'We have never pushed our commercial interests in our newspapers'

Rupert Murdoch appeared at the Leveson Inquiry today. Under oath, he said:

I take a particularly strong pride in the fact that we have never pushed our commercial interests in our newspapers.

Never?

The first article this blog ever wrote about was this one in the Sun:

Here's the full text of this 'news' article:

WATCHING telly can help you beat the winter blues.

A top psychologist studied British TV and found a mix of bright colours, laughter and music can help lifts Brits from their winter gloom.

Sky psychologist Donna Dawson identified what cheers viewers up and has compiled the Sky+ HD Happier Days TV Guide packed with shows to lift the spirit.

She has rated each programme using the categories Colour, Laughter, Music, Bonding, Escapism and Inspirational so viewers know how it will boost their mood.

Donna explained: “Colour research reveals bright colours lift your mood and can help you to feel more positive, excited, happy or relaxed.

“Laughter has also been shown to release endorphins from the brain, the body’s natural feel good chemicals.

“By watching an uplifting film or intense sports event in High Definition, fed-up viewers can enjoy the invigorating roar of a stadium crowd in their living room.

Click here to see a TV guide to help beat the blues

“Or they can enjoy a bit of escapism by being transported to the setting of a far-away exotic nature documentary.”

February’s Sky+ HD highlights include the upbeat Abba musical ‘Mama Mia!’ on Valentine’s Day.

‘Mr Bean’s Holiday’ and ‘Run, Fat Boy, Run’ should also have viewers chuckling.

If you’re after escapism there’s other films like ‘The Golden Compass’ and ‘Happy Feet’ on offer.

While documentaries such as ‘Wildlife Photographers Widescreen’ could provide a much-needed dose of colour this winter. 

Gary Gibbon from Channel 4 News adds:

The “I-Sky” column in “Private Eye,” listing constant references bigging up Sky’s output in Murdoch papers, would presumably come as a bit of a shock.

'Giving you the inside track'

@Sun_Politics is the Twitter name of 'The Sun's political team' who bill themselves as 'giving you the inside track on Westminster'. At around 8.21pm tonight, they tweeted their views on the demise of the News of the World:

Just over an hour later, after much criticism:

Recommended reading: phone hacking denials

The Guardian has collected some of the very 'best' denials about phone hacking from News International, the police and the PCC.

For example, this News International statement from July 2009 following Nick Davies' first Guardian story on hacking:

"All of these irresponsible and unsubstantiated allegations against News of the World and other News International titles and its journalists are false."

And this from Rebekah Brooks:

"The Guardian coverage has, we believe, substantially and likley deliberately misled the British public."

Some things never change...

Tabloid Watch began two years ago today.

The first post highlighted an article in The Sun which was plugging Sky HD as the best way to cure the winter blues.

Two years on, the Sun is still at it. Yesterday, Rupert Murdoch launched 'The Daily' - his iPad-only newspaper. Unsurprisingly, Sun Digital Editor Derek Brown was impressed:

Some are calling it as significant as the day in 1788 that the first issue of The Times hit London's streets...

The American football coverage, ahead of this Sunday's Super Bowl, is presented brilliantly. There is a feature about what it's like to stand in the tunnel, accompanied by lovely 3D-style images. There is also a section on top plays which has video running through tactics. The prospect of using this technology with proper football is mouthwatering.

Fashion also works well, with the ability to click on outfits for a more detailed look...

The Daily runs smoothly, downloads quickly and is a promising glimpse into what the future holds.

And it's not just them doing the cross-promotion. Richard Desmond's Daily Star continues to give free advertising to Richard Desmond's Channel 5 - the latest being this puff piece about some upcoming programmes, including the TV show linked to Richard Desmond's OK! magazine...

'Inconceivable no-one else knew'

The News of the World phone hacking saga rumbles on.

Yesterday, several more media outlets started to report on the story including the BBC and (shock!) Sky News. However, it wasn't until 10.30pm that the Mail wrote anything about it, prioritising instead such important news as Kim Kardashian going out wearing a dress.

Questions have been raised about whether anything new has emerged. The answer is yes.

Firstly, the New York Times revealed that this year a News of the World reporter was suspended having been suspected of phone-hacking, a fact confirmed by the paper and the PCC on Thursday:

The [NYT] reported that the News of the World was conducting a new phone-hacking investigation and had suspended a reporter, after a "television personality" had been alerted by her phone company to a "possible unauthorised attempt to access her voicemail" and the number was traced back to a journalist at the paper.

It's as if the paper's insistence that phone hacking was a one-off that never happened before or since seems somehow questionable...

The Guardian reported that the journalist in question has worked for the paper since 2005. Although News of the World managing editor Bill Akass said there is an internal investigation and the allegation is subject to litigation, it's not clear if the police are involved. If not, why not?

The PCC's Director Stephen Abell said:

that the PCC was prevented from launching its own investigation because the allegation was "the subject of legal action".

Which is fair enough - for now. But we should remember what PCC Chair Baroness Buscombe said back in May:

"If there was a whiff of any continuing activity in this regard, we would be on it like a ton of bricks. I can absolutely assure you of that."

It will be interesting to see what the PCC's 'ton of bricks' turns out to be...

Mark Lewis, a lawyer who has acted/is acting for some of the targets of the hacking is not expecting much:

“The Press Complaints Commission has been consistent. Throughout it has taken no action. Excuse after excuse is offered but they have shown their true colours. The only way to get redress is through the Court.”

And from today's Guardian editorial:

The NYT article – based on first-hand research – convincingly demonstrates that the September 2009 Press Complaints Commission report into phone hacking was both feeble and wrong. The PCC must find a way of clarifying and correcting the record if it is to command respect.

Other new information came yesterday from Sean Hoare, a former News of the World reporter. He was fired from the paper for personal reasons, so has been dismissed for having a grudge, but during a BBC interview he said he hacked phones while working at the paper and that then editor Coulson 'lied' by saying he knew nothing of the practice.

The News International line that Clive Goodman, the paper's Royal Correspondent who was jailed for his role in the phone hacking, was the only journalist involved has always seemed unlikely.

After all, James Murdoch sanctioned a payment of £700,000 to former Professional Footballers' Association chief executive Gordon Taylor to settle a privacy claim. If Goodman was the only News of the World journalist involved, why would the Royal Correspondent be interested in the phone messages of someone in football?

Or in the messages of MPs Tessa Jowell and Simon Hughes or model Elle Macpherson?

And then there's the so-called 'For Neville' email. Here's how the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee saw it:

On 29 June 2005, five months later, a reporter at the News of the World, Ross Hindley, sent an email to Glenn Mulcaire which opened with the words: "This is the transcript for Neville."[374] There followed a transcription of 35 voicemail messages. In 13 cases the recipient of message was 'GT', Gordon Taylor, and in 17 cases the recipient was 'JA', Jo Armstrong. No witness has sought to deny that these messages had been intercepted by Glenn Mulcaire, or that they had been transcribed by Mr Hindley.

[In-house lawyer Tom] Crone...asked the News of the World's IT Department to find out who else had received the email and was told that 'there was no trace of it having gone anywhere else'.[377] He also questioned the reporter:

"He had very little recollection of it […]. He does not particularly remember this job in any detail; he does not remember who asked him to do it; and he does not remember any follow-up from it. He saw the email and he accepts that he sent the transcript where the email says he sent it."[378]

415. We were unable to question the reporter, however. Mr Crone told us that Mr Hindley was in Peru: "He is on a holiday. He is going around the world. He is 20 years old."[379] "[…] about this time he had only just become a reporter; prior to that actually I think he had been a messenger and he was being trained up as a reporter,"[380] he added. We return to the veracity of this below.

416. The message above the transcript said it was 'for Neville'. In June 2005, there was only one Neville on the staff:[381] Neville Thurlbeck, the chief reporter. Mr Crone told us he asked Mr Hindley whether he had given him the transcript. "He said, "I can't remember." He said, "Perhaps I gave it to Neville, but I can't remember."'[382] Mr Crone said he also asked Mr Thurlbeck if he remembered receiving the transcript: 'His position is that he has never seen that email, nor had any knowledge of it.'[383]

(One of the questions for the police is why they never interviewed Thurlbeck, or indeed Hindley - if the newspaper maintains Goodman was the only one involved, how come he was transcribing phone messages?)

And this is what the Committee concluded from all that:

...there is no doubt that there were a significant number of people whose voice messages were intercepted, most of whom would appear to have been of little interest to the Royal correspondent of the News of the World. This adds weight to suspicions that it was not just Clive Goodman who knew about these activities...

Evidence we have seen makes it inconceivable that no-one else at the News of the World, bar Clive Goodman, knew about the phone-hacking. It is unlikely, for instance, that Ross Hindley (later Hall) did not know the source of the material he was transcribing and was not acting on instruction from superiors. We cannot believe that the newspaper's newsroom was so out of control for this to be the case...

Despite this, there was no further investigation of who those "others" might be and we are concerned at the readiness of all of those involved: News International, the police and the PCC to leave Mr Goodman as the sole scapegoat without carrying out a full investigation at the time.

Currently, several Labour figures - Jowell, John Prescott, Chris Bryant, Alan Johnson and Tom Watson (who sits of the Select Committee) - have raised concerns about the extent of the hacking and the police investigation. As Andy Coulson is now David Cameron's Director of Communications, it has become a political issue.

But it is vitally important that this does not become the overriding issue. There are crucial questions here about the role and behaviour of journalists, and about the actions of the police. It is imperative that those questions do not get buried under the political tit-for-tat.

Links

The latest migration figures have, predictably, led to a flurry of newspaper articles, not all of them entirely accurate.

Exclarotive looks at a misleading Mail headline while Five Chinese Crackers looks at the article that followed. He has also written two posts looking into claims about England's population density and an earlier piece in the Mail linking immigration to crime.

The discovery of the body of spy Gareth Williams has led to a lot of guesswork from journalists. Minority Thought looks at some of the speculation from the Sun ('it was al-Qaeda') and the Mail, while Primly Stable 'learns' that Williams:

was stabbed, poisoned and strangled to death by a gay-slaying Al-Qaeda agent who was a colleague and a friend and police fear that secrets that were not stolen from his flat could be sold to Britain's enemies.

It's not surprising that Williams' uncle criticised the speculation:

"When you have these rumours in the papers, it is most distressing. It is heartbreaking that he has died so young and his family have enough on their plate without having to read these stories.

"Gareth's parents are not doing well at all. They are in a state of shock and struggling to come to terms with what has happened. They have seen what has been in the papers and they are very, very upset about these untruths."

Unfortunately, as with the Stephen Griffiths case in May, the media seems to relish spreading lurid gossip rather than sticking to the facts.

Indeed, Matt Lucas has launched a legal action against the Daily Mail for an intrusive and untrue article about the death of his former civil partner Kevin McGee:

Lucas contends that close relatives and friends quoted in the story did not make the statements attributed to them and that much of the information was false.

The story claimed Lucas was planning to have a big birthday party. According to the writ, Lucas had already told friends and family he would not celebrate his birthday this year and was out of the country at the time.

The writ said Lucas was particularly distressed by allegations that he blamed himself for McGee’s death and was hosting a party to “let go of the pain”. Both claims were untrue, it said.

Lucas, who instructed London law firm Schillings to act on his behalf, said Associated Newspapers, owner of the Mail, had refused to apologise or accept the story should not have been published.

Meanwhile, the Mirror, Mail and Express have been making exaggerated claims about grapefruit, as Minority Thought reports. The Express' headline stated 'Eat grapefruit to fight off diabetes' although Jo Willey's article later admitted:

to get the beneficial effect, someone would need to eat 400 grapefruits in one sitting.

Moreover, NHS Behind the Headlines pointed out that:

consuming too much grapefruit can interfere with people’s drug treatment and cause harmful effects.

While the Express loves miracle cure stories, the Mail website loves articles pointing out a famous person has lost/gained too much weight. The paper asks today 'Why ARE women so unhappy in their own skin?' (own?). Maybe some of their recent articles, as highlighted by Angry Mob, are to blame?

At Enemies of Reason, Anton has written three posts about mental health. While the Sun has tried to avoid 'bonkers' by using 'zany', 'weird' and 'wacky' instead, the Star has no such qualms about using the word, splashing it all over the front page.

Also from Anton, a post about a Sun front page story reporting a crocodile sighting in the English Channel. Having written two sensationalist articles about the 'killer croc' the Sun should have admitted that it was, in fact, a piece of wood. But it appears to have forgotten to set the record straight.

It's not the only bit of forgetfulness from a Murdoch-owned paper. George Eaton at New Statesman explains how The Times' readers might not have seen the criticisms of Sky from BBC Director-General Mark Thompson during his speech at the Edinburgh Festival because of the paper's selective, partial reporting.

'Hysterical bawlings from the sidelines'

Much has already been written about yesterday's four-pronged attack on Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg by the four newspapers most supportive of the Conservative Party, so this post will be a brief overview of these front pages and the reaction to them.

As Kevin Marsh said:

You do not have to support the Liberal Democrats or Nick Clegg or be carried along on the current poll wave to wonder, as a journalist, what was going on Wednesday in the newsrooms and editorial offices of the Telegraph, Mail, Express and Sun.

Of course, it's not exactly shocking that party spin doctor's speak to political hacks - as the BBC's Nick Robinson and the Guardian reported had happened before these newspapers appeared. Nor is it news that the media outlets have agendas and political bias.

It's hard to know if this actually was a concerted effort, but it certainly looked like it was, with all the stories appearing on the day of the second leaders' debate. The fact that each paper was focusing on a different subject suggested everything was being thrown to see what might stick.

One that didn't stick was the Telegraph's half-hearted attempt to create a scandal:


If the Telegraph thought this was a big deal, they would have published it last year with all their other expenses coverage.

Given that all the payments were declared properly, it always looked thin and the way the story slipped down the Telegraph's website homepage during the day rather gave the game away. Despite a rule-breaking attempt by Sky's Adam Boulton to bring up the story during the second debate, an attempt that has prompted complaints to Ofcom, the story sank without trace.

Forced to defend the story on his blog, even the Telegraph's Deputy Editor didn't sound convinced:

So far [Clegg] has been unable to produce an adequate explanation for them, or the paperwork to back up his justification. The likelihood must be that it is evidence of disorganisation, nothing more, but don’t know that yet.

So why not wait until the evidence is produced before rushing to print? But the paperwork did turn up during the day and that was that - although the prominence the Telegraph gave to the 'evidence' was nothing like that of the original.

Meanwhile, the Express was complaining, of course, about immigration:


But there was a bit of a disconnect between the sub-head, which focused on jobs for asylum seekers, and the article, which didn't.

Alison Little wrote:

Controversial Lib Dem plans to allow illegal immigrants to stay and work in Britain were exposed as madness yesterday as unemployment hit a 16-year high.

Nick Clegg struggled to defend allowing asylum-seekers to join the workforce when he came under attack from a panel of first-time voters.

With official figures showing 2.5 million out of work, they warned it would be unfair to law-abiding residents.

'Exposed as madness' is a complete exaggeration, and the use of 'crazy' on the front page is Express editorialising and nothing more.

But look how it goes from 'illegal immigrants' and then to 'asylum seekers' as if they are the same. This is emphasised by the 'law-abiding' comment in the next sentence, which implies that asylum seekers are not.

It's further evidence that for all they talk about these issues, there's little sense they really understand them.

The Sun was also on the attack, although their front page pun was very weak by their standards:


The Sun very publicly switched allegiance from Labour to the Conservatives last year when the Tories were substantially ahead in the polls. Following the surge in support for the Lib Dems after the first leaders' debate, there seemed to be some panic that the Sun - and the other right-wing papers - may not, after all, be backing the winner. And that's why the knives came out.

A curious incident from Wednesday illustrated not just this panic, but the contempt the Sun and its owner Rupert Murdoch has for the British public.

The Independent newspaper re-launched on Tuesday with the strapline:

Free from political ties, free from proprietorial influence.

It said:

You may not always agree with what we say, but it is spoken from the heart, and from a standpoint that's untainted by commercial or political imperatives.

In case the target wasn't obvious, a marketing campaign added:

Rupert Murdoch won't decide this election. You will.

The reaction? Former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks, now chief executive at News International, and obnoxious Rupert's obnoxious son James arrived unannounced at the Independent's office and demanded to know:

'What are you fucking playing at?'

The Guardian reports:

A bewildered [Independent Editor-in-Chief Simon] Kelner quickly ushered his visitors into his office, where they remained for what have been described as 'frank and full discussions' for another 20 minutes.

All were grim-faced as Murdoch, carrying a promotional copy of the Independent, accused the rival editor of breaking the unwritten code that proprietors do not attack each other and of besmirching his father's reputation. With his piece said and with the matter unresolved, the aggrieved media mogul left.

Bewildering is right. The arrogance of this is jaw-dropping. Murdoch and his son - like the other right-wing papers' editors and proprietors - do apparently believe they decide this election rather than over 40 million voters.

How dare they decide that the Sun's chosen candidate is not the one for them, according to latest polls. Indeed, when a poll by Sun pollster YouGov showed:

voters fear a Liberal Democrat government less than a Conservative or Labour one

the Sun decided to do the far-from-honourable thing: it refused to publish the results.

(Further insights into the Murdoch mindset come from biographer Michael Wolff and former Sun Editor David Yelland)

But perhaps the most notable of yesterday's front pages was the Mail:


So the Mail digs back through the archives and finds what it thinks, quite wrongly, is a 'Nazi slur'. Of all newspapers, you would think the Mail would be slow to accuse others of a 'Nazi slur'. In July 1934 it infamously carried the headline 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts' and then Mail owner Lord Rothermere - grandfather of the current owner - was effusive in his praise for Hitler.

And in 1933 the paper wrote:

The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage. The number of aliens entering the country through the back door is a problem to which the Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed.

Replace 'stateless Jews from Germany' with 'asylum seekers' or 'immigrants' and you could easily imagine that being said in Daily Mail now.

The 'Nazi slur' it attributed to Clegg was nothing like this. In fact, there was no 'Nazi slur' at all. The article, which was written eight years ago for the Guardian, related tales of how Germans are still subject to childish reminders about Hitler, and how many Brits still showed a:

misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war.

There was little wrong with it, although you might think you are reading a different article to the one the Mail saw and so wilfully - and woefully - misinterpreted.

The Express, not wishing to let the story go, then put a version of the Mail's 'Nazi slur' claims on its website. The headline became even more grotesque, and even further from the truth:


The original never implied that Britain was 'more guilty than the Nazis', let alone that being a direct quote, which the quote marks suggest. It's dishonest and totally misleading.

But back to the Mail, where Editor Paul Dacre seems to have become somewhat obssessed with the Lib Dems. The election section of their website contained nine anti-Lib Dem articles on Wednesday - almost to the exclusion of anything else.

Then they ran a poll at the end of the second debate asking who had won. But with the results saying the victor was Nick Clegg, they decided to start another poll asking the same question - which Cameron was then leading.

The 'Nazi slur' headline received a lot of negative reaction - including from Mail hack Ann Leslie, who said she disapproved of it on the BBC's Question Time.

But this meant that a disgusting comment in the Mail's editorial was rather overlooked. Following on from their suggestion that there was nothing British about Nick Clegg, it said, under the headline 'Damning insight into the Liberal leader':

It's perhaps unfair to point out that Mr Clegg's father is half-Russian, his mother is Dutch, and he's married to a Spaniard.

Yes, the Mail is so reluctant to bring it up (for the third time in a week). 'Unfair' isn't the word. Pathetic, stupid, irrelevant and xenophobic would be much more appropriate.

The final word should go to Kevin Marsh, who sums all this up perfectly, although his conclusion is depressing:

Scrutiny? Is this scrutiny? Really? Perhaps we've become so de-sensitised to the awfulness of some parts of the British press that journalism like this passes as scrutiny.

We - mere readers, mere voters - are left with two unattractive possible conclusions.

Either the press really does think that these stories amount to genuine scrutiny of the men who want to run the country - that this is exactly what we need to help us choose our next government. Hysterical bawlings from the sidelines on dog-whistle issues like immigration and sleaze.

Or that parts of our press are proving once again that they are totally incapable of fulfilling their most basic function - supporting our self-government with reliable, honest news and information. And that they don't care since they place their commercial and ideological interest in a particular result above the democratic process they claim to support.

Sun, syphilis and social networking

The Sun's front page today contained what may well become a classic headline:


No, not the 'scanner', but the one at the side. Facebook 'spreads syphilis'.

Presumably that's on top of the cancer Facebook will give you if you believe the Mail.

The Sun said:

Cases of syphilis have increased four-fold in Britain's Facebook capital as users meet up for unprotected sex, it was revealed yesterday.

Figures released last month showed that people in Sunderland, Durham and Teesside were 25 per cent more likely to log on regularly.

And an NHS trust chief said Facebook and similar sites were to blame for a shocking rise in cases of potentially-lethal syphilis in the region.

Except, that's not quite true. The original statement from NHS Middlesborough doesn't mention Facebook at all. It does say:

Unprotected sex, especially with casual partners, is the biggest risk for syphilis. Social networking sites are making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex. It is important that people avoid high risk sexual behaviours and practise safe sex to protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections.

Which sounds like unprotected sex is being blamed for the rise. Not Facebook.

Why have certain sections of the media become so obsessed with blaming the social networking site for everything going?

And more importantly, does the Sun think that stories about sexual health are unimportant unless they're linked to some topical, but totally irrelevant, hook?

The Sun's attack on Facebook is even more pathetic given that the agenda behind it is so obvious - rival social networking site Myspace is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

The Telegraph and Mail were quick to follow the Sun's lead and mindlessly repeated the story. But the reader comments were very critical of this nonsense.

Delightfully, however, the Mail moderators let through this comment which mentions this blog. And no, I didn't write it:


Thank you Scott - and all the green arrow clickers.

(More on the syphilis story from Dr Petra Boynton. And thanks to Jeff Pickthall for spotting the comment.)

Reactions to the 'Press standards, privacy and libel' report

The Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee has published its long-awaited report on Press standards, privacy and libel today. (Full coverage at MediaGuardian)

It is an extremely wide-ranging report and has many very good recommendations for changing the Press Complaints Commission, including several that have been supported by this blog. (The attempt to ban newspapers from printing for a day for serious transgressions is a very poor recommendation, however).

On the issue of fines, the Committee recommends that:

in cases where a serious breach of the Code has occurred, the PCC should have the ability to impose a financial penalty.

On the placement of apologies:

Corrections and apologies should be printed on either an earlier, or the same, page as that first reference, although they need not be the same size.

That would mean front page apologies for front page stories which are wrong. This change should be implemented immediately because the 'due prominence' wording in the current Code of Practice clearly is not working.

On sacking Paul Dacre as Chair of the Code of Practice Committee:

We further recommend that there should be lay members on the Code Committee, and that one of those lay members should be Chairman of that Committee.

Absolutely. However, there is a shocking quote in the report from Dacre. He told the Committee:

"It is a matter of huge shame if an editor has an adjudication against him; it is a matter of shame for him and his paper. That is why self-regulation is the most potent form of regulation, and we buy into it. We do not want to be shamed."

Firstly: bollocks. Secondly: Dacre and the Mail have shame?

The MPs added that lay members should be a majority on the decision-making Commission, which should also include journalists, rather than just editors:

We recommend that the membership of the PCC should be rebalanced to give the lay members a two thirds majority, making it absolutely clear that the PCC is not overly influenced by the press.

This, the Committee says, would:

enhance the credibility of the PCC to the outside world.

Which is, of course, urgently needed. The MPs add:

However for confidence to be maintained, the industry regulator must actually effectively regulate, not just mediate. The powers of the PCC must be enhanced, as it is toothless compared to other regulators.

It's all pretty damning about the PCC, but things will only improve if these changes are implemented to give the regulator those much-needed teeth.

It was also highly critical of the Daily Express, which several years ago refused to pay its subscriptions to the self-regulatory system. The MPs called this action:

deplorable.

From Peter Hill and Richard Desmond, that shouldn't be surprising.

But the report was especially damning about the News of the World over their illegal phone-hacking activities. The report says these were not restricted to one 'rogue reporter':

Evidence we have seen makes it inconceivable that no-one else at the News of the World, bar Clive Goodman, knew about the phone-hacking....[which] went to the heart of the British establishment, in which police, military royals and government ministers were hacked on a near industrial scale.

Moreover, the MPs are brutal in their judgements about the News of the World and News International employees who came before them:

Throughout our inquiry, too, we have been struck by the collective amnesia afflicting witnesses from the News of the World.

And:

Throughout we have repeatedly encountered an unwillingness to provide the detailed information that we sought, claims of ignorance or lack of recall, and deliberate obfuscation. We strongly condemn this behaviour which reinforces the widely held impression that the press generally regard themselves as unaccountable and that News International in particular has sought to conceal the truth about what really occurred.

Ouch.

For a clear example of this amnesia, look through the oral evidence and the exchanges between Philip Davies MP, current News of the World Editor Colin Myler and Tom Crone, the Legal Manager at News Group Newspapers (Q.1411-1418).

Davies was trying to find out who authorised the payments to Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, the bin-rummager who did the phone-hacking, which was paid after their release from prison. As if they was being paid to shut up, or something...

Q1416 Philip Davies: Just while we are on the theme, has any payment been subsequently made to Clive Goodman?

Mr Crone: I am certainly not aware of it.

Mr Myler: Again, likewise, I am not aware of any payment.

Q1417 Philip Davies: If a payment had been made, would you be aware of it?

Mr Crone: Not necessarily. Mr Kuttner would.

Q1418 Philip Davies: So this is a question for Mr Kuttner?

Mr Crone: I would say so.

And when Stuart Kuttner, the News of the World's Managing Editor, came before the Committee later that day:

Q1578 Philip Davies: We are obviously not going to make any further headway there. Have you made any payments to either Glenn Mulcaire or Clive Goodman since they were convicted of their offence?

Mr Kuttner: So far as I know agreements were made with them. I have no details at all of the substance of those agreements and so I cannot go beyond that.

Q1579 Philip Davies: Could you tell us who can because when I asked Mr Crone the same question he seemed to think that you were the person to ask.

Mr Kuttner: Well, in which case that is simply not so.

So Crone said Kuttner would know. Kuttner said he didn't know and he didn't know who would know.

Given that Kuttner has been Managing Editor of the News of the World for 22 years 'collective amnesia' seems a rather generous description.

Needless to say, News International were not happy with the report. They issued a ridiculous statement (pdf) which whined that the Committee had failed to act without:

bias or external influence.

This comes after Crone (Q.1329) had tried to get Labour MP Tom Watson kicked off the Committee (he was suing The Sun at the time - and won) and Kuttner wanted Davies removed from it too (Q.1572).

'External influence' indeed.

The statement went on to complain about the Committee's:

innuendo

and

exaggeration

and said it had

repeatedly violated public trust.

For the publishers of the Sun and the News of the World to accuse others of those things is almost beyond parody.

The Sun's article on the 167-page report ran to just five paragraphs, which consisted of how the report had been 'hijacked' by Labour MPs. Had it really? Tom Watson said not:

570 clauses agreed unanimously, 4 were voted on, 3 of them opposed by a single MP.

That's some hijacking. As if to prove they had something to hide, the Sun were not taking any comments on this story on their website.

Their editorial was equally pathetic and designed to make petty political points, categorically failing to engage with the substance of the report:


Note 'unfounded claims' by the Guardian. Well, the Guardian's exposing of the News of the World's payment to Gordon Taylor wasn't unfounded. And if News International think it's all unfounded, why not sue?

Of course, the report did include many pages of insight and recommendations on privacy, libel and the McCann case.

But because the MPs dared take on the Sun's sister paper, its work was deemed 'worthless'. How grown up.

More astonishing was the reaction of Sky, which is in the same Murdoch stable as the News of the World, and which tried to pretend nothing had happened.

Here's the BBC's teletext news headlines this morning:


Second story. And on Sky Text it was here:


Oh rather, wasn't here. Still at least Sky News had it prominently on their website:


Oh no, it wasn't in their top 15 stories by early afternoon. Surely they wouldn't just bury it below some photo gallery of a pop star and a footballer:


Ah they would.

And even then it doesn't concentrate on the libel recommendations, or the reform of the PCC or the McCanns, that the Sun was complaining about. No, they've made it deliberately party political by referring to it in terms of 'Cam's man', as former editor Andy Coulson now works for David Cameron.

And on Tuesday night, during the Sky News press review, the News International line was already clear. They were faced with this:


What to do? Journalist Mark Seddon began to talk about the inquiry and the claims against the News of the World. Sat next to him was a journalist from the Times (also owned by News International), who butted in to say the phone-hacking had been looked at over and over and it's a non-story now.

Well, if the News International people would tell the truth for once, there wouldn't need to be constant enquiries into the sordid affair.

But at this point Anna Botting, the Sky News presenter, spoke over everyone to dismiss this whole story as a 'vendetta' from a 'left-leaning' newspaper which was aimed at Andy Coulson solely because he now works for the Tories. And she made clear that was the end of that discussion. It was dreadful.

And it clearly highlights the dangers of too much media being in the hands of too few people. The biggest selling daily newspaper and one of the two main TV news channels are all owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the News of the World.

And when not claiming some mythical political plot (the Chair of the Committee, incidentally, is a Conservative MP), they have decided the stick their fingers in the ears, shut their eyes and shout 'la la la', instead of telling their viewers about some important proposals to improve the press in this country.

The Guardian reports the Mail has done a short article, mostly avoiding the phone-hacking claims. The Telegraph has written more in general, but ignored the phone-hacking stuff. The Independent has given lots of coverage to News International's pathetic sound and fury.

So today we've seen parts of the media refusing to engage in a debate or admit to their own failings, while other parts try to intimidate and smear anyone who dares criticise.

How are things ever likely to change?

It's Tabloid Watch's birthday

Tabloid Watch has been going for exactly one year.

And after 579 posts it's clear some things never change.

For example, the first article this blog looked at was in The Sun and revealed that a 'Sky psychologist' had:

found a mix of bright colours, laughter and music can help lifts Brits from their winter gloom.

And where did this psychologist recommend gloomy Brits get this 'laughter and music' from?

Sky HD, of course.

And two days ago, The Sun was at it again. 'Fans thrilled by the first 3D telly in pubs' revealed:

An amazing telly revolution kicked off yesterday - football screened in 3D.

Fans who packed nine pubs for the ground-breaking trial were gobsmacked by the coverage.

Who could be responsible for this 'thrilling', 'gobsmacking', 'ground-breaking' 'revolution'?

Sky HD, of course:

And viewers across the country will be donning special specs too when Sky HD beams the cutting-edge pictures nationwide from April.

You would almost think The Sun has some vested interest in running ads-as-editorial for Sky...

(Hat-tip to Martin Burns)

Gaunt toes the party line

The latest entry in the (not quite) daily blog from Sun loudmouth Jon Gaunt is an attack on the BBC. Starting off on Jonathan Ross' salary, it expands into a wider rant about the Corporation and how he thinks it could save money. He says that the first things to be cut should be management salaries and then, with no hint of irony:

the excess in the digital channels that no listens to or watches.

Yes, he still has problems with his grammar. But as Matthew Norman pointed out recently, listener figures for SunTalk, where Gaunt has a show, have never been made public. That must be a measure of how large the numbers are...

He goes on:

The axe then should fall swiftly on the ridiculous Asian network and he should immediately privatise Radio 1 and 2.

It's not hard to guess why he's picked on the Asian Network, is it?

Finally, he adds:

Clearly the BBC's domination of the Internet has to be curtailed as they have no right to effectively, with our money, suppress entrepreneurial enterprise with their almost monopoly position.

Hmm. Complaining about a BBC monopoly suppressing 'entrepreneurial enterprise'? Who could he mean?

Surely not Sky News which, like The Sun, is owned by Rupert Murdoch?

And his views are clearly nothing at all like the sentiments expressed by James Murdoch in Edinburgh in August:

In this all-media marketplace, the expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision, which are so important for our democracy.

Dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly difficult for journalism to flourish on the internet.

Yet it is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it.

We seem to have decided as a society to let independence and plurality wither. To let the BBC throttle the news market and then get bigger to compensate.

In other words: clip the BBC's wings so the Murdoch empire can earn more money.

Towards the end, Murdoch said:

People value honest, fearless, and above all independent news coverage that challenges the consensus.

Honest like Fox News, presumably. The 'consensus' Fox challenges is known as reality.

(Read Charlie Brooker's excellent take on the Murdoch speech)

Sorry we called you a murderer and stalker

The Sun and the News of the World have apologised and paid 'substantial' libel damages to Barry George - the man convicted, and then acquitted, of killing Jill Dando - over several articles suggesting he was guilty and was also a stalker.

Here's one of the key excerpts from the MediaGuardian story:

In his interview with the News of the World, the paper stated that George had told them: "I didn't kill Jill Dando – I was stalking someone else at the time."

News Group now accepts that George never made that statement to them. News Group also admitted that any suggestion George stalked Kay Burley was incorrect.

And:

the Sun and News of the World, further apologised for a series of articles in the two tabloids in which various allegations were made that he had become obsessed with the Sky News presenter Kay Burley, had pestered a woman after answering an advertisement she placed about a dog and had become obsessed with Pam Wright, the fiancee of the Ipswich strangler Steve Wright.

George's lawyer said that:

News Group has now admitted that the articles "would have been understood to mean that there were grounds to suspect Mr George of the murder despite his acquittal. (They) accept that the verdict of the second jury in acquitting Mr George was correct and it apologises to Mr George for any suggestion otherwise."
...
"The defendant now accepts that, although on one occasion Mr George did cycle to Sky TV studios to try to collect a tape of his interview with Kay Burley, Mr George did not pose a threat and was not obsessed with her nor did he pester any woman who had a dog for sale nor did he become obsessed with Pam Wright," said Bishop.

And from News Group's solicitor Benjamin Beabey:

"The defendant takes this opportunity to correct matters and to apologise to Mr George for any hurt and distress he has felt."

So a series of despicable articles have been retracted, and not before time. But is this really enough?

After all, the George stalking Burley story ran and ran (Google it and see how many articles are found). There was, for example, this Express article and a now removed Mail story headlined: 'Kay Burley offered extra security after Barry George is stopped at Sky News studios'.

There was also a memorable Leo McKinstry column in the Express which said George was guilty (still looking for reference...).

Of course it is surely a coincidence that George did his post-acquittal interview with Kay Burley on Sky - owned by Murdoch. The Sun and News of the World, owned by Murdoch, then run a series of disparaging, nudge-wink hatchet-jobs about George. These included one about him stalking Burley, who happened to be in a relationship with the Sun's political editor George Pascoe-Watson at the time.

It's all very cosy isn't it? It may also be described as a stitch up.

EDIT: The Sun apology reads:

In August, 2008, some of the articles we published on the acquittal of Barry George for the murder of Jill Dando could have been understood to mean there were grounds to suspect him of the murder despite his acquittal.

We are happy to make it clear we accept that the jury's verdict in acquitting Mr George was correct.

Following allegations made in other articles published last October, we accept that Mr George did not pose a threat to Kay Burley nor was he obsessed with her.

We apologise to Mr George for the upset and distress caused by these allegations.

Funny that they are 'happy' to make that clear, but took sixteen months to do it...

Damages round-up

A cracking end-of-the-week for the newspapers and their lawyers. First up, yet another libel payout by one of Richard Desmond's rags:

Earl Spencer and his daughter Kitty today accepted substantial damages today over false claims made by the Sunday Express that they acted improperly over his divorce... Today, the court was told the newspaper had offered its sincere apologies for the distress and embarrassment caused and had agreed to pay substantial damages and their legal costs in full.

But Rupert Murdoch has two substantial lots of damages to pay. First, to Derek Simpson of the Unite union:

Union leader Derek Simpson today accepted undisclosed damages from the News of the World after it claimed he took unfair advantage in an election he eventually won. Simpson, the joint general secretary of Unite, brought High Court proceedings over an article published in October.

His solicitor, Athalie Matthews, told Mr Justice Eady in London the article alleged that Simpson was guilty of a breach of election rules and misusing union funds which gave him an unfair advantage in the March election. It stated that he had sent a mailshot to Unite's members six weeks before the election and, as a result of this, was to be fined £100,000 or would have to retire early.

All the allegations were untrue, Matthews said, adding: "The publication of this article caused Mr Simpson considerable distress and embarrassment.

"He was especially concerned that it could cause Unite members to suspect him of cheating in the election and thus to question the validity of his election.

"He was also understandably concerned that falsely suggesting that he might have to retire within six months could undermine his leadership and destabilise the union."

News Group Newspapers, publisher of the News of the Word, had apologised and agreed to pay Simpson damages and legal costs. The newspaper's solicitor, Patrick Callaghan, said it wished to make clear that it was entirely mistaken in publishing the allegations.

He added: "It did so in reliance on a source which it believed to be reliable. As such, the News of the World apologises to Mr Simpson for this article and for the distress and embarrassment it has caused him."

And (thanks to Sun - Tabloid Lies) a reminder that the Sun will be paying £75,000 in libel damages to Mohammed George for calling him a woman-beater, which they also have to tell their readers about now:

Former EastEnders star Mo George has been awarded £75,000 libel damages over a Sun article which a jury ruled wrongly branded him a woman beater. The actor's lawyer Ronald Thwaites, QC, told the High Court the article left Mr George depressed and unwilling to go out. After the case, Mr George, 26, said: "I want to thank all my friends and family who have supported me through all of this." Publishers News Group Newspapers had denied libel, claimed justification and maintained the article was true.

Murdoch and the illegal phone hacking

The Guardian is running a lead story Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims:

Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists' repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.

The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures and to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills.

As if anyone ever believed that the Clive Goodman case was ever the one-off the News of the World tried to make everyone think.

At the time, News International said it knew of no other journalist who was involved in hacking phones and that Goodman had been acting without their knowledge.

However, one senior source at the Metropolitan police told the Guardian that during the Goodman inquiry, officers had found evidence of News Group staff using private investigators who hacked into "thousands" of mobile phones.

Well worth a read - this is an important story and well done to the Guardian for revealing it.

How they aren't related

Like something from the Private Eye's 'How they are related' column, The Sun makes an effort to avoid saying that Dick Best's racist comment about Delon Armitage was made on Sky Sports News (owned, like The Sun, by Murdoch):

Rugby coach in TV racist slur

TOP rugby coach Dick Best’s reputation was in tatters last night after he made a racist remark about an England ace on live TV.

The former British Lions boss was asked to name the team he would send on the up-coming tour of South Africa.

He picked Trinidad-born Delon Armitage ahead of Ireland winger Tommy Bowe.

He was asked why and — thinking his microphone was turned off — said: “Well, you’ve always got to have a coloured boy in the team somewhere.”

Sky Sports News presenter Mike Wedderburn, who is black, looked shocked.

Co-host Millie Clode apologised.

Last night Armitage refused to comment. A spokesman for The Telegraph, for which Best has written columns, said: “We have no plans to use him in future.”

Ex-soccer boss Ron Atkinson made a similar mic mistake and ended his TV career in 2004 by calling Chelsea ace Marcel Desailly “a lazy n****r”.

Sun is boost for Sky

Although listed as 'news', this blatant advert appeared in The Sun website's 'news' section on 2 February 2009.

In it, The Sun (owned by Rupert Murdoch) reports that the best thing to cheer us up in winter is to watch Sky HD (owned by Rupert Murdoch). That's the view of Donna Dawson, a psychologist who regularly contributes to discussions on, er, Sky.

Shameless.