Friday, February 15, 2013 

The tabloids: publishing death porn since the advent of the printing press.

Much comment, understandably, on the Sun's decision to run a front page splash (and in this instance it really does seem the right word) on the death of Reeva Steenkamp, illustrated with a full page photo of the model and presenter appearing to undo her bikini top.  It's certainly tasteless, and as Marina Hyde notes, just happens to come the day after the One Billion Rising protests, the campaign intended to bring more attention to violence against women.

It's hardly the most egregious recent case of tabloid death porn though, and one which at the time barely caused a ripple of complaint as far as I can remember.  Back in 2008, the Daily Star splashed on the latest evidence heard at the trial of Mark Dixie, who was subsequently found guilty of the murder of Sally Anne Bowman.  "MY SEX WITH SALLY ANNE'S DEAD BODY", the front page screamed, alongside the ubiquitous shot of Bowman from her modelling catalogue, hands in the top of her jeans.

As for the motivation behind using such photographs to illustrate crime cases, Dixie's trial more than provided a clue.  Found on Dixie's digital camera was a video of a man masturbating over a copy of the Daily Mail, the front page of which featured a photograph of Bowman.  The police also found said copy of the Mail in Dixie's possesion, and noted the cover was dashed with a "sticky substance".  The Mail, all but needless to say, merely reported that the police had found a video of Dixie "performing a lewd sex act on the six-month anniversary of the model's death".  Not, you understand, which publication and what material had further energised his "lewd sex act".

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2/15/2013 06:12:00 pm | |

Thursday, January 12, 2012 

"It kept it on the front page."

It is incredibly easy to make fun of the Leveson inquiry. (It is though far more difficult to be funny when making fun of the Leveson inquiry, as yesterday's post showed.) Up until today this had been by far its least insightful week, partially down to those giving evidence and partially down to the interrogators having something of an off week. Dominic Mohan on Monday was allowed to get away with the obvious inconsistency of paying tribute at the 2002 Shaftas to "Vodafone's lack of security" and his insistence that this was merely a joke, rather than any indication that either the Mirror or Sun were engaged in phone hacking at the time. Such was either Mohan's preparation and one would expect his work with the best of News International's lawyers, or Robert Jay QC's hangover from the weekend that all that seemed to come across was just how wonderfully philanthropic the paper is.

We should perhaps have expected something different when the representatives of the Daily Express and Daily Star came to pay their visit. They are after all the rogue operators on what used to be Fleet Street, having decided last January to leave the Press Complaints Commission, although they had previously refused for a time to pay their accreditation fees. This issue was also the only thing it seemed that the two current editors, the one previous and then Richard Desmond all agreed upon, apparently having decided on a common line when they came to write their witness statements: they had left, not because the PCC had made stringent criticism in two separate adjudications, one against the Daily Star over the "Muslim-only public loos" story, the other against the Scottish Sunday Express and its quite amazing decision to publish an "outraged" story about the private lives of those who survived the Dunblane massacre, but due to how complainants were now going to the PCC and then suing anyway. Never mind that there was never any rule, written or unwritten, that you couldn't then sue after getting the PCC involved; there had to be some other excuse found for removing themselves from even the lamentable regulatory oversight of the PCC.

First up was Dawn Neesom, the lesser spotted editor of the Daily Star. Richard Peppiatt, who resigned from the Star last March in protest at the paper's stance on Muslims, tweeted that she prefers to keep a low profile. Indeed, I can't remember ever seeing a photograph of her prior to today, and only had the the description of her as "editirix" in Private Eye to go by. On the basis of her evidence, as with some of the other editors and reporters, you'd have never believed she had risen to her position on the basis of merit: some recent stories she couldn't remember at all, while others she was forced to admit treated readers like idiots. Like the one declaring Simon Cowell to be dead, which wasn't even based on someone saying he had passed on, or the report during the ash cloud disruption last year headlined "TERROR AS PLANE HITS ASH CLOUD" which referred to, err, a TV reconstruction of a previous incident due to be broadcast on Channel 5 (prop. R Desmond).

One thing Neesom was convinced of was that the low number of staff under her supervision most certainly didn't compromise accuracy. "We always try to employ people that pride accuracy above all else," she stated, something it seems would be news to Rockstar Games, who were paid damages after the paper claimed that the next title in the Grand Theft Auto series would be based around Raoul Moat's stand-off with the police. Nor would the PCC agree, commenting in their adjudication on the "Muslim-only loos" story that they were "particularly concerned at the lack of care the newspaper had taken in its presentation of the story". She also denied that the paper had any anti-Islamic bias, despite the Star's legal representative later complaining she hadn't been given any of the front pages in advance of Jay asking about them. He later provided two examples of "positive" coverage of Muslims, both notably from late last year, after Peppiatt had resigned in the pages of the Graun.

Up next, and notable perhaps only for one thing was current Express editor Hugh Whittow. His remarkable statement when asked on why the group he worked for had left the PCC was to claim it was because it hadn't intervened sooner over their coverage of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. This rather staggered Jay momentarily, as it did everyone else. To quote him:

Are you seriously putting that forward as a reason, that the PCC failed to stop you freely publishing a defamatory article?

It was just one of the things happening at the time, Whittow responded. Everyone it seemed other than the journalists on the Express were to blame for the repeated libels, as the then editor Peter Hill elaborated on next. According to him it was all the fault of the dastardly Portuguese police, who kept insisting that he print whatever they unofficially told his journalists, even though it all but impossible to check anything they leaked. The Express weren't the ones accusing the McCanns of killing their daughter, even if they were publishing the unverifiable claims of those who did. There was "reason to believe they might be true", so Hill kept on putting it on the front page day after day. Despite costing Desmond £550,000 and having to give an unprecedented apology, according to the Hill there were no internal repercussions whatsoever for his part in the sorry saga.

Hill was though thoroughly upstaged by his former boss, who breezed in and did his absolute best to come across as the cheeky upstart wideboy he imagines himself to be. This might have changed had someone, as Michael White notes, uttered the dreaded "p" word, Desmond having made most of his fortune through his past ownership of a vast array of porn mags. Happily, this was skirted around, with Desmond himself making the only mention of his involvement in "adult magazines". His initial approach was to try to bore the inquiry into submission by droning on about how he had cut costs when he bought the Express group, including how he sacked the one correspondent they had in New York, America after all being a country where not a lot happens

Only then did we get onto the good bit, Desmond first livening things up by asking Jay to define ethical, claiming not to know what it meant, only clarifying slightly with his comment in his witness statement (PDF) that everyone's morals and ethics were different and that "it's a very fine line". Just how fine his ethical line is quickly became clear, as Jay tussled with him over the McCanns. Disagreeing that there had been 38 libellous articles, he then went on to suggest that over the four month period if there had been 38 "bad" articles there must have been around 68 "good" ones. Startled by this novel logic, Jay tried breaking his point down to its component parts: that if people believed Madeleine was dead, as the Express was suggesting, they were less likely to look for her. Desmond, having clearly imbibed the Daily Express's other obsession down the years, suggested this wasn't the case as people were still talking about the death of Diana and "these situations where no one actually knows the answer, as it turns out, it just goes on and goes on". Except there was a body in Diana's case, as Jay exasperatedly pointed out.

With his hole duly dug, he kept on going down. It wasn't until the McCanns had taken on new lawyers that they decided to sue, and in any case, it kept it on the front page. As for the PCC, only the Express were made scapegoats by ex-head Christopher Meyer. How much better regulation would be if instead it was done in Desmond's own image, with proper business people, proper legal people, not these other industry johnnies that had slandered him ever since he bought the Express.

If anything, Desmond got off lightly. Like with the non-mention of the pornography, no one brought up his goose-stepping and sieg heiling at a meeting with the Telegraph bosses, the time he punched a journalist in the stomach for not running an obituary of a friend of Desmond's, or any real instances where he had directly interfered in the Express's editorial process, such as when he described a front page Peter Hill had put together as "fucking shit", the then Express editor downing tools as a result. Instead, he dropped himself in it. How one hopes the circulation of his "fantastic" Daily Star drops in a similar fashion.

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1/12/2012 11:05:00 pm | |

Friday, April 15, 2011 

A front page for the ages.


Yes, that's a young woman described as both a tart and a moll due to her relationships with two different men, an actress brave enough to admit she's struggled to cope with mental illness referred to as "loopy", while lastly the always handy idle dole scrounger provides today's two-minutes hate. Makes you almost yearn for the Daily Sport, doesn't it? (No.)

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4/15/2011 07:25:00 pm | |

Saturday, June 26, 2010 

They never learn.


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6/26/2010 01:14:00 pm | |

Thursday, May 13, 2010 

Callous, unfeeling scum.

One of the best ever descriptions of how the tabloid press operate was made by the partner of Rachel Nickell, the part time model murdered on Wimbledon Common back in 1992. He referred to the media as a whole, based on his considerable experience of them, as "[C]allous, mercenary and unfeeling scum".

Much the same could be said today for the Daily Express, Daily Mirror and Daily Star, who felt that the attempted suicide of a model best known for appearing in Marks and Spencer's adverts was a perfect opportunity to splash on their front pages pictures of her appearing either in lingerie or beachwear, none of them even having the dignity to call her by her actual name (Noemie Lenoir), instead deciding that "M&S girl", "M&S babe" or "M&S beauty" were all far more appropriate. Here, ladies and gentlemen, is what the tabloids consider to be a completely appropriate topic to plaster on their front pages, with all the sympathy, subtlety and understanding you can expect from those who think that putting a woman wearing few clothes on the cover might just shift a few extra copies. Presumably those who get off on knowing that the person they're salivating over came within an inch of taking their own life, and that the obvious response to that is announce it to the nation with all the feeling of a Scouting for Girls song.

Not to stress the point or anything, but how exactly would the editors of those newspapers like to have the attempted suicide of someone they knew thrust onto the pages of the "popular" press, complete with similar photographs and with the same wholesale lack of any respect whatsoever? How would they feel if it was them in the same position, already being incredibly fragile, yet knowing that the entire nation was now gawping at them and speculating on just why, when they're obviously so happy and couldn't have a care in the world, they could possibly do such a thing? I really don't think that callous, unfeeling scum even begins to cover it.

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5/13/2010 06:04:00 pm | |

Tuesday, December 16, 2008 

They've only stolen all our jobs!

What goes through the minds of journalists working on a newspaper when they know that the information they are putting out is either demonstratively false or likely to be found to be demonstratively false? An example, if an obviously extreme one, is provided by Peter Chippendale and Chris Horrie in their history of the Sun concerning the paper's coverage of the Hillsborough disaster:

As MacKenzie's layout was seen by more and more people, a collective shudder ran through the office [but] MacKenzie's dominance was so total there was nobody left in the organisation who could rein him in except Murdoch. [Everyone in the office] seemed paralysed, "looking like rabbits in the headlights", as one hack described them. The error staring them in the face was too glaring. It obviously wasn't a silly mistake; nor was it a simple oversight. Nobody really had any comment on it—they just took one look and went away shaking their heads in wonder at the enormity of it. It was a "classic smear".

No one can on the Daily Star can possibly make the same excuse for today's front page, unless Dawn Neesom is rather more fearsome than she has been made out to be and prepared to use her kick-boxing training against her own hacks,ly Star, Daily Star-watch, Muslim bashing, churnalism, racism, immigration, immigration figures, or Richard Desmond himself was personally involved:

They haven't just taken all our jobs; they've stolen them from out of our hands!

There is instead a rather more simple explanation for the Star's front page, the Express's copy/paste and the similar effort in the Sun, doubtless amongst others: churnalism. As 5cc quickly found out, the origin of these claims is that old favourite of utterly unbiased and completely reliable figures on all matters immigration, Migration Watch. Their press release on the subject has everything that put-upon tabloid hack needs for a quickly cobbled together story; all that has to be added is the huge headline and red lettering.

And, as 5cc explains, it's crap, unsourced or badly sourced like the tabloid stories themselves. As he also points out:

The great thing about this one is that it contradicts its own conclusion with the real reason so many jobs have gone to immigrants in recent years:
The British born working age population also fell during this period, so the proportion in work remained unchanged at 75.4%.
So when the report goes on to say:
These employment statistics are not, in themselves, absolute proof that the employment of British born workers has declined as the result of East European immigration but it is hard to find another explanation.
It looks a bit silly. The other explanation is just one paragraph above.

The journalists responsible for pumping out this bilge in most of the circumstances almost certainly don't agree with or indeed believe it. They just do so because if they didn't they find themselves out of a job. Even so, it does represent something of a continuing campaign by the Star to be the most "outrageous" paper when it comes to tackling such thorny issues as Islam and immigration. A couple of years back you might remember it took a NUJ mutiny for the paper not to run a page 6 "burqa babes special", while more recently it led with "BBC PUT MUSLIMS BEFORE YOU!". In today's paper, apart from the front page splash, there's a similarly doubtless half or not even half-true report about how a "multi-faith area" in Lewes prison had a crucifix removed from it, lest it apparently offend Muslims. The reason for why "the multi-faith space" must supposedly double up for both faiths is made plain in the last independent inspectorate report into the prison:

Worship facilities were very poor. The Christian chapel was at the top of a steep flight of stairs and inaccessible to prisoners with mobility difficulties, the small multi-faith room had been taken over for other use two months previously and Muslim prayers were held in an association area on F wing with no carpet or ablutions facilities. A new multi-faith area was due to be built as part of the rebuild. The coordinating chaplain had identified some basic errors in the design and it was unclear whether it would provide enough room for the number of prisoners expected to want to use it.

The article claims that the "independent board which monitors prisons admitted the Lewes cross was dropped after discussions with a Muslim priest", but if this is a reference to the actual prisons inspectorate, there's nothing on their site to suggest this is the case or contained in the report from over a year ago. It's the apoplexy of Phillip Davies that makes it all slightly worthwhile:

“It’s barmy politically-correct madness no doubt dreamed up by some white middle-class, lentil-eating, sandal-wearing do-gooder.

“This kind of thing does so much damage to race relations because it builds up resentment.”

Doesn't it just? I bet the percentage of the population that read the Daily Star and care about the facilities for different religions in prisons are absolutely fuming. I can't recall whether it was Simon Hoggart or the parliamentary column in Private Eye which described Davies, often mistaken for David Davis, as an "unpopular populist", but for passive aggression on the behalf of the outrageds of Tonbridge Wells who have never heard of him he deserves some sort of prize.

That label of unpopular populism probably applies equally well to the Daily Star itself. After all, anyone really that disgusted or concerned by the twin outrages of uncontrolled immigration and Muslims on the rates must have abandoned the Star a while ago: the Mail or the Express do that stuff without all the distracting women with huge tits in-between. The paper defended itself a while back with the claim that it wanted to give its readers a smile in the morning, and in fairness it's a rare occasion when the paper does go in for such front pages as today's or the one attacking the BBC, far more concerned as it with the tit situation already mentioned.

Which leads us to probably the best, most likely unintended juxtaposition of the gorgeous pouting Danielle Lloyd with the headline next to her. Lloyd, for those with slightly shorter memories, was one of those along with the single-monikered Jade and S Club 7 reject Jo whom bullied Shilpa Shetty on Celebrity Big Brother. Lloyd's most well-known contribution, apart from asking in the thickest in both senses of the word Scouse accent whether "those people who eat with their hands are Indian or from Chi-nah", was that Shetty "should fuck off home". Unlike Jade, who had to develop cancer before she could be successfully re-admitted to reality television, Lloyd continued in her furrow, much thanks to the readers of Zoo and Nuts not being too picky when it comes to the ideological status of the women they one-handedly admire the aesthetic beauty of. After all, doesn't Lloyd's success in her work suggest that as yet those filthy foreigners haven't managed to steal the jobs of our hard labouring British glamour models? Isn't that something to proud of, that the Daily Star promotes home-grown talent regardless of the foreigners' insidious attempts to thieve such jobs? British boobs for British men, and nothing but the best shall do!

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12/16/2008 10:27:00 pm | |

Wednesday, February 06, 2008 

Tabloid-watch: Reporting sensational crime details, blatant stupidity and empty smears.

Today was undoubtedly another glorious day for the country's tabloids. If there's one thing apart from a missing white blonde girl that's always going to fill the front pages, it's a murdered white blonde young woman, especially if said white blonde young woman was an aspiring model who left behind a handy cache of material of her posing in a range of different clothing. Add to that how the trial of the man accused of the murder has heard that he admits to having sex with Sally Anne Bowman's corpse, which he just happened to come upon by chance, and you're guaranteed that it's going to be the story of number one interest on the day in question.

What you don't have to do is then rub everyone's face in it. That, however, was the modus operandi of the Daily Star. The PCC code on reporting on cases intruding into grief is suitably vague, but it does say the following:

In cases involving personal grief or shock, enquiries and approaches must be made with sympathy and discretion and publication handled sensitively.

Here then is the Daily Star's front page:

It's the sort of headline you'd expect from a sex scandal where the person in question is boasting about what he's done and given an interview to that effect. Why bother being sensitive to others' feelings however when you can instead use a sledgehammer to crack a nut?

Without wanting to get into a debate on whether if something similar had happened to a middle-aged non-photogenic woman it would be making the news in such a fashion, there was this further smirk inducing evidence given to the trial:

When Dixie was arrested, nine months after the murder, police found a digital camera among his possessions. On it, they found a video file showing a pornographic film being played on a television, while a man records himself masturbating over a copy of the Daily Mail bearing a photograph of Bowman.

Police later discovered a copy of the Daily Mail of March 22 2006 which had a "sticky substance" on the front page featuring Bowman.


It's true then: the accusation that the use of photographs of "pretty young dead girls" is intended to boost the one-handed sale seems to be based in something approaching fact. How then did the Daily Mail itself report this free and rather impressive plug for its journalistic content?

Police raided several properties in Horley, Surrey, and Croydon where he had been staying.

They recovered a video of Dixie performing a lewd sex act on the six-month anniversary of the model's death, the court heard.


Well, I don't suppose "the Daily Mail: the newspaper of choice for masturbating necrophiliacs" would quite hit their target market. That report incidentally only contained the one photograph of Bowman. Among the other coverage was one which had two, and this one, which went for a whole three.

Moving on, the Express splashed on how there'd been yet another suicide in the supposed cursed town of Bridgend. I think Merk from Daily Mail Watch can take the reins from here:

BBC: Death ‘not connected’ to suicides.

icWales: …police today stressed the death was not connected to the spate of suicides…

Times: did not appear to be linked to the seven suicides.

Telegraph: The death is not linked to other recent sudden deaths in the area.

Daily Mail (heh): police have ruled out that the latest death is linked to the previous incidents.

Express : There were renewed fears last night of an internet death cult in the town after it emerged that Miss Fuller had visited a social networking website just hours before she died.

See where I’m going with this? Now are you ready for the revelation about the ‘Internet Cult’ from the Express? Here goes:

The teenager, the second girl to die in the spate of suicides, was a member of Bebo and Facebook. Many of the previous victims had posted profiles on such sites.

This, my friends is the self acclaimed ‘World’s Greatest Newspaper’.

I rest my case.


Finally then to the Scum, which has an amazing exclusive on the bugging of Sadiq Khan, the headline shouting "MP first probed by MI5 over 9/11":

BUGGING scandal MP Sadiq Khan was first probed by security services over his association with a 9/11 terrorist, The Sun can reveal.

And just what was this association?

Security sources told yesterday how 9/11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui asked lawyer Mr Khan to represent him after being accused of being the ‘20th hijacker’.

Oh. It gets better though:

The Labour whip was not allowed to see Moussaoui and was barred from seeing court papers in the run-up to the trial.

Yet by the tone of the article it feels like you're supposed to think that Khan is somehow tarred or condemned for so much as thinking of being Moussaoui's legal representative.

Human rights lawyer Mr Khan, 37, who says he loathes terror groups, was the only practising Muslim on Moussaoui’s team. It brought him to the attention of MI5 and MI6.

One security source said last night: “It is hardly surprising he came to the attention of security services in view of the people he was associated with.”


Who says, eh? Must be a traitor. It's quite right too. Dare to consider legally defending a "terrorist suspect" and you too will find yourself being bugged by MI5, although his supposed labelling as a "subversive" by Scotland Yard might be because he represented and defended black and Asian officers in discrimination cases, as well as bringing actions against the police. Still, so much for even the thought of confidentiality between a lawyer and his client; that's been thrown out of the window now that the sky's dark.

Last year it was revealed that five members of his family belonged to fundamental group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

It's not entirely clear here whether they're referring to Khan or to Babar Ahmed, but I can't find any articles from a relatively quick search that back up this especially lurid allegation. Indeed, Khan has spoken out against Hizb ut-Tahrir on a number of occasions, the following, in a Fabian speech, particularly strong:
Let me be quite clear. Hizb-ut-Tahrir quite deliberately have the same effect on race relations as their mirror image, the BNP. They encourage hatred and their preaching is used by the BNP to foster fear of Islam.

Calling your family racists doesn't appear to be the number one way to keep good relations with them.

Mr Straw is believed to have told officials that he thought someone was trying to “smear” Mr Khan.

Well, the Sun's certainly decided that if others are going to have a go, it may as well join in.

As Private Eye points out today, surely of even more interest than the fact that the police are now bugging MPs daring to visit childhood friends in prison, is that Ahmed has now been held without charge in jail in this country for three and a half years, awaiting deportation, even while his alleged accomplices in America have been released without charge. Azzam.com, the site that Ahmed allegedly ran, and which can be accessed via the Wayback Machine was certainly radical: its sub-title was for "jihad and the mujahideen", but whether he broke any applicable laws while the site was still up in this country is most certainly questionable. That injustice however is of little consequence to a newspaper determined to defend the police and the security services over almost anything, however how troubling.

Slightly related: PDF attacks the puritan spin machine.

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2/06/2008 11:59:00 pm | |

Monday, October 29, 2007 

Tabloid-watch: Star idiocy, Scum's support for the troops, and the Mail gets caught out.

You'd think, writing a blog such as this that often dwells upon the very worst behaviour of this country's tabloid press, that you'd quickly become inured, desensitised to the casual lies, hypocrisies, set-ups, smear jobs and entrapments that are part and parcel of the street of shame, and have been for decades. I sometimes wonder if things have improved in recent years, especially with the set-up of the supine but occasionally condemnatory Press Complaints Commission, and while the overt racism and homophobia that was often present in years gone by has either vanished or become layered and shadowed (the Scum refers to "Gypsies" as "Gipsies" so as not to be accused of fall foul of protests, for example), my conclusion is that there has been no real fundamental change. If they can get away with it, they'll do it.

Before we get to today's most egregious example of abuse, it would be amiss not to take a look at today's Daily Star. While the Daily Star is a newspaper in the same sense that Spinal Tap are a band, it's difficult to know where to apportion blame for today's ridiculous front page, either to the McCanns and their employment of a bunch of idiots describing themselves as private detectives, or to the Star for making up nonsense which a child could see through. According to the Star, private detectives believe that she is being held in Morocco by a "rich Arab family." Apart from it fitting the pattern of everyone being involved in the saga being a nationality other than our own, and therefore inimitably condemnable, why on earth would a "rich" family pay for a child to be kidnapped when it's so easy to adopt, or failing that, even paying to adopt? Such a scenario is about as likely as Madeleine being found tomorrow along with Lord Lucan and Shergar, all drinking in a bar in Haiti. Still, doesn't it fill you with joy that the money donated to the McCanns is being spent so wisely by such competent investigators, if things are indeed as the article describes?

Meanwhile, things are little less desperate over in the Scum. Despite their constant support for "Our Boys", it's deeply concerned that the British public doesn't feel the same about them, or at least in their view doesn't feel proud enough, hence its launching of a campaign to "Help our Heroes". There's nothing wrong with that of course, although whether starting up a separate charity to the British Legion, which already does an admirable job, is going to help is questionable. It's also true that this government has failed the soldiers immeasurably, both in terms of kit and in providing adequate compensation for those seriously wounded, as the desultory pay-outs have proved.

It's quite another thing however to suggest that the apathy showed to returning troops is due to opposition to the war, and not being able to differentiate between the politics involved in the Iraq war and their role in fighting it. I'd venture that while that does have a role, the lack of support at homecomings apart from family members and relatives is more down to the fact that there has no been tangible victory to celebrate. Just what have we achieved, for example, in Iraq? The Scum was about the only newspaper which tried to play up the withdraw to Basra airport as a victory, laughably claiming that the army had fought Shia militants into a ceasefire, while every other source reported that it was down to a deal which had involved the release of a number of prisoners. On a broader scale, we've replaced a murderous dictatorship with a democracy that attempted to run before it could walk, resulting in a murderous, sectarian anarchy that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, resulted in 2 million Iraqis fleeing the country and 2 million more becoming refugees in their own land. Is it much of a surprise that many don't feel like turning up and cheering our soldiers' return? It shouldn't be viewed as a snub to them; this is after all the season where everyone who appears on television has to wear a poppy lest they be accused of not remembering the sacrifices made in the past.

The Sun itself has misjudged the mood of the public at every turn. Its gung-ho support for the war, attacks on those who opposed it, from Robin Cook to George Galloway and disgraceful coverage of the Hutton inquiry went against the grain. It campaigned for a victory parade shortly after "official" combat ended and has opposed every attempt to further investigate how we came to enter the conflict. It mentions vandals allegedly targeting the homes of soldiers while they were fighting in Afghanistan, without bringing up the tissue of lies it cooked up late last year about "Muslim yobs" attacking a house that soldiers had looked into moving into. It weeps crocodile tears for those who have been injured without admitting that without its own propaganda for the invasion and support of Blair those scarred for life might not have been called into action. You have to wonder whether Murdoch will be dipping a hand into his own vast pockets to contribute something, especially considering every single one of his papers supported the war, and that he did so mainly because he was convinced that it would lead to oil at $20 a barrel. Oil has just touched its highest ever unadjusted for inflation level, $92.

Elsewhere today, the Scum is again resorting to talking up the various desperate women who are getting their breasts out on the MySun network:

MY Sun users are once again proving they are simply the breast.

As competition hots up in the search for this year’s Page 3 Idol, several girls have been uploading sexy pictures to their MY Sun blogs.

MY Sun has seen loads of girls show off their breast bits since it launched last year, and now girls are using it to drum up support as they bid to become Page 3 Idol 2007.


Interestingly, on MySpace, on which MyScum is based, nudity is against the terms of services and results in getting your profile removed. On MyScum, a supposed newspaper website, it's actively encouraged.

Finally, we come to the tale of the Daily Mail and the potential paying of Poles to break the law. Via FCC, the beatroot relates how a researcher from the Daily Mail had phoned up a friend in Warsaw and asked him to drive his car around law, breaking the speed limit in front of speed cameras and not paying the congestion charge:

Apparently, he had got a call from the Daily Mail (I can’t remember how they found him – but I am sure he will be telling us) asking him if he would like to drive a car with Polish number plates from Warsaw to England and deliberately park illegally. They also asked him to drive purposely over the speed limit in sight of speed cameras.

There had recently been a report by the BBC claiming that Poles had been parking all over the place and disregarding the highway code, as they knew that because their cars were not registered in the UK there was no chance of them ever receiving a summons to pay the speeding/parking fines.

...

A couple of hours later a 'researcher', Sue Reid (author of this story), at the Daily Mail offices telephoned me. I told her that though I was British my girlfriend was Polish and that she has a car registered in Poland. We were interested. We were not interested – but we were interested in getting the details of how low journalism has sunk in the UK.

Ms Reid said that she would offer me 800 pounds to come over and park illegally and speed, “Just ten miles an hour over the speed limit, no more…”. We would then go back to Poland and wait for the demands for payment of the fines. “We know this is going on but we want to prove it by having a foreign car here with a foreign driver for five days and driving and parking in London, Kent, East Anglia and Portsmouth,” said the Daily Mail researcher.

A photographer would follow us around, showing how we were breaking the law. And then, back in Warsaw, when we later failed to receive any demands for payment - as the British authorities would have no record of our vehicle – the Mail would publish the whole thing as an ‘exclusive’ on how Poles and others are breaking the law in the UK and GETTING AWAY WITH IT.

She even offered to put the girlfriend and myself up at her house in Fulham in London, if we had nowhere else to stay.

EU Referendum, which can't resist putting in a reference to its own distortions of what happened in Qana in Lebanon last year, also has the email from Sue Reid.

How is this any different to the fakery scandals at the BBC and ITV? If anything, this is far more serious than anything that the BBC did, especially as it involves paying people to break the law to prove a point. Just how does this sit with the Mail's uncompromising stance on law and order? As beatroot points out, this was the work of the Mail, not the Scum or the Star, designed to raise anger against minorities that may or may not have been exploiting a loophole. Are then the tabloids just as bad as ever? I find it hard to think otherwise.

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10/29/2007 07:03:00 pm | |

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