Saturday, October 12, 2013 

Let the shitstorm commence.

Paul Dacre, then, has broken cover.  It's interesting that like so many tabloid editors before him he won't actually be interviewed and instead leaves that to his underlings, only prepared to engage with critics on his own terms, but such is the way of those who demand accountability from everyone else and accept none themselves.

A few points:

1. Dacre's obsession with the BBC is a wonderful projection of how he seems to imagine the left is obsessed with his paper (although it must be said, some are).  It would be nice to get an audit on just how many hours of programming were devoted to discussing the Mail's attack on Ralph Miliband, but I'm willing to wager right now that it doesn't amount to hundreds.  Dacre and the Mail also wouldn't attract quite as much hostility if they didn't resort to hyperbole at the first opportunity; it was obvious by Thursday that some within Labour were trying to exploit the issue shamelessly, and the use of Alastair Campbell was questionable.  The point remains however that the BBC was entitled to cover the issue when it wasn't just Labour or the "Twitterati" but politicians on all sides who raised concerns.

2. Even now Dacre is repeating his and Geoffrey Levy's lies about Ralph Miliband.  He did not give "unqualified support" to Russian totalitarianism until the mid-50s, and besides there is nothing in Levy's article to back up that claim.  As Chris and a myriad others pointed out, being a Marxist does not make you a Stalinist or a Leninist, which is something that either the pair cannot get their heads round, or as you have to suspect, are being willfully misleading about.  If we want to get into how political beliefs have resulted in "evil", then we have to discuss both right and left, as well as how governments both Labour and Tory have supported authoritarians and dictators when it's suited them.  If hating Britain is not liking its institutions, as Dacre has repeatedly argued, then he clearly loathes modern Britain.  Now that is a paradox.

3. Dacre, again like numerous tabloid editors before him, justifies his paper's viewpoints on the basis that he's reflecting his readers' interests, which just so happen to also be his.  Regardless of the political party in power, in Dacre world Britain is constantly ruled over by the liberal left, and all Daily Mail readers object most strongly to this elite and their contempt for ordinary people.  In Dacre world the politicians don't fight like rats in a sack for the support of the middle classes and the centre ground, they only represent the "metropolitan classes" and sneer at decent working Britons.  Only the Mail stands up and protects these salt of the earth victims from having their interests ignored, and thank goodness it does.

4.  Gosh, Labour really is a ghastly party, isn't it?  No other political party has engaged in "corruption" like that of Damian McBride, except all of them (nor has any journalist ever facilitated the exchange of smears).  The Mail only focused on Ralph Miliband because his son wants to reintroduce price fixing, an unacceptable form of state intervention quite unlike Help to Buy, or the Stalinist seizing of land, quite unlike the compulsory purchase order legislation that has been on the statute book for decades.  They even covered up unnecessary and horrific deaths in NHS hospitals, except the Care Quality Commission disagrees entirely with that interpretation.

5. When everything else has failed, resort to a straw man argument.  Who suggested that the Ralph Miliband article necessitated statutory regulation?  Precisely no one, but that didn't stop Tory politicians from acting as though that's what the criticism implied, nor does it stop Dacre now.  Dacre would have a point in saying politicians can't be trusted with the freedom of the press after this week's assault on the Graun, if err, his paper hadn't led the charge after friendly briefings from those same politicians and indeed MI5 itself.  Amazingly, he attacks the BBC more than he does the Graun for "ignoring" the story, as though leading on it repeatedly over the last couple of days was trying to push it down the news agenda.  Apparently they should have focused more on Jack Straw's criticisms of the paper.  After all, who better than the foreign secretary who called the initial reports on the rendition programme "conspiracy theories" at the same time as he signed off on the rendition of two Libyan men back to Gaddafi's torture chambers to lecture the Guardian on the importance of such things remaining secret?

6. Which says everything about what this has really been about.  After accusing the Graun of treachery, he now of course wants to get the paper on side in rejecting the newly agreed press charter.  While I think the last couple of days has made clear both the press and government charter are untenable, the idea that you suddenly forget both sides have said you're helping terrorists and choose one over the other is hilarious.

7. Dacre says if you dish it out, you take it.  Except as is obvious, he doesn't take it, he throws even more shit back in return.  To quote Glenn, it's time to throw so much shit back at him that he can't pick up shit, he can't throw shit, he can't do shit.  On your marks everyone.

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10/12/2013 09:00:00 am | |

Thursday, October 03, 2013 

No one to blame but himself.

When the Mail gets it wrong, it tends to get it spectacularly, boneheadedly, irredeemably wrong. Ever since Geoffrey Levy and (presumably) Paul Dacre decided it was a great idea to portray the deceased father of the Labour leader as a man who hated the country that gave him refuge and which he had to request to serve in the navy for, it has just kept on digging. Mocked for claiming a juvenile diary entry proved his loathing, it shifted to claiming his Marxism is why he hated our freedom. Except, as scholars and those who were taught by him have pointed out, his Marxism never extended to apologia for the Soviet Union or any other communist state. His socialism was democratic, just to the left of that offered by Labour. All they can point to is that his home played host to other thinkers on the left, not all of whom entirely rejected communism. By the same yardstick countless of those on the right could be equally condemned for their cosying up to authoritarians and dictators.  That his son is now the leader of the party he wrote would always betray the working class also gives the lie to the idea that he is a "dangerous" influence.

Quite what the executives who sent the reporter to the memorial service for Miliband's uncle possibly thought they would achieve is therefore difficult to ascertain. Did they seriously imagine those there would tell them something they could use? Or was this simply classic tabloid behaviour, deliberately pestering them simply because Ed had dared to respond in kind?  The PCC code (which is still in operation, fact fans) forbids journalists from entering private sections of hospitals unless there is a public interest in doing so, which while Paul Dacre would inevitably claim there was, is quite apparently not there.

It's Dacre's role since the beginning which is major point in all this.  Was he the one who decided upon the "man who hated Britain" headline?  Was he the executive who sent the Mail on Sunday hack to Professor Harry Keen's memorial?  And was he also responsible for deciding this morning that the paper shouldn't apologise, the MoS editor Geordie Greig, who was apparently unaware of the doorstepping, having told Miliband one would be issued this morning?  If so, then he seems to have made miscalculation after miscalculation, not expecting that Miliband would go to Rothermere himself with his complaint.

One thing people shouldn't be getting however is carried away.  While this has been classic Mail behaviour, it pales in comparison to the kind those who aren't leaders of the opposition have gone through.  For now at least, Miliband and the Labour leadership have judged their response just about right, but the letter to Rothermere almost crosses the boundary between justified complaint and the suggestion that they should think twice before writing anything.  Miliband might be dead right in saying that this entire episode is indicative of the Mail's culture and practices, or at least is of Paul Dacre's, as that's clearly the sentiment being expressed, but there's an extremely fine line between criticising newspapers for going beyond what's acceptable and politicians being seen to be potentially intimidating their critics.

That, frankly, is what some either within Labour or now outside have been attempting to do.  We can all agree that Alastair Campbell's lambasting of the Mail's Jon Steafel on Newsnight made for great television, yet Campbell is the absolute last person to be taking the moral high ground when it comes to smear stories.  One aspect of the Damian McBride book serialisation which was undeveloped was that neither he nor Campbell, or those in the Blair camp after Campbell left could have run their operations without the help of journalists willing to write up their attacks on each other.  Politics is only as dirty as the media that facilitate such briefings.  Nor is this a Milly Dowler moment, and for the likes of John Prescott to be trying to make it into one by suggesting to advertisers that they should stop doing business with the Mail is absurd.

The most significant thing is that unlike during the 80s, when tabloid smearing of Labour figures was par for the course, this time politicians of all parties have been explicit in condemning the Mail.  True, Cameron and Boris Johnson claimed not to have read or seen the piece and so only said they would defend their fathers from unfair criticism as well, but others such as Francis Maude have gone far beyond that.  With the Sun clearly in decline, not least thanks to Murdoch's decision to put it behind a paywall, the Mail is without doubt the most powerful newspaper in the country.  If some Tories are now prepared to go against it, it's indicative of just how quickly the influence the media barons once had is declining.  And how delicious that Dacre has no one to blame but himself.

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10/03/2013 10:15:00 pm | |

Tuesday, October 01, 2013 

Better living through irony.

It used to be said, by our more patronising commentators, that Americans didn't "get" irony. They always have of course, it's just that different countries have different traditions of comedy. To get things off to an exceptionally meta start, it's highly ironic that some of us seem to have forgotten what irony is.

Like, for instance, referring to the Labour leader as "Red Ed" non-ironically.  As an insult or jibe, it just doesn't work on any level other than it rhyming.  The closest Ed or the party he leads come to being "red" in the old socialist style is that he answered in the affirmative recently when asked whether he would bring socialism back, when he clearly meant social democracy, the same principle part of the coalition continues to profess to adhere to, and that the party laughably continues to sing the "Red Flag" come the end of conference.  It signifies about as much as the way Putin's Russia continues to display the ever deteriorating rubberised corpse of Lenin.  Think of the way the Sun took to calling Heather Mills Lady Mucca, on the basis that she had once posed for some softcore snaps, highly similar to those appearing on the paper's third page every day.  It was and is phenomenally stupid, but seems to please the little minds in charge of the nation's gutter rags.

Then again, part of our media and political class don't seem to like having even an occasional joke, let alone descend into silliness for say, the reason of having fun.  I can't quite believe I'm defending Godfrey Bloom, but the whole "sluts" row at the UKIP conference was mindboggling in its inanity.  I don't care whether he was using "sluts" in either the sexually promiscuous or lazy sense of the word, everyone in attendance laughed.  It wasn't meant seriously, no one in the room was offended, and had it not been for the fact he then went out and smacked Michael Crick with the conference programme, it most likely would have been brushed off just as his "bongo bongo" jibe was, when he should have been held to account then.  That the UKIP programme declared that the "new face of politics" was entirely white, as befits a party that can be summed up as being consumed with first world problems, ought to have been enough rope to hang them in the first place.

Not that we can just point the finger at those who think politics and humour shouldn't mix outside of Yes, Minister, The Thick of It or sketch columns.  Last week also saw Alastair Campbell reaching new levels of sanctimony, touring television studios lecturing Tesco and Asda for the crime of selling Halloween costumes that apparently stigmatised or belittled those with mental health problems, reinforcing prejudices that we should instead be seeking to overcome.  Fine sentiments indeed, but coming from the man who did more than anyone other than bloggers to paint Gordon Brown as "psychologically flawed", to put it in the politest possible terms, and over fucking Halloween costumes that simply reproduced age-old tropes from horror films and would never have been taken seriously by anyone other than those looking to be offended, came uncomfortably close to beggaring belief.  I couldn't give a toss about Halloween, but if for one night a year people want to dress up as figures from history or in other potentially offensive ways in the spirit of enjoying themselves, perhaps the rest of us should, within reason, get over ourselves? Yes?  No. Of course not.

Then we come to the levels of hypocrisy as well as irony in the Daily Mail deciding to smear Red Ed's long deceased old man.  As someone born in the 80s, I don't remember the good old days when the Tory press used to savage the "loony left" time after time, and have only read about it.  When such overbearing Tory bias hits you straight in the face then, as it has since Miliband's speech last week, it's a bit of a shock.  Yes, the Sun was bad during Labour's last term when it declared the country was on the brink of anarchy, even as crime continued to fall, something it believes is happening now the natural party of government is back in charge, but this is something else.  We saw a bit of it after Nick Clegg's performances in the debates, and earlier in the year during the Eastleigh by-election as the Mail splashed on Lord Rennard repeatedly, but to really invoke the hammer and sickle?  If it wasn't so ridiculous and truly meant it would be comical.

The Mail describes Ed's piece in response to Geoffrey Levy's obviously Paul Dacre-approved hatchet job as "tetchy and menacing".  Anyone who reads it can see it is neither.  It is in fact a tender defence of his father, setting out exactly what he owed to this country and how he loved rather than hated it.  You would have thought that Dacre, notoriously sensitive about the bringing up of the Mail's support for the Blackshirts in the 30s, might have realised that questioning the dedication of a man who fought for Britain would lead to critics pointing to the treachery of those who the Mail applauded, but apparently not.  Levy and Dacre in their deliberately obtuse manner can't imagine why a 17-year-old Jewish refugee from the Nazis was suspicious of nationalisms of all varieties.  The only other evidence it has for his hatred for this country is that he attacked the establishment, the self same establishment that Dacre has repeatedly said he rejoices in "tweaking the nose of".

Giving up any semblance of reasonable critique, the paper's editorial in response to Miliband's demand for a right of reply indulges in classic red-baiting, as Martin Kettle writes.  Ralph Miliband was a life-long Marxist, ergo even if he didn't support the Soviet Union, he "validated this most pernicious doctrine", which presumably is the "evil legacy" the editorial is concerned with.  It then lets the cat out of the bag by going straight on to the paper's monomaniacal obsession with the proposed royal charter on press regulation, as though whatever emerges from that tortured process will be anything approximate to actual state control of the press.  Indeed, when press freedom is genuinely threatened, as it has been by the government's response to the Guardian's revelations of surveillance of the internet by GCHQ, the Mail has taken the side of... the government.

Irony, as a rather good band once had it, smothers us.  It infects our speech and actions whether we like it or not.  Some, however, like the Mail, ignore the way it nags and carry on regardless.  Like George Osborne promising to run a budget surplus if the Tories are re-elected when he couldn't even keep his promise to eliminate the deficit in this parliament, thanks to the plan he now lauds as having laid the foundations for the recovery, just the three years later than scheduled.  That level of chutzpah still doesn't come close though to that of the newspaper that pretends, as Miliband scathingly put it, to uphold "the best of British values of decency", even as it has repeatedly attacked and smeared those who can't answer for themselves.  As when the Sun attacked Gordon Brown for his handwriting, the Mail might well find that this time it's gone that one step beyond the pale.

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10/01/2013 09:45:00 pm | |

Thursday, January 26, 2012 

Scum-watch: Promoting the lies of a "Walter Mitty" character.

The Sun, like most of the rest of the press, today notes the conviction of a certain Leonard Watters:

A JOBLESS dance teacher has been sentenced to six months in jail for falsely accusing X Factor judge Louis Walsh of groping him in a nightclub.

Leonard Watters, 24, admitted making two false reports to police that the music mogul sexually assaulted him in Dublin nightspot Krystle.

Father-of-two Watters — described as a "Walter Mitty" character — has apologised to Walsh, 59.

Lawyer Cahir O'Higgins told Dublin District Court Watters is now a laughing stock and has been treated as a pariah in his home town Navan, Co Meath.

The court heard Watters is penniless after blowing £670,000 compensation he received for serious burns.

He was allowed bail pending an appeal against his sentence.

Strangely, the Sun doesn't feel fit to mention that this "Walter Mitty" character, now being treated as a laughing stock and a pariah had his initial version of events most prominently promoted by... the Sun. Indeed, after the investigation against him was dropped, Louis Walsh made clear that he was considering taking legal action against the paper for splashing Watters' allegations all over the front page.

His threat presumably resulted in this sort of clarification in the Sun the following day. Gordon Smart took one for the team and wrote an award winning piece of arslikhan, making clear how Walsh is variously "one of the nicest blokes in showbiz", "one of the most friendly, decent and warm characters I have met in the music industry" and also that "he hasn't got a bad bone in his body — even after a big drink". Nonetheless, "[T]he Sun's duty is to report that news. It's our role to ask the difficult questions."

This ought to have been something both Dominic Mohan and Smart could have been asked about at the Leveson inquiry, yet for some reason both were at best, very lightly grilled. Still, plenty of time left for them to be recalled.

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1/26/2012 11:59:00 pm | |

Thursday, October 28, 2010 

Scum-watch: How to take advantage of a parliamentary misunderstanding.

We all know how dearly the Sun loves "Our Boys", even if the feeling is not necessarily mutual. It's therefore hardly surprising that it's instantly leapt to their defence, having apparently been accused by Labour MP Paul Flynn of committing "atrocities in the name of the British people". The problem is that almost every single thing about the report by Tom Newton Dunn in which the claim is made, and the leader comment which accompanies it, is wrong.

WIKILEAKS and a Labour MP were accused of giving the Taliban "a propaganda gift" yesterday by spreading wild smears about Our Boys.

Foreign Secretary William Hague mounted a passionate defence of troops in southern Afghanistan after reports were leaked to the website saying British soldiers had shot at civilians 21 times in four years.

Despite what the Sun says, there has been no new leak to Wikileaks concerning British troops and their presence in Afghanistan. The reports it refers to have in fact been released by, err, the Ministry of Defence themselves, after a Guardian Freedom of Information request based on the incidents first detailed in the US war logs leaked to Wikileaks. Far from being wild smears, these are the MoD's version of what happened; surely the army's own account is more believable and reliable than the second hand one which the US recorded?

The MoD said on each occasion the troops were under grave threat of suicide attack or vehicles being driven at them had failed to stop.

Despite this, anti-war Labour MP Paul Flynn jumped on the statistic to brand the incidents "atrocities".

Mr Hague hit back: "I condemn the unauthorised release of information which can endanger our forces and give one-sided propaganda - a propaganda gift, for insurgents."

He also hailed British troops, saying: "They are the finest any nation could hope to have."


Flynn, as you might have guessed, has done nothing of the sort. The Sun has taken only a half quote and turned on its head, as the Guardian didn't provide a full one in the first place. Here's how it reported his remarks:

The Labour MP Paul Flynn called for an inquiry into the conduct of the units in what he said could be "atrocities in the name of the British people". "Truth has a cleansing function," he added.

Not perhaps the most cautious of statements to make, but also clearly not one where he was directly accusing troops of committing atrocities.

It's pretty apparent then that the statement the Sun has William Hague as making had nothing whatsoever to do with the information released by the MoD. Here's where the misunderstanding seems to have originated from. Hague's comments were made in response to a question from Tory MP Stephen Mosley after his quarterly statement to parliament on the "progress" in Afghanistan, who seems to have confused the Iraq war log release at the weekend with the FoI release reported in yesterday's Guardian:

What is the Foreign Secretary's assessment of last weekend's WikiLeaks reports, which made reference to 21 incidents in Afghanistan involving British troops?

Hague's answer was then a general condemnation and a just as inaccurate one, as he talks of the treatment of detainees, none of which applies to the 21 incidents in Afghanistan. He doesn't correct Stephen Mosley, but his stock condemnation of the release of unauthorised information suggests that he realised his mistake, even if he didn't mention Iraq. Hague's praise for British troops which the Sun quotes comes from the statement, and so has been taken entirely out of context.

Paul Flynn is not referred to anywhere in Hague's statement to the House or the debate that followed. It's clear then that Newton Dunn or someone else, despite obviously reading the report in the Guardian still failed to realise that Stephen Mosley had got the wrong end of the stick. Or did they? After all, the story's nowhere near as good if the information, rather than being leaked, came from the Ministry of Defence themselves. Why not then go along with what was said in parliament, while disingenuously attacking Flynn? This seems to be what the paper's done.

Here's the paper's leader:

AS if facing death from the Taliban wasn't enough, our Forces have to face snipers back home.

Labour MP Paul Flynn accuses Our Boys of committing "atrocities in the name of the British people".

His basis for this slur? Irresponsible and unsubstantiated internet leaks claiming British troops fired on Afghan civilians.

The Defence Ministry insists this would only ever have happened in self-defence when our soldiers came under threat of suicide attack.

Our troops have spent nine years doing their best for Afghan civilians, laying down their lives for them.

As Foreign Secretary William Hague says, these smears are a Taliban propaganda gift.

Ed Miliband should order Flynn to apologise.


The leader then simply takes the same (deliberate) inaccuracies and magnifies them again, further misquoting and taking out of context Flynn's quote, gets the source of the new information completely wrong for good measure, and then finally uses Hague's own mistake to attack the hapless Labour MP further. The only people apologising should be the Sun for conniving in a misunderstanding in parliament in order to attack an MP for quite rightly wanting a proper inquiry into what happened.

P.S. The Sun also does its usual bang up job of promoting the witterings of the friends of Anjem Choudary, this time reporting in depth Abu Izzadeen's remarks on being released from prison. It's this sentence and claim though that catches the eye:

His every word was cheered by a flock including sidekick Anjem Choudary and jailed hate cleric Abu Hamza.

Would the Sun care to explain how Abu Hamza was there cheering him on when he's currently being held at Belmarsh prison awaiting deportation to the United States, or was he allowed out for the day in able to attend? This extra detail is missing from the Daily Mail's report of Izzadeen's release, unsurprisingly.

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10/28/2010 11:59:00 pm | |

Friday, September 24, 2010 

Scum-watch: How a Sun investigation works.

The Sun has, predictably, followed up yesterday's dubious article on the suicide pact between Steve Lumb and Joanne Lee with if anything an even more sensational story, claiming that Lee was "goaded" and "preyed" upon by a sinister Dr. Death figure. As yesterday, through using exactly the same sources as the Sun has relied upon for its story, it can be shown that this is also at best a massive exaggeration of his role and at worst an outright fabrication. It also shows exactly how a couple of details can be seized upon and sexed up, as well as how dangerous and lazy the Sun's journalism in the aftermath of this case has been.

(The same cautions as discussed in yesterday's post apply equally if not more so here.)

Some of the details the Sun provides about this "Dr. Death", or Dr. Kiriyu, as he styles himself, are accurate. His Google Groups profile does record 368 posts made since last April, and he did post on the death of a former US Marine, Sherry Pike, who killed herself at the beginning of the month. Almost everything else in the article about him is either conjecture or ascribing motives to his actions purely for sensational effect, as if they weren't potentially sensational enough on their own.

Also accurate is that he did respond to Lee's second post seeking a pact. Whether he uses the x-no archive: yes tag or not is unclear, but some of his messages have been either removed from the archive or not been mirrored, at least on Google Groups, one of which is the post he made on Lee's pact thread. His post was however quoted, and also shows in his profile. He also posted in another of Lee's threads, one asking for advice on where to carry out her suicide, although this one has also gone missing and was not quoted, making it impossible to know what was said. While it's possible that Lee did respond to his posts, with them also not being mirrored, or could well have responded to him personally via email, there are no posts in the Google archive at least of her doing so. Furthermore, Lee's first post asking about her method of suicide was on the 22nd of August, where she was directed to a different post by Kiriyu by another poster. She went on to make a number of separate threads detailing her plans, none of which were responded to by Kiriyu at least based on the Google archive. As made clear yesterday, a better case could be made that Lee was "egged on" than it could be for Lumb, as she was both responded to by trolls and had a series of conversations with a poster called "ttestimony", which included instructions and advice. The claims however that "Dr. Kiriyu" personally either goaded or preyed upon Joanne Lee are highly dubious and unproven.

In a sign of just how much time was spent by the by-lined hacks on their "investigation", the following quotes the paper used can be incredibly easily found:

His is a glowering presence on forums used by depressed people - who were last night enraged at his vile "hobby". One user branded him "no better than a murderer" - with "zero regard for human life". Another raged: "I'm not the first nor only person to suggest that he gets off on people dying by H2S. Yes, I mean sexually."

Search Google for Dr. Kiriyu and the thread these comments were made in is the very first result. The @ poster in that thread also made similar remarks in a thread on the death of Sherry Pike, which were also lifted by the Sun, not all of which were directly attributed. Play spot the difference:

Yes, that is what a few of us have been trying to say, Carl, about a handful of people here, not just "Dr.Kiriyu". Some people here appear to thrive on the suicide deaths of others. They appear love it. They appear to have a fetish for it. Dr.Kiriyu bombarded Ex US Marine Sherry Pike (trixiepie66) with suicide methods and advice, then he watched the Internet news websites and came back to ASH and ASM and reported her death. In the same report thathe posted of her death, he also included his usual list of H2S and hanging suicide methods. How classy . The dude ("Dr.Kiriyu") appears to be intensely ill.

Gulf War veteran Sherry Pike was said to have been bombarded with "advice" from him.

He gleefully "announced" her death on a web group alongside a series of instructions on how others could use his deadly method. One horrified forum user wrote: "He watched the internet news websites and came back and reported her death.

"In the same report that he posted of her death, he also included his usual list of H2S and hanging suicide methods.

"The dude appears to be intensely ill."


Despite not reporting "Dr Death's" real name, supposedly as not to publicise it, the paper has more or less done everything but, as those on alt.suicide.methods have themselves noted. Just as dangerous, if not more so, is spelling out exactly how Kiriyu has advertised his method, calling it detergent suicide. A quick Google search for that term and within a few clicks you can be at Kiriyu's page, none of which I'm going to link to in this instance. For a newspaper which was demanding censorship yesterday in order to save lives, this seems to be a remarkably careless and hypocritical way to go about keeping the tragic story going.

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9/24/2010 09:21:00 pm | |

Thursday, September 23, 2010 

Scum-watch: Dubious investigations into "suicide chat groups" and lying to the bereaved.

Is there anything more despicable than lying to those recently bereaved? Moreover, is there anything more despicable than telling a bereaved parent that other people were involved in "egging" their loved ones on, when it can be established in a matter of minutes that is simply not the case?

Yesterday the Sun splashed on the suicide pact between Steve Lumb and Joanne Lee, two people who met only a matter of hours before they killed themselves in a car on an industrial estate in Braintree. The case was notable not just because Lumb and Lee had made contact via the internet, but also due to the unusual method which was used, not to mention the warnings which the pair had put on the car's windows, warning of the poisonous gases that would be released should the car be opened without the use of specialist breathing equipment.

Before going any further, it should be noted that this post is going to link directly to the posts made by both Lumb and Lee, some of which contain discussion of the method which they used. It also links directly to the Usenet newsgroup where both Lumb and Lee posted, where the method they used is often freely discussed. While it's perfectly understandable that newspapers censor details which would allow easy access to sites such as those used by Lumb and Lee, and it is indeed required by the Press Complaints Commission's code that any descriptions of suicide be shorn of explicit details lest anyone attempt to copy them, that is no excuse whatsoever for inaccuracy. As someone who has suffered from severe depression in the past and has been suicidal, I admit to being somewhat conflicted over such websites. They can be used by those who simply have not experienced enough of life in order to be able to make a informed decision over ending theirs, yet at the same time I respect deeply the right of individuals who have suffered throughout their lives both from mental and physical illness to choose, if they so wish, to kill themselves. Suicide is not illegal. Assisting suicide is, yet providing information which is eminently available from a number of sources should also not be as long as it is not provided with active encouragement. Usenet groups such as those which Lumb and Lee used toe a very fine line between these two things.

If it wasn't clear enough from the above, the newspapers and media outlets variously describing the group used as either a website or a chat group are plain wrong, although as also stated they could be censoring the detail for good reasons. Alt.suicide.methods is a Usenet group, and so is not centrally hosted by any internet service provider by itself. Lumb and Lee it seems both used Google Groups to access it, although they could have just as easily used a separate newsgroup reader and their own ISP's Usenet stream, if they provide one (most still do).

How and who first established it is unclear, but it was soon discovered that Lumb and Lee had both posted to alt.suicide.methods, Lumb under the username "endthis" and Lee under the username "*heavens*little*girl*". Whether they posted under different aliases is as yet unclear, and it could be possible. They could also have used the "x-no archive:yes" tag at the beginning of posts which prevents them from being archived, although this doesn't seem to be the case from the posts that have been archived.

Despite the claims from the Sun in particular that Lumb was egged on, the archive on Google simply doesn't support this version of events. The first post made by Lumb, who made relatively few, was back in November of 2008, asking for help, to which he received a sarcastic reply. Lumb responded by calling the poster a "funny cunt". He made a further 12 posts in July of this year, again asking for help, to which the replies were more cooperative. He responded to a request from someone else asking for help, telling them to search, and posted a thread asking about getting "deliveries" sent somewhere other than home, to which again there were helpful replies. Finally, he posted the "goodbye" thread last Sunday, as reproduced by the Sun. 9 separate individuals responded, all wishing him luck and best wishes. None tried to dissuade him, but equally none did anything which admittedly in my subjective view could be construed as "egging him on", much less act like "perverted creatures [who] get their kicks encouraging others to end it all" as the Sun's leader column* has it.

Despite the Sun not focusing on Lee, perhaps because of the many separate posts which she made, it would have far more of a case for claiming that she was "egged on". A number of threads which she both started and contributed to were responded to by a troll going by the name of Colonel Edmund J. Burke, who the Google archive has as posting to a variety of groups, not just the ones dealing with suicide. She only however responded to him once, in a thread started by "him", in which he urged those in the group to get on with it. She replied saying that she wished that she could.

The Sun doesn't however seem satisfied with just potentially misleading the relatives of those who have just lost loved ones. It also launched an "investigation" into the group:

SINISTER internet chat forums that offer detailed advice on ways of committing suicide are alarmingly easy to find. Two of the most used are hosted by Google.

Posing as a 19-year-old girl called Jen, within 40 minutes we got detailed instructions on how to create the poison gas used by Joanne Lee and Steve Lumb.

And using a nickname that suggested an age of just 25, we were quickly asked to form a death pact with one member who said they were from the US.


The thread started by "Jen" is easy to find. Despite claiming to have posed as a 19-year-old girl, neither the username used, "Journey Jen" or her posts even begin to make clear that she was meant to be 19. Reading the thread it also becomes apparent that she wasn't given detailed instructions on how to create it; she was given advice on how to use it, which is what the journalist asked, and she in fact provided the names of the ingredients needed to make it herself, which were then confirmed and clarified by posters on the thread. For reasons known only to the Sun, the journo also posted in the RIP *heavens*little*girl* thread. Another poster going by the name "John Done" has the exact same IP as Journey Jen, 143.252.80.100, which resolves to dormy.newsint.co.uk. The Google archive has him as making 4 posts, only one of which seems to be currently available, a contribution to the thread "Why prevent suicide?", a thread in which Lee had also posted. I can't at the moment find the posts supposedly made by the Sun under the nickname that suggested an age of just 25. As noted above, while Google provides access to these groups, it does not solely host them. Even if it was to stop hosting them, or disable access to them, they would still be easily available through Usenet services, or by using a proxy server.

Fundamentally, the whole issue comes down to personal responsibility. Both Lumb and Lee were adults in their mid-30s, not impressionable teenagers. No one forced them to do what they did; they chose to take their own lives, even if they needed the moral support of each other in order to do so. The Sun claims in its leader that they arranged "their deaths online, egged on by sickos". As hopefully shown above, the latter assertion is dubious at best and downright misleading at worst. It also claims that "online suicide pacts are increasing", something which it provides no evidence to back up. As also alluded to above, it states:

These sites are the virtual playgrounds of perverted creatures who get their kicks encouraging others to end it all.

It is harder to think of anything more callous or wantonly cruel.


How about telling the parent of a man who has just committed suicide easily disprovable lies? And how about this: in its previous article on Lee, it carried the plea from her family:

"We would ask the media to protect our privacy and let us grieve in peace."

In spite of this, the Sun contacted a poster who had been in contact with Lee and asked for them to share what they talked about, under this dubious justification:

Hi there,

I see from the records in Google chat that you asked Heavens Little Girl for her email address on Saturday September 18. To which she replied she had sent her email address to you.
As I'm sure you know, just over 24 hours later, Heavens Little Girl, whose real name is Joanne Lee, started on the road to committing suicide with a stranger she had met online.
Her death has caused a huge amount of agony and anguish to her distraught family who cared deeply about her.

I was wondering if you could be so kind as to reveal the nature of the conversation you had with Joanne in the short final hours before her death.

It would be of great consolation to her family if you were able to impart such information.

Many thanks

Alex West
The Sun
News Reporter
020 7782 4104

"Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail"

The Newspaper Marketing Agency: Opening Up Newspapers:

http://www.nmauk.co.uk/

This e-mail and any attachments are confidential, may be legally privileged and are the property of News International Limited (which is the holding company for the News International group, is registeredin England under number 81701 and whose registered office is 1 Virginia St, London E98 1XY), on whose systems they were generated. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately and do not use, distribute, store or copy it in any way.

Statements or opinions in this e-mail or any attachment are those of the author and are not necessarily agreed or authorised by News International Limited or any member of its group. News International Limited may monitor outgoing or incoming emails as permitted by law. It accepts no liability for viruses introduced by this e-mail or attachments.

Alex West was doubtless only going to use anything he was told to console or inform Lee's family of her actions in the last hours of her life. The Sun certainly wouldn't have published such information without her family's permission. Would they?

*The Sun's leaders disappear down the memory hole without being archived and easily searchable, so on this occasion I've reproduced in it full below.

SUICIDE by internet takes the world wide web into chilling new territory.

Joanne Lee and Steve Lumb had never met. But they arranged their deaths online, egged on by sickos.

They were even able to download technical advice on how to kill themselves using chemicals.

Online suicide pacts are increasing. So today The Sun calls on the Government to stop this becoming a horrifying new craze for the vulnerable and impressionable.

Our investigation uncovered scores of websites dedicated to suicide, from forums discussing detailed methods to chatrooms urging on those considering killing themselves.

These sites are the virtual playgrounds of perverted creatures who get their kicks encouraging others to end it all.

It is harder to think of anything more callous or wantonly cruel.

Grooming someone online for sex is illegal. Technically, so is grooming someone to kill themselves. But no prosecutions have been brought.

Action is needed, and we welcome Home Secretary Theresa May's pledge to review internet law on encouraging suicide.

It is out of date and urgently needs tightening.

Those driven to consider suicide are often despairing young people for whom life has gone wrong - perhaps because of a broken relationship, or, as in Joanne Lee's case, bullying.

But most suicide attempts are a cry for help.

Many suicide chatrooms are available not through shady online outfits but mighty Google.

If Google can video every street in Britain and map the surface of Mars, it is not beyond its wit to remove or block suicide sites available by a simple Google search.

The same goes for other search engines. And internet service providers must refuse to carry suicide sites.

It's no good these firms saying they are only gateways to someone else's site. They share responsibility.

The price of a free internet is eternal vigilance.

Not in the name of censorship. But in the name of saving lives.

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9/23/2010 10:34:00 pm | |

Wednesday, April 21, 2010 

The panicking right-wing press.

The greatest thing about the spike in Liberal Democrat support is just how terrified it's made the right-wing press. Yet another leader in the Sun about how you can only be sure of getting rid of Labour by voting Tory, ignoring how that's hardly going to help in places where the Tories have no chance, a front page about "Lib Dumbs", and how's about this, via Angry Mob, from the Daily Mail, clearly not panicking at how they could win the largest share of the vote:


Like the Conservatives themselves, they were convinced Cameron was going to walk it. The real reason why it's making them so nervous is apparent: they have no control whatsoever over Clegg and the party in general, and also seemingly over the public themselves. It's one thing to not be able to understand the polls, it's another to not understand why they have turned so decisively. Instead, they're flailing out in all directions, trying to hit an invisible target. If the tabloid press especially has no power and also no influence, then like the Labour party without a moral crusade, it is nothing.

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4/21/2010 10:18:00 pm | |

Thursday, April 01, 2010 

Scum-watch: Spot the deliberate April fool.

As you might have expected, the Sun is outraged by yesterday's decision that Sky must reduce the price at which it sells its sports channels to rival broadcasters:

THE beauty of competition is that YOU decide what to watch on your telly.

Unlike the BBC, no one is forced to pay for Sky TV, part of the company that owns The Sun.

But Labour have decided Sky must hand over its content cheaply to rivals who have never taken Sky's risks to revolutionise TV sport.

Nor made the massive investment that won Sky rights to events like the Premier League and Test cricket.

Sky pays around £1billion a year to UK sports. That will be hit if the firm has to take less for its content.

Labour the party of business? A ragbag of meddling Lefties, more like.


Did you spot the deliberate mistake? No, not that Sky has ever revolutionised anything, but rather the paper's strange decision to blame the Labour party rather than err, Ofcom, the media regulator which actually made the decision. It's doubly strange as the paper's actual report correctly identifies Ofcom as the body behind the ruling.

 Undoubtedly this is simply another of the paper's April fools, of which there were a further four, as surely the paper's leader writers wouldn't deliberately blame the government for something that has absolutely nothing to do with them whatsoever. If they had, then the Press Complaints Commission would surely take a dim view of such an egregious lie, coming as it does only days before the election campaign is officially launched. Clearly, the Sun would never try to mislead voters into believing that Labour is threatening their beloved sports on satellite; now that really would be a scandalous, unfounded and certainly libellous allegation.

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4/01/2010 10:25:00 pm | |

Thursday, February 18, 2010 

A questionable, but ultimately correct decision.

There was almost never any danger of the Press Complaints Commission deciding that Jan Moir's piece of heartless, discriminatory grief intrusion breached their code of practice. The very first thing that mitigated against it was the fact it was a straight-up comment piece, rather than an actual piece of news which took it upon itself to offer an opinion as well, and the PCC has in the past been loth to decide what columnists can and cannot offer as their view, regardless of whether or not their article is factually inaccurate.

There have been a few recent cases where there has been a retraction, such as when Amanda Platell claimed that the tragic death of Rachel Ward was a direct result of equality and blamed her friends for not going home with her, resulting in the Mail "noting" the father of one of her friends' concerns and removing her article from the website, but with no actual apology forthcoming. There was also the attempts by one persistent individual who complained to the PCC about the ludicrous claim by Carole Malone in a column in the News of the World that immigrants were being given free cars, which Tabloid Watch documented, finally resulting in the paper printing this incredibly terse statement:

"On July 26, our columnist Carole Malone claimed illegal immigrants receive "free cars". We now accept illegal immigrants do not receive such a benefit and apologise for the error".

Something that was definitely worth all the effort involved. Both of these though are examples where either what the columnist had wrote was patently false, or where the newspaper decided not to put up any fight, with the complaint coming quite some time after the original article was published. The Mail knew what a potential precedent the Moir article could set if it decided not to defend itself; as the PCC's lengthy adjudication sets out, it offers no apology whatsoever and defends every aspect of Moir's comment, as was its right. It is also though another indication of just how far removed the world of tabloid newspapers is from that on which they comment: they seem to inhabit a completely different moral sphere when it's them expressing their opinions on someone; when either rivals do it, in the case of "Sachsgate", or when a footballer supposedly brings his entire country into disrepute, then it's perfectly legitimate for them to act as judge, jury and executioner.

If any ruling had set this complaint up to fail, then it was a recent one involving that distinguished inventor of political blogging, Iain Dale, which the adjudication indeed references. In this instance, Dale was for once on the side of the angels, complaining about an almost overt piece of homophobia which appeared in the Ephraim Hardcastle diary column in, naturally, the Mail:

The piece reported that the complainant was on the shortlist of people applying to be the Conservative candidate for the parliamentary constituency of Bracknell. It described him as ‘overtly gay', and referred to an interview he had given to Pink News in which he encouraged its readers to attend the open primary, saying it was ‘charming how homosexuals rally like-minded chaps to their cause'.

Dale felt, quite reasonably, that this breached clause 12 on discrimination. The PCC however has other ideas:

For instance, the newspaper had used no pejorative synonym for the word ‘homosexual' to describe the complainant: this would certainly have been a breach of the Code. Neither had the complainant been outed as gay by the column - which would also have been a breach - as he had frequently and publicly referred to his sexual orientation. Rather, the complaint seemed to be that describing him as ‘overtly gay' at the same time as saying it was ‘charming how homosexuals rally like-minded chaps to their cause' was spiteful to the point of homophobia. This was a more subtle and subjective charge against the newspaper.

In other words, in order to breach clause 12, you essentially have to call a gay person either a faggot, a poof, although considering how relatively soft that term is that might not even not, or a bent cocksucker. Jan Moir was far more subtle, if just as knuckle-headed: Gately was the "Posh Spice of Boyzone", he "couldn't carry a tune in a Louis Vuittion trunk" and "the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see". In line with the PCC's view of how Dale was described, it found:

it was not possible to identify any direct uses of pejorative or prejudicial language in the article. The columnist had not used pejorative synonyms for the word "homosexual" at any point.

What then about accuracy, also complained about by Gately's partner? How could Moir possibly have not breached Clause 1 with her claims that:

The sugar coating on this fatality is so saccharine-thick that it obscures whatever bitter truth lies beneath. Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again.

Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this. All that has been established so far is that Stephen Gately was not murdered.

Despite these assertions, Moir had also covered herself. She also wrote that:

All the official reports point to a natural death, with no suspicious circumstances.
and

A post-mortem revealed Stephen died from acute pulmonary oedema, a build-up of fluid on his lungs.

Despite therefore successfully contradicting herself, considering the post-mortem found that it was indeed a natural death, this was all she needed to do. Hence the commission found:

In the Commission's view, it was important to recognise that the article had clearly referred to the official verdict on the cause of death that was available at the time ("all the official reports point to a natural death, with no suspicious circumstances"; "acute pulmonary oedema, a build-up of fluid on his lungs"). It was against this context that the columnist had stated her views on the matter. In her opinion, the events leading up to the death were "sleazy" and showed a glimpse of "a very different and more dangerous lifestyle"; it was also her view that Mr Gately's death was "lonely". The complainant may have disagreed with these claims, and many readers had objected to them, but the Commission felt that these individual judgments did not constitute assertions of fact.

Andrew Cowles also complained under clause 5, intrusion into grief, which although the most obvious and most despicable thing about Moir's piece, was also the least likely point on which the PCC was likely to intervene. It would be ridiculous for a regulator to decide when and when not someone can say something that might cause suffering or pain; instead it ought to be apparent to both the writer and the newspaper itself that doing so when grief is likely to be so raw is far more likely to be intrusive and felt to be unacceptable. To do so the day before the funeral, and less than a week after the death was crude, cruel, unkind and downright ignorant, just as much as Moir's actual article was. For the Mail to so often invoke morality when it clearly cannot even understand such basic human emotions or simple matters of taste, or rather does but nonetheless feels no wider responsibility when it attacks individuals in such a way just shows up its values for what they truly are.

Moir's article, as alluded to above, was actually far cleverer than the views it expressed. It hedged its bets; it covered itself; and most of all, it hid behind innuendo rather than outright accusation. All of this ensured that it didn't breach the PCC's code, whilst also distinguishing it as far worse than just the ravings of a bar-room bigot. It's not a completely apposite comparison, but it reminds me somewhat of Enoch Powell's infamous "rivers of blood" speech; not in the actual outrageousness of the views expressed, in which Powell's were far worse, but because of how Powell hid behind the supposed opinions of others throughout. Moir didn't hide behind the ignorance of others, she instead attempted to hide her own by not being prepared to wrote what she really thought. These are the actions of a coward, not a writer. The tagline on her column, which asks whether you're thinking what she's thinking, is doubly apt, appealing to the lowest common denominator whilst also portraying herself as an ordinary reader holding forth over the topics of the day, something which couldn't be further from the truth.

Despite all this however, I actually agree with the overall conclusion of the PCC. It should not be the job of a regulator to decide what a commentator can and cannot say, as long they do not directly breach the rules on accuracy, as Moir just managed not to. As the Graun's C.P. Scott had it, comment is free, but facts are sacred, or as the PCC say:

Individuals have the right to express honestly-held opinions, and newspapers have the right to publish them, provided the terms of the Code are not otherwise breached.

Moir instead, and the Mail as well, can be held to account in other ways. It's fair to say that Moir is never going to live her column down, and her reputation has been permanently sullied. The Mail has been shown up for the hypocrisy sheet which it is, governed only by what it think will sell rather than what its thundering leader columns and editor actually say it stands for. Finally, despite the sneering of the Mail, it's also shown that Twitter and Facebook can as much be forces for good as they can for bad and general frivolity. Never before have newspapers been held up to such scrutiny as by actual individuals who do have a voice, even if only to those who tend to share their opinions, and this is only going to increase. Will the paper think before publishing something like Moir's column again? Probably not, considering the values by which the Mail lives by, but when it does, and it will, the storm will only likely be even more fierce.

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2/18/2010 09:43:00 pm | |

Monday, October 19, 2009 

A truly amoral newspaper.

It just had to be, didn't it? The week I'm dragged away turns out to be the week when two of the biggest media stories of the year break. First Trafigura and Carter-Fuck try to censor parliament, never a wise thing to do, even when MPs were more concerned about their expenses, then the Daily Mail does what the Daily Mail does best and publishes an utterly heartless piece of grief intrusion masquerading as a columnist attempting to articulate what the readers are really thinking.

At long last the Mail chose to attack someone so completely harmless, so apparently lovable and so popular that even it couldn't manage to brush the outrage under the carpet. As it is, compared to the Mail's past record and other similar articles, Jan Moir's screeching on Friday was almost tame. Sure, it has the blatant homophobia, the knowing better than everyone else what the two men were doing that night, and the gratuitous, ignorant insults, such as Moir's claim that he "couldn't carry a tune in a Louis Vuitton trunk", when he could in fact sing perfectly well, unlike numerous other members of boy and girl bands and doubtless Moir herself. It has the same "I know best" attitude, ignoring point blank the actual facts of the case while relying entirely on her own prejudices; a 33-year-old man can't possibly die of "natural causes", especially a gay 33-year-old man who had invited another man along with his civil partner back to their holiday apartment, most certainly not a gay 33-year-old man who had been smoking the devil weed cannabis. Yet, it still feels by the Mail's standards to be not harsh enough, not as completely without redemption as it should be.

You can't after all really compete with the utter heartlessness, the downright beastliness of describing the murder of five young women as "no great loss", as Richard Littlejohn did back in December 2006 after Steve Wright had killed 5 prostitutes from the town of Ipswich. That piece of nastiness made very few ripples, except for becoming part of a Stewart Lee comedy sketch which finishes with Littlejohn being described as a part of the female anatomy. Moir's attack on Gately wasn't close to being as vindictive and shameless as Allison Pearson's description of Scarlett Keeling, the 15-year-old raped and killed in Goa, as a "ripe peach", and who variously blamed her mother for leaving her behind with friends while she travelled further on in the country while also noting that she was in "a culture where Western girls are all too readily viewed as sexually available", meaning that brown people just can't wait to get their hands on the white women. It also wasn't as so utterly without dignity or research as Amanda Platell's assault after Rachel Ward tragically died whilst on holiday. To quote myself:

According to Platell, rather than this being a tragic accident, it's instead indicative "of the lives of many middle-class young women". Variously, her death seems to have been down to the following facts: firstly, that she was middle class, and therefore should have known better than to have been taking part in such working class pursuits as going on a skiing holiday and drinking whilst on it; secondly, that her friends abandoned her when she decided to go back to where she was staying on her own, therefore it's their fault too; and finally, that it's actually neither her own fault nor her friends' fault, but rather the fault of equality:


Sadly, in a world where women have fought for generations for equality, where they insist on their independence, where drunkenness and debauchery are actively encouraged, you can’t really blame a young man for failing to act chivalrously.

Yes, Rachel’s death was tragedy — but it was an accident waiting to happen.


There you are then girls - you weren't fighting for equal rights, you were in fact fighting for the right to die alone in a freezing river, because Amanda Platell says so.

As far as I'm aware, the only complaint made about any of these grief intruding attacks was on the latter, by the father of Haydn Johnson, which resulted in the Mail noting that the piece was inaccurate and removing Platell's viciousness from the website. No apology, no thoughts about whether attacking the grieving is ever justified, just an article flushed down the memory hole with no repercussions.

Whether the difference this time was because Gately was a celebrity, while all those mentioned above were just commoners, with only family and friends to be angered and shocked by their treatment at the hands of the press doesn't really matter in the end. The most significant factor to my mind is most likely the obvious culture clash, a mirror image culture clash to that which took place over "Sachsgate". Then the Mail was the ringleader in getting its readers and others to complain to both the BBC and Ofcom over the humiliation of a much-loved actor by two arrogant bullies, one of whom was and is on a vast salary. As offensive, unfair and low as the abuse masquerading as humour was in that case, it was still blown out of all proportion. Those who complained were the Mail's target market, the older, the more middle class, and overwhelmingly those who would have never listened to Russell Brand's show and so only complained after they were alerted to it. Who knows this time how many actual Daily Mail readers have complained about Jan Moir's article, but I doubt it's higher than a few hundreds out of the 22,000 complaints which the PCC has now received. This isn't to suggest that Daily Mail readers want and expect the kind of thing which Moir delivered; far from it. It is however what the Daily Mail thinks that its readers want. The editor is a man who believes that the bedroom door should be wide open when the activities within it pass outside the "norm", as they did in the Max Mosley case, and that Justice Eady's ruling, that the NotW infringed his privacy, was in effect, "amoral".

All newspapers make mistakes. All newspapers misjudge the feeling of both the public and their readers at times. Only the Daily Mail however has repeatedly and consistently attempted to intrude into grief, regarding the death of almost anyone as fair game. Some might believe that the truly amoral in this instance to be those who have got it so horribly, terribly wrong on so many occasions, and who will doubtless continue to get it wrong in the future.

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10/19/2009 09:55:00 pm | |

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