Russell Grant and Eurovision

It was announced last week that Engelbert Humperdinck is to represent the UK at the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest.

This may have come as something of a shock to readers of the Daily Star. On 17 November 2011, the paper said the person being 'lined up' to sing for the UK was...Russell Grant:

Peter Dyke's article includes a quote from a conveniently anonymous source, who says:

“He’s camp just like Eurovision. But he can also sing and dance, unlike some of our past entries.

“We’re looking for someone who will bring the fun back to the contest so it would make sense to ask him."

The only attributed quote in the article comes at the end and is from Grant. He points out such reports are:

"very premature"

Indeed.

One week later, the Evening Standard had a different role lined up for Grant:

Russell Grant is set to host of the Eurovision Song Contest.

The 'Strictly Come Dancing' star - who left the ballroom competition last weekend - is the frontrunner to present the BBC's coverage of the annual singing competition next year, taking over duties from Graham Norton.

A source said: "Russell would be perfect for Eurovision. He's well and truly in the nation's hearts after his amazing routines on Strictly and would bring his unique humour and zest to the show. 

Another anonymous source.

It's not clear where the suggestion Norton was being replaced came from. But the BBC's press release announcing Humperdinck as the UK act ended with confirmation that commentary for the 2012 event will indeed be done by...Norton.

But that wasn't the end of Grant and Eurovision. On 28 December 2011, the Sun came up with a different tale:

Astrologer Russell Grant has been asked to represent MALTA at Eurovision.

Organisers from the Mediterranean island got in touch with the flamboyant star after he impressed them with his turn on Strictly Come Dancing. 

Malta? Oh yes, according to another anonymous source:

A pal said: "He was thrilled but a bit perplexed to be asked to represent Malta as he has no link to the country.

"The only Maltesers he knows are in a box of chocolates. But he was really flattered."

Yet there's an interesting comment under this article, from one of the 'organisers' in Malta that, the Sun said, had 'got in touch' with Grant:

'Absolutely garbage and completely untrue'.

An article on Malta Today elaborates on this denial:

Eurovision Malta chief organiser and PBS chief executive Anton Attard described the report as "absolute nonsense".

Attard explained that he didn't even know Russell Grant, however he did not exclude that the British media got it all wrong.

"Mr. Grant may have been contacted by any composer who would have offered him a song, and we do not go into that as long as the competition regulations are observed," Attard said.

He added that from the long list of entry submissions made to the organisers, Russell Grant's name never featured. The time for submissions has meanwhile been closed.

And last month it was announced that Malta would be represented by Kurt Calleja.

So three articles about Russell Grant and Eurovision, and not one of them turned out to be true. The papers clearly need more reliable anonymous sources.

'That is not my dad'

A heart-warming story in the Evening Standard last week about Laura Robson's dad taking time off work to watch his daughter's second round match at Wimbledon:


But Robson tweeted:


(Photo from Laura Robson's lockerz.com page)

Churnalism to sell...films, Botox

Last Tuesday, several of the papers printed a 'story' that was designed to sell an app and get a recruitment agency's name in print.

A day or so later, the Mail, Express and Sun ran stories about a piece of (as yet unexplained) research on belief in the afterlife which coincided with the release of the film Hereafter.

Then yesterday, another dodgy bit of PR nonsense got the same treatment. It was also designed to sell something and was treated very seriously by some papers. It seems to have started in the Evening Standard in an article by their Health and Social Affairs Correspondent Sophie Goodchild. She wrote:

Young women are developing premature wrinkles from staring at their smartphones all day...

Really? Who says so?

...says a top cosmetic doctor.

Ah. The article goes on to name the doctor, reveal where his clinic is, and let him get away with saying stuff like this:

"The natural tendency is to squint at the screen when reading messages and as a result some people develop this area of tightness/small frown lines between the brows, which is easily rectified with the light use of Botox by an experienced doctor."

Who could he have in mind?

There's no evidence provided, no explanation as to how he knows the wrinkles are caused by using smartphones, nor any reason given as to why this doesn't seem to affect men.

But he's backed up by a beauty therapist, who claims to have:

noticed a huge difference over the past 18 months in my clients' faces

Unsurprisingly, she recommends a slightly different treatment which she can provide.

The same 'story' then ran in the Mail and the Sun with the same terms, the same quotes and the same 'experts' - all in the same order - to describe what all the articles called a 'phenomenon'.

There's no scepticism, no challenging - just lazy Phil Space churnalism.

Mail: two libel payouts in two days

On 16 July, the Mail apologised to Marlon King for a false story it published about him, which it had copied from the Sun.

On 21 July, the Mail apologised to Cheryl Cole for a false story it published about her, which it had copied from the Sun.

Today, both the Mail and Sun have apologised and paid (around £80,000) libel damages to Parameswaran Subramanyam for false stories they published about him. This time, however, the Sun copied it from the Mail.

Subramanyam went on a 23-day hunger strike in Parliament Square in April 2009 during protests against the Sri Lankan government's offensive against the Tamil Tigers.

But on 9 October, the Mail ran a story headlined 'Hunger striker's £7m Big Mac' which claimed - on the basis of an anonymous police source - that Subramanyam had been secretly eating hamburgers and wasn't actually on hunger strike at all. The following day, the Sun ran the same story, with the headline 'Hunger Striker was Lovin’ It: Bogus…striker was 'eating burgers''.

Unsurprisingly, the story quickly spread around anti-Tamil websites.

But today:

Victoria Jolliffe, counsel for Associated Newspapers and News Group newspapers, told the court that both organisations had withdrawn the allegations and apologised 'sincerely and unreservedly' to Subramanyam for the distress that had been caused.

The Mail ran this, linked from their homepage, although positioned very near the bottom:

An article (9 October 2009), 'Hunger striker's £7m Big Mac', reported claims that Mr Subramanyam was caught secretly eating burgers while on hunger strike during the Tamil protest in London, wasting significant police costs. We now accept that there was no truth in these allegations and we and other media have agreed to pay him damages and have apologised to Mr Subramanyam for the distress and embarrassment caused.

The Sun published this:

Our article of 9 October 2009 falsely alleged that throughout a 23 day hunger strike, Mr Parameswaran Subramanyam secretly ate takeaway burgers when dishonestly claiming he was on hunger strike in support of Sri Lankan Tamils, in a campaign which was policed at considerable expense and caused the police to waste public money.

We now accept that these allegations are totally untrue. Mr Subramanyam, whose sole aim has always been to promote the Tamil cause, did not eat any food at all during his hunger strike.

We apologise to Mr Subramanyam and his family for any upset and embarrassment caused and are paying him a substantial sum in damages.

Subramanyam's lawyer, Magnus Boyd, said:

“The allegations are entirely false which both defendants now accept. The claimant did not consume any food at all throughout his hunger strike. The Metropolitan Police Superintendent who was in charge of the operation in Parliament Square confirmed that there was no police surveillance team using 'specialist monitoring equipment' and that no video evidence existed.”

Subramanyam added:

"I am relieved that this matter is now resolved and I can start to rebuild my life again The past eight months have been an unbearable strain on my life, to the extent that at times I have even contemplated taking my own life.

"As a result of the lies that the Newspapers published about me, and through no fault of my own, I have lost friends, been shunned by family members and completely ostracised from the Tamil community."

For the Mail, it's two humiliations in two days.

Because yesterday, Associated Newspapers paid undisclosed libel damages to Reza Pankhurst over false claims he had groomed a suicide bomber. The Mail published an apology for this on 21 April. Inexplicably, it took the Evening Standard, which made the same claims, until 13 May to do the same.

Pankhurst's lawyer Lucy Moorman told the court:

the allegations in the articles were false and that both papers had now agreed to pay him costs and damages for the “injury to his reputation and the distress caused to him” by the articles.

(In other Mail libel news, Nathaniel Rothschild has today launched a libel action against the paper over a front-page story from 22 May.)

(Hat-tip to exclarotive)

Mail clarifies anti-Muslim story

The Press Complaints Commission has published details of a complaint against the Mail and the Evening Standard by Ms Farah Ahmed, a trustee of the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation.

It's not clear why the PCC has not published this sooner, given the Mail published the clarification back in March.

It sounds as if the articles carried much the same allegations as those in this groundless Express front page scare story, where money that they claimed was going to 'fanatics who want to kill us' was actually going on children's nursery places.

Here's the complaint:

Ms Farah Ahmed is a trustee of the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation - a charity which runs Muslim faith schools - and the head teacher of the organisation's Slough-based school.

She complained to the Press Complaints Commission, on behalf of the ISF, that articles in the two newspapers - reporting that "members of Hizb ut-Tahrir", a "militant Islamic group" had received over £100,000 of public money to run schools - contained inaccuracies and misled readers.

She said that, in fact, parents of pupils at ISF schools had claimed education grants to which they were entitled, and that the ISF had no links to Hizb ut-Tahrir.

The resolution begins:

The newspapers said that the articles were based on a story published by the Sunday Telegraph.

Once again, the initial reaction is to blame someone else. It can't possibly be the Mail's fault that they didn't check the story out.

But they wrote this anyway:

An article of 26 October 2009 stated that Hizb ut-Tahrir was given £113,000 of public money to run schools.

In fact, the money was given in the form of the nursery education grant, to the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation; a registered charity which maintains that it is not an extremist group, is independent from any other organisation and has no links with Hizb ut-Tahrir.

We are happy to clarify the situation.

A clarification five months later, and no apology.

The Mail had also claimed a Hizb ut-Tahrir member groomed a suicide bomber, which it apologised for in April. Now it has corrected an incorrect claim about Hizb ut-Tahrir's links to schools.

It seems accurate reporting is less important to the Mail than creating scare stories around Islamic bogeymen.

Lies and outrageous smears

In one of many recent Mail articles attacking the Liberal Democrats, Peter Oborne writes that the party is:

profoundly dishonest...prepared to lie, cheat and on occasion issue outrageous smears on its opponents

What better time, then, for the Mail to have to publish an apology to Reza Pankhurst for the profoundly dishonest article 'Revealed: Islamist preacher who lectures at top London university 'groomed suicide bomber'':

On 15 January a headline on our report said that Reza Pankhurst, a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir who teaches at the LSE, had groomed the suicide bomber Omar Sharif for an attack in Israel in 2003.

We accept that this allegation was untrue, should not have been made and we apologise to Mr Pankhurst, who had had no contact with Sharif since attending Kings’ College, London, some eight years before Sharif’s attempted suicide bombing.

The Evening Standard - which had its own version of the article under the headline 'LSE’s Islamist teacher 'groomed suicide bomber for Tel Aviv attack'' - hasn't apologised yet but, presumably, will.

Pankhurst said at the time he was seeking legal advice, so the Mail and the Standard may still have to go to court over their 'outrageous smears'.

Another apology over the 'gatecrashed' wake

Last week, this blog noted the apologies made to Nancy Jones by the Sun and the Evening Standard over claims she had 'gatecrashed' her father's wake.

But the Mail newspapers have also published an apology to Jones for the same false story:

An article on 7 October suggested that Nancy Jones, Keith Floyd's eldest daughter, had turned up unannounced at his wake and that there was reason to doubt her paternity. In fact, Ms Jones' existence was well known to Mr Floyd and the family and she was an invited guest. We apologise for any distress caused.

Only 'suggested'? Really?

The original headline 'Mourners at Keith Floyd's funeral stunned by his 'secret love child'' is a little more than a suggestion.

The Sun were, at least, upfront in admitting their original story had 'wrongly stated' the claims. Why did the Standard and Mail pretend they had only 'suggested' the lies?

Churnalism, terrorism and alcoholism

Ben Goldacre's Bad Science column on Rentokil is excellent. He shows how the Telegraph, Evening Standard and the Mail all mindlessly repeated some bogus claims made by Rentokil in a classic bit of churnalism.

Yes, Mr Dacre. Churnalism. In the Mail.

The journalists did nothing to investigate or verify the story, or even consider that Renotkil's claims that 2,000 bugs are in every train compartment might not be totally believable.

After a week and a half of obfuscation, Rentokil eventually issued a 'clarification and apology' because, they said:

it might be helpful to explain how we arrived at the numbers and where things went so wrong.

Quite. They added:

We’re really sorry that the numbers that appeared in the media were wrong and misleading and we’ve put in place a number of measures to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

So the numbers have been exposed by the Guardian and retracted by the company behind them. Yet the Mail, Telegraph and Standard articles are still live. Why?

This is a clear example of where the PCC should be pro-active in ensuring the articles are removed and clarifications posted.

By contrast, the PCC would be hard pushed to act on articles about Ian Davison, however, because there aren't any.

Davison had produced ricin and possessed 'documents which detailed how to make explosives and could by used in acts of terrorism'.

When he was arrested last June, the Mail called him a 'white supremacist' who wanted to 'poison ethnic minorities'.

Davison admitted the charges in court last week - yet the tabloid press has been absolutely silent since then.

It's a quite astonishing silence, which shows the stark contrast between how terrorists and terror suspects are treated by the press based on the colour of their skin and religion.

Indeed, the Mail spent more time covering the case of Cossor Ali, who was cleared of 'failing to pass on information that would be useful in preventing an act of terrorism'.

But according to the Mail, an innocent Muslim woman is more newsworthy than a white man who admits to producing ricin.

There's more on Davison and media coverage of ricin plots at Septicisle.

One more recommended read: over at the Beer Blog, Pete Brown has exposed the Mail's latest attempt to scare people about drink.

Sorry for saying you gatecrashed your father's wake

The Sun and the Evening Standard have both apologised to Nancy Jones after they claimed she had 'gatecrashed' Keith Floyd's wake and announced she was his 'lovechild':


But:

An article on 6 October last year about Keith Floyd's funeral wrongly stated that Nancy Jones had gatecrashed the wake, had acted in an insensitive way and that she was ushered out. We now accept that our information was incorrect.

Nancy Jones, Keith Floyd's eldest daughter, was expected and welcomed at the event and was not ushered out because of her behaviour or otherwise.

We apologise to her for any embarrassment caused.

And from the Standard:

On 6 October 2009, our article suggested that Nancy Jones gate crashed Keith Floyd's wake and announced that she was his secret love child.

We accept that Ms Jones, Mr Floyd's eldest daughter, was well known to the family, that she was invited to the event, and that she did not behave in an insensitive manner to any of the guests.

We apologise for the distress caused to her at a difficult time.

(Hat-tip Regret the Error)

Six apologies in three days

From yesterday's Sun, an apology - and £10,000 damages - to Lily Allen:

In May we reported in Bizarre that Lily Allen had made various offensive remarks about David and Victoria Beckham and Ashley and Cheryl Cole in an interview with a magazine.

We now accept that Lily didn't say these things to the magazine and we apologise to Lily for the upset and embarrassment caused by repeating them.

The day before, on Thursday 24 September, the Evening Standard and Mail dished out an apology and 'substantial' payout to Metropolitan police commander Ali Dizaei after they claimed he was a bigamist in June 2008:

In an article published on 21 June 2008, we reported the results of a search from the Principal Registry of the Family Division that there was no record of a divorce between Ali Dizaei and Natalie Downing. In fact, Decree Absolute had been obtained in July 2005, two years before his marriage to Shahameh Dizaei, but due to an error of the court the divorce was not registered centrally. We are happy to clarify the position and apologise to all concerned.

That came a day after the Sun apologised over the hit list story and both the Mail (and News of the World) had apologised and paid out to England's football coach Fabio Capello over an invasion of privacy.

The Mail's role in the Capello story is particularly interesting, as explained in the Independent. The Capellos were on holiday and had noticed lots of photographers sniffing around. He contacted the Football Association (FA) which in turn spoke to the PCC, who issued a statement to all editors that publication of any pictures of the Capellos would be considered a breach of privacy.

The News of the World decided to ignore that and publish seven photos a few days later. The FA weren't impressed, and got onto the PCC. The pics were soon removed from the paper's website.

On Sunday afternoon, the FA sent a further letter, as the Indy explains:

The FA then wrote to newspapers and broadcasters to "formally request all other media do not use these photographs and respect the Capellos' right to privacy set out by the PCC". It pointed out that: "Fabio Capello and the FA could not have been clearer from the moment he commenced his role in January 2008 that he wants to enjoy a professional working relationship with the media, but he considers his private life and his family private."

But the Mail decided to ignore all that and printed some of the pictures on page three of its Monday edition. Why did it think pictures of Mrs Capello taking a mudbath of any interest to its readers at all? But more importantly, why did the Mail think it was above a warning from the PCC? Does the Mail really treat the PCC with such disdain?