The 'World's Greatest Newspaper' won't win a British Press Award again this year

The nominations for the British Press Awards have been announced.

Unsurprisingly, the Telegraph leads the field (with 19 nominations) after its coverage of MPs' expenses.

The Guardian (17 nominations), The Sunday Times (15), The Times (13), Daily Mail (12) and the Mail on Sunday (11) follow.

There's also a handful of nominations each for the Mirror, Independent, Sun and FT.

In fact, only two national daily newspapers failed to get a single nomination: the Daily Star and the Daily Express. Richard Desmond, who owns both, must be so proud.

The Sunday Express got one nod, for the story about Jacqui Smith putting her husband's porn film on her expenses. But that's as good as it gets.

Because the Express, Star and their Sunday versions didn't get a single nomination in 2009 either.

And it was the same story in 2008.

And, ahem, 2007.

So only one nomination for Richard Desmond's dreadful rags in four years.

And yet the Express continues to call itself the 'World's Greatest Newspaper' on its masthead every day. Its circulation is collapsing, it serves up a daily diet of hate and lies and the complete lack of any nominations in these awards means it becomes increasingly hard to understand how they are allowed to make this obviously bogus claim.

Elsewhere, it was pleasing to see the Express' Paul Thomas was left off the cartoon shortlist.

But best of all, the complete failure of any of the nasty columnists at the Mail to get a single mention. No Littlejohn. No Moir. No Platell. No Melanie Phillips. No Liz Jones. No Allison Pearson.

Wonderful.

Not quite so wonderful is the somewhat surprising nomination for the Mail's 'Science' Editor Michael Hanlon in the 'Specialist journalist' category. This is the man who once wrote:

one soon forgets that zombies, so far, exist only in the imagination.

Does one?

Even worse is the inclusion of Kelvin MacKenzie on the Columnist shortlist. MacKenzie is so highly valued by the Sun - despite his lies about Hillsborough - that they don't put his columns on their website.

Here's a flavour of his work. On 11 February he wrote about the Muslim bus driver who had stopped his bus in order to pray. Last time the Sun wrote this story about a different driver it cost them £30,000. But to MacKenzie, the latest incident was evidence that them Muslims were taking over - solely because the driver had not been sacked. He wrote:

So why wasn't he fired on the spot? It seems there is one rule for them and one rule for the rest of us.

And when he says 'them' we can safely assume he's not talking about bus drivers.

No, he's talking about Muslims who, he seems to be admitting, aren't really meant to be reading the Sun. They're not one of 'us'. Such language if often used by right-wing tabloids and serves only to divide people, to build barriers, to cause tension.

It's hugely depressing to see newspapers talk of 'them and us' in this way. And it's equally depressing that such talk gets rewarded with award nominations.

Links

Who knew?

Migrationwatch are advertising for a Director of Research. An opportunity to earn £45,000 for emailing press releases to the Mail explaining how there are too many evil immigrants in the UK, it sounds like very easy money.

Anton Vowl's application is here. 5CC can always be relied upon to take apart Migrationwatch's 'research'.

Some personal favourites from this blog: the stupidly worded poll (makes that polls), the million failed asylum seekers joining the NHS queue (which was plucked out of the air), and the amazing assumptions behind 'Each illegal immigrant to cost us £1m'.

Migrationwatch say they are:

recognised as the leading source for independent expert commentary on matters relating to migration into and out of the United Kingdom.

Apart from by themselves and the tabloids, who 'recognises' them as that?

Also from Anton, the Express gets into a 'fury' about @dianainheaven on Twitter. Good.

Over at Angry Mob, Uponnothing reveals how the Mail changed a headline on an anti-Gordon Brown story when the comments turned against them; and another classic example of the Mail choosing to highlight crime based on race.

The Daily Quail looked at Melanie McDonagh's unbelievable defence of Jan Moir, whose infamous column about Stephen Gately was, apparently:

off-message but factually truthful.

This despite the fact the coroner had said the death was natural and Moir said it wasn't. Still can't blame McDonagh for missing that news - the Mail buried it at the bottom of page 36.

Also worth reading is a post on the Beer Blog of Pete Brown (via Jeff Pickthall) - a look at how the media distorted figures on children and alcohol.

Meanwhile, 5CC has looked at why the Mail seems to have fallen out of love with Julie Spence.

Talking of the Mail and love: look - it's Kim Kardashian wearing two dresses in one night.

That article included yet another example of 'look what [insert name] has posted on Twitter', which the media seems to lazily rely on for celebrity gossip these days.

A particularly curious example of this was when The Sun took a jokey tweet from pop singer Katy Perry and turned into an actual article about her 'skipping work to watch porn'. But they hid some of what she said with this exceptionally cryptic bit of censorship:

*** ***** *****

Any guesses?

Back to the Mail and their oh-so-consistent coverage of swine flu continued with this article:

It's official, the swine flu 'pandemic' is over (shame it cost us £1billion and scared thousands witless)

'Scared thousands witless'? Good job the Mail wasn't involved in any of that. Oh:

How swine flu could be a bigger threat to humanity than nuclear warfare

That was another gem from Michael Hanlon, the Mail's Science Editor, who also produced this astonishing piece of scaremongering nonsense:

Killers in your kitchen: Gender-bending packaging, exploding floor cleaners and toasters more deadly than sharks...

'Gender-bending packaging'? Really?

Over on the evil Facebook, Hugh has created a list of all the things the Mail says give you cancer, from bras to chips, peanut butter to talc, and, of course, Facebook itself.

Another Mail obsession is ageism. When Arlene Phillips was replaced as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing, the Mail was delighted to bash the BBC over claims of ageism and wrote lots of supportive articles about her.

Until she dared go outside without make-up on. Then she looked:

washed out

and:

ensured she looked her 66 years.

With friends like that...

In Amanda Platell's unsurprisingly useless review of 2009, she called Alesha Dixon, Phillips' Strictly replacement, 'Clot of the Year'. She wrote she was:

Nicknamed 'Ditto' Dixon because of the hopeless way she drearily parroted her fellow judges' comments

Dixon was, of course, nicknamed 'Ditto' by, err, Platell. That doesn't really count.

And Platell's unjustifably nasty attacks on women (and they almost always are on women) continued into 2010, when she turned on Andy Murray's mum for no apparent reason at all:

Of course I'll celebrate if Andy Murray wins tomorrow's Australian Open final, but does he really have to grimace like a savage?

You wonder what makes a young man so full of ugly, uncontrolled rage - and then you see his fishwife mother screaming from the sidelines.

Charming.

(Hat-tip to the contributors of the Mailwatch Forum)

No zombies 'so far' says Mail science editor

Hat-tip to Guy who emailed about a Mail story examining the ways the world would cope with a zombie invasion.

It is based on some actual scientific research and written up by Science Editor Michael Hanlon, who recently wrote Why ARE so many planes falling out of the sky? and failed to provide much evidence that 'so many' are.

In Forget swine flu - could we cope with a plague of the Undead? Scientists ponder the threat of a zombie attack may be useful Hanlon says:

The results are not pretty - indeed, the report shows that only rapid use of overwhelming military force would save humanity from extinction - but the authors point out that, even though zombies may be imaginary, the findings may be pertinent to the spread of some devastating diseases that are all too real.

But surely researching actual 'devastating diseases' and the way they have actually spread would be more useful than researching a made up disease. Why not look at the real spread of swine or avian flu rather than basing claims on complete hypotheticals which will never, ever happen? Or will it? Hanlon says:

one soon forgets that zombies, so far, exist only in the imagination.

'So far'? How much scientific knowledge do you need to be the Mail's science editor?

He goes on to suggest that a growing population would be ripe for an attack by a deadly disease, thus fitting in a bit of anti-immigration rhetoric because this is the Mail (Hanlon had written about the 'threat' of rising population only a month ago). And it clearly worked, because one of the many dismal comments reads:

they are already here and claim benefits
- mike, durham, 26/8/2009 9:16

Mike's comment reveals a mindset where immigrants are soulless, violent creatures intent on feeding off, and destroying, the British people. Among Mail readers, Mike isn't alone. Six of the 14 comments left so far think it would be equally hilarious to call the Labour (sorry, 'Liebour') government 'zombies':

The Liebour party conference is starting soon, that will prove Zombies do exist. Liebour voters are Zombies as well.
- Martin, Ashford, 25/8/2009 23:31 1:53

We already have a plague of the undead, they're called the Labour Government!!!!
- Arthur Gruntfuttock, Moscow, 26/8/2009

Yeah..we know..they are called Liebour!
- Beverley, Chichester, 26/8/2009 7:03

I thought they were already running the Government.
- Richard, York, 26/8/2009 8:19

Gordon Brown's government?
- Alan Lothian, Newbury, Berkshire, 26/8/2009 8:51

We already have them here in the UK........650 currently reside in the Houses of Parliament. Their leader is to be found relentlessly feasting on the nations wealth in No10 Downing street.
- Ordinary Bloke., Margate, Kent., 26/8/2009

Was it really necessary for the same not-funny-the-first-time joke so be let through so many times by the mods? Well it's not as if they haven't done it before.

As Guy said in his email:

the hilarity, the sheer naked insight of Daily Mail comment making types is enough to fill you with wonder and mirth. Their masterful command of the English language combines with their rapier sharp wit to produce an effect truly dazzling.

Couldn't agree more.