The Media Blog

Vote for your Media Hero and Villain of 2011

It's time again to vote for your Media Hero and Media Villain of the Year and the nominations, all made by Media Blog readers have been totally dominated by just one story - phone hacking. Read on to find out who the nominees are and to place you votes.

Nominated for Media Hero Of The Year are:

Nick Davies: The Guardian journalist was nominated for this award in 2009 when he originally began to lift the lid on phone hacking at the News Of The World. Since then he was worked tirelessly to expose scandal after scandal at News International.

Hugh Grant: Not only did an extraordinary New Statesman article by Grant do much to raise the public profile of the phone hacking scandal, but his star turn at the Leveson Inquiry was also lauded as the actor's best performance to date.

Tom Watson MP: Watson lost a few admirers with a poorly judged soundbite the last time he locked horns with James Murdoch but there is no denying his tireless campaigning to make the Murdochs answerable for phone hacking and corruption.

 
Nominated for Media Villain Of The Year:

Rebekah Brooks: Vilified by the public and arrested by the police, Brooks left Wapping with a very nice severance package while many staff were left jobless by the gross mismanagement at the News Of The World.    

James Murdoch: Murdoch's apparent ignorance regarding the level of corruption within News International has left commentators and critics either baffled or cynical - how could a CEO be so ignorant of such corruption?  

Rupert Murdoch: Many believe the buck stops at Rupert Murdoch's door for phone hacking and the corruption within the News Of The World that has thrust the ethics of the whole newspaper industry into the spotlight.

 

Some of Sepp Blatter's best friends are black

FIFA president Sepp Blatter has sparked anger by appearing to suggest footballers who are racially abused should rise above it, shake hands and accept it's just part of the game.

The backlash against Blatter's words has caused FIFA to issue a statement denying their president is complacent or in any way condoning of racism. Their choice of image appears to owe much to the "Some of my best friends are black" school of Public Relations:

Beyond the choice of accompanying picture, the statement drafted by, or perhaps more likely on behalf of Blatter does little to clear things up:

"My comments have been misunderstood. What I wanted to express is that, as football players, during a match, you have "battles" with your opponents, and sometimes things are done which are wrong. But, normally, at the end of the match, you apologise to your opponent if you had a confrontation during the match, you shake hands, and when the game is over, it is over."

So he is saying that racial abuse that happens during the game should be forgiven if the offending racist offers a handshake at the final whistle. Glad he cleared that up. 

Interestingly, the Daily Mail has joined in the chorus of criticism for Blatter, despite publishing an article last month in which writer Steve Doughty made it clear he does believe victims of racism should "put up with it and get on with the game".

Fast Show: Sneak preview...

Not content with bringing back Alan Partridge, Foster's are about to unleash a whole new series of The Fast Show on the internet. They've just sent through these two sneak preview clips ahead of the first episode going live at 1pm, Thursday 10 November:

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.

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."

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.

Thames Water's backfiring PR

A press release from Thames Water today blames women for wasting 50 billion litres of water by shaving their legs in the shower.

"A third of UK women leave the shower running while shaving their legs, wasting around 50bn litres of water a year – enough to supply London for 25 days, according to research published today."

So far the story's been picked up by the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, suggesting the PR team at Thames Water may have picked the right angle to lead with (despite the same release claiming that a far more significant 120 billion more litres of water are apparently wasted by people leaving the tap running while brushing their teeth).

It probably helped of course that the Daily Mail is incapable of passing up an opportunity to use a picture of a model in the shower.

However, as PR exercises go, it seems to be backfiring, not just because of its clumsy singling out of women but also because such finger-pointing rather invites a comparison with the amount of water Thames Water itself wastes through leakage across its network. Here is that comparison:

Daily water wastage (litres)

 
The Guardian is leading the charge in taking Thames Water to task.

Badminton girls offered up to media

Badminton School has once again offered up its more 'media friendly' girls to newspapers looking for photos of happy female A Level students.

The Media Blog happened upon an email from the £9,000-per-term public school this week which promises the girls on offer "speak extremely well and take a good picture". We can assume this latter point is not a comment upon their camera skills.

An extract of that email reads:

"Please find enclosed a draft release regarding A Levels. We obviously won't have the figures until Thursday but you are very warmly invited to come to Badminton... to interview, take shots and film as we have lots of girls coming in that day including the three below who would make very good case studies - they speak extremely well and take a good picture..."

There then followed some pen portraits of three teenage girls, one of which began:

"I have a fabulous case study of a girl... who sadly lost her mother to breast cancer..."

It's worth remembering the purpose of such publicity stunts is not really to champion these students, whatever their personal tales of bravery and high-achievement, it is ultimately to attract more fee-paying parents to the school by showcasing its academic results in a way which will court the most media attention. Also attached to the email were some photos showing what the girls might look like celebrating their A Level results, inlcuding the obligatory, 'girls jumping in the air' shot:

 

Repeat after us "I welcome Google's commitment to defending Android..."

Following news today that Google had splashed $12.5bn to buy handset manufacturer Motorola Mobility the search giant issued four quotes for the media on behalf of its other handset partners, HTC, LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. They couldn't have been more uncannily on-message if Google had written their quotes for them... 

Psst! Mr journalist... you wanna see some pretty girls?

On 18th August you can be sure the media will be full of wall-to-wall pictures of pretty 18-year-old girls collecting their A-level results. But if you thought these shots owed anything to chance, or more likely journalists doing the legwork to find the prettier female students themselves, think again. The FT reveals an even more unsavoury practice today as it seems the marketing of some of England's fee paying schools stretches to pimping out their girls to secure coverage. The paper's Chris Cook writes:

"Last year, I received an unsolicited voicemail from the press liaison at Badminton School in Bristol...'wanting to give ...some details of some absolutely beyootiful girls we've got here who are getting their A-level results tomorrow'..."

Meanwhile Cook adds that "Bedales School in Hampshire... supplies photos..."

But there is worse:

"Most alarmingly, another (very grand) private school invited the FT... to an end-of-year sports event [and] said that watching the girls playing sports would have given ...a unique opportunity to pick out promising candidates for A-level day pictures."

Ghosts, sharks, rude captions and THAT Diana story... it's June's top 10 posts

1. Telegraph picture editor has Sixth Sense
A ghostly visitor to Wimbledon, or just a bad case of reusing old pictures...?

2. It's what she would have wanted...right?
Newsweek in the US explores news depths of creepiness with this Princess Diana special

3. What do Johann Hari and Britney Spears have in common?
Independent journo caught lifting quotes from other sources... plagiarism or 'lip-synching'?

4. Enough for a whole football team
Ryan Giggs owned the front page of the Daily Star throughout June

5. And now, in other news...
A very unfortunate caption on BBC News...

6. Rihanna or the Queen: Who does the Daily Mail prefer?
Surely they wouldn't put pop stars before royalty, would they...?

7. If anyone knows the words to describe this, it's Gordon Ramsay...
If it looks like a turkey, and it sounds like a turkey... it's probably the chef's big screen debut

8. Infographic: An internet minute
Look at everything that happens every 60 seconds online...

9. The truth behind BBC 'doughnutgate'
Krispy Kontroversy...

10. SHAAARKK!
One of the year's most predictable stories returns to UK waters...

 

The truth behind BBC 'doughnutgate'

The Daily Mail has taken the BBC to task for an item on Radio 4's You And Yours which featured an interview with the boss of Krispy Kremes.

The Mail story is based around "complaints from listeners" lodged with the Beeb about the apparently friendly nature of the interview:

"...listeners have accused Radio 4's You and Yours of broadcasting a 'six-minute advert' for Krispy Kreme doughnuts... Listeners claimed there was a lack of penetrating questions, saying that it was only in the final two minutes of the interview that issues such as health and obesity were raised."

Should you be interested, The Media Blog has been told by the BBC's press office that it was "flooded with 13 complaints" following the programme. That's 13 complaints - or 0.0008 per cent of the 1.6 million who listened. (The BBC addressed these complaints itself on Feedback... which may have been what tipped off the Mail.)

I've listened to the interview. It wasn't Frost/Nixon that's for sure (but then it was about doughnuts) and the negative aspects of the doughnut trade were covered and surely a six-minute interview, spent in its entirety blaming the world's ever-expanding waistband on Krispy Kreme alone would have been no more even-handed. But anyway, the Mail's stance on this issue is all the more interesting in light of two recent articles from its own pages, which no doubt went down very well with the marketing team at Krispy Kreme:

So, that's a new Krisy Kreme store open now at Cardiff's St David's Centre. Get along there now. Hurry, don't delay. And then there was this catchy headline:

Mmmmm doughnuts.

(Hat tip @Jemstone) 

Angry Birds: LIVE!

Those crazy cats at T-Mobile have done it again. This time the latest video 'viral' features Angry Birds (the world's most popular mobile phone app, dontcha know) live.

That's right, I said Angry Birds, LIVE!

'Banned' Imogen Thomas ad gets free run on the Guardian

A number of newspapers have apparently declined to run this tasteful little ad (right), from bookmakers Paddy Power.

That is no doubt great news for Paddy Power.

Because while a good advert can help a company raise its profile quite considerably an advert that gets 'banned' works so much better. After all, not only has the Guardian run the full advert online today but Paddy Power didn't even have to pay them*.

Paddy Power clearly weren't about to point this out.

Speaking to the Guardian, a spokesman did a good job of pretending this exposure was somehow inconvenient.

"When an ad gets pulled at the last minute it's all hands on deck," he guffawed added.

 
(*Yes, we know we've run the advert too.)

Times takes Royal Wedding cover crown

Naturally every newspaper has gone with the royal wedding on its front page today - there's just no getting away from it -and most have predictably gone with exactly the same image, give or take a millisecond here and there.

Each have embellished the image to a lesser or greater extent - a weak pun on The Sun versus the pristine front page of the Mail (while The Mirror weaves in the unfortunate bridesmaid who has become an overnight web sensation). But ultimately this safest of choices - exactly the same image their editorial predecessors would have gone for in happier, less competitive times for their business - shows the newspaper industry's collective preference for not straying too far from the crowd or historic precedent:   

              

The Telegraph, FT and Guardian have also toed the line, with the Guardian even using the 'sealed with a kiss' headline that it shares with the Express:

             

Which leaves The Independent and The Times fighting it out to be the best of the bunch. The Independent, as is its wont, has certainly dared to be different with its 'cut out and throw away keep' Tracey Emin scribble (still depicting that kiss). But the less said about this aberration the better:

So it falls to The Times to win, hands down, the battle of today's royal wedding front pages. It has focussed on the Austin Powers moment when William and Kate departed Buckingham Palace. Even many of those who tried to avoid the big event, have grudgingly admitted this was a nice, lighthearted touch and it certainly helped the event stand out from the more tedious pomp and ceremony of the day and tiresome discussion of the dress which could have marked any such event in any era. 

Many commentators, and the Clarence House PR machine, have laboured hard to brand the royal couple "progressive", "modern", "fun" but The Times is the only paper to have reflected any of these apparently noteable traits on its wraparound cover:  

How did it come to this...?

From cult movie star to cameo in a Boris Johnson photocall. Still, once you've posed for the cameras in one profession it's very much like riding bike...

 

It's Radiohead v The Guardian

No sooner had Radiohead announced they were launching a newspaper than the Guardian responded - by releasing a record; a cover version no less of the Radiohead song Creep, featuring Alan 'Crazy Fingers' Rusbridger on keyboards... and a banjo player, just like the original.

 Anything you can do... Rusbridger (left) and Thom Yorke (right)  

Now, I think I probably want to read Radiohead's newspaper about as much as I want to listen to the Guardian's music, so we'll call it a dead-heat in the one-upmanship stakes.

However, as publicity stunts go it's a nice touch. So if you feel inclined, you can listen to it here.

Childish press release of the day

It was inevitable that events in Japan would reopen debates about the safety of nuclear energy - even before anybody fully knows what the risks and outcomes will be from the ongoing issues in Fukushima.

But that last detail certainly didn't stop a group of anti-nuclear campaigners, calling themselves the Sun Day Campaign, from issuing a press release headlined:

JAPANESE NUCLEAR ACCIDENT – WE TOLD YOU SO

The shouty capital letters were their own, as was the dispensing with time-honoured traditions of 'hating to say I told you so' (without yet having clear justification for such tasteless self-congratulation).

The release was forwarded to the Media Blog by one unimpressed energy journalist who toils in the hope that debate in his industry may one day mature beyond childish point-scoring.

...oh and they also spelled 'Chernobyl' wrong. Durrr!!

Interestingly, according to its press release, the Sun Day Campaign has been "telling us so" since before Chornobyl [sic]. It also tells us it was founded in 1993 - seven years after Chernobyl.

It must be very easy to have such a "told you so" attitude when you're armed with a time machine.

Churnalists beware...

The Media Standards Trust has launched a website aimed at highlighting instances of 'churnalism' - a phrase made popular Nick Davies, author of Flat Earth News, which refers to the tendancy among some journalists to cut and paste content from press releases with minimal 'topping and tailing' and little effort to seek independent comment or challenge claims therein. 

Called, appropriately enough, Churnalism.com the website will enable visitors to check press releases against more than three million news articles, from national newspapers and the websites of major broadcasters. 

Of course, it should be stressed at this point that information has pretty much been taken verbatim from the Media Standards Trust press release. Irony is alive and well.

Visitors to the non-profit website will also apparently be able to see the percentage of any press release cut and pasted into news articles as well as tagging examples of 'churn' for others to see, thus creating a database of 'churnalism', and sharing them via Twitter and Facebook. 

Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust said (in a press release emailed to The Media Blog, just to be transparent about just how little thought, research and effort went into this post):

"News organisations can now be much more transparent about the sources of their articles, but most of them still aren't. Hiding the connection between PR and news is not in the interests of the public.

"Hopefully churnalism.com will nudge them to be more open about their use of PR material."

"Maybe churnalism.com will also encourage more original journalism. Exposing unoriginal churn may help slow the steep decline in the amount of original reporting that we've seen in the last few years."