The Media Blog

Playing the man not the ball...?

If you happened to be a Conservative MP who supported Manchester United there could surely be few duties you'd relish more than being able to criticise the BBC for the wages it pays to a former Liverpool player. So step forward Manchester United fan and Conservative MP for Folkestone in Kent, Damian Collins who, according to the Sunday Telegraph*, has singled out Alan Hansen's reported £1.5m per year pay deal from the BBC:

"It is a lot of money for Alan Hansen, and the BBC needs to justify such large amounts at a time when every pound they spend is being scrutinised..."

If Hansen's salary, which the Mail reported back in July, is correct then it is indeed a sizeable wage. It should be pointed out however that Hansen is not the highest paid presenter at the BBC - or even the highest paid member of the Match Of The Day team - though I'm sure Collins had his reasons for singling him out.

One of Hansen's other employers of course is the Daily Telegraph and as a result of the article appearing on its website one of the paper's star columnists has been the subject of a 'lively' discussion in the comments. Beneath the article on the Telegraph's website, Hansen is branded an "overpaid muppet", "utterly boring", "a waste of money" and "irrelevant" to quote just some of the less defamatory complaints from Telegraph readers.

*UPDATE: It seems the Telegraph has subsequently thought better of this story. Both the story and the comments posted beneath it appear now to have been deleted from the Telegraph's website. However, the Daily Mail has also run with the story, citing the Sunday Telegraph as the source of Collins' quotes. 

A great website for debunking tabloid 'science'

The relationship between the media and science is an uneasy one. Many academic institutions may want to publicise their work but they must surely cringe when they see the degree to which complex findings can be distilled down to a single news 'fact' which often misrepresents their hard work.

The tabloid need to simplify, then simplify again is the reason why everything in this world must either cause cancer or cure cancer. It's the reason a detailed study of female autonomy in sub-Saharan Africa becomes a news story about bossy British women getting less sex.  

As such it's long been believed by many that the key to establishing the truth about scientific claims appearing in the tabloids is to simply assume they are all wrong. But if you need a little more substance to this rule of thumb you could do a lot worse than pay regular visits to the NHS.uk 'Behind the Headlines' news pages. It's been running since 2007 and is an excellent resource for anybody in and around the media who thinks there might be more to science than the erroneous interpretation of a press release. 

Facebook will grow your brain

Take this story from the Daily Mail which appeared in many other outlets and gained a lot of interest over the weekend:

Researchers at University College London found a link between the number of 'virtual' friends a person has and the size of parts of their brain associated with social skills... Brain scans showed [social networking] increases the size of the amygdala, linked to emotional response.

Like me you probably reached the bit where a Daily Mail journalist was writing about the size of the amygdala and suspected a high likelihood of error in whatever came next. So over to the NHS for its take on this story:

This study measured the participants' network size and brain structure at the same time. As such, it is unable to tell us whether there is a causal relationship between the two factors; that whether having larger social networks caused this part of the brain to grow or the other way around, or indeed whether some other factor causes both… The Daily Mail's assertion that Facebook increased the size of the amygdala is incorrect.

...The media generally reported this study accurately. The Daily Mirror and the BBC appropriately pointed out that the study could only assess a link between the website and brain structures and not assess cause and effect. The Daily Mail, however, reported that, 'brain scans showed it increases the size of the amygdala', which is not correct as the study was not designed to find a causal relationship between the two.

You get the idea. This is just one example. The NHS site has also this week tackled the media's obsession with alcohol. The story arc of red wine alone makes for dizzying reading as it changes from kill to cure on a daily basis.

Is Britain beset by binge boozers? Will wine help you lose weight? Could six cans of lager help you live longer? The media pose questions like these on an almost daily basis, often using and abusing the findings of medical research to back up their headlines.

The special report is well worth a read. Why not bookmark Behind the Headlines now, or set up an RSS feed.

Daily Mail 'turns its back on Britain and the Queen'*

The Daily Mail has been accused of turning its back on Britain and Her Majesty the Queen after it was revealed the newspaper has BANNED the use of BRITISH pounds in favour of US dollars in its articles. It has also controversially ABANDONED the Queen's English, changing to the US spelling of common words such as "labor" and "appetizer".

The move has angered many decent hard-working British people who said the move is the latest example of 'broken Britain'. 

Star spangled ban? Pounds have been replaced by dollars 

It is thought the Queen would be "incredibly saddened" to hear the news. And Her Majesty is not alone.

"It's unbelievable to think that after all we've been through to protect the pound from the unspeakable twin evils of Brussels and the Euro, the Daily Mail would just turn its back on the good old British pound coin in favour of the Yankee dollar. It is literally a slap in the face for the Queen," said a source close to this article.

This spells trouble: The Mail has changed the spelling of words such as "appetiser", replacing the Queen's preferred "s" with the all-American "z"
 

However, the ban is being ignored by some within the Daily Mail. Writing in the newspaper yesterday, popular columnist Richard Littlejohn used THREE pound signs in one article, while Amanda Platell flaunted the new rules using "ise" AND "our" endings to a number of words instead of the newer "ize" and "or".

New "Labor", new danger? We don't like "u" anymore says the Mail to thousands of years of English education

*DISCLAIMER: Of course the Daily Mail hasn't really turned its back on Britain or the Queen - in the same way the BBC hasn't really turned its back on 2,000 years of Christianity. I have merely jumped upon some isolated incidences and blown them massively out of proportion.

Music fans missing out to online 'touts'

If like me you spent Friday morning trying to buy Stone Roses tickets on the Ticketmaster website, there's a very good chance, like me, you spent the morning faced with this message:

In fact, I was still staring at this frustrating message when I heard via Twitter that tickets had sold out. Meanwhile, over on another Ticketmaster-owned website they were already advertising hundreds of the very same Stone Roses tickets (face value £55) at prices of up to £1,100. 

The site, GetMeIn.com, is "an online ticket marketplace where fans can buy and sell live entertainment tickets... at fair market prices". Some of those "fair market prices", being asked by sellers using the site, can be seen in the screengrab (right).

So while Stone Roses fans were trying to buy tickets in good faith from Ticketmaster, hundreds of the tickets they were trying to buy were already being sold on another Ticketmaster property, in some cases with sellers asking for more than ten times face value.

That doesn't seem fair, yet it's a situation which plays out every time a major concert or tour goes on sale. However, Ticketmaster and users of GetMeIn.com are operating entirely within the laws as they stand.

Stone Roses

For me though there can be no suggestion that all of these are indivuals who bought tickets in good faith only to discover - within seconds - that they could no longer make it and are simply trying to recoup face value.

It's hard to imagine anybody would meet these £500-plus asking prices but clearly those reselling tickets - whoever they might be - are keen to push prices as high as possible to see what they can get away with. At the time of writing the average asking price was still around £250 per ticket, from which Ticketmaster would take a healthy £75 commission (set at 25% according to BBC Watchdog).

As such Ticketmaster's commission is far higher in this secondary market than when selling tickets on the main Ticketmaster.co.uk site. In fact, in the above instance, its commission is higher than the face value of the tickets. It's therefore easy to imagine Ticketmaster would be keen to see as many tickets as possible sold via its secondary market.

Clearly all of this leaves a bad taste in the mouth for music fans who were willing to pay the high prices already charged for live music tickets but not willing to compete in such a secondary market. A number of people on Twitter this morning branded the situation "a scandal", "blatant touting" and "disgraceful".

For the record I did get tickets, through a friend. Better still I paid face value but this situation does little to inspire me to join the scrum next time tickets go on sale for such an event. At a time when the music industry is bemoaning lost revenue it seems unthinkable that music fans who actually want to pay for something would be treated in a way I personally, as a consumer and a fan find totally unacceptable.

Hillsborough debate told of Sun's "malicious lies"

Steve Rotheram, Labour MP for Walton in Liverpool (pictured right), this evening addressed the House of Commons during a debate on the full disclosure of government documents relating to the Hillsborough stadium disaster in April 1989 which claimed the lives of 96 football fans.

Rotheram saved some of his strongest criticism for The Sun newspaper and its then-editor Kelvin Mackenzie, now employed by the Daily Mail.

 Below is an edited version of his address to the Commons:  

"Is it any wonder that some people have doubtful and distorted views as to the exact course of the disaster when misinformation began almost immediately after the players were led off the pitch at 3:06pm. The BBC and ITV News that very afternoon misreported what had occurred and it is important to understand the effect this had as it formed the immediate public perception of Hillsborough… But the faux pas committed in the immediate aftermath when there was much uncertainty and a degree of confusion pales into insignificance when you consider the malicious manner in the way some sections of the press reported things and which still clouds thinking today.

"Just a few days later, before people had even had time to arrange funerals for their loved ones, The Sun newspaper infamously printed the banner headline "THE TRUTH" on the personal instruction of its editor, Kelvin MacKenzie. It claimed that drunken fans had forced the gates open because they did not have match tickets, that they had stolen from the corpses lying around the pitch, assaulted police officers and emergency services, robbed cameras and other equipment from press photographers and urinated on police officers helping the victims. This was one of the cruellest blows and it beggars belief that certain sections of the media still give air time to this most despicable of men to air his bile and mendacity…  

"Months later the rag he edited admitted the allegations it had made were totally false. But the damage had been done. To this day the people of Merseyside do not buy that paper. But it has taken the hackgate allegations against Murdoch's News International for people to at long last sit up and take notice of the claims we made 22 years ago, that there may be some truth to our allegations of collusion between the press, certain politicians and the police.  

"It is claimed that truth is the first casualty of war but the same can be said for Hillsborough. Misdirection, obfuscation and damn lies were all used as smokescreens to deflect attention away from the guilty. 

"Today I call for the Prime Minister to make a statement in this House and to apologise for the mistakes that were made and the mishandling of this whole tragedy on behalf of a previous government. I would also ask him to join me in pushing for the full disclosure of the senior police officer and Conservative MP who allegedly leaked the story to the press and to press for a front page banner headline in The Sun newspaper admitting that they lied in April 1989."

Jemima Khan leaves Indie for New Statesman

Jemima Khan, 8 June 2011:

"I am thrilled with the opportunity to be associate editor of the Independent and i. I am a huge fan of both papers and am very excited to be able to work with a talented team of writers and editors."

Jemima Khan, 17 October 2011:

"I am delighted to become a permanent part of the exceptional team at the New Statesman. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Independent but the challenge of a wider role at the New Statesman was too tempting."

Khan of course was hugely successful as guest editor of the New Statesman back in April this year. Her ability to attract guest contributor Hugh Grant gave the New Statesman a real scoop when his account of secretly recording a conversation with News Of The World phone hacker Paul McMullan went viral on social networks.

Now Khan just needs to follow that. No pressure then.

Daily Mail exploits family tragedy to smear BBC

The Daily Mail has raised the stakes in its increasingly desperate attempts to smear the BBC, this time exploiting the death of a 57-year-old family man. The Mail's headline states:

Husband 'kills himself' just hours after BBC claimed wife's shop sold wedding dresses that fall to pieces

It goes on to explain:

"A husband was found dead just hours after the BBC screened an investigation into his family-run business... James Edwards, 57, was discovered in his fume-filled car on a deserted mountainside the day after the TV consumer programme was shown... The couple's business La Belle Bridal Wear was featured on a BBC consumer programme the night before he was found dead... The BBC called at the Edwards' home to demand answers about a series of complaints from customers."

Further down the article, the Mail explains Trading Standards are also investigating the company. It also permitted this quote from the BBC in the penultimate paragraph of the article:

"The X-Ray programme featured a legitimate investigation into Carolyn Edwards' wedding dress business... The programme was not connected in any way to her husband..."

Most importantly, the final paragraph states:

"An inquest has been opened and adjourned pending the results of a police inquiry into Mr Edwards' death."

But despite neither the police enquiry or the official inquest having happened the Mail is clear about who it wants people to blame. 

The best journalist name you'll see today

The Waltham Forest Guardian has a rather wonderfully named gentleman covering the wheelie bin beat:

 
But Mr Binns falls short of all time champion, Roger Boyes, over on the Times:

(Hat tip Hayley Dunlop)

Internet trolls: "Offensive" but good for a follow-up

The Daily Mail brings us news today of reality TV star Chantelle Houghton hitting back at cruel jibes about her weight:

 
The Mail's article tells us:

...the star, who has previously suffered from bulimia, has taken to Twitter to address the offensive comments made by members of the public... She wrote: 'So apparently I'm fat and 'fat birds' shouldn't wear the swimsuit I was wearing..its no wonder young girls end up with eating disorders when people say things like that.'

The Mail doesn't tell us where these "offensive" remarks from the public were made. But you won't be surprised to hear it was 'internet trolls'.

The Mail has previously investigated the horrible trend of 'internet trolls' - those people who use chatrooms and social media sites to cruelly taunt people. And jibes about a person's weight when they have suffered previously with a potentially deadly eating disorder are a pretty vile example.

Fortunately, the Mail has it within its power to do something about these particular trolls, because a little digging reveals the kind of comments Houghton is responding to were posted by Daily Mail readers on a previous Mail article about Houghton:

 
Sadly the comments are still live on the Mail's website.

But at least they got another story out of them.

Compare and contrast

Here's an extract from a news release on the website of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics:

A thousand years ago, a brilliant beacon of light blazed in the sky, shining brightly enough to be seen even in daytime for almost a month. Native American and Chinese observers recorded the eye-catching event. We now know that they witnessed an exploding star, which left behind a gaseous remnant known as the Crab Nebula.

The same object that dazzled skygazers in 1054 C.E. continues to dazzle astronomers today by pumping out radiation at higher energies than anyone expected.

And here's an extract from an article on the Daily Mail website carrying the ubiquitous 'Daily Mail Reporter' byline:

A thousand years ago, a brilliant beacon of light blazed in the sky, shining brightly enough to be seen even in daytime for almost a month.

Native American and Chinese observers recorded the eye-catching event.

What they were witnessing was an exploding star, which left behind a gaseous remnant known as the Crab Nebula.

The same object that dazzled skygazers in 1054 C.E. continues to fascinate astronomers today by pumping out radiation at higher energies than anyone expected.

Of course, cutting and pasting a press release verbatim is nothing new. But on this occasion it did mean the Daily Mail rather unfortunately embraced the inclusion of "C.E" - a date system it recently described as 'absurd political correctness' and afront to Christianity.

After its use of C.E. was pointed out, the Mail quickly, incorrectly, changed it to BC and then changed it yet again to the correct AD. But not before at least one keen-eyed blogger had enjoyed the slip. 

Primal Scream's misplaced "disgust"

As if home secretary Theresa May hasn't been criticised enough for her Tory party conference speech, now rock group Primal Scream have hit out at the use of their song Rocks as she exited the stage.

But it seems it wasn't their song at all.

Primal Scream issued a statement saying:

"Primal Scream are totally disgusted that the Home Secretary Theresa May ended her speech at the Tory party conference with our song Rocks. How inappropriate... Hasn't she listened to the words?"

The last point is a good one. Why would a home secretary, with responsibility for policing in the UK, choose to walk off to a song whose lyrics include:

"Dealers keep dealing
Thieves keep thieving
Whores keep whoring
Junkies keep scoring...

...Ain't no use in praying
That's the way it's staying, baby"

But sadly it seems she didn't. The Independent reports the mix-up is due to similarities with a different song altogether - Bohemian Like You by the Dandy Wharhols - and a number of misleading Tweets which lead the Scottish rockers to react so angrily.

The Independent reports:

"The confusion appears to have begun when Labour MP Kerry McCarthy, tipped off by someone in the hall, wrote on Twitter that the Primal Scream song was used... Tipped off by journalists at the conference who had received confirmation that the offending track was played, the band's management issued the strongly-worded statement from the musicians."

Modern music eh! All sounds the same... even to the people who wrote it, it would seem.

(Update: This blog post initially referenced only Primal Scream's angry statement and not the reports that the wrong song had been played.)

...and it burns, burns, burns...

Sometimes a PR stunt needs to seemingly backfire so badly that it goes all the way around the failometer and starts clocking up considerable positive points. Take the case of the Edinburgh chili eating competition which hospitalised two contestants. This from The Telegraph:

"Curry house owner Abdul Ali admitted that he would have to "tone down" the contest, but said the challenge had raised hundreds of pounds for charity CHAS.

"He added that half of the 20 people who took part in the challenge had dropped out after witnessing the first 10 diners vomiting, collapsing, sweating and panting."

Ah yes, the old "vomiting, collapsing, sweating and panting" publicity stunt - a winner for any restaurant. 

But then consider it's been covered on the BBC and The Telegraph as well as countless other outlets such as The Scotsman - all making reference to the fallen heroes who have tried and failed to tame the Kismot Killer; each article a call to arms to those people thinking "...surely it can't be that hot".

Even those who don't believe a good meal should end in the back of an ambulance, or panting and wheezing on the floor of a restaurant, may be tempted to dine at the periphery of such a spectacle.

It's no wonder perhaps that, The Telegraph reports: 

"...Mr Ali said he felt the competition had gone well."

Never going to tire of this...

Every time there is a new launch from Apple I am minded to repost this classic video from those geniuses of satire over at The Onion. It tells you everything you need to know about the media and consumer appetite for all things Apple... no matter how underwhelming the news: 

The Sun's apology is a 'stunnah'

Reading between the lines of this rather bizzare apology today, The Sun has actually managed to turn the fact it didn't stand up its original story into an endorsement of one of its Page 3 girls by calling into question the notion anybody would have cheated on one of its famous 'stunnahs'.

 The apology follows the agreement of "substantial damages" according to The Guardian.

Mail distances itself from 'catgate'

Home Secretary Theresa May has brought ridicule upon herself by citing the case of an illegal immigrant allowed to remain in the UK to look after his cat. In her speech, May said:

"We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act... The illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because – and I am not making this up – he had a pet cat."

If May had stopped and listened to what she was actually saying she would surely have realised how unlikely this version of events sounds, even for a minister intent on scrapping the Human Rights Act.

And sure enough it was quickly revealed to be a tall tale.

In fact, even the Daily Mail has come out and pointed out May's story is a bit of a dud:

"Catgate was the talk of the Tory party conference today as Theresa May cited the case of an illegal immigrant she claimed could not be deported because of a pet cat... But Mrs May's claims were refuted by a spokeswoman for the Judicial Office... who said the ruling had nothing to do with the cat... Neither the man, nor his cat, were named in the judgment, delivered in December 2008... Today, a spokeswoman for the Judicial Office reissued the statement which it first released two years ago, denying the cat's role in the decision."

So where did this story come from and what gave May the confidence to include it in her conference speech? Funnily enough, May's source may well have been a news story in either the Telegraph or - you guessed it - the Daily Mail, published in 2009:

In the words of FactCheck: "Theresa May appears to have fallen for some classic Daily Mail spin."

But Theresa May isn't the first Conservative to fall for one of the Mail's tall tales in the past week.

Last week, London Mayor Boris Johnson blundered into the midst of a contrived scandal about the BBC allegedly abandoning the use of BC and AD in dates.

Should we be worried our Home Secretary and the Mayor of London are so willing to be taken in by some of the more outlandish stories published in our newspapers?

See also:
More 'dategate' duplicity from the Mail
Mail reported to PCC over 'dategate'
Boris wades in to BBC 'dategate'
Daily Mail admits BBC claims were wrong... but repeats them anyway
The Daily Mail's 'whodunnit' journalism

'Foxy Knoxy' and the rolling news super sleuths

Amanda Knox has been acquitted of murder in Perugia. And now it falls to the great British public to decide who actually committed the crime.

Or at least you could be forgiven for thinking it does, based on the number of media outlets today who have been asking readers and viewers for their 'thoughts' on the story.

How is this going to help?

Have they simply forgotten that the British public's collective crimefighting consciousness tends not to stretch beyond whether somebody 'looks a bit shifty'.

Media circus

Of course the presenters will read out some words of sympathy for the parents of Meredith Kercher, adding that the tragic loss of their daughter has been entirely overshadowed by the media circus surrounding 'Foxy', but that's not really why they open up such stories to the public. They are the media circus and they want to get back to 'Foxy' as quickly as possible.

They want theories. They want cliches. Despite her proven innocence, they want to hear 'there's no smoke without fire' so they can "now go live" to their self-fulfilling prophecy correspondent outside Perugia airport and say "from what we're hearing this morning it sounds as though speculation is going to follow Amanda Knox all the way back to the US".

Do seasoned broadcasters and journalists really think the super-sleuths of suburbia will have this cracked by lunchtime?

Of course not.

"We've just had an email from Terry Smith in Wolverhampton who says he's uncovered some overlooked DNA evidence which proves beyond doubt who actually did it..."

It isn't going to happen.

More likely they will get endless speculation, questions and comments with which to feed the hungry rolling news beast.

Better still, they will be able to rope in some 'experts' to trawl through the public's offerings.

By throwing the question open to the public we learn nothing more than editors need more words to go with their pictures. Their many, many pictures of 'Foxy Knoxy'.

They didn't...? Oh God, they did...

Topical chat show The Wright Stuff on Channel 5 today embarked on a mission through the bottom of the barrell with a hard-hitting studio debate entitled: "Foxy Knoxy: Would Ya?"

The show's website blurb explained:

"So Amanda Knox has been cleared of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher. She's entirely innocent. She's also undeniably fit and loves wild sex. Or did. So if you were a guy who'd met her in a bar and she invited you back to hers, would you go? ...Or would something in your brain make you think twice?"

 
(Hat tips @ChainBear and @markaugustyn)

More 'dategate' duplicity from the Mail

There can surely be no doubt in the newsroom of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday that its claims about a BBC-wide ban on the use of 'BC' and 'AD' with historical dates is simply not true.

But still they persist.

The Mail on Sunday's initial story, last Sunday, actually carried a quote from the BBC confirming that no such guidelines have been issued. And even columnist Melanie Phillips - no stranger to a ludicrous distortion if it helps enforce one of the Mail's well-established prejudices - as good as admitted the story wasn't true.

The Mail has since been reported to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) for the way in which it continued to peddle a story that was clearly wrong.

Then on Friday, the BBC's head of religion & ethics further clarified:

"We have issued no editorial guidelines or instructions to suggest that anyone in the BBC should change the terms they use. The BBC, like most people, use BC and AD as standard terminology. But we recognise that it is possible to use different terminology, and that some people do: that is what is reflected on our Religion website. Even though we told the newspaper this, they ran the story anyway."

Yet today we read this from the Mail on Sunday:

"The Government last night moved to safeguard BC and AD after The Mail on Sunday revealed they were under threat because they were considered offensive to non-Christians. Last week this newspaper reported that the BBC had replaced Anno Domini (the Year of our Lord) and Before Christ with the obscure terms Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE)..."

It seems the Mail has absolutely no interest in reporting the truth regarding this story and no shame about its willingness to continue encouraging readers to believe a story which it knows to be untrue.

Having fooled London Mayor Boris Johnson (which probably ranks in difficulty alongside fooling a dog by pretending to throw a stick) the Mail is clearly aware the story doesn't have to be true in order for people to believe it.