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Posted by Tim Ireland
October 3rd, 2011
Amanda Knox has just been found not guilty of murdering her room-mate Meredith Kercher. An Italian court upheld her appeal against a 26-year sentence, and similarly overturned a 25-year sentence imposed on her ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.
Below is a screen capture from an article published by the Daily Mail soon after the verdict. This article by Nick Pisa was clearly published in error, as it declared that both Knox & Sollecito were found guilty, when nothing like this happened:
But what is more significant is that we know this article was prepared in advance of an event that no-one at the Daily Mail could possibly have witnessed… which means that Nick Pisa and the relevant editing staff at the Daily Mail were prepared to print the following eyewitness accounts as if they were genuine, when everyone involved with preparing this article must have known that they described events that had yet to happen:
“Amanda Knox looked stunned this evening after she dramatically lost her prison appeal against her murder conviction….”
and
“As Knox realized the enormity of what judge Hellman was saying she sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears.”
and
“A few feet away Meredith’s mother Arline, her sister Stephanie and brother Lyle, who had flown in especially for the verdict remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family.”
In the same article, the Daily Mail of all papers has the temerity to sniff at the “media circus” around the trial; one caption even labels them ’scum’. But I can only see one ‘news’ paper inventing reactions from the prosecution following an event that never happened:
Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that ‘justice has been done’ although they said on a ‘human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail’.
The Daily Mail even give a full account of events that didn’t follow the event that didn’t happen:
Following the verdict Knox and Sollecito were taken out of court escorted by prison guards and into a waiting van which took her back to her cell at Capanne jail near Perugia and him to Terni jail, 60 miles away.
This is a clear-cut case of entirely invented detail that cannot be explained away as part of any standard verdict-preparedness process. In fact, it goes well beyond the ‘X actually said this to my face’ antics of Johann Hari, but I doubt very much if we will see Nick Pisa admitting to any wrongdoing or offering to attend journalism school anytime soon.
UPDATE (4/10/11 10:28): Tim emails Nick Pisa for a quote.
Categories: News |
12 Comments
Posted by dnotice
October 3rd, 2011
You may be aware that Amanda Knox has been cleared of murder.
However, if you’d stumbled upon the Daily Mail’s website, you would have thought otherwise.
This was published on the Mail’s website as soon as the judge said “Guilty”. However, he was referring to her being “guilty” of defamation, not murder.
Nevertheless, it appears that whoever publishes articles on the Mail’s website jumped the gun. A piece went up with the URL slug-words: Amanda-Knox-verdict-GUILTY-appeal-murder-conviction-rejected.
The artice has since been removed, but a screenshot was taken by @syn for posterity.
While it has captions including “Media scum”, what it interesting is that the Mail’s erroneous article has “quotes” from the prosecution.
The killer paragraph is:
Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said “Justice has been done” although they said on a “human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail“
Clearly they would only make such comments upon there being a guilty verdict. Even ignoring the fact that she was innocent and so the quotes would never have been made, the timing of the article on its own (8:50 p.m.) would suggest that the “quotes” are fake.
Categories: Media, News |
1 Comment
Posted by Dave Cross
September 28th, 2011
[This is cross-posted from davblog]
It’s not often that you can trace a tabloid meme back to its beginnings. Over the last week we’ve seen the birth of a new tabloid meme and, luckily, we’re able to see where it comes from.
Here’s the seed. It’s from the Frequently Asked Questions page on the BBC Religion religion web site.
Why does bbc.co.uk/religion use BCE and CE instead of BC and AD?
In line with modern practice bbc.co.uk/religion uses BCE/CE (Before Common Era/Common Era) as a religiously neutral alternative to BC/AD. As the BBC is committed to impartiality it is appropriate that we use terms that do not offend or alienate non-Christians.
There is something important to notice here. From reading the answer to question, it’s clear that it’s only talking about the BBC Religion web site – this is not a BBC-wide policy. Also note that this page has been there for some time. There’s nothing at all that indicates that this is a new rule. But that’s not how it seemed to various Mail columnists.
In the Mail on Sunday on 18th Septamber, Peter Hitchins wrote this:
The BBC’s Chief Commissar for Political Correctness (whom I imagine as a tall, stern young woman in cruel glasses issuing edicts from an austere office) was hard at work again last week.
On University Challenge, Jeremy Paxman referred to a date as being Common Era, rather than AD. This nasty formulation is designed to write Christianity out of our culture. Given the allegedly ferocious Mr Paxman’s schoolgirlish, groupie-like treatment of various prominent atheists in recent interviews, maybe he favours this far-from-impartial view.
I’m guessing that Hitchens just happened to be watching University Challenge, got annoyed by the use of “Common Era” and decided to use it at the end of his column to have a little go at the BBC. It probably wouldn’t have gone any further if it wasn’t for James Delingpole.
On Saturday Delingpole wrote a piece for the Mail entitled “How the BBC fell for a Marxist plot to destroy civilisation from within”. I swear I’m not making this up. The piece reads like something from The Onion but, amazingly, he seems to be completely serious. It’s Delingpole who links Hitchens’ annoyance to the FAQ page I quoted above. He writes:
No longer will [The BBC's] website refer to those bigoted, Christian-centric concepts AD (as in Anno Domini – the Year of Our Lord) and BC (Before Christ). From now on, it will use initials which strip our traditional Gregorian calendar of its offensive religious context. All reference to Christ has been expunged, replaced by the terms CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before Common Era).
But the BBC isn’t doing this because it has been flooded with complaints, you understand. Nor is it responding to public demand. No, as it primly explains on the Q&A page on the section of its website bbc.co.uk/religion, it is doing it to be ‘in line with modern practice’.
He’s getting it completely wrong, of course. As we’ve already established, the FAQ page is only talking about a single section section of the BBC’s web site. But Delingpole isn’t a man who ever lets facts stand in the way of a good rant. Building on a non-existent foundation he spins a magnificent conspiracy theory about pernicious left wingers destroying the British way of life.
Then, on Sunday, Chris Hastings ties it all together, building on Hitchens’ annoyance, the BBC FAQ and Delingpole’s rantings to produce a front-page story with the headline “BBC turns its back on year of Our Lord: 2,000 years of Christianity jettisoned for politically correct ‘Common Era’”.
But, of course, the story doesn’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny. In fact it is full of internal contradictions.
The Corporation has replaced the familiar Anno Domini (the year of Our Lord) and Before Christ with the obscure terms Common Era and Before Common Era.
A bold statement which is rather shown up by the following sentence which admits that University Challenge and In Our Time “are among the growing number of shows using the new descriptions” – indication that the BBC’s evil plan isn’t quite as advanced as Hastings would like us to think. It’s also interesting that he uses the phrase “new descriptions” as the terms have been around for 150 years.
If you get to the end of the article, he has asked the BBC for a statement on the issue. They say:
The BBC has not issued editorial guidance on the date systems.
Both AD and BC, and CE and BCE are widely accepted date systems and the decision on which term to use lies with individual production and editorial teams.
A lesser man would have realised that this statement completely overturns the argument of the article and may even have thought better of submitting the story. Hastings, however, knows that most Mail readers don’t get past the first couple of paragraphs of a story and decided to press ahead safe in the knowledge that very few people would get to the end and realise the embarrassing truth. And it seems he was right to do so, as this story currently has over 1,500 comments, the vast majority of which are from people who obviously didn’t get far past the headline.
I thought that would have been the end of it, but this nonsense now seems to have gone viral. Yesterday the Mail published “Our language is being hijacked by the Left to muzzle rational debate” by Melanie Phillips (don’t read it – really, you have been warned) and “The BBC just loath anything that smacks of tradition” by Reverend Peter Mullen. Neither of these articles show any evidence of the authors having taken any time to investigate the story at all. The story has also moved beyond the Mail and has been covered by other papers like the Telegraph.
So there you have it. The birth of a new anti-BBC meme. One throwaway remark from a Mail writer and within a week the BBC is under attack for something that it hasn’t done. Well done Peter Hitchens. And the brilliant thing (as far as the Mail is concerned) is that the BBC is in a lose-lose situation here. If programmes stop using BC and AD then the paranoia of the Mail will be proved correct. If, however, (as seems far more likely) a mixture of the two systems continue to be used as it has been for several years, then the Mail will be able to point out every use of BC and AD as a triumph for its campaign.
One more nail in the coffin of rational debate in this country.
P.S. For more detail on the story see these two great posts over on Tabloid Watch.
Update: I’ve just seen this in an old article on the Daily Mail site:
A comparison of this latest finding with city walls and gates from the period of the First Temple, as well as pottery found at the site, enable us to postulate with a great degree of assurance that the wall that has been revealed is that which was built by King Solomon in Jerusalem in the latter part of the 10th century BCE.
And, you know what, not a ripple of complaint in the comments.
Categories: Media |
4 Comments
Posted by Tim Ireland
August 5th, 2011
A small group of liberal elitists behind The Sun: Tabloid Lies, Mail Watch, Express Watch and other personal attacks on common sense and decency will be meeting for a London-centric Chardonnay-quaffing* session at The Monarch in Camden at 2:30pm on Saturday 6th August, 2011.
Members of the public are invited to attend, provided they are not operating under the constraints of an imaginary legal device.
Those attending may be exposed to furtive whispers about media standards as a spectacle, media-watching as a sport, and other aspects of the vast left wing conspiracy to impose accuracy and accountability on a self-regulated system that’s doing just fine without our incessant meddling.
[*There may be some drinking of popular colas and lager beer, purely for the sake of appearances, should a photo opportunity arise. PS - bring a camera.]
Media Watch Meet-up
2:30pm
Saturday
6th August 2011
The Monarch in Camden:
http://www.monarchbar.com/contact/
Bags will be searched for pie.
Categories: Media |
2 Comments
Posted by Dave Cross
July 5th, 2011
[This is cross-posted from Davblog]
A lot of tabloid watchers have obviously been looking elsewhere today, but the Mail still manages to peddle its usual level of bullshit.
I was particularly drawn to this piece [istyosty link]. In it they examine recent Department of Health figures on the number of girls of sixteen or under who have an abortion.
The Mail line is predictable.
Campaigners warned that the alarming figures, revealed by the Department of Health, were representative of a society where abortion was ‘on demand’ – even for very young girls who legally should not be having sex.
But there’s another way of looking at this data.
Here’s the table that the Mail published.
Now I’m not saying for a second that this is an acceptable level of teen abortions. Obviously anyone would hope for those figures to be far smaller – zero even. But take a close look at the figures for the last four years.
The number of abortions carried out on girls of sixteen and under has fallen every year since 2007. In fact the figure is now 15% lower than it was at its peak.
Surely that has to be seen as a good thing. That’s a substantial fall over four years. But no. The Mail looked at these figures and decided to spin it as a comment on our over-sexed society rather than the success story that it undoubtedly is.
Categories: Healthcare |
9 Comments
Posted by sim-o
April 27th, 2011
This post was originally posted by Simon HB at his No Rock and Roll Fun blog and is reproduced here with kind permission.
The death of Isobel Jones-Reilly is a terrible thing, a terribly sad story.
But no story is so heartbreaking that it’s not going to get the Mail moralising and blaming everything in the modern world (istyosty.com link):
Ecstasy death girl, 15, ‘idolised drug-taking musicians and was hooked on the internet’
Right from the first three crappy depersonalising words of the headline on Arthur Martin and Tamara Cohen’s shabby piece sets the tone for a careless, thoughtless long honk as the Mail drags the body of a dead teenager up and down the streets.
Let’s start with that claim she was “hooked on the internet”. You might think that if Isobel really was hooked on the internet, she’d be getting lambasted in a different part of the Mail for sitting in her bedroom looking at a screen. Her very real death was in the very real world, surely?
But how does the Mail know about this being addicted to the web, except for when she had switched the computer off and gone out with friends?
But one of her teachers blamed her downward spiral on an addiction to the internet.
Really?
Jaye Williamson, who was Isobel’s English teacher at Chiswick Community College, in West London, said: ‘She was into the kind of things that teenagers get into, but she got hooked on the worldwide web. She was part of the Myspace generation. She got caught and we are devastated.’
“Part of the MySpace generation” pretty much tells you to what extent Williamson is an expert witness on these matters. To be fair to Williamson, her quote sounds like something somebody who is still upset and confused by the death of a young person they knew might mumble out if being badgered for a quote from a shitty journalist.
Certainly, the Mail offers no other evidence for this “addiction” to the internet, and doesn’t seem to consider for a moment that ‘doing stuff on the internet’ is what people do now. It reports memorial events organised online and scrapes Facebook photos and YouTube videos from tribute sites without seeming to realise that this is the sort of “being sucked in” to the internet that is meant to be the bogeyman in the story.
So what of Martin and Cohen’s second bold claim, that Isobel “idolised drug-taking musicians”?
Did she edit a fanzine called something like ‘Works and Plectrums’? No.
Had she shot a YouTube video in which she cheered while waving round pictures of Pete Doherty? No.
Have Martin and Cohen got details of a tattoo she had reading “Bands who take drugs are cool”? No.
Their claim seems to be based on one single quote:
‘Like many teenagers she idolised musicians who took drugs and it was hard to tell them the pitfalls of copying such behaviour.
‘These bands seem to have it all and the kids just want to copy them. It’s just desperately sad that it’s ended in the death of such a beautiful and lovely girl.’
And who gave this line to the Mail?
Diane Bardon, 50, whose son David was at school with Isobel
So the parent of another child at her school farts out a suggestion that maybe she was “idolising” drug-taking musicians “like many teenagers” – a vague and empty claim that, you’ll note, can’t even stand itself up by suggesting a name or two of whose these musicians might actually be – and suddenly it’s up in the headlines.
There’s a dead child, a mourning family, and all the Mail is interested in doing is kicking the corpse to see if it can somehow blame the internet and rock music. What a triumph for journalism.
Categories: Music |
Tags: children, death, drugs, Internet, Music | 12 Comments
Posted by Dave Cross
April 10th, 2011
[This is cross-posted from davblog]
Today, the Daily Mail published the most hysterical pile of anti-internet crap [istyosty link] that I think I’ve ever seen. And that takes some doing as Daily Mail articles usually combine a complete lack of understanding of the internet together with the deep distrust and fear that Mail writers have for most of the modern world.
In this article, writer Alex Brummer turns his attention to Google and the damage that they are doing to the UK’s digital industry. It’s the usual concoction of nonsense and half-truths and it contains a typical Mail conspiracy theory claiming that David Cameron is promoting Google as a good example of a digital success story because his strategy advisor Steve Hilton is married to Rachel Whetstone, Google’s head of communications. It doesn’t seem to occur to Brummer at all that Cameron is promoting Google as a good example of a digital success story because… well because it’s a bloody good example of a digital success story.
The article then goes seriously off the rails as Brummer explains how Google’s business plan is plunder the copyright of hard-working British artists like Adele and to share their work with everyone for free. It reaches a peak of insanity as he says this:
One only has to switch on the computer, call up the Google search engine and type in the name of a star like Adele to understand why the digital channel is such a threat to the UK’s performers, and for that matter our whole creative industry.
Nine out of the first ten websites which pop up on Google’s search engine are run by pirates who have downloaded Adele’s output and offer it online far more cheaply than official copyrighted sites and High Street retailers.
Claims like this aren’t new, of course and presumably Brummer assumes that everyone who reads those paragraphs will nod in agreement whilst thinking to themselves, “Of course that’s what happens – wouldn’t be at all surprised if it turns up a few pages of porn too”. Brummer relies on his readership being people who have be told so many horror stories about Google search results that they are now scared to even visit the site.
So what happens if you actually bother to try Brummer’s suggestion. Here’s what I got:
- Three links to videos on YouTube. Two of them are from her record label and the other one seems to be from Adele’s own channel.
- Two links to Adele’s official web site.
- Three links to news stories about Adele (including Brummer’s own story).
- A link to Adele’s MySpace page.
- Five images.
- A link to a page about Adele on last.fm.
- A link to a page of Adele lyrics (this doesn’t look official).
- A link to Adele’s Facebook page.
- A link to an Amazon page promoting Adele.
- A link to Adele’s record company’s page about her.
All of which rather seems to disprove Brummer’s theory. From this sample it seems that Google seems very adept at putting Adele’s fans in touch with official sources of information about her. Only the lyrics page seems unofficial or unapproved – and do lyrics really count as piracy?
There’s another option to consider here though. For a couple of years now Google have been providing customised search results. Whenever you search on Google, they take into account the links that you have clicked on from previous search results. I’m not surprised that I get a page of official links as those are the kinds of sites that I usually show most interest in. If Mr Brummer gets a page of pirate links then perhaps he should investigate who has been using his computer.
Categories: Internet |
14 Comments
Posted by sim-o
January 6th, 2011
Back in September FullFact.org looked into the claims of the press of how many children had been mis-diagnosed as having special educational needs (SEN). This was because throughout the press there was several different claims all arising from the same OfSted report.
The three most inaccurate claims were in the Independent, The Telegraph and the Daily Mail (this is an Istyosty link).
Full Fact came to the conclusion that about 457,000 children had been mis-diagnosed, not to belittle that number but it is significantly different to the 700,000 – 750,000 that these three papers claimed.
Mistakes happen. These reports are not usually the easiest things to read and interpret (for me at least). Given that an error in reporting of this size could influence any future debate about the subject (there has been some recent debates where SEN was raised), and being good public spirited citizens, Full Fact contacted the gang of three and explained where they had gone wrong with their figures.
I should mention that Full Fact, once they had done their adding and subtracting, went to Ofsted for clarification and to make sure they had infact got it right. Full Fact were correct in their workings and the figure of up to 750,000 children being mis-diagnosed with SEN is wrong, although Ofsted would only agree privately and not publicly. Ofsted only said anything publicly after a Parliamentary Question (.pdf) was asked.
By the time November had come round Full Fact had given…
…almost two months of concerted, polite effort on the part of Full Fact to remove inaccurate figures from the debate the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Independent still refuse to correct their stories. Indeed, the Independent and the Mail both repeated the claim. They say they will not correct except at the request of Ofsted themselves.
This is a clear breach of the Editors’ Code of Practice, which demands that “a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence…”
So, with the Mail, Independent and the Telegraph sticking to their mis-informed guns dispite clear accurate proof that their figures were seriously inflating an already serious number of SEN mis-diagnoses, off Full Fact went to the PCC.
Fast forward a month to December and Full Fact have another update. After initially refusing to get off it’s arse, due to those being directly involved, Ofsted, not making the complaint, the PCC accepted the complaint from Full Fact and the online articles have now been corrected and a note explaining why. Two out of the three articles have been corrected, at least.
The Independent and The Telegraph have both updated their articles but sadly the Daily Mail, being a true rebel, hasn’t.
The Daily Mail, in the face of the correct figures, Ofsted claiming publicly, albeit forced to, that the figures the mail has used in it’s story are incorrect and the PCC telling it it is wrong and should issue a correction, is still sticking with the wrong numbers. Full Fact explain why…
However the Mail’s response to the PCC argued that based on the information in the report and the press briefing, the figure was valid – and made only more so by the use of qualifiers such as “up to”.
We feel that even if the use of the higher figure was reasonable based on the briefing, this is no grounds not to correct the story in light of the later clarification.
Exactly. Fine, the Mail came to the wrong conclusion like others did, but why, when new information comes to light, shouldn’t it update/correct itself? Answers on a postcard please, to Northcliffe House, London.
Categories: education |
Tags: corrections, education, incorrect, special needs | 3 Comments
Posted by sim-o
December 8th, 2010
Whoever’s compiling the statistics for the Department for Work and Pensions could do worse than get the Mail and Express involved as they seem to have the inside knowledge.
The Mail goes with the headline…
1.6m benefits claimants have never had a job ‘because it does not pay to work’
The article underneath doesn’t back up this claim, presumably because the headline can be a total lie and still be ok with the PCC. As FullFact.org state…
Unfortunately there are no statistics available for the reasons why people have never worked. Although the Labour Force Survey does record a person’s reason for currently being out of work, this would not necessarily be the reason they have always been out of work.
Therefore there is no way of knowing precisely how many of the 1.6 million have never had a job due to caring responsibilities or disability.
The headline is only the bit of the article that gets read by *everyone* that looks at it. Not everyone reads to the bottom of articles. Nearly everyone reads past the first couple of paragraphs, but *everyone* that looks at that article reads the headline.
It doesn’t matter that there are no figures for why people have never had job. The Mail doesn’t even say how many of those 1.6 million are claiming any sort of benefit. It’s just pulled the headline out it’s arse.
There will be some people that have never had to work because they have a spouse that earns enough for them not to work. There will be others that cannot work because of disability or are carers. There will be a bucket load of teenagers that are included in this that aren’t in full-time education that have never worked because they haven’t had chance to get job, despite wanting one.
But no. Every one of those 1.6 million people are lazy, workshy scroungers sponging off the state because ‘work doesn’t pay’. Or as I like to put it, capitalism sucks.
Now about that headline, this is the paragraph where I make it ok by stating that an expert says that, no, Daily Mail headlines aren’t truthful. They’re a load of bollox, isn’t it?
*the Express is not quite as forthright as the Mail, but still goes on in the same vain.
Categories: Wellfare State |
Tags: benefits, misleading headline | 5 Comments
