Obsolete

Labels: "Sachsgate", abuses by tabloids, Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, football, John Terry, libel, media analysis, morality

According to Platell, rather than this being a tragic accident, it's instead indicative "of the lives of many middle-class young women". Variously, her death seems to have been down to the following facts: firstly, that she was middle class, and therefore should have known better than to have been taking part in such working class pursuits as going on a skiing holiday and drinking whilst on it; secondly, that her friends abandoned her when she decided to go back to where she was staying on her own, therefore it's their fault too; and finally, that it's actually neither her own fault nor her friends' fault, but rather the fault of equality:


Sadly, in a world where women have fought for generations for equality, where they insist on their independence, where drunkenness and debauchery are actively encouraged, you can’t really blame a young man for failing to act chivalrously.

Yes, Rachel’s death was tragedy — but it was an accident waiting to happen.

There you are then girls - you weren't fighting for equal rights, you were in fact fighting for the right to die alone in a freezing river, because Amanda Platell says so.

Labels: abuses by tabloids, Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, intruding into grief, Paul Dacre, privacy, tabloid mendacity

Labels: abuses by tabloids, Baby P, banality of evil, Daily Mail-watch, Lord Laming, moral panics, Scum-watch, social services, social workers, Sun-watch

Labels: crime, crime policies, Daily Mail-watch, Kirk Reid, Mail-watch, Peter Bacon, rape, tabloid analysis

Labels: Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, tabloid analysis, tabloid mendacity

£706,000, an apology from the Met and Colin Stagg is still bitter

Inside were books on witchcraft, an altar and a black-painted wall decorated with chalk drawings of horned gods. Pictures from pornographic magazines adorned other walls. Books on the occult are still on the shelves, but a 50-inch plasma TV now dominates the living room and a new flameeffect fire adds a homely touch.

Stockier now than when he was arrested, Stagg added: ‘I never want to talk about the case again as long as I live.’

He is not quite as media-shy as he claims, however. He wrote a book about his experiences, has given interviews for cash - and has just spent months with a BBC film crew. But his girlfriend - for whom he has bought a new patio, and lavished presents on her children - insisted to the Daily Mail yesterday: ‘Colin just wants to get on with his life like a normal Joe Public.’

Miss Marchant confirmed that Stagg retained his interest in the occult, ‘but not in an evil way’ and said he was an extremely intelligent self-taught individual who ‘flies through the Times crossword’, but at heart is just ‘a normal regular guy’.

He probably watched her for a little while.

Almost certainly, he would have walked towards her at first, just to check her face. Maybe he even smiled.

This was the way Robert Napper stalked his prey before turning back to pounce on them from behind, usually with a knife at their throat.

Sometimes, in the dark, he would spy on them for hours in what they assumed was the privacy of their homes.

But here on Wimbledon Common, he selected his victim in the full glare of a summer day. Rachel Nickell was 23, blonde and beautiful, an ex-model and devoted young mother.

During his first 10 years of life, he witnessed brutal violence meted out by his father, Brian, against his mother, Pauline. Such was the trauma suffered by Napper and his siblings that when the couple divorced, all four children were placed in foster care and underwent psychiatric treatment.

It seems Napper suffered more than his siblings, undergoing treatment for six years at the Maudsley hospital. As he reached puberty, he was psychologically damaged further when a family friend assaulted him on a camping holiday. He was 12 years old.

The story of how one of Britain’s biggest murder inquiries descended into a disgraceful shambles which wrecked reputations starts on Wimbledon Common shortly after 10.30am on July 15, 1992, when Rachel Nickell’s body was found by a passer-by.

it is certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility that he was indeed innocent.

Their misguided ‘obsession’ with Stagg was compounded by what one senior legal figure described yesterday as the ‘mesmerising’ influence of Paul Britton, the controversial forensic psychologist who compiled a profile of Rachel’s likely killer.

Senior officers were forced to make an unprecedented public apology to Stagg, currently enjoying a £706,000 compensation payout.

Astonishingly, there was no such apology to Rachel’s family - even though detectives were compelled to admit that had Napper been apprehended back in 1989, Rachel need not have died.

“I do feel sorry for him. He has paid a terrible price for a man found not guilty of murder.”

Reclusive Andre, 46, moved with Alex to a remote Mediterranean town to rebuild their lives — keeping their past a secret from locals.

Ripper loved to butcher blonde mothers in front of their children

And the question The Sun asks today is this: Can it be right that a man who has so savagely taken the lives of others is allowed to live such a cosy life himself?

Common decency demands that the way our justice system treats him reflects his crimes.

Labels: abuses by tabloids, Colin Stagg, Daily Mail-watch, Keith Pedder, Mail-watch, media analysis, media reporting, miscarriages of justice, Rachel Nickell, Robert Napper, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

The next loss is your anonymity. Your life is trampled on by the media. You are gawked at in supermarkets. You are avoided by so-called friends who think some bad luck will rub off on them.

...

You become ever more wary of strangers. You reveal nothing because they might be media or have contacts with the media. Copies of your phone bills are obtained and friends abroad ring up to try to discover where your grandson lives.

...

Every day Rachel's name is mentioned, her photograph published or her home videos shown, everything comes flooding back.

Callous, mercenary and unfeeling scum ... you've got people on your doorstep every day, people following you around in cars taking pictures of you, people peeping over fences and Rachel's face appearing in the paper every day with any tenuous link ... it's one of those stories that's become part of British culture."

Labels: abuses by tabloids, Barri White, Colin Stagg, Daily Mail-watch, Mail-watch, media reporting, miscarriages of justice, Paul Britton, Rachel Nickell, Robert Napper, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

The Producer also telephoned Andrew Sachs. Their accounts of what each took from the conversation differ and Mr Sachs believes it may have taken place on Wednesday afternoon rather than Thursday, although the time difference does not appear material and on either account no proper consent was obtained such as to justify transmission of the material in question.

The Producer said the conversation was cordial. He asked whether Mr Sachs had heard the messages and Mr Sachs said that he had, adding words to the effect of ‘they’re a bit wild, aren’t they’. The Producer asked whether the programme could use the recordings and he recalls Mr Sachs saying ‘Yes, as long as you tone it down a bit’, or words to that effect.

The Producer said there was then a discussion about Mr Sachs appearing on a future edition of the programme and the conversation ended amicably with the Producer agreeing to contact him again about a date for his appearance.

Andrew Sachs, for his part, confirmed that the Producer sought his consent but says he demurred. He recognised, however, that he did not do so in strong terms and he agreed that he said that the content needed toning down. He added that he would have reacted more strongly had he heard everything that had been said on the programme.

Mr Sachs also agreed that the conversation went on to discuss his possible future appearance on the programme which by now he knew had been pre-recorded that week. Mr Sachs understood this future appearance was to be instead of using the material which had already been recorded.

Mr Sachs was prepared to accept that it was possible the Producer had taken away the view that his consent had been obtained and that the future appearance was in addition to the transmission of the existing material, but in his view that would, at best, have been ‘wishful thinking’.

The Producer did not check what Mr Sachs had actually heard on his voicemail, made no record of his conversation with Mr Sachs and no file note was made afterwards. Even if one accepts the Producer’s account, it remains clear that no proper consent was obtained. Consent in these circumstances would depend on ensuring that Mr Sachs was properly aware of what the programme intended to say about him and his family and what was to be edited out in order to tone it down. Nor could Mr Sachs consent on behalf of his grand-daughter whose separate consent would also be required. However, other than a voicemail that Russell Brand is said to have left for Ms Baillie, no steps appear to have been taken to obtain informed consent from Ms Baillie.

The complainant wrote an email to the Director-General on 6 May 2008 via the BBC Complaints website. In the email he outlined his complaint against the previous Friday evening’s Friday Night with Jonathan Ross show requesting that he wanted an “absolute assurance” that Jonathan Ross would be taken off air after his “foul mouth outbursts” to two of his guests. The complainant believed the use of such language was a result of “a BBC run by trendy left wing liberals” of which, he said, Mr Ross was one. He closed his email by stating:

“You have disgusted me and I suspect just about every English person.”

Labels: "Sachsgate", Andrew Sachs, BBC, BBC bashing, Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, Georgina Baillie, Jonathan Ross, media coverage, media hysteria, Russell Brand

Labels: comments, Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, Mail-watch

Hugh Cudlipp’s “Publish and Be Damned”, and Arthur Christiansen’s “Headlines All My Life” were my much-thumbed bibles. All those glorious memoirs by James Cameron, that brilliant reporter, were my text books.

I am, however, delighted, over the years, to have made my own small contribution to the chattering classes’ dyspepsia with the Rothermere press – but then no day is too busy or too short not to find time to tweak the noses of the liberalocracy which effectively run Britain.



At university, I edited the student newspaper. I’m afraid I took a product that looked like the then Times on Prozac and turned it into a raucous version of Cudlipp’s Mirror complete, I shudder to admit, with Page 3 girl students whom I dubbed “Leeds Lovelies”. 

We mounted an undercover investigation, complete with photographers, into seemingly respectable pubs that were putting on strip shows. Family entertainment it wasn’t.

So what was the editorial formula identified originally by the brilliant Scottish editor John Gordon and followed with ruthless will by John Junor? Firstly, the paper never, ever, forgot who its readers were and what interested them and their families. Secondly, it told everything through the prism of people. 

Page 3 of the Sunday Express said it all. The lead article under the title “Meeting People” was an interview - not with the kind of half-baked trollop who passes as a celebrity these days, but with, say, the mother of a newly chosen British Nobel Prize winner.

 Next to it was a large cartoon by Giles whose genius for clean, gloriously warm family humour is matched today only by the Mail’s magnificent Mac. Why this genre of cartooning - which combines superb draftsmanship with a timeless universal humour that often contains great truths - is dying out is a subject for another speech. Anyway, underneath was the “You the Lawyer” column addressing the problems of every day life such as fencing disputes and dog bites. What paper today would have such a low-key, non-newsy page 3. Yet all human life was on that page.

Donning my hat as Chairman of the PCC’s Editors’ Code Committee, I would like to talk to you a little about where we are on regulation and press freedom issues. 

About 18 months ago, I, Les Hinton of News International and Murdoch MacLennan of the Telegraph, had dinner with the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

Thirdly, there were the very serious financial implications for newspapers of the Conditional Fee Arrangement, the no win, no fee legislation. Introduced as a well-intentioned measure to help the poor have access to the courts, it was being ruthlessly exploited by unscrupulous lawyers who were ramping up their costs in media cases. Publishers were being faced with huge bills, sometimes running into millions, to defend even the most simple, clear-cut cases.

 Costs in CFA cases, as many of you here know, can be almost infinite with lawyers entitled to “success fees” of up to 100% on top of their actual bills. This gives them a positive financial incentive to take relatively straight-forward cases, worth just a few thousand pounds, and run them as long as possible. Adding insult to injury, CFA claimants can take out very expensive ATE (after the event) insurance policies to protect themselves against costs. If they win, the paper has to pay the claimant’s premium, but if they lose - and this is the cynicism of it all – the insurer rarely enforces the charges because the claimant invariably cannot afford to pay. 



Let me give you an example: Martyn Jones, an utterly inconsequential MP, sued the Mail on Sunday over their claim that he had sworn at a Commons official. The Mail on Sunday believed it had rock-solid witnesses and decided to fight the case. In the event, they lost and were ordered to pay £5,000 in damages. The MP’s lawyers claimed costs of £388,000 – solicitor’s costs of £68,000, plus 100% success fees, barrister’s costs of £63,000, plus 100% success fees, VAT and libel insurance of £68,000. Associated’s costs were £136,000 making a total of £520,000 costs in a case that awarded damages of just £5,000 in a dispute over a simple matter of fact.

 Can it really be right for a QC in a libel case to be paid £7,000 for a day in court whilst the same QC, prosecuting or defending a serious case at the Old Bailey, may receive less than £600 a day – less than a tenth?

The result is that today, newspapers – even wealthy ones like the Mail – think long and hard before contesting actions, even if they know they are in the right, for fear of the ruinous financial implications. For the provincial and local press, such actions are now out of the question. Instead, they stump up some cash, money they can’t afford, to settle as quickly as possible, to avoid court actions – which, if they were to lose, could, in some case, close them. Some justice!



The fourth issue we raised with Gordon Brown was a truly frightening amendment to the Data Protection Act, winding its way through Parliament, under which journalists faced being jailed for two years for illicitly obtaining personal information such as ex-directory telephone numbers or an individual’s gas bills or medical records. This legislation would have made Britain the only country in the free world to jail journalists and could have had a considerable chilling effect on good journalism.

 The Prime Minister – I don’t think it is breaking confidences to reveal – was hugely sympathetic to the industry’s case and promised to do what he could to help.

 Over the coming months and battles ahead, Mr Brown was totally true to his word. Whatever our individual newspapers’ views are of the Prime Minister – and the Mail is pretty tough on him - we should, as an industry, acknowledge that, to date, he has been a great friend of press freedom. 



Thirdly, there is to be action on the “scandalous” greed of CFA lawyers. That adjective is not mine, by the way, but Justice Minister’s Jack Straw’s in a recent speech on the subject. For following Number 10’s intervention all those months ago, there have been many constructive meetings between the industry and the Ministry of Justice on what to do about CFA.

A few weeks ago, I, Rebekah Wade and Murdoch MacLennan saw Jack Straw who assured us that, in the next few months, he is set to unveil proposals to reform CFA, including capping lawyers’ fees.

...

It was agreed that the Data Protection Act should be amended so that journalists would have the right to seek out protected information if they had a “reasonable belief” that their actions were in the public interest.

 And, more pertinently, the Act was amended so that the jailing clause cannot now be implemented unless the Secretary of State seeks approval from Parliament to activate it.



So that is where we are. The industry has been warned. We must make sure our house in order. Under the auspices of PressBoF, we have produced a guidance note on DPA that has been sent to every paper in Britain. Now it is up to all of us to ensure that our journalists are complying with the Act. At Associated, we are holding seminars on the subject and have written compliance with the Act into our employment contracts. 

At the Editors Code Committee, we are considering whether the current provisions of the Code on data protection and our Guidance Notes, as well as the wording in the Editor’s Codebook, can be strengthened.

But there is one remaining threat to press freedom that I suspect may prove far more dangerous to our industry than all the issues I have just discussed.

 Put to one side the United Nations’ recent attack on Britain’s disgracefully repressive libel laws that have made London the libel capital of the world – something that should be a bitter source of shame for our judicial system. Concentrate instead on how inexorably, and insidiously, the British Press is having a privacy law imposed on it, which – apart from allowing the corrupt and the crooked to sleep easily in their beds – is, I would argue, undermining the ability of mass-circulation newspapers to sell newspapers in an ever more difficult market.



This law is not coming from Parliament – no, that would smack of democracy – but from the arrogant and amoral judgements – words I use very deliberately – of one man. 

I am referring, of course, to Justice David Eady who has, again and again, under the privacy clause of the Human Rights Act, found against newspapers and their age-old freedom to expose the moral shortcomings of those in high places. 



Two cases in particular underline this threat. 

Two years ago, Justice Eady ruled that a cuckolded husband couldn’t sell his story to the press about another married man – a wealthy sporting celebrity – who had seduced his wife. 

The judge was worried about the effect of the revelations on the celebrity’s wife. Now I agree that any distress caused to innocent parties is regrettable but exactly the same worries could be expressed about the relatives of any individual who transgressed which, if followed to its logical conclusion, would mean that nobody could be condemned for wrongdoing. 

But the judge – in an unashamed reversal of centuries of moral and social thinking – placed the rights of the adulterer above society’s age-old belief that adultery should be condemned.

Recently, of course, the very same Justice Eady effectively ruled that it’s perfectly acceptable for the multi-millionaire head of a multi-billion sport that is followed by countless young people to pay five women £2,500 to take part in acts of unimaginable sexual depravity with him. 

The judge found for Max Mosley because he had not engaged in a “sick Nazi orgy” as the News of the World contested, though for the life of me that seems an almost surreally pedantic logic as some of the participants were dressed in military-style uniform. Mosley was issuing commands in German while one prostitute pretended to pick lice from his hair, a second fellated him and a third caned his backside until blood was drawn. 



Now most people would consider such activities to be perverted, depraved, the very abrogation of civilised behaviour of which the law is supposed to be the safeguard. Not Justice Eady. To him such behaviour was merely “unconventional”. 

Nor in his mind was there anything wrong in a man of such wealth using his money to exploit women in this way. Would he feel the same way, I wonder, if one of those women had been his wife or daughter? 

But what is most worrying about Justice Eady’s decisions is that he is ruling that - when it comes to morality - the law in Britain is now effectively neutral, which is why I accuse him, in his judgments, of being “amoral".

In the sporting celebrity case, he rejected the idea that adultery was a proper cause for public condemnation. 

Instead, he declared that because family breakdown was now commonplace, there was a strong argument for “not holding forth about adultery” or, in other words, attaching no greater inherent worth to marriage than to any other lifestyle choice. 

Thus no moral delineation was to be made between marriage and those who would destroy it, between victim and victimiser, between right and wrong.



In the Mosley case, the judge is ruling that there is no public interest in revealing a public figure’s involvement in acts of depravity.

 What the judge loftily calls the “new rights-based jurisprudence” of the Human Rights Act seems to be ruling out any such thing as public standards of morality and decency, and the right of newspapers to report on digressions from those standards.

But most worrying is that when it comes to suppressing media freedom, the good Justice Eady is seemingly ubiquitous.... 

It was he who was going to preside in Tesco’s libel case against the Guardian, which was, in the event, recently settled out of court. 

It was the same Justice Eady who, in Lord Browne versus the Mail on Sunday, ruled that BP’s shareholders had the right to know that Browne had lied to the court – but did not have the right to know details of his conversations with his boyfriend, despite the paper’s case that they had serious public-interest implications. 

Again, it was Eady who found in favour of a Canadian folk singer called Loreena McKennitt, who had objected to the publication of a book about her by a former adviser, Niema Ash. Ms McKennitt did not claim that the book was in any way untrue, merely that it infringed her right to privacy. Never mind Ms Ash’s right to freedom of expression.

English Common Law is the collective wisdom of many different judges over the ages. The freedom of the press, I would argue, is far too important to be left to the somewhat desiccated values of a single judge who clearly has an animus against the popular press and the right of people to freedom of expression.

I personally would rather have never heard of Max Mosley and the squalid purgatory he inhabits. It is the others I care about: the crooks, the liars, the cheats, the rich and the corrupt sheltering behind a law of privacy being created by an unaccountable judge. 

If Gordon Brown wanted to force a privacy law, he would have to set out a bill, arguing his case in both Houses of Parliament, withstand public scrutiny and win a series of votes. Now, thanks to the wretched Human Rights Act, one Judge with a subjective and highly relativist moral sense can do the same with a stroke of his pen. 



All this has huge implications for newspapers and, I would argue, for society. Since time immemorial public shaming has been a vital element in defending the parameters of what are considered acceptable standards of social behaviour, helping ensure that citizens – rich and poor – adhere to them for the good of the greater community. For hundreds of years, the press has played a role in that process. It has the freedom to identify those who have offended public standards of decency – the very standards its readers believe in – and hold the transgressors up to public condemnation. If their readers don’t agree with the defence of such values, they would not buy those papers in such huge numbers.



Put another way, if mass-circulation newspapers, which, of course, also devote considerable space to reporting and analysis of public affairs, don’t have the freedom to write about scandal, I doubt whether they will retain their mass circulations with the obvious worrying implications for the democratic process.



Now some revile a moralising media. Others, such as myself, believe it is the duty of the media to take an ethical stand.

Why does not half an hour go by that the high priests of the subsidariat, the BBC, can’t resist a snide reference to the popular press, again blissfully oblivious that all too often they are following agendas set by those very popular newspapers whose readers pay their salaries.

Again, blissfully oblivious to the need for self-criticism of their own papers – the sine qua non of such pages is, by and large, that the liberal media can do little wrong while the large-circulation press is invariably scurrilous, malign and beyond all salvation. 

There was, of course, that recent book that savaged the behaviour of virtually every national newspaper. The book, which began with a presumption of guilt, was itself a pretty sloppy piece of journalism, full of half-truths, anonymous sources, gossip and urban myths presented as facts, and the very selective reporting that it accused papers of employing. And heaven forbid that its author should have observed the basic journalistic nicety of checking those facts with the parties concerned.



Fair enough. Newspapers should be constantly criticised. If you dish it, you should take it with bells on. The problem, I would argue tonight, is that this unrelenting and corrosive drip, drip, drip of criticism of the press does huge harm to our standing in the eyes of the politicians, the regulators, the judges, the public and, most pertinently, I suspect, to newspaper sales.

 In good times, such a poisoning of the well is unhelpful, to say the least. Today, with large parts of our industry fighting to stay alive, it is damnably, unforgivably and depressingly damaging. 

I am not a Jeremiah. I passionately believe that Britain has the best newspapers in the world and – indeed, our papers today are as good as they’ve ever been. Nostalgia be damned.

Labels: abuses by tabloids, bullshit, Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, fisks, human rights act, hypocrisy, libel, Max Mosley, media analysis, media coverage, Mr Justice Eady, Paul Dacre, privacy law, tabloids

Credit: Beau Bo D'or

POPULAR Radio 2 boss Lesley Douglas is the first person at the BBC to emerge with any dignity from the Russell Brand-Jonathan Ross debacle. But her head should not have rolled.

It was down to the production staff who let the filth be broadcast to fall on their swords or for Mark Thompson to fire them.

Instead, a talented senior executive whose only fault was that it happened “on her watch” felt compelled to take the blame for the whole sorry bunch of them.

A brilliant 23-year career at the BBC was thus ended by the disgusting stupidity of two highly-paid stars, only one of whom also chose to do the decent thing.

...

But many will question whether he was right to accept Ms Douglas’ resignation.

...

One thing is certain. Ross owes Ms Douglas an enormous debt for deflecting rather greater flak.

Labels: "Sachsgate", Andrew Sachs, BBC, BBC bashing, Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, Georgina Baillie, Jack Straw, Jonathan Ross, media coverage, media hysteria, Russell Brand, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

Labels: "Sachsgate", Andrew Sachs, BBC, BBC bashing, Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, Georgina Baillie, Jack Straw, Jonathan Ross, media coverage, media hysteria, Russell Brand, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

Labels: "Sachsgate", Andrew Sachs, BBC, BBC bashing, Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, Georgina Baillie, Jonathan Ross, media coverage, media hysteria, Russell Brand

Labels: Andrew Sachs, BBC, BBC bashing, Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, Jonathan Ross, media coverage, media hysteria, Russell Brand

With their accents, they seek to convey an unconvincing matey-ness. Ed (it is rarely Edward) speaks in a strangulated Mockney, which manages to be both staccato and foggy. It is also peppered by delay phrases, such as 'errr', and by little stammers. So bright! Yet so ineloquent!

Yvette labours for a northern twang, making her short 'a' even more aggressive when she is fighting off criticism. Few onlookers would guess she was reared in southern England - in Hampshire, thank you - or that her husband, who loves to attack David Cameron for his public school background, himself attended a fee-paying school.

This background to the Ballses sits comfortably with their record of 'nanny knows best' interference. The nonsense of tax credits? Classic Balls. Stealth taxation? Yet more Balls.

Such vehemence of belief you find in this man. Such fervour of support. Such absence of doubt. It is unnerving, unnatural, the product, I'd say, of deep unhappiness. The reason it matters, and the reason he comes into our rifle sights, is that he infected our public life with this fanaticism.

Today's Times letters page carries a lot of letters from public relations people, and the 'jokey' contributions are rather overdone.

The paper's change to a tabloid format crushed the elegance of the letters page. It lost its status. And a Britain without an authoritative, tightly edited Times letters page is somehow a less civilised place to live.

Labels: broken society, broken society bullshit, christmas books, Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, lists, Mail-watch, Quentin Letts

For centuries our kingdom had maintained a quirky duo-decimal system of currency which sharpened our mental arithmetic, burnished our national identity and baffled foreigners.

Labels: broken society, broken society bullshit, christmas books, Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, lists, Mail-watch, Quentin Letts

Hands up - I was wrong in my prediction that the Mail would put the first photographs of the murdered Larbi-Cherif sisters on the front page today. "Skatey Kate" after "Foxy Knoxy" instead took precedence. The Metro though, owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust, did indeed go with another photograph of the sisters on its front page.

Not that such use of photographs of murdered/critically injured young women is confined to the mid-market tabs. Here's the Sun totally not tasteless announcement that the first photograph of Lucy Yates, the young woman randomly stabbed in a supermarket has been released:

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, Mail-watch, murder porn, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

When Dixie was arrested, nine months after the murder, police found a digital camera among his possessions. On it, they found a video file showing a pornographic film being played on a television, while a man records himself masturbating over a copy of the Daily Mail bearing a photograph of Bowman.

Police later discovered a copy of the Daily Mail of March 22 2006 which had a "sticky substance" on the front page featuring Bowman.

The Daily Mail itself strangely didn't mention that it had the honour of providing the image of Bowman which her killer had performed an act of onanism to.

No surprises then that the Mail's website is currently leading with the hugely important news story that the first photographs of the two young sisters murdered in Birmingham have been released or found. It's doubly good news because the photographs of them show what must have been deeply hoped for: that both women were suitably fruity, and despite being Algerian, they're not of the "dusky hue" which the Mail imagines that its readers won't warm to. Who's willing to bet that tomorrow's front page is occupied by the main photograph?

The same sort of contradictory relationship goes on over paedophilia. Paedophiles are of course the most evil individuals to ever walk the planet, and very few tabloids will ever suggest that measures such as Sarah's Law, even diluted versions such as those now being trialled, are likely to increase the danger to children rather than contain it. When it comes to young stars growing up however, they tend to be fair game. There's the infamous Daily Star double-page spread, on one side marvelling at how Charlotte Church had "become a big girl" at the age of 15, while on the other decrying the sick Brass Eye paedophilia special. The Daily Mail earlier had a somewhat similar moment. First up on the sidebar was the paper ogling the 14-year old Dakota Fanning:

My, hasn't she grown! Dakota Fanning passes the awkward phase with flying colours

Child actress Dakota Fanning seems to have come through her awkward younger years just fine.

At the premiere for her controversial new film Hounddog, the 14-year-old unveiled a mature new look showing she's well on her way to being all grown up.

Scores of complaints as EastEnders shows scenes of a paedophile grooming a teenager

Labels: Amanda Knox, Daily Mail-watch, Foxy Knoxy, Mail-watch, media analysis, media reporting, Meredith Kercher, sex, sex sells

Labels: bullshit, Daily Mail-watch, gangs, Mail-watch, mockery

When two British tourists spotted a woman leading a child with long blonde hair on the Croatian holiday island of Krk, they immediately thought it was Madeleine McCann.

The couple became even more convinced that the youngster was the missing Briton after secretly taking a couple of photographs.

So when the adult leading the child was not looking, the British woman grabbed the youngster's arm.

It was only then that she realised the child not only wasn't Madeleine, it wasn't even a little girl.

To make matters worse, the boy's father is a famous Croatian footballer and his mother - who was with him at the time - is a renowned glamour model.

...

Their son Leone has long blond hair like Madeleine's, but the similarity ends there - he is even six months younger than the missing three-year-old.

A 2 year old boy mistaken for a 5 year old girl? How long before paedophiles everywhere are using the excuse of "we thought it was Madddie" when they attempt to snatch a child? How long before some idiot does grab a child from their parents and hurts them?

- Dee, East Midlands, 18/8/2008 14:51

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, Madeleine McCann, Madeleine McCann bullshit, Mail-watch, media hysteria, sensationalism

A positive Daily Mail front page:

And there I was thinking the country was going to the dogs, overflowing with immigrants, criminals and paedophiles...

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, Mail-watch, Olympics

I predicted yesterday that the same newspapers that stalked and smeared Colin Stagg for 14 years would not be at all happy with his £706,000 compensation award. Even I though didn't expect that both the Scum and the Mail would splash on it, each doing their very best to whip up faux-outrage in the way they have become so accustomed to doing. Not only did we get the £98,000 that was awarded to Nickell's son rolled out for comparison, but anyone and everyone who's received less of late has been brought up, or their families contacted for comment. Hence we have the Scum contacting the family of a woman murdered in the 7/7 attacks, who received only £11,000 in compensation, who declare that this makes the system a joke. The Sun being the Sun, "Our Boys" have to be brought into the equation, with the injured in action often receiving less than the maximum £285,000, although they also get a £20,000 annual pension. According to Phil Cooper, whose son received £57,000 after he lost the use of a leg and received severe injuries to his stomach, it's "a kick in the teeth." Danny Biddle, another 7/7 victim who lost both his legs, an eye and his spleen calls the system "disgraceful". The Mail even got the Tory MP Patrick Mercer to open his trap, commenting on both the "total imbalance" between the payout to Stagg and to Nickell's son, and then also onto our servicemen who are receiving nowhere near the same amount.

There is one comparison which neither of the tabloids make that other bloggers have however. Ben Collett, a promising Manchester United player, only a few days ago received a payout totalling £4.5 million in lost earnings after a high tackle broke his leg in two places and brought an end to his career. The one abiding message coming out of all of this is that the various compensation systems aren't fair or equal - hardly a newsflash. None of this is Stagg's fault. Indeed, that is the very reason why Stagg's payout deserved to be so high, if not higher. While everyone can sympathise with the victims of 7/7 who similarly were in the wrong place at the wrong time, it's a little different to the case of soldiers, who know full well the risks when they join up. This by no means justifies either their lower payouts or their relatively low wages, but it's not comparing like with like. Stagg was picked out for his treatment by both the police and the media for no other reason than he was supposedly weird: meaning he was a loner, had a couple of books on the occult, some paper knives and an unusual decoration scheme. This was enough for the police to decide that he was a murderer. It was enough for the media to believe, or convince themselves enough to believe, that he was the murderer.

What directly lies behind today's phony apoplexy is that the newspapers themselves know that they're just as responsible for the payout as the Metropolitan police are. It's impossible to think that Lord Brennan wasn't in part influenced when deciding the amount by the media's continued obsession with either directly or indirectly accusing Stagg of being involved in Nickell's death. Their cover is to pretend that they themselves are wholly innocent of any wrong-doing, and so again claim to be on the people's side and for those others that have been compensated less well. Even now the Mail is continuing in just the same way as it has for the last 14 years: wilfully misquoting Stagg in the headline of its current article to give the impression that he is unfeeling towards fellow miscarriage of justice victim Barry George, when in he fact says he feels sorry for the time he spent in prison but less sympathy because of his past conviction for attempted rape and tendency to follow women. As Dave Osler also notes, it also gives the most perfunctory of explanations to what happened to Stagg: he was simply cleared of Nickell's murders, not wrongly accused or fitted up by the police, perish the thought.

The Sun kindly however provides a reminder of how it and the other tabloids covered Stagg's acquittal, putting up a scan of their front page the day after. NO GIRL IS SAFE, it shrieks, alongside a photograph of Stagg, with Rachel murderer will strike again underneath. The inference is all too clear: this man has got away with it, and he will kill again.

Perhaps realising that they can't go too over the top, the Scum's leader admits, probably for the first time in such language, how Stagg's life was ruined:

THERE is no doubt Colin Stagg’s life was ruined by Scotland Yard’s cynical fit-up.

He spent a year in jail on remand before the charges over Rachel Nickell’s murder were dropped.

He has since spent 15 years as a social pariah, unemployable, and with the stink of suspicion hanging over him despite his total innocence.

Even so, £706,000 is an enormous compensation payout.

Especially compared with the £90,000 given to Rachel’s son Alex, who saw his mum murdered and will spend a lifetime without her.

Or compared with the payouts to victims of terrorist atrocities.

Many will be asking today whether the enormous sums given out in miscarriage-of-justice cases should dwarf so spectacularly those for people left enduring a lifetime of physical and mental agony.

The system is patently unfair.

The compensation is only a part of making amends. Stagg deserves some very public apologies: from the police and others who were convinced Stagg was guilty. From defaming authors who have made money from him and from every person who has ever spat at him in the street or hurled abuse. And definitely from certain newspapers (it would be tempting to think the press had learned its lesson but the recent experience of Robert Murat shows that nothing has changed). Then, perhaps, at last Colin Stagg really can get on with his life.

Labels: abuses by tabloids, Colin Stagg, compensation, Daily Mail-watch, Mail-watch, media reporting, miscarriages of justice, Rachel Nickell, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

Labels: Amanda Platell, Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, Donkey Punch, film review

Labels: Abu Qutada, Daily Mail-watch, Mail-watch, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, tabloid junk

Labels: Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, Mail-watch, tabloid junk, Wimbledon balls

Labels: Amanda Platell, bullshit, Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, hypocrisy

Emos like guitar-based rock with emotional lyrics.

American bands such as My Chemical Romance, Good Charlotte and Blink 182 are particular favourites.

Labels: bullshit, Daily Mail-watch, emo, Mail-watch, sensationalism, tabloid stupidity

On April 30th just after 3.30pm, I snatched up my phone and bit the bullet. I called up the journalist that had 'interviewed' me (I say this loosely) and expressed my upset at her not actually stating that she was interviewing me and my concern that I would be included in a feature about revenge, which is not what I, or this blog are about. I told her quite shrilly (I was stressed for fecks sake) that I did NOT want to open the paper and see something like "Blogger gets revenge on ex with her blog!" or some other pathetic headline.

I went onto the Daily Mails supposed section for women yesterday and actually nearly threw up in shock!

"Don't get mad, get E-VENGE!"

It's even worse in the paper where just in case the Daily Mail hadn't quite put the full boot into misrepresenting me and featuring me in article full of TWENTY SIX inaccuracies about me, they added a sub header of "It's the new mantra for women using the internet to take revenge on cheating men".

"All the money has been paid to the charities involved, with interest," Thompson added. "The oversight has been remedied. Clearly, this must never be allowed to happen again."

Labels: BBC bashing, Daily Mail-watch, fraud, ITV, Mail-watch, Ofcom, Tabloid-watch, TV fakery scandals

Labels: Amy Winehouse, BBC idiocy, bullshit, celebrity culture, churnalism, Daily Mail-watch, journalism

The liberal Left had been right throughout, and the influx of one million eastern European migrants in less than four years - contrary to the claims of some chief constables - had created little pressure or trouble.

The source was good. A report by the Association of Chief Police Officers, prepared for the Home Secretary, had reached this firm conclusion.

Except it had done no such thing. The report itself, leaked in full yesterday, bore no relation to the BBC or Guardian headline claims.

"EU accession migrants are continuing to present challenges across a range of policing activity," reads one paragraph.

There are "notable changes in crime patterns, including extortion, 'dipping' [pick-pocketing], human trafficking and a growing sex trade", warns another.

Most curious of all, there is not a single mention of a migrant crimewave, let alone about one being "unfounded" or a "myth".

The report says: "While overall this country has accommodated this huge influx with little rise in community tension, in some areas sheer numbers, resentment and misunderstanding, have created problems." It adds that the immigration from eastern Europe has been different to previous arrivals, because it happened much more quickly. The report says that new migrants may be more likely to commit certain types of offences. Polish people are linked to drink-driving, and problems have arisen in central London with some Romanian children being used by adults to commit petty robberies.

There are also problems with people trafficking and exploitation, but while these may be more likely in some migrant communities, other types of offences are less likely to occur.

Peter Fahy, chief constable of Cheshire, who co-authored the study, said: "Migration has had a significant impact on UK communities in past years, but while this has led to new demands made on the police service, the evidence does not support theories of a large-scale crime wave generated through migration.

"In fact, crime has been falling across the country over the past year. Cultural differences such as attitudes to offences like drink-driving may exist, but can be exaggerated.

"The influx of eastern Europeans has created pressures on forces in some areas, including local rumour and misunderstandings fuelling tensions which police have had to be proactive in resolving, and leading to significant increases in spending on interpreters, which can also make investigations more complex."

Even if accurate, the coverage would have begged several questions, not least who had claimed there was a migrant crimewave in the first place?

The influx of Romanian migrants has led to an explosion in crime in this country, it emerged last night.

As recent members of the EU, Romanians have had free access to Britain only since January 1.

Yet in the first six months of this year, police say, they were responsible for 1,080 offences.

Cambridgeshire Chief Constable Julie Spence - whose intervention last year was the report's spur - had warned of pressure on her local force, and problems with sex trafficking and eastern Europeans drink driving.

Neither she nor any other respected critic had suggested the new arrivals were committing disproportionate levels of overall crime (indeed, it is widely accepted - not least by the Daily Mail - that the vast majority are here to work hard).

What is true is that the migrants are as likely to be arrested by the police as a British citizen, but - when this happens - consume more resources by virtue of speaking little or no English.

IMMIGRATION from Eastern Europe has led to a huge surge in crime, police chiefs will tell the Home Secretary today.

The damning report will be presented to Jacqui Smith in a key meeting, at which many chief constables will demand extra funds to cope with the effects of Labour’s open-door policy.

In an alarming message, the report warns: “EU migration has brought with it a huge surge in the exploitation of migrants and organised crime.”

...

The findings provide yet another devastating sign of the pressure Labour’s immigration policies have had on our towns and communities.

Labels: bullshit, crime figures, Daily Mail-watch, Express-watch, Guardian-watch, immigration, migrants, scaremongering

A role model for ordinary women? No, Miss England finalist is fat, lazy and a poster girl for ill health

Chloe Marshall has caused a storm by becoming the first size 16 beauty queen to reach the finals of the Miss England contest.

Feted and fawned over for her courage in daring to break the mould, Chloe boasts she wants to be an "ambassador for curves".

Who on earth does she think she's kidding? What she's demonstrating isn't bravery but a shocking lack of self-control.

Instead of flaunting her figure, Chloe ought to own up to the truth. She is fat and she got that way by over-eating.

Teenage girls aren't in danger of falling victim to an epidemic of anorexia - but of obesity.

The much-vaunted size zero of catwalk models is actually a UK size four. How many girls do you know that size?

The number of women in this country who are seriously underweight is minute around one in 70.

Labels: Chloe Marshall, cunts, Daily Mail-watch, Mail-watch, Monica Grenfell

Parents are alarmingly ignorant of the danger posed to millions of girls by social networking websites, a report reveals.

A study of sites such as Bebo, Facebook and MySpace shows children using them can be at great risk from paedophiles and bullies.

Last night the Daily Mail discovered some of the shocking content youngsters are putting up on these sites.

This includes a 14-year-old girl whose profile picture, which can be viewed by anyone, focuses on her breasts.

Another 15-year- old is smirking at the camera as she grabs her breasts.

She has listed her date of birth, her home town and name of school.

One has also innocently posted pictures of her ten-year-old sister half-clothed alongside lots of personal information, including full name and home town.

Another 16-year-old is seen posing in her underwear in dozens of photographs.

The Mail has kindly pixellated the faces of those it's decided to "sexpose", but it naturally hasn't done the same to their bodies, because that obviously would mean that the Herbert Gussets out there wouldn't be able to get their rocks off. This is the sort of classy, by no means sensational copy placed alongside the images:



Doubtless, I'm sure these teens were asked permission for their profiles, whether public or not, to be reprinted in a national newspaper. That they'll be easily identified by their friends and schoolmates themselves and therefore likely to be um, bullied or mocked as a result is obviously neither here nor there. That it also means that some individuals might now attempt to find the profiles themselves in full is also obviously not a problem - after all, the Daily Mail doesn't seem to mind being the newspaper of choice for men like Mark Dixie, who recorded himself masturbating to pictures of his young model victim in the paper.

This is absolutely classic Daily Mail, having its cake and eating it, tut-tutting at the state of youth while condemning parents for having no boundaries, all the while engaging in the very strongest form of voyeurism that its readers will let it get away with, and distorting a report in order to do so in the first place. This just happens to be the same newspaper objecting to a tightening of the rules over the buying and selling of stolen information, citing "investigative journalism" concerns. Investigative journalism such as going on the social networking websites for the most "shocking" profiles they can find to titillate and outrage, presumably.

Labels: abuses by tabloids, bullshit, Daily Mail-watch, distortion, Mail-watch, paedophilia hysteria, scaremongering, social networking websites

Labels: Amanda Platell, cunts, Daily Mail-watch, French state visit, fruity lady comes to town, media coverage, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

Can you get much more hypocritical than the Daily Mail? Today, a day late after the Sun had already splashed on it:

And part of the Mail's front page the day after the ruling that Learco Chindamo could not be deported back to Italy:

The Mail of course doesn't want malingering criminals to be sent back here, but it's perfectly OK with those who have served their time and have shown such a willingness to reform that the prison governor himself spoke out in his favour to be sent back to their "home" country, even if like Raymond Horne here and Learco Chindamo would be in Italy, they would be without any family, place to go or even any sort of connection to a country which they left when they were small children.

The Sun however is determined to make as much out of the comparison with Chindamo at it possibly can, even though it too is outraged by Horne's deportation. In a sidebar of its Horne story:

RARELY has there been a clearer case of double standards. Britain has been forced this week to accept sick paedophile Raymond Horne after he was flung out of Australia.

But only last year, our attempts to deport the Italian-born killer of headteacher Philip Lawrence — Learco Chindamo — ended in failure.

Horne moved to Australia when he was five and has lived there for 56 years. But because he is a British citizen — and because Australia isn’t tied up in EU regulations — lawyers say we have to take him back.

Chindamo was born in Italy and moved to Britain when he was six. Just nine years later, in 1995, he brutally killed Mr Lawrence.

Yet the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal threw out the bid to deport him to Italy last August as it would infringe his Human Right to have a family life, and breach EU directives that he can’t go unless he threatens the “fundamental interests of society”.

So we are powerless. And both are now free to roam our streets.

EVIL Raymond Horne last night settled in to his cushy new life in Britain — funded by hard-up taxpayers.

The 61-year-old fiend — dumped on us by Australia — will enjoy a free home, protection and benefits.

But police security and surveillance of him will cost taxpayers as much as £100,000 a year.

He is even effectively free to stalk playgrounds or schools — and cannot be stopped from living near young families — because he did not serve time for his vile crimes in Britain.

Last night the Ministry of Justice confirmed that unlike with freed UK prisoners, the police currently have no powers to exclude him from approaching schools and playgrounds.

A spokeswoman said: “Normally when sex offenders are released, they are on licence and can have conditions attached to this, such as to live in a certain address or be banned from certain areas.

“In a situation where a sex offender returns from a foreign country, this does not exist.”

In extreme cases cops can apply for a Sexual Offences Prevention Order that gives them the power to rein in offenders. But Scotland Yard declined to say if they had applied for the order for Horne.

Campaigners voiced disgust at how much he will cost taxpayers.

Matthew Elliot, of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “At a time when schools and hospitals are strapped for cash and taxpayers are paying record levels of tax, it’s a bizarre set of priorities that sees huge amounts spent on a sexual predator.”

The Sun can reveal that Horne, a serial abuser of young boys, is living in a secret location in LONDON.

PERVERTS like Raymond Horne are allowed back in Britain after years of committing disgusting offences abroad.

But it is a very different story when it comes to getting rid of foreign criminals from our shores.

Somali gangster YUSUF JAMA ran up a string of convictions for robbery and firearms offences. But a High Court judge said he could not be sent home as there was civil war in parts of Somalia.

Weeks later Jama, 19, shot dead PC Sharon Beshenivsky in a robbery in Bradford, West Yorks.

Italian LEARCO CHINDAMO was the 15-year-old leader of a Triad gang when he stabbed headmaster Philip Lawrence to death outside a North London school.

Chindamo, already a suspect in another knifing, got life in 1996 with a minimum term of 12 years.

The Asylum & Immigration Tribunal ruled last year he could not be deported because it would breach his right to a “family life”.

MOHAMMED KENDEH from Sierra Leone punched and indecently assaulted a mum-of-two in a South London park in 2003.

At the time Kendeh, 16, was supposedly under supervision for SIX sex assaults in the SAME park.

He also was not kicked out because of his human rights.

Pakistani MOHAMMED MALIK escaped deportation because his criminal record was SO BAD.

The Crown asked that Malik, 20, should be sent home after his latest 3½-year term for robbery.

But the defence argued the sentence was similar to previous ones he had not been deported for.

Iraqi Kurd RAMZI BORKAN was jailed for indecently assaulting a girl of 14 but a judge ruled he couldn’t be deported for safety reasons. Weeks later Borkan, 36, raped a Japanese student.

PJETER LEKSTAKAJ fled to Britain after he shot a man during a row in his native Albania.

UK cops arrested Lekstakaj, 59, but a judge refused to extradite him because he was DEPRESSED.

THE Sun visited the UK’s biggest benefits blackspot yesterday to find out why four out of five people there live on State handouts — and discovered over a THOUSAND jobs up for grabs.

Yet a visit to the JobCentrePlus, ten minutes walk away, revealed 1,630 jobs on offer, from non-skilled cleaners to £30,000 managers.

The centre — where 425 vacancies were posted in the last week alone — was busy.

But most people were claiming benefits, not looking at the work on offer.

I wandered down the street, knocking on doors of businesses.

At Dunelm Mill furnishings store I found a vacancy for a £16,000 manager in the fabric department.

An assistant manager thought I stood a good chance.

Last stop was the busiest shop in Falinge — Coral the bookmaker, where on a working day at least 20 men were fluttering away their cash.

Manager Andrea Moran, 32, offered me an application form for a cashier job and gave me an on-the-spot interview.

She said: “Coral is a big company and offers employment opportunities to scores of local people.

“We’re always looking for suitable staff. You’ve passed with flying colours.”

I’d been in Falinge for just two hours — and landed a full-time job in a bookie’s, with no previous experience.

WHERE there’s a will there’s a wage.

A Sun reporter went to Britain’s biggest benefits blackspot and landed a job at Corals bookies in less than two hours.

Corals were not the only ones offering work to people prepared to get off their backsides.

More than 1,600 jobs were on offer at the Job Centre in the Rochdale suburb of Falinge, where four out of five adults live on benefits.

Here lies the heart of the challenge facing the Government.

There ARE jobs. But too many people prefer loafing to working.

If fit people refuse to take suitable jobs, should we cut their benefit?

That is the question facing Britain today.

Labels: benefit system, crime, Daily Mail-watch, deportation, Learco Chindamo, Lorraine Kelly, Mail-watch, paedophilia hysteria, Raymond Horne, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, unemployment

Yesterday her remaining children finally arrived back in Britain where they will be cared for by their grandmother. Fiona remains in Goa, determined to continue her fight.

It is a fight not just for justice for Scarlett, but also to convince a growing army of critics, who believe she fatally let her eldest daughter down.

Labels: abuses by tabloids, Daily Mail-watch, Express-watch, gutter press, intruding into grief, Mail-watch, Melanie Phillips, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

Oh look, it's a rather over ripe peach.

Labels: Allison Pearson, cunts, Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, Fiona MacKeown, fisks, Scarlett Keeling, swear blogging

LADS have no problem clicking with sexy Alex Sim-Wise - she's the UK's new MySpace girl.

And what a web-site for sore eyes the former Page 3 Idol finalist is.

The 32E beauty's page has attracted so many hits that bosses have given her the honour of a link on their homepage - alongside other popular users.

And could you possibly believe that nowhere is it mentioned that the Sun and MySpace just happen to share the same owner and that this is an absolutely shameless cross-promotion?

Meanwhile, the Sun and most of the rest of the internet is outraged that a US soldier has supposedly thrown a lickle puppy off a cliff. This would be the same Sun newspaper that reported on the torture and mistreatment at Abu Ghraib just twice. The same newspaper that has used the word "Haditha" just seven times since 2003, and not once in relation to the massacre which occurred there in 2005. Oh, and also the same newspaper that seems to have only used the term "extraordinary rendition" in relation to the allegations against the CIA's torture flights twice. Still online is this poster that offered a reward for the finding of those responsible for throwing a Labrador puppy off a bridge, something given far more coverage than anything involving atrocities/torture committed by either US or British soldiers. Tim and Justin have more.


Finally, the Express doesn't seem to be able to make up its mind. Back in November it claimed that migrants had taken all the new jobs in Britain. Today it splashes on its front page that migrants have taken... 85% of new jobs in Britain. Do you believe one, the other, or none of the above? Stupid question, really. This re-evaluation could be related to how the Express might well be under investigation by the PCC for the "all new jobs in Britain" front page. (Anton Vowl got to this one before me.)

P.S. It's always a jolly read to occasionally peruse the Press Complaints Commission website. The Commission has just announced that Paul Dacre, editor of the Mail, is the new head of the Code Committee, the code being the one which the press is meant to abide by and which the PCC judges complaints on. This would be the same editor who helms the newspaper that according to Nick Davies in Flat Earth News has had the most successful number of complaints made against it - 153, as compared to the Times, Mirror and Sun, all of whom had just over 50 each made against them. This appears to be the equivalent of the late Alan Clark being made the head of a committee into whether extra-marital affairs constitute an acceptable reason for divorce.

Oh, and genuinely finally, on the current first page of the cases section of the PCC site, the Mail makes up six of the 20 entries, with its sister the Mail on Sunday taking up another slot. The most serious of these is that the Mail, along with other papers, claimed that Joanna Rhodes's husband had killed himself a day after seeing the results of their baby's scan. As Mrs Rhodes explains, this was completely untrue, as the date on the photographs from the scans provided was not the day before he committed suicide. The case was resolved with the Mail blaming the news agency (although they should have checked the details, churnalism anyone?) and apologising. Only the Express offered to print an apology in the newspaper itself.

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, Express-watch, Mail-watch, Paul Dacre, Press Complaints Commission, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, Tabloid-watch

A wave of immigration that helped to fuel Britain’s early 21st century boom is over, as the Polish plumber and thousands like him go home.

The Times has established that, for the first time since they began arriving en masse four years ago, more UK-based Poles are returning to their homeland than are entering Britain.

Statistics show that only 38,680 Poles signed up to the Government’s register of migrant workers in the third quarter of 2007, a slump of 18 per cent from the previous year. Polish officials say that Poles leaving the country outnumber thoses coming in.

Hard statistics on the number of Poles leaving Britain do not exist. There are no embarkation controls on EU members so they are are not counted out. But Polish officials, British employment agencies and the Polish media all believe that the tide of immigration has turned. Since Poland joined the EU in 2004, 274,065 Poles have signed up for work permits. They make up 66 per cent of all applications from Eastern European countries.

I am urgently looking for anonymous horror stories of people who have employed Eastern European staff, only for them to steal from them, disappear, or have lied about their resident status. We can pay you £100 for taking part, and I promise it will be anonymous…

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, Diana Appleyard, Express-watch, immigration, immigration figures, Mail-watch, migrants

draw together all the threads of government relating to defence and security, whether at home or abroad. It would be ‘somewhere for anyone to go’ in raising concerns. It would draw all parts of government into strategy and planning, as required. Its key function would be strategic: assessing risks and threats, and our capabilities in addressing them, in order to make judgements as to the balance and proportions of policy across the full spectrum of government activity.

On April 21st, at the Ritz Carlton, Washington DC, the Atlantic Council will present former British Prime Minister Tony Blair the Award for Distinguished International Leadership—and will also present awards to Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation and Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for Distinguished Business and Distinguished Military Leadership respectively.

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, defence, defence spending, Mail-watch, multiculturalism, RUSI, terror, terror laws, UK National Defence Association

“Eavesdropping seldom has a good image.

“But let’s hope the perseverance and dedication of our listeners-in-the-sky continues to save the lives of our men and women.”

The Taliban are thought to be recruiting an increasing number of fighters from Britain after RAF experts overheard secret transmissions from the Afghan frontline spoken in broad Midlands and Yorkshire accents.

The discovery indicates that a growing number of British-born Muslim are turning their backs on the West and moving to Afghanistan to be trained as fighters.

Labels: "Talibrum", Afghanistan, bugging, churnalism, Daily Mail-watch, Flat Earth News, media reporting, Nick Davies, propaganda, Scum-wath, Sun-watch, survelliance state

Hamza/Williams: what's the difference?

The beleaguered Archbishop of Canterbury resorted yesterday to the oldest stand-by in the book - "I have been misinterpreted".

Brian Fuller, 46, of Luton, said: “This is the guy who leads our country’s religion and it sounds like he’s given up.

“He’ll soon be asking us all to face Mecca when we say our prayers.”

The whole nation is appalled, outraged and incredulous that Rowan Williams should come out with such dangerous claptrap.

It is hard to see how Williams can cling on to his job.

It is hard, too, to see why he wants it since he feels such sympathy for Islam.

The heart of this issue is not religion. It is law.

To say that the Archbishop is wrong is not to attack Islam. It is to say that allowing Sharia law encourages Muslim fundamentalists who don’t want to integrate with us.

The Archbishop of Canterbury declares Muslims should be allowed to follow a law of their own.

That is totally unacceptable.

And that is why he has to go.

Labels: British Muslims, Church of England, Daily Mail-watch, idiocy, Mail-watch, religion, Rowan Williams, Scum-watch, sharia law, Sun-watch, tabloid mendacity

Today was undoubtedly another glorious day for the country's tabloids. If there's one thing apart from a missing white blonde girl that's always going to fill the front pages, it's a murdered white blonde young woman, especially if said white blonde young woman was an aspiring model who left behind a handy cache of material of her posing in a range of different clothing. Add to that how the trial of the man accused of the murder has heard that he admits to having sex with Sally Anne Bowman's corpse, which he just happened to come upon by chance, and you're guaranteed that it's going to be the story of number one interest on the day in question.

What you don't have to do is then rub everyone's face in it. That, however, was the modus operandi of the Daily Star. The PCC code on reporting on cases intruding into grief is suitably vague, but it does say the following:

In cases involving personal grief or shock, enquiries and approaches must be made with sympathy and discretion and publication handled sensitively.

Here then is the Daily Star's front page:

It's the sort of headline you'd expect from a sex scandal where the person in question is boasting about what he's done and given an interview to that effect. Why bother being sensitive to others' feelings however when you can instead use a sledgehammer to crack a nut?

Without wanting to get into a debate on whether if something similar had happened to a middle-aged non-photogenic woman it would be making the news in such a fashion, there was this further smirk inducing evidence given to the trial:

Police later discovered a copy of the Daily Mail of March 22 2006 which had a "sticky substance" on the front page featuring Bowman.

Police raided several properties in Horley, Surrey, and Croydon where he had been staying.

They recovered a video of Dixie performing a lewd sex act on the six-month anniversary of the model's death, the court heard.

BBC: Death ‘not connected’ to suicides.

icWales: …police today stressed the death was not connected to the spate of suicides…

Times: did not appear to be linked to the seven suicides.

Telegraph: The death is not linked to other recent sudden deaths in the area.

Daily Mail (heh): police have ruled out that the latest death is linked to the previous incidents.

Express : There were renewed fears last night of an internet death cult in the town after it emerged that Miss Fuller had visited a social networking website just hours before she died.

See where I’m going with this? Now are you ready for the revelation about the ‘Internet Cult’ from the Express? Here goes:

The teenager, the second girl to die in the spate of suicides, was a member of Bebo and Facebook. Many of the previous victims had posted profiles on such sites.

This, my friends is the self acclaimed ‘World’s Greatest Newspaper’.

I rest my case.

Security sources told yesterday how 9/11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui asked lawyer Mr Khan to represent him after being accused of being the ‘20th hijacker’.

Human rights lawyer Mr Khan, 37, who says he loathes terror groups, was the only practising Muslim on Moussaoui’s team. It brought him to the attention of MI5 and MI6.

One security source said last night: “It is hardly surprising he came to the attention of security services in view of the people he was associated with.”

Let me be quite clear. Hizb-ut-Tahrir quite deliberately have the same effect on race relations as their mirror image, the BNP. They encourage hatred and their preaching is used by the BNP to foster fear of Islam.

Labels: Babar Ahmed, bugging, Daily Mail-watch, Daily Star-watch, Express-watch, Sadiq Khan, Sally Anne Bowman, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, tabloid stupidity

Before the eastern European country joined the EU, its nationals were associated with 146 crimes over six months in Britain. A year after it joined – over a second six-month period – that figure leapt to 922, a 530 per cent rise.

Police say that since Romania joined the EU in 2007 there has been a sharp rise in children being brought to London by modern-day "Fagin's gangs". Up to 200 Romanian children have been forced into crime in London and can generate up to £20m a year for gangs controlling them.

My Geordie mate, Black Mike, would take one look at her in her absurd "Goth" outfit and remark: "Gi' us a stick and I'll kill it."

Let's hope she's housetrained. But just as it's their prerogative to play One Man and His Dog, so the driver should have the right to decide whom he wants, and doesn't want, on his bus.

Labels: British crime survey, crime figures, Daily Mail-watch, Express-watch, immigration, Mail-watch, migrants, Richard Littlejohn, Romanian gangs

Won't someone think of the children?

TODAY we can reveal the shocking way suicide among teens is glamourised on social networking sites like Bebo.

The sad news that seven young people from Bridgend in South Wales killed themselves in an apparent “chain” of copycat suicides has led police to fear some hoped to gain "web fame".

Some of the dead - who all hanged themselves - had profile pages on Bebo, a popular site with school kids.

A quick internet search reveals one profile under the name Suicide Girls.

It carries a disturbing cartoon picture of a pink teddy bear hanging from a rope.

A line on the page says the site is, "For people who don't give a f*** and want a suicide lifestyle," adding it is "For Girls and Boys Who Love Tattoos, Piercings and Crazy Stuff."

In a discussion forum, user Amy Addiction posts, "For the people who keep asking what a suicide lifestyle is - well this is all to do with suicide girls, like the models, so yeah lifestyle like them ... glamorous, pretty etc."

A spokesperson for charity PAPYRUS - which works to prevent suicide in young people - described the page as "extremely dangerous".

She added that the image of the teddy bear was "very disturbing".

NEW series Ross Kemp In Afghanistan pulled in more than a MILLION viewers on Monday night.

The five-parter for Sky One, on Our Boys’ war with the Taliban, sees ex-EastEnder Ross, 43, train with the Royal Anglian Regiment then brave the frontline. A pal said: “It’s a brilliant start.”

Labels: Bebo, Daily Mail-watch, Mail-watch, MurdochSpace, Scum-watch, self-promotion, social networking websites, suicide, suicide girls, Sun-watch

Labels: abuses by tabloids, Daily Mail-watch, Express-watch, Mail-watch, Princess Diana, tabloid hypocrisy

Some of us are more inclined to believe the most idiotic police chief in Britain is the delusional murderer in charge of the Met.

Notorious chief constable Richard Brunstrom is facing demands to resign after publicly claiming that the illegal rave drug ecstasy is safer than aspirin.

In his latest bizarre proclamation, he insisted that the drug - which claims almost 50 lives a year - was a "remarkably safe substance".

And he went on to dismiss what he called "scaremongering" over the dangers, while predicting that all drugs would be legalised within ten years.

Richard Brunstrom is supposed to be a figure of authority and responsibility, respected by young people, and he's sending out a very dangerous message.

Peter Stoker of the National Drugs Prevention Alliance said: "Mr Brunstrom should resign. His comments are increasingly incompatible with his position.

"Danger from an illegal drug isn't just a question of how poisonous it is in the short term - although any dose of ecstasy can kill - it includes the damaging behaviour which people are sucked into, and the harm it does to those around them, particularly their families."

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, drug prohibition, Ecstasy, idiocy, Mail-watch, MDMA, moral panics, Richard Brunstrom

As many as 165,000 asylum seekers are to be granted an "amnesty" to live in Britain, it was revealed.

The vast bulk of the migrants are failed refugees whose files were left lying in boxes by bungling Home Office staff.

They have now been living here so long that officials have ruled that it would be a breach of their human rights to kick them out.

More than 19,000 asylum seekers, some of whose cases date back more than 10 years, have finally been told they can stay in the country, the Home Office said last night.

They are among the first tranche of 52,000 cases that have been looked at as part of a Home Office "legacy" drive to clear a backlog of between 400,000 and 450,000 files.

Ministers admitted that the first 19,000 have already been granted leave to remain under what the Tories described as a "stealth amnesty".

All will now be free to bring their relatives to Britain - and claim the full range of benefits.

The major reason why so many of the claims will be approved is the Human Rights Act.

Those who have been in the country for many years can claim it is now their home and they no longer have links to their homeland.

The legislation, passed by Labour, also prevents the removal of asylum seekers to countries where they could face torture or persecution, which is likely to apply to thousands of cases in the backlog.

A Home Office document on how the scheme - known as the Legacy Exercise by the department - will operate says "each case will be evaluated on its individual merits, with an assessment of any human rights factors that may be relevant".

Isn't it against OUR human rights to have people in this country using our services when they have not paid for them? Isn't it against OUR human rights for OUR children to be in classes with pupils who cannot speak English, so the teacher’s time is wasted by these incomers? Isn't it against OUR human rights that immigrants get housing which is badly needed by English couples? Isn't it against OUR human rights that our Island is now so crowded with people who neither care nor want to be part of our country, yet want all the benefits? I could go on and on but what's the point. This government doesn't care about OUR human rights.

- Jan, London,England

Labels: asylum seekers, Daily Mail-watch, Express-watch, human rights act, immigration, James Slack, migrants

I might just be the only person on the planet not to give two shits about the vanishing canoeist and his subsequent reappearance while his wife went to live in Panama, but what is intriguing is just what sort of deal the Daily Mirror and Mail have done in order to get Anne Darwin's exclusive story.

The toothless Press Complaints Commission has been so concerned that it apparently sought meetings with both the Mail and Mirror in order to ascertain whether Darwin has been paid - something that may potentially breach the PCC's code if Darwin is subsequently charged, as her husband now has been. The PCC seems to have been satisfied that no money has changed hands between the two papers and Darwin, but the Grauniad reported this morning that the legwork in tracking down Darwin was by the Splash news agency, with the Mail and Mirror just behind, subsequently doing a deal to share the scoop. Whether Splash, not bound by the PCC's code, has paid Darwin is another matter entirely, and as the Mail and Mirror have relied on Splash one is entitled to wonder whether the cash has been funneled through.

In any case, the Mirror and Mail's scoop has already led its first inevitable conclusion: the Scum running a less than flattering front page "story" describing Darwin as a witch. The Sun's failure to get the story has also likely enraged Rebekah Wade, who earlier in the year went on the warpath after Pete Doherty gave an exclusive interview to the Mirror following his split from Kate Moss, lambasting her hacks as "having all lost any journalistic ability you ever had". With Les Hinton gone to the Wall Street Journal, having previously acted as her shield from unpleasantness over her own split from Ross Kemp, Wade herself is looking increasingly isolated.

Labels: Anne Darwin, Daily Mail-watch, media coverage, Mirror-watch, Press Complaints Commission, Rebekah Wade, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

"I don't feel anything about Rachel Nickell. She doesn't mean anything to me," he says, when I first ask about his feelings towards her.

It's a bizarre thing to say, given that their names have been so linked.

Only after being pressed does he express any sorrow for the young mother.

"Of course I'm sorry about what happened to her, but in the same way I'm sorry when I hear about murders on TV.

"That's the thing: someone was murdered and it was all very tragic, but murders happen.

"They don't affect your life. Unless you knew the person, of course."

His attitude to women is, however, more than a little unsettling.

In the infamous letters to the undercover policewoman, he admitted to violent sexual fantasies, and at one point confessed he was aroused by the thought of Nickell's murder (though crucially, he never admitted to the killing).

He appears to blame all women for his social failings.

"You women don't realise how much power you have to hurt men," he says.

"Women always go for good-looking blokes, even if they treat them terribly. The geeks like me never get a look-in."

Even in the aftermath of his acquittal, there were many - certainly among the police, and consequently Rachel's family - who never wavered in their conviction that Stagg got away with murder.

Perhaps now the murder charge brought against Robert Napper will mean that whatever becomes of this new case, the public perception of Stagg will change.

"The only difference is that now, people are also coming up and saying sorry for thinking the worst of me.

"But there's still a lot of people that need to say sorry.

"I have been terribly wronged."

That much is clear.

And a British family is left to mourn the brutal death of their beautiful daughter, who, it seems, died for no other reason than that she had the terrible misfortune to find herself sharing an apartment with 'Foxy' Knoxy.

Labels: abuses by tabloids, Andrew Malone, Colin Stagg, Daily Mail, Daily Mail-watch, hatchet jobs, Mail-watch, tabloid mendacity

Labels: chutzpah, Daily Mail-watch, Facebook, Mail-watch, MurdochSpace, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

You'd think, writing a blog such as this that often dwells upon the very worst behaviour of this country's tabloid press, that you'd quickly become inured, desensitised to the casual lies, hypocrisies, set-ups, smear jobs and entrapments that are part and parcel of the street of shame, and have been for decades. I sometimes wonder if things have improved in recent years, especially with the set-up of the supine but occasionally condemnatory Press Complaints Commission, and while the overt racism and homophobia that was often present in years gone by has either vanished or become layered and shadowed (the Scum refers to "Gypsies" as "Gipsies" so as not to be accused of fall foul of protests, for example), my conclusion is that there has been no real fundamental change. If they can get away with it, they'll do it.

Before we get to today's most egregious example of abuse, it would be amiss not to take a look at today's Daily Star. While the Daily Star is a newspaper in the same sense that Spinal Tap are a band, it's difficult to know where to apportion blame for today's ridiculous front page, either to the McCanns and their employment of a bunch of idiots describing themselves as private detectives, or to the Star for making up nonsense which a child could see through. According to the Star, private detectives believe that she is being held in Morocco by a "rich Arab family." Apart from it fitting the pattern of everyone being involved in the saga being a nationality other than our own, and therefore inimitably condemnable, why on earth would a "rich" family pay for a child to be kidnapped when it's so easy to adopt, or failing that, even paying to adopt? Such a scenario is about as likely as Madeleine being found tomorrow along with Lord Lucan and Shergar, all drinking in a bar in Haiti. Still, doesn't it fill you with joy that the money donated to the McCanns is being spent so wisely by such competent investigators, if things are indeed as the article describes?

Meanwhile, things are little less desperate over in the Scum. Despite their constant support for "Our Boys", it's deeply concerned that the British public doesn't feel the same about them, or at least in their view doesn't feel proud enough, hence its launching of a campaign to "Help our Heroes". There's nothing wrong with that of course, although whether starting up a separate charity to the British Legion, which already does an admirable job, is going to help is questionable. It's also true that this government has failed the soldiers immeasurably, both in terms of kit and in providing adequate compensation for those seriously wounded, as the desultory pay-outs have proved.

It's quite another thing however to suggest that the apathy showed to returning troops is due to opposition to the war, and not being able to differentiate between the politics involved in the Iraq war and their role in fighting it. I'd venture that while that does have a role, the lack of support at homecomings apart from family members and relatives is more down to the fact that there has no been tangible victory to celebrate. Just what have we achieved, for example, in Iraq? The Scum was about the only newspaper which tried to play up the withdraw to Basra airport as a victory, laughably claiming that the army had fought Shia militants into a ceasefire, while every other source reported that it was down to a deal which had involved the release of a number of prisoners. On a broader scale, we've replaced a murderous dictatorship with a democracy that attempted to run before it could walk, resulting in a murderous, sectarian anarchy that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, resulted in 2 million Iraqis fleeing the country and 2 million more becoming refugees in their own land. Is it much of a surprise that many don't feel like turning up and cheering our soldiers' return? It shouldn't be viewed as a snub to them; this is after all the season where everyone who appears on television has to wear a poppy lest they be accused of not remembering the sacrifices made in the past.

The Sun itself has misjudged the mood of the public at every turn. Its gung-ho support for the war, attacks on those who opposed it, from Robin Cook to George Galloway and disgraceful coverage of the Hutton inquiry went against the grain. It campaigned for a victory parade shortly after "official" combat ended and has opposed every attempt to further investigate how we came to enter the conflict. It mentions vandals allegedly targeting the homes of soldiers while they were fighting in Afghanistan, without bringing up the tissue of lies it cooked up late last year about "Muslim yobs" attacking a house that soldiers had looked into moving into. It weeps crocodile tears for those who have been injured without admitting that without its own propaganda for the invasion and support of Blair those scarred for life might not have been called into action. You have to wonder whether Murdoch will be dipping a hand into his own vast pockets to contribute something, especially considering every single one of his papers supported the war, and that he did so mainly because he was convinced that it would lead to oil at $20 a barrel. Oil has just touched its highest ever unadjusted for inflation level, $92.

Elsewhere today, the Scum is again resorting to talking up the various desperate women who are getting their breasts out on the MySun network:

MY Sun users are once again proving they are simply the breast.

As competition hots up in the search for this year’s Page 3 Idol, several girls have been uploading sexy pictures to their MY Sun blogs.

MY Sun has seen loads of girls show off their breast bits since it launched last year, and now girls are using it to drum up support as they bid to become Page 3 Idol 2007.

Apparently, he had got a call from the Daily Mail (I can’t remember how they found him – but I am sure he will be telling us) asking him if he would like to drive a car with Polish number plates from Warsaw to England and deliberately park illegally. They also asked him to drive purposely over the speed limit in sight of speed cameras.

There had recently been a report by the BBC claiming that Poles had been parking all over the place and disregarding the highway code, as they knew that because their cars were not registered in the UK there was no chance of them ever receiving a summons to pay the speeding/parking fines.

...

A couple of hours later a 'researcher', Sue Reid (author of this story), at the Daily Mail offices telephoned me. I told her that though I was British my girlfriend was Polish and that she has a car registered in Poland. We were interested. We were not interested – but we were interested in getting the details of how low journalism has sunk in the UK.

Ms Reid said that she would offer me 800 pounds to come over and park illegally and speed, “Just ten miles an hour over the speed limit, no more…”. We would then go back to Poland and wait for the demands for payment of the fines. “We know this is going on but we want to prove it by having a foreign car here with a foreign driver for five days and driving and parking in London, Kent, East Anglia and Portsmouth,” said the Daily Mail researcher.

A photographer would follow us around, showing how we were breaking the law. And then, back in Warsaw, when we later failed to receive any demands for payment - as the British authorities would have no record of our vehicle – the Mail would publish the whole thing as an ‘exclusive’ on how Poles and others are breaking the law in the UK and GETTING AWAY WITH IT.

She even offered to put the girlfriend and myself up at her house in Fulham in London, if we had nowhere else to stay.

Labels: abuses by tabloids, Daily Mail-watch, Daily Star-watch, Madeleine McCann bullshiSt, MySun, Pole-bashing, Scum-watch, Sue Reid, Sun-watch

Sory to say it but I stopped trusting the BBC long ago. They are an arm of Nu labour! - John Stretton, Albrighton, nr Wolverhampton

Like the others who have passed comment, I am not surprised by this, it has beeen so obvious in the content of the news and current affairs programs, what does supprise me is that the staff who register on Facebook are so blatent about it. Perhaps thier HR department will look at it and take it into consideration when the axe starts to fall on the overmanning dross. - Mike Woods, Colchester

And why are there 10,000+ BBC employees on Facebook anyway? Do these people not have enough work to do? They are paid with public money and I expect value for it. - David G, Carshalton, Surrey

It is simply that facebook is a young persons phenomena and most people are more liberal in their views when younger and become more conservative with age. Older and probably more influential employees of the BBC won't be on Facebook. - Sara, Cornwall, UK

Labels: BBC bashing, bias, ConservativeHome, Daily Mail-watch, Facebook, Mail-watch

Back a little later than I expected, so I'll get back into the swing of things properly tomorrow. First, if like me you missed FCC's dissections of tabloid garbage, his posts last week following the government's publishing of its own report into immigration (PDF) are essential reading.

Next, here's a scandal that it seems wasn't. The report by Deloitte into ITV's various phone-in scams discovers that at least £7.8 million was defrauded from viewers who had no chance of winning competitions or influencing public votes. Peter Hain described it as "daylight robbery". One of the most egregious examples of how money was taken under false pretenses was on Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, where those who weren't within an hour of where the show was filmed or suitably excited/telegenic/charismatic never had any chance of winning, which also has Ant and Dec (or is it Dec and Ant?) as executive producers. Like Manuel, they "knew nothing". Despite Michael Grade's previous bowel movement which declared that there would be "zero tolerance" towards any examples of fakery or deception of viewers, no one has resigned, and it seems likely that no one will be sacked, as Grade has now decided there shouldn't be a "witch-hunt". ITV have said that the money will be paid back, while Ant and Dec have promised that the money from the phone-ins on the next series will be given to charity. Never mind that Richard and Judy's attempts at giving the money fraudulently made back were far from successful: the problem has been solved.


Or at least that's the message that the middle-market tabloids have given off. While the Daily Mirror was the only one of the tabloids to give it a full-splash on Friday (the Sun cleared the front page to go with the suicide bombing targeting Benzair Bhutto in its final edition, previously having the ITV scandal in a sidebar, then featured it again the following day, again in a sidebar), the Mail had more important things on its mind, like the ring that Dodi never gave to Diana prior to them both coming to a sticky end. (Oh, and a suitably fruity photograph of the tennis coach who sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl. She "seduced" her; you can imagine what the Mail would say if it was a man in the same circumstances.) The Express isn't worth even looking at: Madeleine, where there hasn't been any new developments for weeks, still occupied the front page every single day.




How very different to the Mail's coverage of the BBC's own recent travails. When the BBC published its own findings into examples of fakery, none of which involved any defrauding of the viewer, but did involve some slight deceptions, the Mail declared it the "SHAMING OF THE BBC". After Blue Peter admitted that Socks the cat should have been named Cookie, only for it to be changed after they wondered about the suitability of the name, the Mail splashed with it, screaming "NEW LIES FIASCO SHAMES THE BBC". On the very day that the ITV report was the published, the Mail was shattering windows with its shrieking of "BBC TO SCREEN MORE REPEATS", despite for years calling for the BBC to be radically slashed and cut down to size. The Mail had previously splashed on one example of ITV alleged "fakery", that involving the death of a man in a documentary which it turned out wasn't, but that was during the silly season.

Just how do we explain this apparent attitude to ignore ITV's far more serious offences, which may well amount to fraud and definitely show a contempt for their very viewers? It can't be put down to the fact that the BBC is funded by every single one of us; ITV was taking the money off the public too. Is it just snobbery on the behalf of the Mail, thinking that its readers' won't have "wasted" their cash on such frivolities? If it is, this is incredibly blind: those who buy the paper might not have done, but their children are a different matter. Far more likely is that the Mail fears the effects of what a purge might well mean to newspapers themselves if they were held up to the same degree of scrutiny.

You don't have to read this blog or FCC to know that the tabloids lie on a daily basis; polls have consistently shown that the public holds around the same amount of trust in tabloid journalists as they do with estate agents, lower even than that in politicians. How often do journalists get the sack for getting it wrong? Apart from Andrew Gilligan, who ironically was completely in the right, you'll be hard pressed to find any such examples in recent memory or even history. If ITV were to go by the letter of zero tolerance, as Grade said, it would set a precedent also in the City itself. So far, just one member of the board of Northern Rock has resigned. No one at ITV has, or seems to be likely to. At the BBC, the Blue Peter editor's gone, as have others involved in the various bits of fakery. It's a weird scale when you add it all up: you can play naive, economically unsound games with the money of thousands of people and not have to face the consequences when it all goes wrong; you can defraud the public and cynically take their cash when they have no chance of appearing with Ant and Dec; but if you change the name of a cat that kiddies have voted for the name of, then you may as well hand in your notice straight away. So is the logic not just of media and their decision on what constitutes an outrage, but that of the market itself.

Labels: abuses by tabloids, Daily Mail-watch, fraud, ITV, Michael Grade, tabloid hypocrisy, TV fakery scandals

Health and safety killjoys are threatening Britain with a Christmas blackout, council bosses warned yesterday.

Crippling insurance costs and absurd safety requirements mean many local authorities have abandoned their traditional lighting displays.

Labels: Christmas politically correct bollocks, Daily Mail-watch, political correctness gone mad bullshit

Immigrants will swell the British population by almost two million in the next decade, according to official predictions.

Whitehall now believes the record immigration levels of the past few years are likely to continue.

The projection drew an immediate admission from the Government that it has "worries" over migration.

The new estimate by the Office for National Statistics - that numbers will grow by 190,000 a year - is 30 per cent higher than previous figures.

Migrationwatch chief Sir Andrew Green said yesterday: "This new assumption at last recognises that the present very high levels of immigration are likely to continue unless the Government moves from rhetoric to really effective measures."

He said the figures mean the population will have increased by 8.7million between 2004 and 2031, of which 7.2million will be due to immigration, including the children of migrants.

In a sign that the open-door era of Mr Blair is over, Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said: "This shows what could happen unless we take action now.

"Frankly it underlines the need for swift and sweeping changes to the immigration system in the next 12 months."

He admitted: "Migration is bringing new wealth but also new worries to Britain."

The statement contrasted sharply with the past attitude of Labour ministers, who have stressed the benefits of immigration and cast doubt on the motives of those who warned it was too high.

Home Office officials said the action promised by Mr Byrne refers to policies already announced.

These include the points-based immigration system for migrants from outside the EU beginning next year.

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, Eastern European migration, Express-watch, immigration, Migration Watch

Labels: BBC bashing, BBC deceptions, Daily Mail-watch

Labels: cunts, Daily Mail-watch, ultra-rich

In the revised reasons for deportation letter it is noted that it is unlikely that the appellant will reoffend, and that he accepts his responsibility for his offences and has undertaken courses for anger management. It notes however that his current behaviour and actions and day-to-day life are very closely monitored. There is reference there to one escorted visit, though we accept that the evidence is in fact that he has been on two escorted visits and three unescorted visits. The point is also made in the refusal letter that the court has deemed that the appellant’s crime is of such severity that he will always continue to be a threat to the community such that his release on licence would be on the basis that he might be recalled to prison at any moment for any breach of his conditions. The point is made that he has been assessed and that he is subject to the highest level of multi-agency public protection arrangements (Mappa) (Level 3). In this regard though we must bear in mind the point to which we were referred by Mr Scannell that that assessment was not made on account of the appellant being a threat to the public but because of the likelihood of media scrutiny and/or public interest. The letter does note that risk factors might increase because of media and public scrutiny that the appellant might receive. It also comments that the OAsys report notes that there are occasions where the appellant has overacted to situations and there are severe concerns with finding him appropriate accommodation on release if allowed to remain in the United Kingdom. He would need to be excluded from certain parts of the country, community integration would be a problem on release and he might suffer a backlash. The letter states that the appellant’s notoriety might make him feel excluded from society as he had been before and there was a significant risk that his previous disregard for authority and the law might resurface and result in him coming to adverse attention. As a consequence it was considered that he posed a continuing risk to the public and that his offences were so serious that he represents a genuine and present and sufficiently serious threat to the public in principle such as to justify his deportation.

THE killer of headmaster Philip Lawrence has been let out of jail early — despite an emotional warning it would “destroy” his victim’s family twice.

Former teenage gangster Learco Chindamo, now 25, was allowed an unsupervised day outing from Ford Open Prison in West Sussex.

He should have got a suspended sentence - suspended from the end of a rope.

Sachilles

NEVER mind deportation — what’s he doing being let out of prison if he killed a headmaster in cold blood? I hope this evil killer is hounded by the press and vigilante mobs until he dies.
Germuluv

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, deportation, Frances Lawrence, human rights act, Learco Chindamo, prisons, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, Times-watch

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, swan eaters, urban myths

Your not wrong england7777 the government should be in the dock for treason

Fly87 has it in a nutshell.

Come back Mr powell the country needs you...

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, Scum-watch, silly season, Sue Turton, Sun-watch

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, Mail-watch, Paul Dacre, tabloid stupidity

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, Five Chinese Crackers, political correctness gone mad bullshit, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, tabloid stupidity

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, Express-watch, house price idiocy

Princess Diana is dead, just in case you'd forgotten. She's been dead for close to ten years. In life, she was chased by newspapers trying to sell their sordid wares. In death, she's chased by newspapers trying to sell their sordid wares. Oddly, the very same newspapers which day after day filled their pages with paparazzi photographs of the woman, apart from suffering a few pangs of guilt in the immediate aftermath of the accident in the Paris tunnel, with the Daily Mail famously announcing that it would never again buy snatched shots, only to break its own declaration within a matter of weeks, have since then felt the need to act as her personal shield; she can't defend herself, so they will instead. Again, this was a surprising role reversal, considering that the Glenda Slaggs' had loved to rip Diana to shreds over whatever they saw fit, leading after her end to the biggest reverse ferret in newspaper history. No longer was she a silly bulimic girl who had betrayed the royal family, now she was the greatest Briton who had ever lived, whose beauty, principles and dignity were second to none.

It's therefore unsurprising that the middle-market tabloids are united in anger over Channel 4's decision to screen a documentary which allegedly features images of Diana laying in the car being treated before she died. We had the very same faux-outrage last year, when an Italian magazine published the far from shocking images, at the same time as some genuinely shocking photographs from Lebanon and Israel were being comprehensively ignored.


Even so, it's difficult to deal with the sheer level of chutzpah, especially of the Daily Express, accusing Channel 4 of being "ghouls cashing in on her memory". This is the same newspaper which has spent the last few years propagating the bullshit theories of Mohammad Al-Fayed, the man most responsible for the death of Diana in the first place, dedicating its front page time and again to false "new leads" and lies about what happened that night. If it wasn't for the Express's Diana obsession, it would probably be even further in the mire created by its asset-striping pornographer owner, Richard Desmond. The only surprise is that Desmond hasn't tried to combine the two by giving away Diana sex dolls with each turgid copy.


As for the Daily Mail, variously accusing Channel 4 of "trampling on her grave", and today printing the words of Rosa Monckton, urging Diana to be given the privacy in death she didn't get during her life (from the very same Daily Mail), could this possibly be the same Daily Mail which back in February was giving away a free Diana figurine from Royal Doulton "worth over £100", as well as Diana DVD entitled ten years on? That isn't trampling on her grave, that's just taking advantage of her, and as we all know, there's a great difference between the two.

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, Express-watch, hypocrisy, Princess Diana, shooting fish in barrels

Last night, faced with the latest statistics that showed that immigration from the eastern European countries which joined the EU in 2004 has likely peaked, I wondered just how the tabloids were going to be able to spin the figures into showing that the Poles etc and now the Romanians and Bulgarians are still flooding in. Rather than making a big thing of them as usual, would they simply drop them back onto page 94? Would they blatantly lie, as the Mail has previously done? Or would they come up with a new statistic to be outraged about?

They decided upon the latter. The Express, in full crusader battle cry, screams 92,000 EASTERN EUROPEANS MILK OUR BENEFITS. For once, they're telling the truth but as usual they're being wholly disingenuous. What the Express (and the Mail) have done is taken all the number of benefits claims made by migrants, for jobseeker's allowance, income support, state pension credit, child benefit and tax credits, and added them all together. The Mail has kindly provided the table below which shows what's being claimed and what it isn't.


As you can see, the numbers claiming benefits for being out of work are still so minuscule as to be almost entirely negligible. The Express and Mail have instead thrown their toys out of the pram about the numbers claiming child benefit and tax credits, which on the surface do look large, leading the papers to claim that this is adding up to around £100m in benefits going to migrants. What neither paper bothers to tell you though is that the accession statistics (PDF) also tell you how many national insurance numbers have been allocated since 2004 for employment purposes, through which they'll be paying tax. These stand at 610,751. That means that over 500,000 migrants are taking nothing out while putting far, far more back in than the others are claiming back. And anyway, why shouldn't those 90,000 migrants that are paying tax just the same as the rest of us are not be allowed to claim the same benefits that we're entitled to?

Both papers, trying desperately to keep their readers believing that nothing has changed, quote "Sir" Andrew Green of Migration Watch:

"These figures confirm that massive levels of immigration from Eastern Europe continue un­abated. It is even more vital to reduce immigration from the rest of the world if our public services are to be able to cope."

Really? Here's the applicants by quarter of application from January 2005 to March 2007:


As the graph shows, the numbers applying to come here from the countries which joined the EU in 2004 for was in actual fact at one of its lowest levels in the last two years last quarter. It's true that the numbers might yet go up in the next two quarters, with students and others coming here in the summer months mainly to help in the agriculture sector, but otherwise the figures look to be broadly in line with what's been the case since 2004. Nowhere in either of the Mail or Express articles is the very legitimate point made that many of those who have come here since 2004 will have long returned home; both prefer to perpetuate the myth that the 630,000 that have registered since then are all still here. Even that isn't good enough for the Mail, which adds the following qualifier:

But the figure is likely to be closer to 840,000 once the self-employed are included.

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, Eastern European migration, Express-watch, immigration, Mail-watch

What the paper has done is take the number of visitors from EU25 countries (pre-January EU countries) and subtract it from the number from EU27 countries (post-January EU countries) to find out the total from the two new EU countries. So, the number of people visiting has trebled.

The number of visitors from Eastern Europe has risen by a quarter since Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU, a Government survey has revealed.

The first count taken since the beginning of the year shows there were around 50,000 arrivals each month from the two new members.

The count, at ports and airports, suggests that warnings of a new flood of immigrants could be coming true.

The actual number of extra visitors from the two new EU countries so far since accession in January compared to last year is just 29,000. Yes, the Mail's original 'Migrant numbers triple' story claimed a rise from 23,000 in three months of 2006 to 60,000 in 2007, but it was using the figures of December 2006 to February 2007, including one month before accession. The more recent figures show that the number of visitors from January to March 2006 was 31,000, and in the same period of 2007, the figure is 60,000. So, the actual number of extra visitors from the two new EU countries in March 2007 is around 10,000. The Mail implies that the accession of the two new countries is responsible for a rise of 50,000. Does the Mail lie much?

Only 8,000 Romanians and Bulgarians came to work in Britain in the first three months after their countries joined the European Union on January 1, according to official figures published today.

The Home Office figures show that 10,418 Romanians and Bulgarians applied for permission to work in Britain between January and March this year, of which 7,935 were granted. The figures include 2,660 who registered as self-employed and 200 who described themselves as "self-sufficient". About two-thirds were Romanian.

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, Eastern European migration, fucking liars, immigration, Mail-watch, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

"When it's the misspelling of something like Google, that's one thing, but to capitalise on the disappearance of a little girl is a despicable practice."

Quite. But did you know that you can help widen the search for "Maddie" if you're going on holiday by wearing one of the Sun's Where's Maddie t-shirts?


Meanwhile, the Express, which earlier in the week compared the only "suspect" so far named to Ian Huntley, has much more important speculation news. Robert Murat has apparently asked a number of people for alibis; somehow, the Express takes this attempt by Murat to clear his name through showing he could not possibly have taken Madeleine as further evidence of his abundant, obvious guilt.

Angela Philips, writing on CiF, attacks the naysayers by saying this isn't prurient media barons taking advantage of a great opportunity to sell some newspapers by indulging in emotional blackmail, but rather pure empathy from journalists and the population of Britain towards the McCann family. Such pure empathy can be seen on MyScum, where the coverage seems to have driven several of those commenting close to despair:

this is to much!! i cant bear to see Maddie´s sister and her parents faces anymore. this is breaking my heart. i cry all the time, someone, somebody MUST know something !! i think about Maddie all the time, and i cant sleep. i pray for you Maddie all the time, and i know you will be home soon with your mum and dad, and your sister and brother. whoever did this crime must be a very disturped person !!! i pray to God to talk with this person heart and let Maddie go. even this is affecting me daily, because i simply cant forget about Maddie and her family, i can never compare my sadness and frustration with Kate and Gerry. i just thank God that He gives them strenght to carry on with the search for Maddie, Becauses i know for sure that she will be found. i bless the woman who saw Maddie in Maroco and God help her to identify the man who was with Maddie.

I can't believe someone would do this to a little girl!! every time it comes on the news it makes me want to cry my heart goes out to her family!! I'll be praying for her safe return!!!!! ino she'll come home soon and safe.

Hi i think they should try and use a spitulist,clairvoyant or pysicic.it must be worth a try....that Poor little girl..It wasn't her fault all this happened to her..And her parents must be so distrant..They are a beautiful family and i do hope this is going out all around the world...someone MUST KNOW SOMETHING!!!It tearing my hair out with it and soon this story will disappear...something Must be done fast.thankyou and good luck

Their apparent breakdowns doubtless have nothing to do with the specialised section the Sun has set-up, which has almost as many reports as the whole normal news page has.

It is however easy to quote statistics regarding how many other children will have gone missing in the 16 days since Madeleine went missing and glibly remark how many children in Iraq, Darfur or wherever else will have died in that time period. This is slightly unfair, both on the media and on the McCann family. There was always going to be immense public interest in the story, whether it had happened to a respectable middle-class religious couple or a godless working class family, although the coverage may have been different as some have more than convincingly alleged. The main problem with the coverage from the beginning hasn't been that it has been all-out to find Madeleine: it's rather that it's geared towards serving the own interests of those who are so kindly helping to spread the message, whether it's British Airways, the News of the Screws or "Sir" Philip Green, while at the same time indulging in the kind of mawkishness and synthetic, manufactured grief that is making ordinary people around the country feel almost in some way responsible and personally involved, even though there's nothing whatsoever that they can do. For papers like the Daily Mail to be outraged when some companies and individuals take advantage of the situation in the exact same way that MP's wearing yellow ribbons were and the press itself is isn't surprising, it's just classic Street of Shame humbug. And neither is going to get Madeleine back.

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, emotional pornography, Express-watch, Madeleine McCann, media hysteria, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

The blood has been washed off, the funerals are beginning, classes recommence on Monday, so it's time to move on from the pictures of the bullet-ridden pretty girls and on to finding something to blame. With Columbine, instead of wondering where the parents had been and how the teenagers had been able to get their hands on their arsenal, they quickly found out that Marilyn Manson was most definitely the one who was really responsible, despite the boys' both disliking his music, as well as the first-person-shooter Doom, which the boys had at least played.


The Daily Mail then has started the ball rolling by noting the striking similarities between some of the poses struck by Cho and by two of the characters in the Korean film Oldboy, directed by Chan-wook Park. Notice that? It's a Korean film, and Cho was Korean. QED, right? QED! The whole article is a sensationalist, over-the-top joke:

He wouldn't have drawn much attention as he strolled across the campus.

Cho Seung-Hui was just another anonymous face that morning among the scores of people criss-crossing the sweeping lawns and wide, sunlit streets of Virginia Tech university.

It was approaching 9am and everyone was preparing for the start of the college week.

But the 23-year-old Korean was on a mission. He had just killed the teenage brunette with whom he is thought to have been infatuated, and blasted to death the college prefect who appears to have come to her aid.

Now he was about to play the leading role in a sickening finale to what would become America's most devastating gun massacre.

In his twisted mind he carried images of a violent Korean movie that appears to have scripted his thoughts.

As he turned the gun on himself, it is difficult to imagine that he didn't allow himself a rare smile.

For while police scrambled hopelessly to bring his killing spree to an end, he still held the power to control the finale from beyond the grave, which is precisely what he wanted.

Seldom have 28 poor-quality video clips and the monotone rantings of a deluded maniac been given so much air time.

Labels: blame game, Cho Seung-hui, Daily Mail-watch, moral panics, Virginia Tech massacre

It's hard to judge just who is the most nauseating in the continuing battle over the selling by some of the 15 hostages of their stories to the tabloids. The Grauniad leader gets it mostly right by saying that nobody comes out of it well. It was always to be expected that a few days' long civil war would break out between the newspapers that were successful in getting the "exclusives" and those that weren't; it happens every time a big story like this comes along - remember how Paul Burrell was attacked after selling his story to the Mirror? Even by the usual low standards of our press though this is an abysmal trough.

If the hostages had told us anything, absolutely anything slightly interesting or insightful about their brief imprisonment, then maybe the obscene payouts would have been at least somewhat justified. As it happens, they've told us even less than was revealed at the staged MoD press conference last Friday. The closest Turney has come to telling us something new was that she supposedly had a more charged conversation with Ahmadinejad than that which appeared on the news. The treatment which they received, while not pleasant, was certainly not anything which they shouldn't have perhaps expected if they were to have been captured. The staged photographs on the front page of the Sun this morning, mother and daughter kissing, happy to be reunited, meant to make you feel pleased at the outcome of this whole sorry affair, instead leave a sour taste in the mouth. Some of the details just make you wince - that Turney will be keeping a doll given to her in the "goody bags" they received from the Iranians, but only after it was checked for explosives, as you can never be too sure about those extremist suicide bombing plastic Islamic warriors.

The Sun has then set about attempting to defend itself. Turney makes clear that the money is not going to be spent on her - it's instead going into a trust fund for her daughter, with some going to the HMS Cornwall benevolent fund, although she predictably doesn't reveal how much. It also launches an attack on two ex-army figures who went public with their concerns whom apparently received fees themselves for doing so, enlisting Andy McNab, who obviously won't be getting any money for his own appearance to denounce them. That the fees given to them will have been next to negligible, while Turney will be receiving a quoted £100,000 through her deal with the Sun and Tonight with Trevor McDonald, doesn't affect the Sun's righteous outrage.

All this said, it's hard to not feel somewhat sorry for Turney when you read the disgusting bilious reaction of everyone's favourite blowhard, Richard Littlejohn. Almost half the front page of the Daily Hate is given over to advertising his attack on Turney and the others, liberally sprinkling in insults about Blair and Labour in general, as if the Tories would have handled things differently if they'd been in power. I mean, does Turney really deserve this revolting passage from Littlejohn?

How long before the ludicrous Faye Turney pops up on Celebrity Fat Club? I bet they didn't let her get in the dinghy first. This is a woman who is capable of capsizing the Ark Royal if she shifts her weight to the wrong cheek.

Take that, you dumb overweight bitch! In fact, the whole of Littlejohn's piece sets out to belittle the whole incident. He doesn't criticise them for the contents of their interviews, except to make fun of Batchelor for being a "wimp", as if Littlejohn himself would dare to go out to Iraq in the first place, but for the whole selling of the story and their conduct while in captivity. If Turney had sold her story to the Daily Mail, then the boot would be on the other foot. As it is, Littlejohn is more than happy to oblige in attacking Turney for making the wrong choice. That the Mail was at the forefront of the why-oh-whying about Turney even being out in the disputed waters in the first place doesn't seem to have made them reflect on why she rejected them.

Littlejohn does have a point about emotion and drama being used and abused more than ever. This isn't the fault of the sailors, but the sensationalist media which Littlejohn himself works for which has created that very culture. He often makes mocking references to the cult which surrounded the death of Princess Diana, but the Mail was one of the chief culprits in elevating her from a flawed, ordinary woman who married a member of the royal family into a modern day saint purely because of her untimely death.

As a result, every news story has to be ever more hard-hitting, every death is always an avoidable tragedy, every mourning mother needs to have her anguish documented, otherwise no one will care. Turney's time in an Iranian jail is therefore an ordeal, her 13 days mental agony, or even torture. Words, as we know, are weapons. Simon Jenkins wonders, quite legitimately, how all this hate being directed towards Tehran is going to affect the chances of the only solution to their alleged pursuit of a nuclear weapons program, a diplomatic one.

Does Turney then deserve a medal, as the Sun's discussion board rather optimistically asks? Does she deserve to be called a fat ass by a man known disparagingly for the alleged shortness of his own appendage? It's hard not to reflect that this whole outbreak of mass idiocy wouldn't have occurred if we hadn't already dealt with the equal stupidity of staying in southern Iraq for no particular reason. Until then, I think I'm going to go sit in the corner with a sick bag over my head, just in case.

Labels: chequebook whores, Daily Mail-watch, Faye Turney, Iran captures sailors, Richard Littlejohn, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, tabloid feuds

Labels: cannabis, Daily Mail-watch, Ezekiel Maxwell, Grand Theft Auto, knife crime, mental ill-health, moral panics, Telegraph-watch