Mail loses Big Fat Quiz fight

In early January, the Daily Mail was trying to create another Sachsgate-style outrage, this time about Big Fat Quiz of the Year. It got very upset about some jokes on the post-watershed Channel 4 comedy show, and was desperately trying to get its readers to complain to Ofcom.

Although some did, there was a distinct lack of interest. As MediaGuardian reported:

Ofcom is understood to have received just a single complaint on the day the show was broadcast on Sunday 30 December, and just five more the following day.

However, after a series of Daily Mail front-page stories and the paper reprinting jokes from the programme in full on page 4 on Wednesday 2 January, complaints to Ofcom increased to 180.

On Monday, Ofcom announced it was not going to launch a full investigation:

An Ofcom spokesman said: "After careful consideration, Ofcom has taken the decision not to investigate this issue. In reaching this decision, we concluded that the programme was scheduled post watershed; it was preceded with a clear warning of 'strong language and adult humour'; and was consistent with audience expectations of a satirical quiz on Channel 4."

The Mail claimed the verdict 'shocked MPs and campaigners'.

The Mail v Big Fat Quiz of the Year

The Mail has been desperately trying to create 'Sachsgate II' over a few jokes broadcast - after the watershed - on The Big Fat Quiz of the Year:

Originally, Ofcom received only a handful of complaints by people who appeared to have actually watched the programme. After several days of campaigning by the Mail, that number reached 165. Not, exactly, the success they were clearly hoping for:

Ofcom had received five complaints by last night, but that number could quickly grow – in Sachsgate, an initial two complaints rose to nearly 45,000.

The Mail said it made:

no apology for voicing concerns shared by an overwhelming but seldom-heard majority.

So seldom-heard, indeed, that even after days of trying to get a negative reaction, only a fraction of the people who saw the programme, or had read the jokes in the Mail, bothered to make themselves heard. 

The majority of comments on the online versions of the articles were critical of the Mail's stance. When the Mail needed some 'angry' comments to back its position, it chose the 'worst rated' ones from its own website.

Ofcom told the Independent that:

the vast majority [of complaints] were made in response to the negative media coverage.

Yet when defending Jan Moir over her nasty Stephen Gately article at the Leveson Inquiry, Mail editor Paul Dacre downplayed the 22,000 complaints sent to the PCC. He said:

You keep using the phrase "a lot of people" complained about this. You realise that these are all online complaints and this is an example of how tweetering can create a firestorm within hours...Most of those people conceded they hadn't read the piece.

But the Mail expresses no such concerns about the Big Fat Quiz complaints:

it was revealed that complaints to Ofcom and the broadcaster had now reached 165.

At least 80 viewers have complained to Ofcom about the show, which featured puerile sexual jokes and innuendo just minutes after the 9pm watershed. Some 85 have complained directly to Channel 4.

Some of the Mail's anger was specifically aimed at Jonathan Ross, who the paper has targeted since Sachsgate. Ross appeared on Big Fat Quiz and his production company made it. An editorial on 2 January said:

the Mail is quite happy to be accused of being reactionary when it wonders how many more of society’s broader problems are exacerbated by such creeps as Ross.

It also argued:

It cannot, surely, be fanciful to draw a connection between the explicit four-letter outbursts of such TV role models and the epidemic of vile, coarse ‘sexting’ in our schools.

But the paper provided no evidence for such a connection.

The Mail has repeated the (what it calls) 'vile' jokes again and again - including embedding video of 'one of the controversial jokes' on its online articles. It claimed that it had to publish all the jokes so people could make up their own mind about whether they were suitable for broadcast. It said the same when it repeatedly published dozens of images and videos of scantily-clad singers on The X Factor.

The Sun, however, was more coy. It said a joke about the Queen was:

too coarse to be repeated in a family newspaper.

Oddly, the Sun positioned this story and this claim on page 3, next to a topless female model. This is also the very same 'family newspaper' that on both the 28 October 2011 and 11 November 2011 ran full page ads for 'Triple-X DVD blockbusters'.

This morning, the lead story on MailOnline was this:

The headline was clear: Jack Whitehall could be dropped as a presenter at the National TV Awards. But deep in the story, there was this giveaway sentence:

A spokesman for the awards last night said the comedian had been booked and would be presenting an award as planned.

Despite that, MailOnline decided to run it as a major story implying the opposite.

The Independent revealed a few hours later:

Kim Turberville, creator and executive producer of the NTA, told The Independent: "Contrary to spurious reports earlier today, I would like to confirm that there has been no crisis summit over Jack Whitehall’s invitation to present an award at this year’s National Television Awards."

"We are very much looking forward to welcoming him on January 23 for our live show.”

The final word, for now, should go to the Mail, which said - apparently without irony - in its 2 January 2013 editorial:

Indeed, a New Year seems an appropriate time to take stock of what is deemed acceptable in popular culture – and ask what effects a constant diet of filth, misogyny and casual contempt for the vulnerable may have on impressionable young minds.

Some recent corrections

This correction was published by the Mail on 11 June:

An article on Wednesday said that the communications regulator Ofcom’s budget for 2012/13 is more than £140m and that it has a staff of nearly 1,000. We have been asked to point out that the budget for this financial year is £121.4m and that it employs 780 people. Ofcom denies using savings to offset the effect of public sector cuts.

And this one was published by the Sun on 3 April:

On November 21, 2011, The Sun published an article entitled ‘Scandal of Union Chiefs' £2.6m Pay Deals'. In that article, we cited POA General Secretary Steve Gillan's annual benefits package as being £62,131. This figure was based on information in the annual report of the Certification Officer for 2010-11. We have now been informed that in fact, his total annual benefits package is £24,689.50. We are happy to make this clear and to set the record straight.

Isn't it curious how these mistakes always over-estimate figures in a way that fits the papers' editorial line?

A couple of other corrections - this one from the Sun in March:

Our story of March 13 wrongly stated that Prince Harry has been told never to socialise in public and to give up alcohol until deployment.

We have been asked to point out that Prince Harry is fully committed to his intensive pre-deployment training and he has not been told anything by his chain of command that does not apply to any other pilot.

And this one from the Sun on 1 May:

On August 16, 2011 we published a report about Precious Douaihy and her relationship with Mark Duggan, who was killed by police in August 2011. We accept that the publication of this article, based upon intrusive information about Ms Douaihy, was inappropriate and that the photograph, which was taken in unsuitable circumstances, should not have been published. We regret the publication and apologise to Ms Douaihy for any distress caused by our approaches and the story.

The 'toothless' regulator

In 2007, the broadcast regulator Ofcom fined GMTV £2m for 'widespread and systematic deception' in the way they ran premium rate phone-in competitions.

The same year, Ofcom fined Channel 4 £1.5m for similar breaches of the Code.

And in 2009, they fined the BBC £150,000 for the infamous Sachsgate phone calls.

Along with fines, Ofcom can also revoke licences - in November 2010, they did just that for four adult channels that were ''no longer fit and proper' to remain on air, following 'serious and repeated' breaches of Ofcom's broadcasting code'.

The Mail, however, is still smarting from the fact Ofcom didn't rule the way it wanted over The X Factor final, and those performances from Christina Aguilera and Rihanna that were so scandalous, the Mail published dozens of photos and the videos to show how appalled they were.

So today, in its editorial, it dismisses Ofcom as 'pathetic' and 'toothless' and says it has 'contemptibly failed to take any meaningful action'.

Indeed, it's so 'toothless' that it once fined the Daily Mail and General Trust £225,000 for a breach of its public service broadcasting licence for Teletext.

Compare that to, say, the Press Complaints Commission. It has no power to fine newspapers. It will do absolutely nothing about the Daily Star saying Simon Cowell 'is dead' in a front page headline. It even lets the Mail get away with burying corrections, so that clarifications for British stories are hidden in the US section of the Mail's website.

So what does Mail editor Paul Dacre have to say about the PCC?

the PCC has over the years been a great success story.

But could Dacre point to all those occasions when the PCC has taken 'meaningful action' against the Mail? Or indeed against any other paper?

Is it Ofcom or the PCC that is really a 'toothless' regulator?

Ofcom criticises the Mail

Yesterday, Ofcom published its ruling on the 2,868 complaints it had received about the final of last year's The X Factor. Although it did not find the programme in breach of the Code it did say:

In view of our concerns about the material under consideration in this case, and the fact that we considered it was at the limit of acceptability for transmission before the 21:00 watershed, Ofcom is requiring the compliance licensee to attend a meeting to discuss the approach taken to ensuring that the programme complied with the requirements of the Code.

However, it wasn't only The X Factor that came in for some criticism from Ofcom:

Approximately 2,000 of the 2,868 complaints about this programme were received following coverage about the performances in a daily national newspaper. The newspaper coverage reported on concerns that the performances were too explicit for a family programme, and included a number of still images of the performances.

However, from a comparison of the images it is clear that the photographs that were published in the newspaper were significantly more graphic and close-up than the material that had been broadcast in the programme, and had been taken from a different angle to the television cameras. Readers of the newspaper would have therefore been left with the impression that the programme contained significantly more graphic material than had actually been broadcast.

Hmm. Now which paper could Ofcom be referring to? Could it possibly be the Mail, which infamously published several photos in a double page spread under the not-exactly-convincing headline:

We apologise to readers but you have to see these pictures to understand the fury they've stirred.

Their online article about how 'racy' the show was helpfully included 13 pictures and two videos.

Their online article about Ofcom's decision helpfully includes 11 pictures and two videos, with the handy information 'Scroll down to see video of the performances...' in bold at the top.

Although this article mentions the criticism of the 'national daily newspaper' the Mail website has, unusually, decided not to allow comments. Why would that be?

If the Mail really thinks this was too much, why make the pictures and videos so freely available so often? And, of course, all this faux outrage is from a newspaper whose website is obsessed with publishing 'racy' photographs of singers and actresses (such as these of Rihanna, at one of her own shows), which made their coverage more than a little hypocritical.

But according to a Mail spokesman, it was nothing to do with them, guv:

"We note that the Ofcom report did not actually name any newspaper itself – but it has been suggested in other media that they were referring to the Daily Mail.

"We wholly reject any criticism, which Ofcom may or may not be making.

"The fact is that all the pictures we used were provided by ITV and X Factor's official photographic agency – with the exception of one, which was an actual screen-grab of the show's transmission. They gave an accurate and fair representation of the show. We also made it clear why we felt it was important to show them.

"Thousands of our readers had clearly been incensed by the programme before we carried the pictures. What we raised was the legitimate question as to whether these scenes were suitable for pre-watershed TV and presented the facts in a fair and reasonable manner."

Trust

The results of a new survey on public trust make grim reading for the newspapers, particularly the tabloids.

YouGov asked 1,854 adults 'how much do you trust the following to tell the truth?' with a number of different professions listed - politicians, doctors, journalists, police and others.

Compared to results from 2003, trust in the media has declined significantly across the board.

Here are the results:

BBC News journalists
Total trust: 60% (81% in 2003)
Total not much/no trust: 34%

ITV News journalists
Total trust: 49% (82% in 2003)
Total not much/no trust: 43%

Journalists on 'upmarket' newspapers
Total trust: 41% (65% in 2003)
Total not much/no trust: 51%

Journalists on 'mid-market' newspapers (Mail, Express)
Total trust: 21% (36% in 2003)
Total not much/no trust: 71%

Journalists on 'red-top tabloid' newspapers
Total trust: 10% (14% in 2003)
Total not much/no trust: 83%

Of the 25 professions listed, BBC came 6th, the mid-market newspapers 15th and the red-top tabloids 25th. Last. Behind estate agents and, amusingly, EU officials.

The results aren't a one-off. An Ofcom survey in May 2010 showed newspapers were the least trusted source for news. The Committee for Standards in Public Life's 2008 Report showed TV news journalists - trusted by 46% of people - far ahead of broadsheet (36%) and tabloid (10%) journalists.

It is hard not to conclude that the broadcast regulator Ofcom (with its power to fine for serious breaches of its Code) does a far better job of maintaining standards - and therefore trust - than the PCC (with its power to allow newspapers to bury two sentence 'clarifications').

As Minority Thought points out, it was only in July that Mail Editor Paul Dacre was happily telling us all that:

They [critics] will probably never concede the truth, which is that the PCC has over the years been a great success story. Britain's newspapers are infinitely better behaved than they were two decades ago. Yes, the industry can do more to improve standards. We will rise to our challenge.

The public doesn't seem to be able to see them rising to the challenge and don't seem in awe of this great improvement in behaviour. That's why the number of people who trust tabloid journalists a 'great deal' is, err, 1%. That's why the number of people who have a 'great deal' of trust in journalists on the so-called 'mid-market' papers (like the one Dacre edits) is, err, 1%.

Anyone would think Dacre had some vested interest in plunging his head in the sand and pretending everything is fine.

It would, however, have been great to see Dacre's reaction to the fact that news journalists from the BBC, that organisation he seems to have such an irrational hatred of, are trusted far more - far, far more - than journalists on his paper.

(via Roy Greenslade and Minority Thought)

Rome burns

Broadcast media regulator Ofcom has published a report on media literacy among adults in the UK.

It's 92 pages long but one part of the survey they conducted stands out: which news source do people trust the most?

Only 34% of people said they trusted what they see in newspapers, compared with 66% who trusted radio news and 54% TV news.

Moreover, that 34% was overshadowed by the 43% who disagreed that they could trust what they saw in newspapers. The percentages who said they didn't trust TV (24%) and radio (15%) news were significantly smaller:


The timing of this report is excellent because tomorrow sees the publication of the PCC's Annual Report. No doubt they will try and pretend that the PCC and the newspapers in this country are all wonderful - as they do every year.

For example, in 2008, the PCC had a record number of complaints - 4,698 - which was an increase of 8% on 2007.

Because so many newspapers write a lot of rubbish? Not a bit of it:

We are confident that it is not a sign of dramatically falling standards in the industry, but of increased awareness and accessibility of the PCC.

They may be 'confident' of that, but who else is?

Who really thinks an increase in complaints is a result of the PCC doing such a good job?

That's a quite bafflingly blinkered view of the current state of affairs.

When compared with TV and radio news, newspapers are - by a considerable amount - the least trusted. Sadly, the PCC's failure to act against the worst excesses of the press make this almost inevitable.