Friday, May 29, 2009 

Beyond parody.

At first sight, I imagined that the subs at the Graun had had a bit of fun with Pollyanna T's latest column. After starring in the latest Private Eye's Hackwatch with the emphasis being on just how many "last chances" she had given both Labour and Gordon Brown, it would have been a laugh to headline it with just that description. Then I actually bothered to read the text:

Anything that makes enough splash to stop the one story that really matters: will the cabinet and leading MPs seize this last chance to sack their failed leader?

...

What will it take? They don't need to wait for Thursday's poll results. I have no idea if a coup will happen, but if they let this moment slip, history will record this as the spineless cabinet that threw away Labour's last chance.


Either Pol doesn't take Private Eye, she's sticking two fingers up at them, or she really can only find just the one way to express herself. Perhaps Pol herself should be in the last chance saloon.

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Wednesday, August 06, 2008 

Daily Star journalists in not making it up shocker.

One of my other sad habits other than writing this narcissistic self-abasement is regularly perusing the latest complaints made to the PCC. Ranging from the banal (Lembit Opik is a serial complainer) to the occasionally revelatory, it's instructive of journalism, especially tabloid journalism as a whole. The number of complaints made especially against the Sun and Daily Mail for intruding into personal grief can only be described as staggering.

It can also on occasion add insight into recent news stories. Remember the story last year of the community support officers that did nothing to save a child from drowning which caused a furore? It was only after the hubbub had calmed down that the Greater Manchester Police complained about the coverage in the Star and the Sun, resulting in the clarification that made clear that the community support officers had arrived several minutes after the boy, Jordon Lyon, had disappeared from view, and not before, and that rather than doing nothing to help, they had instead directed other emergency services to the scene, with an officer arriving at the scene within 5 minutes of their getting there. Greater Manchester Police also complained about the actions of journalists on the Daily Telegraph, a case which went to adjudication before it was not upheld.

None of the above however really applies to a case today which caught my eye, involving one of this blog's favourite celebrities, Ms Peaches Geldof.

Complaint:

Ms Peaches Geldof complained, through Swan Turton solicitors, that the newspaper inaccurately alleged that her Wikipedia page had been amended to claim that she was a transsexual, and that she had reacted to this by angrily emailing her friends.

Resolution:

The complaint was resolved when the newspaper published the following apology:

“On March 28 we published an article with the headline, “I’M NOT A TRANNY (AND I’M CERTAINLY NOT HUNG LIKE A DONKEY) SAYS PEACHES”. The article alleged that there had been an update for Peaches Geldof on her online encyclopaedia Wikipedia entry claiming that she was a transsexual, and that she had responded by sending out angry messages to friends to deny the story. We now accept that there was neither any such entry on Wikipedia, and nor was there any of the hysterical reaction by Peaches to the entry as described in the articles. We apologise to Peaches for any distress that the article caused”.

Stories about Wikipedia are easy enough to check because of the history trail which edits to the pages leave behind. We can therefore for instance easily see that someone on the 22nd of March edited her Wikipedia entry to read ''Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof'
is a dickhead".

On the day on which the Star reported this amazing news event, we can also see that there indeed were a number of vandalism attacks on Geldof's page. Someone from the IP address
90.197.8.210 (a Sky broadband allocation), changed the opening of the entry to Peaches Geldof -- aka No sense of humour -- and still hung like a donkey & still madly in love with Pablo and Eirah (Ray Charles) Lewis. Later still, someone with the IP address 64.236.80.62, which resolves to an address used by IPC LTD, a media company, and whom has a long Wikipedia edit history, including a very large number of edits to a page on Andrew Sumner, the current publisher director of IPC's celebrity title, Now, made three separate edits to Geldof's entry. These were variously to put that "Geldof is a man...", "She currently lives in her own little world" and that "She has recently been acting like a spoilt brat."

None of this naturally puts it plainly and clearly that Geldof is a transsexual, which is what Geldof, through her solicitors, complained about. They simply took the main edit to imply that she was a transsexual. Nor does it prove by any means that Geldof had emailed her friends to say it wasn't true or that she was angry about it. The headline "hung like a donkey" though certainly was accurate, and some might come to the conclusion that the Star was rather hasty in apologising for something that clearly had happened, despite the subsequent acceptance that any such edits had been made. It might well have been that Geldof had come into contact with someone from IPC (definitely not Andrew Sumner, surely?) who she promptly pissed off, and they edited her page as revenge and then sent on this "news" to the Star, who promptly embellished it further. It might be that the IPC stuff is just a coincidence and a Star hack noticed while looking for some reason at Geldof's Wikipedia page. It might be that Geldof in fact had been complaining to her friends about someone editing her page, and the Star story was completely accurate but decided to say it wasn't after the complaint just to get on with things.

Geldof has had a history with the Star and the PCC: she complained after two stories last year, one which claimed she was to get married in Ibiza and that her father was angry about it and the other that she had insulted Coleen McLoughlin, both of which the Star apologised for and admitted weren't true. The Daily Star of all newspapers though, in not making a story up and apologising where it may not have been strictly necessary? Who would ever have thought it?

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Wednesday, July 09, 2008 

If we churn, churn, churn, churn, churn, churn, churn....

We haven't looked at any examples of transparent churnalism in a while, and on a day in which there is one which is deadly serious and another that is not so, it seems as good as any:

THESE chilling pictures of teenagers brandishing guns and knives were found in just ONE DAY on the Bebo website.

The users’ homepages glamorise gang violence — despite 19 young people dying in vicious attacks in London this year.


Incredible as it may seem, teenagers tend to do a lot of stupid things, and posing with weapons in a feeble attempt to look tough or hard is not exactly a new development. The only difference is that now with the rise of the social networking, on any slow news day the put-upon hacks on both local and national papers can easily put together a story purely through browsing Facebook/MySpace/Bebo and exposing some new scandal of the how the young live so dangerously.

There are just a few problems with this story. First, the Sun provides absolutely no evidence whatsoever that they even were on Bebo to begin with: there's no screen grabs of the pages with the profiles showing the images, so we have to completely take the Sun's word for it that they were on the site. You also can't now go and attempt to find whether they were or not because Bebo has now "frozen the profiles", again, something you have to take the Sun's word for, although the only profile name they give in the article, "Craks Capone" did exist, and is now "unavailable" (At least one of his "friends", again a rather loose term on social networking sites, lives in Norwood/Heath). Then there's the fact that nowhere does the Sun mention whether the images they've exposed are of individuals actually living in this country; it's not as if Bebo isn't a global site, even if it is especially popular with school age children in this country.

With all that in mind, we then have the relatively slight problem of this not exactly being just an issue on Bebo. Amazing as it may seem, there are doubtless pictures of youths with weapons on Facebook, and shock, horror, MySpace. You know, the social networking website that just happens to be owned by the Sun's own parent company, and which mysteriously never receives any bad press while Bebo and Facebook have in the past been criticised on a large number of occasions in the Sun. Perhaps there's also a clue to why the Sun's chosen Bebo to embarrass on the front page of Bebo itself, which currently has as one of the featured profiles the "STOP Knife Crime" campaign group. Meanwhile, over on MySpace, second in the blog charts is this thoughtful piece: Are All Women Whores Till Proven Otherwise???

Far be it from me to suggest how Sun hacks do their job, as that's obviously what Red Rupert and Rebekah Wade are paid for, but it would have been just ever so slightly fairer if they'd investigated all three of the major social networking sites, took screen grabs of the profiles with individuals showing off their weapons, also proving that they happen to live in the UK, and then presented the shocking evidence to the salivating public, i.e., you and I. This would however have taken far more time than simply banging out 250 words accompanied by photographs you have to take on trust are from Bebo and feature UK youngsters, precious time that may simply have not been available to Vikki Thomas. This is of course also the tabloid media we're talking about, where too much effort, rather than attempting to make the best of the medium available to you, is simply trying too hard.

Trying too hard is not something that afflicts the PR industry in attempting to get the most daft references to their company into the press. Previously we had the ridiculous story of the teenager that wanted a taxi but ended up with a cabinet because of her mockney patois, which just so happened to also advertise the company that provided the cab, innit, that the teenager didn't want. Today there's the equally preposterous story of a woman who put her bra on "while in a hurry" who just didn't happen to notice there was a baby bat nesting in it until five hours later. Now, never having needed to wear a such a constraining item of clothing I wouldn't personally know, but somehow the idea of not realising there's a living creature in an item of clothing next to your skin, and such a sensitive area of epidermis to boot, for five hours, doesn't wash. Luckily, not only is the woman in question attractive and willing to pose in just her bra, she's also more than willing to make clear that all this occurred while she was working at the
Holiday Inn near Norwich International Airport.

The Churners were on the spot, tipped off by none other than 5cc, but the story has spread far further than even the tabloids now, also infecting the Independent, Torygraph and the BBC, as well as numerous other news sites worldwide, although it appears to have started via the Eastern Daily Press. You have to credit whoever thought the story up, as it's been one of the most viewed reports throughout the day. 5cc speculates it might have something to do with the new Batman movie also, but that part of the original article is one of the few parts of it that hasn't been copied and pasted into all the subsequent ones, so it seems far more likely this was an attempt to get trade over to see the famous Abbie Hawkins at the
Holiday Inn near Norwich International Airport. The fact that this is lazy journalism of the lowest kind, with apparently no one actually bothering to check whether this isn't a pathetic attempt by Holiday Inn to bypass advertising costs doesn't seem to matter when it's a story apparently too good to be true and gives the excuse of being able to show a woman in the flower of youth with large breasts either in your newspaper or on your website. Still, at least it shows more creativity than yet another "worst lyric" poll, which is where this post's title comes from.

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Friday, April 11, 2008 

Churning, innit.

Do the "journalists" that bang out this complete and utter shit believe it themselves?

A TEENAGER called directory inquiries to book a taxi but ended up having a cabinet delivered – because she asked for a “cab, innit”.

The 19-year-old Londoner wanted a taxi to take her from her home to Bristol airport, and first asked for the number using the Cockney rhyming slang “Joe Baxi”.

When the baffled operator told her she could not find anyone listed by that name, the teen snapped back: “It ain’t a person, it’s a cab, innit.”

The operator then found the nearest cabinet shop, Displaysense, and put the girl through.

She then spoke to an equally bemused saleswoman and eventually fumed: “Look love, how hard is it? All I want is your cheapest cab, innit.

I need it for 10am. How much is it?”

The sales adviser said it would be £180 and the girl gave her address and paid with a credit card.


As anyone with more than 10 braincells will have realised, this is a PR puff piece turned into "news" by the Metro, Daily Mail and Ananova, while the above was in the Scum. It's almost believable - up until the marketing manager himself makes an appearance, ala Paul Hucker and Simon Burgess. The Churner Prize tracked down the actual press release that the hacks then constructed into a story from Displaysense's own website. 5CC called bullshit too.

Churnalism at its finest then, but most of the commenters on the Sun don't seem to have seen through it:

Bring back elocution lessons, & for those that don't know what they are, they are lessons to help one speak and pronounce words clearly and correctly eliminating all this "Ain't it" and "Ya get me" rubbish we hear everyday.


Sigh.

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Monday, March 03, 2008 

Are they middle-class miserablists too?

I wonder if the same individuals that so lambasted the protesters that reached the top of the palace of Westminster last week will pour the same vitriol over those that today scaled a crane opposite the houses of parliament to call for a referendum of the Lisbon treaty.

No, thought not.

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Saturday, August 04, 2007 

(sort of) Quote of the week.


But engineers insisted yesterday that the relatively low death toll vindicated the bridge design.

I'm sure that'll be a great comfort to those who lost their loved ones.


At least those caught up in the Minnesota bridge collapse can be glad they got some media coverage. Last night's 10 O'Clock News on BBC1 had a report lasting a full 30 seconds on the floods
on the Indian subcontinent which have killed at least 1,100 and forced 19 million people to flee their homes. Immediately following it was the report on the bridge collapse, which occupied a slot at least 3 minutes long.

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