The 'date' that wasn't

Yesterday, MailOnline published an article about double Olympic gold medal-winning cyclist Laura Trott. She was pictured sat next to Prince Harry at the beach volleyball and so the MailOnline gossip-mongers felt they could speculate about what was going on:

It said they 'got on like a house on fire' and were 'laughing and joking together'. She had been 'invited to join Prince Harry' at the beach volleyball. She was 'Cinderella Laura' on a 'date' with a Prince.

It seems this 'inspired' the front page of today's Express:

This morning, the article looked different. MailOnline discovered photos of Trott kissing fellow cyclist Jason Kenny, and decided to re-write the article a little:

Suddenly, Trott had had 'two dates'. She had been 'chatting up' Harry, but was then kissing Kenny.

A tweet this morning from Trott, confirming a relationship with Kenny, led MailOnline to re-write the article for a third time:

The second bullet point says Trott was 'chatting to' Harry. That's rather different from claiming she was 'Harry's Olympic date'.

But what's clear is that many of the photos of Trott and Harry that fuelled the innuendo in the first article were simply misleading:

As can be seen from the last of these, Jason Kenny was sat next to Trott throughout her 'date' with Harry. Whether he was cropped out by the picture agency or MailOnline isn't clear. But it does seem very clear that the hacks at MailOnline used these pictures to imagine a 'date' wasn't a 'date' at all.

(Hat-tip to Dylan Mitchell)

Express and Mirror illustrate British Olympic success...with photos of the Dutch

The front page of today's Daily Express - the self-proclaimed 'World's Greatest Newspaper' - celebrates Team GB's success at the Olympics. Under the headline '22 CARAT GOLD', the paper says:

Jubliant Team GB was celebrating a sensational Olympic record last night – notching up a glorious total of 22 gold medals.

Sir Chris Hoy rounded off another astonishing day for Britain’s athletes as they scooped four more golds.

There were other triumphs in cycling and dressage and the gruelling triathlon.

They decided to put pictures of all these gold medallists on the front page:

Unfortunately, rather than the gold-medal winning British dressage team, the Express has published a photo of the third-placed Dutch team:

And the Express wasn't the only one - the Mirror used photos of the Dutch team on page seven and on their centre pages (photo from Nick Sutton):

According to Roy Greenslade, Getty sent out the photo wrongly-tagged. But did no-one at the Mirror or Express notice the bright orange collars or the not-very-gold medals and wonder if it was the right team?

(Thanks to Antonia, Martin, Chris and others)

Too insensitive and too touchy-feely

Mail, 4 August 2012:

Mail, 6 August 2012:

So in two days, the BBC has gone from 'lacking sensitivity' to too 'touchy-feely' over their Olympic interviews. It is almost as if the BBC can't win in the eyes of some at the Mail...

Today's article talks of 'unhappy viewers' and says 'many have complained'. Yet the article is based on four (yes, four) comments that the anonymous author has found on Twitter and BBC messageboards.

The article ends with the rather telling line:

But others praised reporters for calming the athletes down, such as when [Phil] Jones brought Ennis back from the verge of tears as she celebrated her gold.

Yet none of these 'others' are quoted.

Moreover, the vast majority of the 800+ comments on the article are critical of the Mail's sniping.