per cent of ex-burglars believed social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare are being used to target properties".

Clearly somebody is tapping into that rich seam of fear, uncertainty and doubt that has kept the tabloids in scare stories about the internet for the past 10 years. However, tellingly, the Metro doesn't say who commissioned the research.

However, here is a clue:

"Nearly four out of five ex-burglars said that the presence of a simple home alarm system would have stopped them choosing to break into the house in the first place."

A little digging online reveals the story was issued by a company called Friedland and you don't need me to tell you what manner of household security device they produce.

Boris wades in to BBC 'dategate'

Over the weekend the Daily Mail claimed the BBC has "banned" the use of 'AD' and 'BC' for historical dates - replacing them instead with the more "politically correct" CE and BCE. It was, of course, nonsense and the Mail admitted as much in a column by Melanie Phillips where she conceded an "edict" had not in fact been "laid down ...from on high" at the BBC.

Despite this, Boris Johnson writing in the Telegraph has picked up the story and repeated the Mail's original claims as fact, all the time banging a drum for state-funded-political-correctness-gone-mad.

What's more Boris is angry he wasn't consulted about this thing that didn't actually happen:

"...we deserve to be consulted before the [BBC] makes a decision of immense cultural importance, a decision that affects the way we will ask our children to think about the history of our civilisation."

Warming to the subject, Boris adds:

"We are asked to call the years-before-the-event-we-cannot-mention BCE, or "Before Common Era", and the years-after-the-event-we-cannot-mention "Common Era", or CE. You should not underestimate the influence of this verdict."

What verdict Boris?

As an interesting footnote to all of this, can you guess which media outlet does use BCE and CE in its reporting of dates? That's right, the Daily Mail. Here's one example from an article published in February 2010:

 
(Hat tip Jem Stone)

Daily Mail admits BBC claims were wrong... but repeats them anyway

The Daily Mail has admitted it misled readers over claims the BBC had imposed a ban on the use of 'AD' and 'BC' on dates. In her latest column Melanie Phillips has conceded it is not a BBC-wide initiative, as the Mail had claimed:

"...this edict seems to have been laid down merely by some obscure tributary of the BBC website rather than from on high."

If the BBC was waiting for an actual apology, they will have to keep waiting.

But despite admitting it got its facts wrong, the Mail actually repeats these very same claims - in the very same article.

Phillips' article also reads:

"...the BBC...has decided that the terms AD and BC... must be replaced by the terms Common Era and Before Common Era."

It then repeats:

"The BBC has announced it will no longer be using the abbreviations BC and AD..."

Only then do we get to Phillips' admission that these claims are not actually true - all in the space of a few paragraphs.

See also:
Boris wades in to BBC 'dategate'
The Daily Mail's 'whodunnit' journalism

The Daily Mail's 'whodunnit' journalism

If you ever doubted the Daily Mail's journalism has certain characteristics in common with works of fiction try a simple experiment. Try reading one of its stories from the bottom up and see the deliberate twists and turns reveal themselves. In the same way the fabrication of an Agatha Christie whodunnit is instantly unwound by reading the final page first so Mail articles suffer by skipping the deception and deliberate misdirection woven in higher up the article.

Take these closing paragraphs from an article today about the BBC's use of AD and BC in dates, versus CE (common era) and BCE (before common era) :

The BBC said last night: 'The BBC has not issued editorial guidance on the date systems...the decision on which term to use lies with individual production and editorial teams."

You would never guess that that was the denoument of a story which was originally set up thus:

The eventual conclusion that the BBC hasn't in fact turned its back on the use of AD and BC is reached via several levels of misdirection that Christie would be proud of:

The BBC's religious and ethics department says the changes are necessary to avoid offending non-Christians.

So we have a motive. We even have a couple of suspects:

Some of the BBC's most popular programmes including University Challenge, presented by Jeremy Paxman, and Radio 4's In Our Time, hosted by Melvyn Bragg, are among the growing number of shows using the new descriptions.

But ultimately this particular whodunnit concludes, in its final chapter, that nobody has actually done anything.

Carlsberg raises the bar with biker viral video

Thanks to the The Poke for flagging

Childish newspaper ad of the week

Well done to Sofa King for its prominent ad on the front page of the Northampton Herald & Post. I can only imagine how Sofa King pleased with themselves they are:

(Hat tip Dave Lee)

Daily Mail issues sex warning to 'bossy women'

An article which has appeared in the Journal of Sex Research has attracted some media coverage today. Entitled Women's Autonomy and Timing of Most Recent Sexual Intercourse in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Multi-Country Analysis it details research conducted in Ghana, Mali, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Among its conclusions, it found:

A strong relationship between women's decision-making autonomy and time since last sexual intercourse in all six settings, even after controlling for factors such as the husband living elsewhere, age, marital duration, and other sociodemographic variables...

All of which lead to the following sensitive treatment by the Daily Mail:

A Rwandan couple not having sex, yesterday.

Indie boss Lebedev comes out fighting [video]

If his newspaper's handling of rogue journalist Johann Hari made you think Independent owner Alexander Lebedev might be a soft touch, think again. Here he is throwing punches on Russian TV (it's unclear exactly what was said to spark the row but I'd be shocked if Lebedev's trousers and choice of jacket didn't at least get a mention at some point during this angry exchange):

Update: According to Sky News, former KGB operative Lebedev later claimed he was forced to "neutralise" his opponent and fellow guest on the TV debate - property tycoon Sergei Polonsky - because he believed he posed a credible threat.

"In a critical situation, there is no choice," said Lebedev perhaps slightly over-dramatising the life or death knife nature of a TV debate. "I see no reason to be hit with the first shot. I neutralised him.

Who's going to argue?

Bad excuse, terrible headline

Armed with such a story as this, below, you'd have thought the ThisisKent.co.uk website could have come up with a better headline than this placeholder which remains live on the website one day later:

Best press release blunder ever?

A great spot here by journalist Rhodri Marsden who has shared via Twitter a surefire contender for the greatest mistake ever to appear on a press release. See if you can spot it:

 
That's right, Wahl has mixed up the text for its Ladies Beauty Trimmer with a picture of an electric carving knife. It's doesn't bear thinking about for too long.

Johann Hari: Then and now...

Johann Hari, September 2011: "If I had asked the many experienced colleagues I have here at The Independent... they would have explained just how wrong I was. It was arrogant and stupid of me not to ask."

Or would they?

Johann Hari, June 2011: "I called round...other interviewers for British newspapers and they said what I did was normal practice and they had done it themselves."

Divine inspiration for local news?

Big news from North Wales. If you squint and look at it from a certain angle it kind of ...still looks like the middle of a tomato:

(Hat tip Alex Feeney)

You will never see another headline like this...

A sad tale of every day folk, from Gawker. The original story is here:

 

The official snackfood of 'The Social Network 2'?

They may have lost out to multi-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg in the battle over Facebook, but at least the Winkelvoss Twins have landed a gig advertising nuts... who's laughing now Zuckerberg!?!

(Hat tip The Guardian).

Dough! Sandwich blamed for smutty song choice

Radio station Brick FM has – rather creatively – tried to defend its broadcasting of a song which repeatedly used the word 'punani' (a slang term for female genitals, popularised by Ali G) by claiming the word is actually the name of an Italian-style sandwich - we should assume they are thinking of 'panini'.

However, watchdog Ofcom was having none of it. But let's look at the song in question by an artist called Dr Evil and imagine that he is indeed saying "panini":

Last night me get some panini,
Right now me want more panini.
Last night me get some panini,
Right now me want more panini.

OK, so Brick FM's interpretation would require Dr Evil to be eating at least a sandwich per day, often of as an evening meal, but while that's unconventional it is certainly plausible. Moving on:

I love to see the girls in they sexy bikini
Wanna take my chilli and push it betweeni

...with the introduction of a chilli to the aforementioned panini, it seems increasingly likely he is indeed singing about a sandwich. However, the rest of the lyrics, which I'll not reproduce here, make it very clear he is not.

For Essex journalists ‘The only way is Twitter’

Any would-be journalists hoping to find employment with Northcliffe title the Essex Chronicle have been challenged to sell themselves in 140 characters or less and apply via Twitter.  

Editorial director Alan Geere, told Press Gazette: "They've got 140 characters to tell me what they can do and why I should consider them."

Geere believes using Twitter will discourage applicants from the usual waffle which fills covering letters and CVs. He can be found on Twitter at @alangeere.

It's unclear whether Geere is simply trying to lessen the load upon his inbox, or ensure a culture of Tweeting upon his workforce. But either way, he isn't the first to challenge journalists to better understand the role of Twitter. (See: Media must sharpen social skills, May 2011).

Also, last week the BBC's Kevin Backhurst, deputy head of the BBC newsroom, clearly outlined his thoughts on the effect of Twitter on 'traditional' media.  

David Walliams: Go on, donate some money

I popped out this afternoon to see comedian David Walliams during the latest stage of his epic 140 mile swim down the Thames in aid of Sport Relief. He'll be finishing at Westminster bridge around 6pm Monday.

To donate £5 to Sport Relief, text SWIM to 70005. 

David Walliams passing through Surbiton on Sunday afternoon.
Crowds gathered along the river between Surbiton and Kingston.