Rebirth of a legend IV - filmed in Sun-o-vision

I couldn't find the Sun's coverage of the new incarnation of the immigrants-eat-swans story yesterday, which I thought was very fishy. Thanks to Septicisle in the comments for finding the Sun's coverage of the story, which he looks at over at Obsolete. My mistake for not finding the Sun article, but I wish I had.

'Who ate all the swans' is the terrific coverage this time around, and it includes pictures. Pictures! The story must be true then.

Or not. More on the pictures later, but for now let's have a quick look at the story itself. The Sun has clearly learned from its last attempt at suggesting immigrants eat swans. This story makes even fewer explicit connections than the Mail's version, merely claiming that piles of swan carcasses had been found on a camp it's alleged is used by eastern Europeans. The only explicit connection is in the web page's title: 'Immigrants | Who ate all the swans? | Carcasses and cooking pots at migrant's camp':

Lucky the 'immigrants' comes before 'Who ate all the swans?' eh? Otherwise the paper might be accused of saying that immigrants ate all the swans. This way round looks less like that. Oh wait...that wasn't the point, was it?

On to the pictures of the piles of swan carcasses near cooking pots then! Except there aren't any. There are two pictures of one swan carcass, and the cooking pot isn't in shot, nor is the camp itself, so we have no idea of how far this carcass is away from the tents. Still, one picture of a swan where "You could see where they’d snapped off the wings and plucked them before cooking," would go some way toward suggesting that the people in the camp had eaten the swan.

Except there isn't one. Both pictures are of an almost intact skeleton, neck and spine attached and everything, with the wings off to one side. The 'cooking pot', which is unfortunately not pictured, must have been bloody massive to fit a whole swan in, and the dirty foreigners must have been very careful to be able to pick the whole carcass clean while leaving the neck and head intact. The wings have also quite clearly not been plucked, since dirty great flight feathers are still very obviously attached. There are still feathers all over the rest of the skeleton, especially around the abdomen. You can see these most clearly in the second picture, which shows feathers still attached to the stomach area. The visible evidence actually points toward the bird not being plucked at all. In fact, this one looks exactly how you'd expect a swan that has died and decomposed out in the open to look, aside from being arranged for the picture.

If anything, the pictures make me even more convinced that the thing hasn't been cooked. It clearly hasn't been plucked, since there are feathers still all over it, and the whole neck and head is still attached. Think of a chicken after you've cooked and eaten it. Does the carcass look anything like this?

Without an existing urban legend about eastern Europeans eating swans, do you think anyone would have seen this dead swan and thought it had been eaten at all, let alone by eastern Europeans? Except for Jack Black and his faithful dog, Silver. They don't count because they're not real and are actually parodies of a certain kind of person.

Rebirth of a legend III - 'Return of the swan eating monsters'

It's back, and this time it's spurious

A very familiar urban legend has been given another airing in today's Daily Mail story 'Swan bake: carcasses and piles of feathers found next to cooking pots at migrants' camp'. The headline is a direct echo of the first incarnation of this legend, 'Swan Bake', which appeared on the front page of The Sun back on July 4 2003. That time, after an investigation by Nick Medic, the paper had to issue a 'clarification', because large parts of it were made up. There's more about that in 'Rebirth of a legend', where I looked at the last time this legend appeared in the Mail, along with 'Rebirth of a legend II - 'The art of lying without lying'. Anton Vowl at The Enemies of Reason has a good takedown of this latest retelling.

The thing I looked at closely in 'Rebirth of a legend II', was how the paper had produced an entire article about eastern Europeans eating swans without once actually stating that an eastern European had eaten a swan. This one is similar.

The whole story is based around the idea that some swan carcasses have been found in a makeshift camp used by eastern Europeans.

Tellingly, the parts of the article that provide the strongest link to the possibility of the swans being eaten by the people in the camp - the ones that say bones and feathers were found near cooking pots - don't actually say they were swan bones, or swan feathers. Look at the headline again. Although there's a link made between swans and the bones and feathers found, it doesn't explicitly say that swan carcasses and feathers had been found next to cooking pots. Later in the article comes this:

One swan had had the wings snapped from its back, while other bones lay near to a tent and cooking utensils.

Other bones. The hack hasn't said 'other swan remains' or 'bones from other swans', either because they don't know whether the bones are from swans or because they know they're not. You'd expect to see bones near cooking pots. Gil Grissom would be very disappointed.

Even the opening sentence, which comes closer to making a positive claim than the rest of the article doesn't state that eastern Europeans have eaten any swans. It says:

Carcasses from dead swans, broken up and stripped for food, have been discovered in a camp used by East European immigrants, according to reports.

The article doesn't say that they've been broken up for food by eastern Europeans. Or even people. And since it includes the 'according to reports' bit, the story doesn't actually say that the carcasses are actually from swans.

The only definite claims about people eating swans made in the article are in quotes from local people. In a variation of something I mentioned back in 'Rebirth of a legend' - if you already have the idea that eastern Europeans eat swans, and you see what you think might be swan carcasses near where people who you've heard are eastern Europeans are living, you'll be far more likely to jump to the conclusion that eastern Europeans must have been eating them, rather than urban foxes. Or British people killing them for kicks.

There are only two actual references to the people in the camp where the carcasses were allegedly found being Eastern European. There's this:

Three tents remained in the camp on Wednesday. Two young Poles living there refused to come out and speak to reporters but denied taking the swans.

A Romanian bible and cooking equipment could be seen outside another tent, while putrid food and thousands of feathers were nearby the third.

Three tents. Not a very big camp then. I just love that addition of 'remained', as if there were more before the reporter turned up. Plus, as Anton Vowl pointed out, the hack seems to know these people are Polish despite them refusing to actually talk to reporters. The presence of a 'Romanian bible' being used to give weight to the claim that the people in the tents are Polish is another gem in this quote. Imagine a Polish cop arresting you during a search for a French national, and claiming you must be French because you've got books in English near you.

There's also this quote about the people being eastern Europeans - which includes two curious things (or three if you include the fact that the person being quoted is referred to as a 'she' after being revealed as being a bloke called Dave):

"It makes me sick to my stomach. I have heard it is mostly Eastern Europeans who are camping here until they can get a house," she told The Sun.

The first curious things is the 'I have heard' bit. The woman called David doesn't actually know that the people are eastern European. The second, even more curious bit reveals that the witness told this to the Sun. The Sun? Why is this story in the Mail and not the Sun (see update at the bottom), if that's the paper that did the investigating? Couln't possibly be because last time the Sun ran a story like this it had to issue a 'clarification' because it was made up, could it?

There's no hard evidence that the people in this camp are actually eastern European, no evidence that swans have been killed to be eaten, and no evidence that any of the dead birds have been killed by people. We only have the word of one witness that the birds were even swans.

There has never been a single report about any eastern European actually being caught eating a swan. There is one report of a Bangladeshi man being charged with killing a swan to eat, but no eastern Europeans. The Sun also reported a story last month about a gang of three British men killing 29 swans for fun. Still no eastern Europeans. But what's the betting that the person who first found the swans in that second case thought there were some dodgy Polish people about?

As Anton Vowl says in his comments:

I love the way all the commenters know someone who knows someone who says that evil Poles/Romanians eat swans/ducks/geese.

Just like all the best urban legends, eh? "This bloke down the pub said that his mate's cousin saw it, so it must be true".

It's a pity my comment never got past the mods at the Mail:

Masterfully done. Another story about eastern Europeans eating swans that doesn't actually state that an eastern European has eaten a swan!

Is that because when the Sun actually did that back in 2003, it had to apologise for the story made up nonsense?

Hey - maybe you'll find more stories about eastern Europeans eating swans if you get Diana Appleyard to offer people a hundred quid for anonymously providing her with one. Maybe if you get Sue Reid to bribe Poles with cash and accommodation in her flat if they come to the UK and eat a swan you'll even get pictures. You never know your luck.

I hope I haven't just given them ideas.

*UPDATE* Thanks to Septicisle in the comments for pointing out that the Sun has covered the story with pictures. I'll look at the coverage in my next post.

Warming up old food

And why it's important to pick a new name if you're a crackpot organisation

The Daily Mail has a habit of taking old stories and serving them up as fresh, usually when the paper has a bit of its agenda to push. Most often, these are stories that have already appeared in the Mail, but today there's a three week old story from the Telegraph on our plates, and boy does it smell.

In the Telegraph, the story was 'Female Muslim medics 'disobey hygiene rules'' (2 February). Now that some poor work experience kid has been made to do a 'write this in your own words' exercise, the article has become 'Muslim medics refuse to roll up their sleeves in hygiene crackdown - because it's against their religion' in the Mail. The two are virtually identical, using mostly the same examples in the same order, the same quotes and the same hyperbole to exaggerate the extent of the problem, such as it is.

The hyperbole starts right there in the headlines. Why say 'medic' instead of doctor or surgeon, or both? Because the stories aren't about doctors or surgeons, but medical students. Having medical students raise objections to exposing their forearms during their studies, where they'll have to comply or fail, is rather less worrying than actual doctors or surgeons refusing to expose their forearms and actually risking people's health. As ever, the truth would make a bit of a crap headline and a decidedly tame scare story.

Both use similar techniques to exaggerate the numbers of occurrences. The Telegraph says:

Women training in several hospitals in England have raised objections...

and the Mail says:

Medics in hospitals in at least three major English cities have refused to follow the regulations...

So this has happened in several training hospitals in at least three cities. 'At least three' is tabloid language for 'three'. Apparently, three Universities have mentioned that some of their Muslim students have:

raised objections to removing their arm coverings in theatre and to rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands, because it is regarded as immodest in Islam

if you read the Telegraph, or:

objected to rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands and removing arm coverings in theatre, claiming it is regarded as immodest

if you read the Mail. The work experience kid must have been in a rush when they hit that sentence, eh.

Exactly how many students are we talking about though? Both articles open by talking about Liverpool and then go on to mention Leicester, Sheffield and Birmingham. I know that makes four cities and I said there were three, but there's a reason the paper said 'at least three' and not 'at least four' when they have four examples. See, after opening by talking about Liverpool and then going on to mention the other three cities, the Mail reveals:

A Royal Liverpool hospital spokesman said they had experienced issues of Muslim staff not sanitising their forearms with alcohol gel although this had now been addressed.

And a little later:

"A number of female Muslim students had approached the University of Liverpool to ask if we would provide facilities for them to change their outerwear and Hijab for theatre scrubs.

"We were pleased to accommodate this request and these facilities have now been incorporated."

So, it looks as though there's no problem anymore.

Both articles are vague about how many staff are involved in all four places except Sheffield, in which:

Sheffield University reported a case of a Muslim medic refusing to "scrub" because it left her forearms exposed.

according to the Mail, and:

Sheffield University also reported a case of a Muslim medic who refused to "scrub" as this left her forearms exposed.

according to the Telegraph. It may be the case that both papers have had the work experience kids in, since the Mail has the extra information about Liverpool and the Telegraph doesn't. Possibly because the Telegraph kid ignored that bit of the wire release.

So we have one person in one city and one possibly solved case in another. But what about the other cities? How many students have refused to scrub properly there? The Telegraph has this about Leicester:

Minutes from a medical school committee said that "a number of Muslim females had difficulty in complying with the procedures to roll up sleeves to the elbow for appropriate handwashing".

Having difficulty with something isn't the same as not doing it. If students had point blank refused to roll up their sleeves and actually not done so, don't you think that would have been mentioned in the minutes? Me too. So that's Leicester out.

The Mail also has this:

Some students have said that they would prefer to quit the course rather than expose their arms, but hygiene experts said no exceptions should be made on religious grounds.

Luckily, the Telegraph lets us know that the students who'd rather quit are only from Birmingham. It also has this quote:

Dr Mark Enright, professor of microbiology at Imperial College London, said: "To wash your hands properly, and reduce the risks of MRSA and C.difficile, you have to be able to wash the whole area around the wrist.

"I don't think it would be right to make an exemption for people on any grounds. The policy of bare below the elbows has to be applied universally."

which is clearly the source for the Mail's 'but hygiene experts said no exceptions...' bit from the sentence quoted above. There aren't any direct quotes from any University saying that students had refused to scrub properly and been allowed to carry on, putting patients at risk.

So, there's not really that much of a problem here. Since we have no direct quotes from any of the Universities that says that female Muslim students had refused to scrub properly and been allowed to get away with it, it's likely that what's happened is something a whole lot less worrying than either paper is leading us to believe. My money is on some female Muslim students saying they'd rather not scrub in front of men if that could be avoided, but not refusing point blank to do so, with the possible exception of the ones in Birmingham who said they'd rather leave the course.

Presumably there's more than one female Muslim medical student in Sheffield, and definitely plenty from everywhere other than these four cities, so this is clearly something that concerns a small minority. And if Dr Mark Enright is right, no exception will be made for these students.

But - both stories include quotes that suggest this is not a minority concern, from the Islamic Medical Association. Who are they, then? 'Is there a doctor in the mosque?' from the Graun's Comment is Free section gives us an idea. It seems to be made up of a couple of nutjobs whose only web presence is this badly formatted and poorly written word document, which gives no clue of how many members they have, reveals they've only ever produced one book 'Al-Dhabh: Slaying Animals for Food the Islamic Way', which is pretty clearly not medical, and two booklets. On any other subject, would a group like this ever be treated seriously by the Telegraph?

Ah, the usefulness of having an impressive sounding name while spouting what the papers want to hear. Seems to have served the Islamic Medical Association as well as it has MigrationWatch, The Campaign Against Political Correctness and the Taxpayer's Alliance. It got them favourably mentioned in the Mail's 'Muslim and Jews join gay-laws protest', because they like homosexuals about as much as the Daily Mail.

If the Islamic Medical Association are after more coverage, I'd suggest slagging off the Polish.

Why has this story appeared now, and not three weeks ago, when you could make at least a half-hearted attempt to cal it news? So that there's a companion example to go with ''Sharia law will undermine British society,' warns Cameron in attack on multiculturalism'.

It seems that when the paper needs to back up an attack on multiculturalism and scare its audience about Muslims, three week old stories that weren't good enough when they first appeared suddenly acquire urgent importance.

Maybe nobody replied to offers of money for anonymous horror stories about Muslims.

Or maybe the paper couldn't bribe any Muslims into doing anything it could complain about.

Who can say?

Emergency! Call the health and safety brigade!

Wouldn't it be ironic if firefighters weren't allowed to visit smokers' houses because of the smoke? That would make great tabloid copy. People who are in the most danger of being involved in a fire being denied safety advice to protect people who fight fires for a living? Just imagine the outrage expressed by the Daily Mail, say, if that happened.

Well, stop imagining and start believing, you crazy dreamers. Today's Mail has 'Firefighters banned from visiting smokers' homes to offer safety advice'. The caption underneath a photo of two firefighters bravely hosing a fire says this:

Burning issue: Firefighters are trained to deal with the most dangerous situations but new health and safety rules now reckon that visiting a smoker's house is a risk too far

It seems that Matthew Hickley, the hack responsible for this story, couldn't wait to be outraged by such a ban. So desperate was he for such a plum opportunity to slam the health and safety brigade that he kind of made this one up out of something a lot less worrying.

Here's a tabloid reporting rule. If a headline says something has been banned, the body of the story will reveal that nothing actually has. In place of a ban is usually a set of guidelines that only apply to one council or area of the country, sometimes old guidelines that aren't relevant or used any more, that don't threaten any kind of discipline or sanction for people who choose not to follow them. In this case, what has really happened is that the London Fire Brigade has sent a memo to firefighters saying that on prearranged fire safety visits to smokers' homes, they should ask the smoker involved not to smoke in the house for an hour before the visit and make sure the house is ventilated. Apparently:

If these rules are not followed, and a tell-tale haze of smoke remains when the fire officer arrives at the front door, he or she must "complete a risk assessment and consider whether the visit should proceed."

If they feel the home in question is just too smoky to enter, they will provide "general fire safety advice" at the door, and try to make another appointment.

Notice the bit about how the firefighter doesn't have to enter "if they feel" it's too smoky. It's up to them. Nobody's going to get the sack or otherwise disciplined if they go into a smoker's house. Nothing has actually been banned.

Over the last couple of decades, people have become more litigious. Ambulance chasing law firms offer to help people get compensation for what most people would think of as accidents in tawdry adverts on daytime TV. If something bad happens to you, you could get a nice little payout if you successfully lay the blame at someone else's door.

All that's happened here is that the London Fire Brigade is covering its back in case of future litigation from firefighters who might get lung cancer and blame it on the Brigade for making them go into smokers' homes. Firefighters are still allowed to use their judgement and decide whether they feel it's too smoky or not. The only thing that's different is that if they then try to sue the Fire Brigade, the Brigade can point out that it was the individual's own decision to go into smokers' homes since they were given a choice and guidelines for what to do if they didn't want to. This is true of pretty much every health and safety scare story in the tabloids.

Reporting that accurately would make for boring stories and wouldn't fit in with the tabloids' political agenda though, which is why tabloids always present things in an extreme either/or manner. You either want something to be allowed, 100% of the time, or you want it banned. 'Do this at your own risk' won't make a shocking enough headline and doesn't attack the paper's real or imagined enemies, so it gets changed to 'this is banned'.

The spin can change even in very similar stories, depending on who is involved and whether or not they are tabloid heroes or villains. The Fire Brigade story is clearly about tabloid heroes, since it is framed as being about firefighters being banned from entering houses.

The Mail has reported a very similar set of circumstances once or twice in which local council employees have been instructed to ask tenants not to smoke during home visits. The spin on these is evident from the headlines, 'Tenants to be banned from smoking at home' and 'Council tells smokers: 'Don't light up in your own home''. The situations are virtually identical to the one in the firefighters story, but council workers are Daily Mail hate figures, so these stories are about them banning people from doing what they want in their own homes rather than council workers being banned from helping certain people. The paper keeps the outrage but changes the target.

For those of you who are disappointed that you can't daydream about how the tabloids would treat the firefighter story anymore, imagine this; how would all three of these stories have been treated if the same things had happened for the same reason, but not smoking was a requirement of Islam?

The Mail, class and sneaky pictures of young girls wearing not very much to be disgusted by

From 'Middle-class pupils snub 'chavs' in comprehensives':

Which one's working class then?

The caption reads 'Class divide: Pupils don't mix (posed by models)'. Posed by models? You don't say! I could have sworn it was real, since all working class people dress like the one on the right.

Imagine if the report was about racial divisions at school. Presumably, we'd have had a story with the headline 'White pupils snub '*n-words*' in comprehensives', illustrated with a golliwog eating a fucking watermelon.

Big bowl of wrong

Isn't serial murder funny?

That is all.

Nepotism in the broadsheets?

Knowing the right people is obviously key to getting your message across and building trust in your brand. The PGC contact book is priceless and to achieve unparalleled levels of success we use it to access the most important journalists and travel editors, providing them with story ideas we know will work.

Over recent years the PGC travel and tourism public relations team has worked with most major media outlets and leading freelance writers. Our personal contact with the leading newspapers, magazines and broadcast media virtually guarantees outstanding results.

So boasts the website of Paul Gogarty Communications, a travel journalism PR company run by Paul Gogarty, freelance travel journalist, former Chief Travel Writer at the Daily Telegraph, former presenter of BBC1's 'Holiday' programme and Cosmopolitan Travel Editor, who himself boasts:

I’ve spent the past 20 years at the top of the travel journalism tree contributing to virtually all the national newspapers, presenting television travel shows and providing travel consultancy on projects at home and abroad. Now I’m harnessing my knowledge, unbeatable contacts and skills with communications professionals - Peter Joyner, Mark Harvey and a backup team of 12 - to provide bespoke PR and Marketing services to travel and tourism businesses.

A big wheel in the travel journalism, it would seem.

Last week, a new travel blog appeared over at the Guardian that seemed at first glance to be an unusually bad idea - 'Max,19, hits the road'. Generic backpacker offers his generic observations on his generic two month trip around South East Asia in his gap year. The gap year backpacker is an almost universal figure of ridicule, from Marcus Brigstocke's Giles Wembley-Hogg, through getting put into Room 101 by Terry Christian when Nick Hancock was presenting, right back to Alex Garland's 'The Beach' and beyond, so the new blog would have to be both innovative and very good to escape ridicule.

Unfortunately, it was neither:

I'm kinda shitting myself about travelling. Well not so much the travelling part. It's India that scares me. The heat, the roads, the snakes, Australian travellers. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited. But shitting myself. And I just know that when I step off that plane and into the maelstrom of Mumbai - well, actually, I don't know how I'll react.

Jesus. Who farted, right?

Unsurprisingly, the commenters wanted to know the answer to that question at the same time as spotting that whoever it was would end up getting a shoeing in the comments. In the fourth comment in, Underachieving asks:

who's son is max then? terrible terrible terrible, shame on you guardian

It turns out that Max is the son of Paul Gogarty - the one whose contact book is priceless for getting travel pieces placed in the media. The one who has had several pieces published by the Guardian, including one about a trip to Thailand that he took Max along to.

Once this was found out, comments went crazy. Some attacked Max personally (most of which were deleted), but most were angry about what they saw as nepotism. Others came up with the idea that such a bad piece of writing ended up in the Guardian was the connection with Channel 4 yoof show 'Skins', which Max had apparently written something for and appeared in the end of the URL ('skins_blog'). Wasn't this just shameless marketing? The story went viral, ending up on several other websites like Holy Moly, Football 365 and BT3a. And then, unusually, comments were closed.

You'd have thought that would have been it. But a strange thing happened. Instead of posting a quick apology, or a forthright defence of giving a blog to a famous travel writer's son, the Travel Editor issued a response that attacked the commenters for being bullies, downplayed the father's position, didn't defend the quality of the original piece and neglected to mention the existence of Paul Gogarty Communications. This is where the whole thing starts linking in with what I blog about here, since this is where the Guardian started to use tehniques to deflect criticism we've come to expect from tabloids.

Remeber how tabloids deliberately misrepresent people's motives in order to create Political Correctness Gone Mad stories? Here, the Travel Editor frames the whole affair as being about nasty bullies making vindictive personal attacks rather than being about a very poor piece of writing that was an incredibly poor idea in the first place ending up in the Guardian because of who the writer's father is.

When he does address the matter of Max's father, The Travel Editor downplays his importance by using the familiar tabloid technique of attacking something someone else has said - a bit like how the Daiy Mail covered the release of a government report that said positive things about immigration by deliberately confusng it with a negative one. He said:

Paul Gogarty may be thrilled (or he may not) to hear that he is now the travel editor of the Guardian website. He is, in fact, a freelance writer who has had the odd piece published in the Guardian, but he also writes for The Telegraph, Sunday Times, Times and Daily Express among others.

Although some of the other websites that picked up the story said Max's father was the Travel Editor, none of the actual commenters on the original piece did. Plus, just compare that 'had the odd piece published in' with the PCG website. Or this, from the London School of Journalism site:

[Paul Gogarty] writes travel journalism for the Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Sunday Times, Times, Daily Express and is travel editor for Cosmopolitan.

For three years he was a regular presenter on BBC 1's Holiday programme and he is also an author (his latest travelogue, The Coast Road - 3000 miles round the edge of England, published in 2004 - is the second of a trilogy on England and Englishness). In 2006 he won an award for the Best TV Travel Show for his 12-part TV adaptation fo this book.

Strangely, commenters weren't very happy with the Travel Editor's response and said so, rather loudly until comments were suspended on the apology too.

No less than five more responses from the Guardian and Observer followed:
'The week that was - football links and other problems' by Guardian Unlimited's Editor in Chief, Emily Bell, which characterised the whole thing as being about buying and neglected to mention Max's father at all.
'Hate mail hell of gap year blogger' by Caroline Davies, which did the same with the bullying and downplayed the role of Max's father by merely saying that commenters had found out they shared a surname, leaving only ealge eyed readers to spot the bit where he's quoted as saying he only occasionally writes for the Guardian (presumably because he's busy writing for everyone else and getting other people's travel artices placed in newspapers and magazines).
'A little blog abuse is worth it for a lot of discourse', also by Emiy Bell, which does the same, only mentioning that 'the accusations included nepotism among other things', without mentioning who Max's father actually is.
'Backpackers, bullies and internet myths', by the former Guardian Online editor, Rafael Behr, which took the bullying charge to spectaculaly stupid new heights by comparing it to the Chinese Cultural Revolution (no, really) and classed the charges of nepotism as mere jealousy. The comments on that one are still going on.
'The Last Post', finally, also by Emiy Bell, which also fails to mention the existence of Max's father, but this time promises to listen.

Not a single one of these replies mentions Gogarty Snr's PR company. Funny that.

What this all exposes is another facet of Nick Davies' 'Flat Earth News' (as if you hadn't guessed already). PR comanies get their fluff reproduced in papers all the time and that's clearly what has happened here and why the Guardian doesn't feel the need to apologise. The Guardian's reluctance to admit to anything wrong and careful avoidance of mentioning Gogarty's PR company only seems to confirm this is the case. The incestuous world of the press is laid open for everyone to see.

One question remains. Was Max going to mention any of his father's clients in his blog?

*UPDATED* Finally, someone at the Graun addresses the problem dead on - 'Media and the mob'. Doesn't mention Paul Gogarty Communications, thogh.

MAIL OFFERS PEOPLE MONEY FOR HORROR STORIES ABOUT EASTERN EUROPEANS

A while ago, I linked to a number of blogs that revealed how Sue Reid, a hack at the Daily Mail, offered Polish people payment to drive to the UK in their Polish registered cars and break the law, so the paper could take pictures and prove that Polish people drive to Britain and break the law (in 'Mail offers money to Poles to break the law'.

It seems that this sort of thing isn't unusual at the Mail. Via Obsolete, MailWatch and Alex Hilton comes this:

-----Original Message-----
From: rsreply@dwpub.com [mailto:rsreply@dwpub.com]
Sent: 13 February 2008 15:57
To:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Response Source - Diana Appleyard , Daily Mail (Request for personal case study)

PUBLICATION: Daily Mail (Request for personal case study)
JOURNALIST: Diana Appleyard (staff)
DEADLINE: 14-February-2008 16:00
QUERY: I am urgently looking for anonymous horror stories of people who have employed Eastern European staff, only for them to steal from them, disappear, or have lied about their resident status. We can pay you £100 for taking part, and I promise it will be anonymous, just a quick phone call. Could you email me asap? Many thanks, Diana

HOW TO REPLY:
Email: mailto:dianaappleyard@aol.com
Phone: not provided for use
Fax: 01296 738083 (preferred)

The more I learn about the Mail, the more despicable I realise it really is. Are there horror stories about Eastern Europeans stitching people up? Of course there are, because Eastern Europeans are, you know, people. Sometimes people aren't very nice.

Imagine if it turned out a journalist had sent round an email offering £100 to sources who could offer stories about Jewish people swindling them.

Ugh.

MIGRATIONWATCH AND CHURNALISM

THREE months ago, the Office of National Statistics released migrations stats for the UK in 2006 in a regular press release.

The release included some quite comprehensive figures, one of which is that net migration of non-British citizens was 316,000. Total net migration was 191,000 because of the high number of British citizens who left the country in 2006.

At the time, the Daily Mail covered this in 'Half a million migrants pour into Britain in a year, but 200,000 leave'. See the reference to the 316,000 figure in the headline? The article also says this:

Overall, there was a gain of 316,000 foreign citizens and a loss of 126,000 Britons.

So, it was clear three months ago. Net inflow of 316,000 non-British citizens. Got it.

So how is this story, reported yesterday, news? 'More than 860 immigrants enter Britain EVERY DAY - and two-thirds come from outside EU'. Hang on, doesn't that work out as...I dunno...316,000 every year? It also says:

Official statistics reveal that the immigrant population has leapt by almost 2.4million since Labour came to power a decade ago.

They were released as the Government faced accusations of "fiddling the figures" after claiming the number of migrants from outside the EU was over half.

The figures show an increase of 316,000 immigrants - or 865 a day - for 2006 alone, the latest period for which figures are available.

As should be pretty obvious, these figures haven't just been released as the story implies. Instead, they're three months old and the paper already reported them.

The story claims this:

The figures were broken down by the Office for National Statistics in a bid to settle the row over where the bulk of new arrivals are coming from.

This is simply not true. The article doesn't reveal until 24 sentence/paragraphs in, but the row was initiated by MigrationWatch. It says:

The conclusion follows months of arguments between the Government and the Migrationwatch pressure group.

I wonder why this little nugget was buried so far down.

Whatever the reason for such a burial, the MigrationWatch website includes this press release about some correspondence with the Statistics Commission and the ONS, which this article is based on. The letter MigrationWatch first sent to the Statistics Commission is dated 17 December, over a month after the figures were released. The figures weren't released 'as the Government faced accusations of "fiddling the figures"', but a month before the accusations. The conclusion didn't come after months of arguments, but before them.

There's more fiddling by the paper on top of that. It says:

Normally, the focus is placed on "net migration" - the difference between the number of all people arriving in Britain, and those who are leaving.

The total - which was 191,000 in 2006 - includes British citizens returning from long-trips abroad or who are emigrating.

As a result, it masks the dramatic changes in the foreign population.

But once Britons are removed, the full details of the unprecedented wave of immigration from overseas is laid bare.

Rubbish. There's no other way of saying it. If the focus of the ONS was only on net migration, why is the title of their November 2007 press release 'Emigration from UK reaches 400,000 in 2006'? Why does the second paragraph, after the opening elaborates on the 400,000 figure, say:

Continuing the pattern of recent years, just over half of long-term emigrants (207,000) were British citizens.

Because what the paper is doing here is manufacturing an outrage about immigration statistics that isn't justified. None of the figures are new. The originals didn't focus entirely on net migration - the very title of the press release that included the figures was based on total emigration, not net, and the opening separates the figures for UK citizens who left the country. The comprehensive figures include all the breakdowns MigrationWatch was after. Presumably, Slack knew this, since they were used to create an outraged article using them three months ago by his sidekick, Steve Doughty.

So, what of the claims that the Government were caught out fiddling because they claimed that more than half the immigrants to the UK were from outside the EU?

The Statistics Commission confirms that this is actually the case, and even the Mail's interpretation of what the Commission said says is this:

When they [British people from the number of EU citizens] were removed, the percentage of new arrivals from non-EU countries was 68 per cent.

The controversy, such as it is, is not over the fact that Liam Byrne said the number of non-EU citizens coming to the UK was over half, but the level at which it was over half.

But what of that claim? That 68% of immigrants are from outside the EU? Looking back at the MigrationWatch press release and the letters between them and the Statistics Commission, we can see that there was actually a joint reply to MigrationWatch, including a contribution from the Office of National Statistics. The verdict is not unequivocal support for MigrationWatch.

The Statistics Commission says there are two ways of looking at the figures, and if you want to remove British Citizens from the EU figure for net immigration, then MigrationWatch's method is better than the Government's for doing that. But the Govermnent look at things in a different way, and the Commission doesn't say that's wrong in and of itself.

What it does say the Government is wrong for doing is using net migration to measure its figures. It offers an alternative to find a more accurate picture - of not using net migration at all and using total inflow instead. The Commission doesn't say that UK Citizens should be dropped from this measure and only uses an example including them.

The ONS says outright that net migration figures should not be used at all, and points out that MigrationWatch's revised figure of 68% is subject to the same problems as Liam Byrne's figures because it's based on net migration. It also includes an explanation of why MigrationWatch's interpretation of how Liam Byrne's figures were arrived at is wrong. He didn't add UK citizens to EU ones. This is the explanation:

If there had been a net inflow of zero, rather than 89k, for non-British EU citizens, the resulting overall net inflow would have been 96,000 (48% less).

The actual revised figure from the Statistics Commission (which uses total rather than net migration) is 58%, not 68% as this article and MigrationWatch's original letter suggest. So although the Commission agrees that Byrne's figure shouldn't have been based on net migration figures and therefore wasn't accurate, the revised figure it suggests in its place is closer to Byrne's than MigrationWatch's.

Back to the Mail article, which also says this:

In a parliamentary debate, Immigration Minister Liam Byrne claimed only 52 per cent of migrants to the UK were from countries outside the EU, such as Africa and the Commonwealth.

But the independent Statistics Commission said this figure included Britons returning from long trips abroad, such as backpacking holidays.

This is just a lie. The letter from the Commission says nothing of the sort.

The article here is claiming that some of the people in the ONS figures recorded as coming from outside the EU are actually UK citizens. Not only do the Commission not say this, but neither do the ONS figures. The ONS figures measure the numbers of people migrating to the UK by citizenship - not by the country they're arriving from. If they did, how could there ever be any people counted as coming from Britain? Not a single one of those from outside the EU are UK citizens.

The quotes from Sir Andrew Green, which are lifted word for word from the press release, are of him clearly overstating his case. The Statistics Commission does not agree that more than two thirds of immigrants come from outside the EU. It quite clearly offers an alternative measurement which it calls more accurate that shows it to be under two thirds - a claim supported by the ONS, who state outright that using net migration gives inaccurate results.

What we actually have here is Liam Byrne using the wrong set of figures to illustrate his point, MigrationWatch being given a more accurate figure and ignoring it in favour of a higher figure it has been told is just as inaccurate. If not more so since Byrne's was closer to the revised figure.

The article ignores the second half of MigrationWatch's letter to the Statistics Commission, which is no surprise since the press release ignores it too. Presumably because the ONS points out that the figures MigrationWatch claim are not in the public domain actually are, and that they're technically accurate even if MigrationWatch disagree with the way Byrne used them. Just like how some Mail articles are technically accurate but as wrong as can be in terms of whether they're actually true.

Yet again, the trouble with the truth is that it doesn't make a very good scaremongering headline. Nor does it allow for the paper to pretend limp, three month old figures are recent revelations.

Immigration is a difficult issue to get to the bottom of. It may well be best not to listen to Ministers. The thing is, it's just as bad to listen to MigrationWatch, since they trumpet figures in press releases that they've been told are not accurate. The tabloids do this and then exaggerate things even further. Nice.

Go for the source. You'll find it all there.

MIXED BAG OF QUESTIONS IN THE EXPRESS 'HAVE YOUR SAY' SECTION

On 22 January, in 'I was beginning to worry', I looked at how often the Daily Express asks its readers for their erudite opinions on whether or not we have too many migrants in the country. in it, I said:

Maybe the new question has something to do with the fact that tomorrow, the last 'Does Britain have too many immigrants?' question disappears from the main set of links. I wonder.

It seems that today the Express must ask the same question, just a day or two after the question disappeared from the list of links on the 'Have Your Say' front page. Must be a coincidence.

I wonder where I can find out whether Daily Express readers think we have too many immigrants in the country.












The paper is so desperate to know, it's asked the question again today, while a previous version is still open in the special box for extra special questions that the paper thinks are worthy of extra attention. The Express has asked its readers a question they're already discussing. That's worth it.

In the three weeks since the last time the paper asked the same question, it has asked whether foreign criminals should be booted out of Britain three times, whether sharia law should be tolerated twice and a whole bunch of other questions about migrants and Muslims getting benefits.

Still, while the Mail is the most dangerous paper in the country, the Express is probably the most moronically nasty, turning its comments section into Stormfront-lite. Good job nobody takes it as seriously.

CAR PARK ATTENDANTS ARE THE HEART OF BRITAIN

WHILE we're on the subject of propaganda, today's Daily Mail has this 'Revealed: Islamist extremists have penetrated the heart of Britain'.

Apparently:

Islamist extremists have infiltrated Government and key public utilities to pass sensitive information to terrorists, the security services have warned.

If this is the case, why aren't these extremists either sacked or arrested rather than just being the subject of 'warnings'?

The only example the article includes of such an extremist is an NCP car park attendant in Richmond Upon Thames. It misleadingly calls this guy a Traffic Warden to make his position sound a bit more official than it actually is.

The trouble with trying to work out which press stories are propaganda is that you end up looking like a crazy conspiracy theorist - but just think - the best example the paper could come up with of Islamic extremists penetrating the heart of Britain is a car park attendant in Richmond.

Propaganda, or the paper bullshitting again?

DOWNING STREET ECHO?

ONE important effect of what Nick Davies calls 'churnalism' in his excellent 'Flat Earth News' is the press's reliance on official sources for stories.

An important consequence of this is that newspapers are prone to accept propaganda as truth, unquestioningly. Via Obsolete and Big Sticks and Small Carrots, is this from the Sun - 'Spy planes take on Talibrum'. Of course, we're talking about the Sun, so it's just as likely that the paper doesn't care that the story is propaganda as being unwittingly duped.

This smells so much like propaganda, it's making me gag. I'm not sure even the Sun would be stupid enough to run a story bragging about how people are unaware they're being listened to without realising that the minute the story breaks, those people will instantly know.

On top of that, having those people think they're being listened to when they're not would be a pretty good result for the armed forces. And so would having the population at home thinking we've got one over on those stupid Taliban idiots who don't even know they're being spied on.

The 'Brummie accent' thing is just an excellent hook to make sure the Sun publishes the story. Lots of people would instantly spot a hole in a story just boasting about how unaware people are that they're being spied on. Inject a little bit of fearmongering about the people at home and you instantly divert attention away from how shoddy the whole premise looks.

Garry at Big Sticks and Small Carrots had a comment on the story deleted that pointed out how stupid it was to show off that people don't know they're being listened to because that would, you know, give the game away. There has to be some reason the mods didn't want their readers spotting that, eh.

I'm betting this will be a story that ends up in text books about propaganda in a few years' time. Of course, if there's an uproar that leads to an enquiry about how an intelligence operation's cover was blown by the Sun I'll have to eat crow.

I reckon crow will be firmly off the menu.

EVERY 4 MINUTES, AN EXPRESS HACK PULLS A FIGURE OUT THEIR BUM

SOMETIMES, you can look at a front page headline and instantly know it's bullshit. Like if it's on the front page of the Daily Express and...well, and nothing really. Just if it's on the front page of the Daily Express.

Funnily enough: not really true - and even if it was, it would mean that migrants are less likely to be arrested than everyone else. It's a win double!









'EVERY 4 MINUTES A MIGRANT IS ARRESTED IN BRITAIN' screams the headline, popping a metaphorical vein in the paper's metaphorical forehead.

So, what piece of research has the paper distorted to get this figure then? If the headline hadn't made your bullshit detector go off in wavy lines from your head like your own personal Spidey-sense, then these words are guaranteed to:

The Daily Express investigation presents the most detailed picture yet of the impact immigration is having on crime levels and police resources.

A Daily Express investigation, eh? That must be worth the paper it's printed on.

Here's the Express investigation's methodology. I should have put tabloid style scare quotes around 'methodology', because it's so rubbish:

Figures from 26 police forces received under the Freedom of Information Act showed that a total of 79,308 foreign nationals were arrested in 2006 – the latest year for which figures are available. They represented seven per cent of the total number of arrests.

If the level of arrests was reflected across the remaining forces which failed to supply information, it would mean more than 131,100 foreigners arrested in one year. That is the equivalent of up to 360 a day, or one every four minutes.

So, the investigation covers less than half the police forces in the country and includes the one that arrests more people than any other force - the Met.

Luckily, the Daily Mail tried to scare the shit out of us six months ago with figures for the number of foreign nationals arrested and charged by the Met. From it, we can see that 22,793 foreign nationals were arrested and charged by the Met in a six month period in 2007. That would work out at roughly 45,000 a year. Since many people who get arrested don't get charged, we know that the number of arrests of foreign nationals will be higher than that for those arrested and charged, so the Met accounts for way over half the arrests the Express has recorded.

Another thing we know is that police forces are not required to record the nationality of the people they arrest. Which forces are the least likely to bother recording those details - the ones who arrest lots of migrants and want to track how many get in trouble so they can call for more funding, or the ones who never even see a foreigner for most of the year?

In any case, the idea that the forces who didn't supply information even arresting as many as the Met, let alone the other forces that did, is very funny. Another thing that's very funny is the way the paper tries to scare us with that 7% of the total number of arrests figure, and tells us that there are 5.4 million migrants in the country. What the article leaves out is that 5.4 million migrants only makes up about 9% of the population, so migrants would actually less likely to be arrested than everyone else, even if we did accept the paper's shonky 'investigation' as accurate.

Another nice little bit is this:

One prediction estimates there will be 9.1million immigrants by 2030 – up from 5.4million at present.

Remember, that 9.1 million figure appears to have been made up by the Express in the first place.

A perfect example of a paper telling its readers what it thinks they want to hear regardless of the facts - which are that migrants are less likely to be arrested, and the overall crime rate is falling. Sure, there are places where Chief Constables claim certain types of crime have risen, and there might be an argument for increasing resources to these areas, but that doesn't make a really good vein popping headline.

*UPDATE* *EXTRA FISHINESS* I've had a closer look at the figures from the Mail and the ones from the Express. Lucky me.

The weird thing is, the Express claims that foreign arrests count for 15% of all arrests in London. Comparing the earlier Mail figures (roughly 45,000 in a year) with total number of crimes in the Met area for 2007 (876,298) shows only 9% of crimes were connected with foreign nationals.

This suggests either that a lower percentage of migrants are actually charged after they've been arrested than everyone else, there's been a big drop in the number of migrants charged with crimes or the Express is farting around even more with figures than I first thought.

Whatever is happening, these numbers sure do smell fishy.

AND WHEN THEY TRACED THE CALL, IT WAS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE

THERE'S a new urban legend that's spread throughout the land, picked up (or possibly started by) our usually wonderfully accurate tabloid newspapers.

Here is a selection of front page tabloid headlines from the last couple of days:

Daily Mail, 9 Feb: 'Sharia UK: Now the backlash'
Daily Express, 8 Feb: ''Muslim laws must come to Britain''
Daily Express, 9 Feb: 'Muslim courts are here already'
The Sun, 8 Feb: 'What a burkha - Archbishop wants Muslim law in UK'
The Sun, 9 Feb: 'Bash the bishop - join our campaign to give him the boot'

Today's poll (9 Feb) on the Mail website asks 'Which of these men poses the bigger threat to Britain's way of life?'. The two men in question are the Archbishop of Canterbury and Abu Hamza. The Sun is running a campaign to get the Archbishop of Canterbury sacked. The last two days' questions in the Express website 'Have Your Say' section are 'Should sharia law be banned in Britain?' and 'Should the Archbishop resign over Sharia row?'

The Mail's poll is currently at 64% saying the Archbishop of Canterbury is a bigger threat to the British way of life than Abu Hamza.

So, what exactly did the Archbishop say?

We can tell from the Daily Express headline, right - since that's in quotes, it must be a quote. If you believe that, you haven't been paying attention. Here is the Archbishop's original lecture and here is a commentary including a transcript of the Archbishop's interview on the BBCs 'World at One' programme. Go and do a search for the phrase 'Muslim law must come to Britain' in both of them.

Nothing there, right?

As plently of other blogs have pointed out, so many that I don't need to offer my own account, the Archbishop didn't actually say exactly what he's been accused of saying. He made some coments about Muslims using similar courts to Beth Din courts to decide civil matters only, and din't say their introduction were inevitable, or make a claim that they must be introduced or anything like that. Disagree with him if you like, like Obsolete does, but don't make stuff up.

This is a perfect example of what Nick Davies refers to as 'Flat Earth news'. Something that people accept as fact that is actually untrue. It's something I think of in terms of urban legends because of the extra little embellishments that get added to the story.

This one proably started with the BBC reporting that the Archbishop said that Sharia law in the UK was unavoidable. Even though this claim is itself contentious, other sources that pick it up have to exaggerate the comment further - claiming that the Archbishop said Muslim law must come to the UK, which is bollocks. The Express even include spictures of people in Iran getting lashed in its inevitable efforts in distorting the paper's coverage even further from the truth. Big sticks and small carrots has an excellent rundown of how this thinking has spread out of the papers and into the mouths of politicians, scrambling over each other to condemn what the Arcbishop didn't actually say.

That development is part of the same malaise that infects the press. Just as the press sacrifice the truth for giving their readers what they want to hear, politicians either say what they think voters want to hear, taking the lead of the lying tabloids to guage exactly what that might be; or they believe the reports they read about things without checking the source, which is becoming an increaingly stupid option.

Ironically, this is an example of how Political Correctness works in the opposite direction to the one we're always told it does. Here we have someone in a senior position threatened with sacking for saying something rightwingers don't like, and calling for equality of a sort (with the Orthodox Jews who are allowed to use Beth Din courts).

Doubly ironic is the fact that in all of this, the only person speaking honestly and attempting to look at the issue logically is the country's chief witch-doctor.

SHORT LESSON IN DISTORTING FIGURES

THE Daily Express has a wonderful example of how to use a figure to create a false impression in the 'Have Your Say' section 'Are you fed up with the benefit system being abused?'

Of course, this question isn't about benefits, but is actually about immigration. Toward the end of the intro article is this:

Mr Steen revealed that the number of Romanian criminals had soared by a staggering 786 per cent in London alone [...]

Wow! 786 percent in London alone! Imagine how higher it must have soared across Britain if it's 786 percent in London alone.

Luckily, we don't have to. The paper told us a couple of weeks ago in the story I covered in 'The Daily Express continues courting the BNP'. It's 530 percent.

That would be less.

Of course, the paper tried to pretend that the 530 percent was total migrant crime - so maybe the hack responsible got mixed up.

So mixed up that they didn't notice that Mr Steen didn't reveal this figure. The police did. Six months ago. Lucky that, since six month old news isn't as scary.

*Update* These figures are bizarre. Somehow, London's figures are higher than the total for the entire country. The Express report quoted 922 total crimes committed by Romanians in the UK in six months, whereas the London figures show 1,086. Since we know the London ones cover January to June last year, could it be that the 922 figure represents a later period, which would mean a drop in crime by Romanians?

*Another update* Or could one or both of the sets of figures be made up? A while back, I made an FOI request to Kent police about the nationality of offenders in alleged racial attacks in the area. They said this:

There is no requirement for the police to record the nationality of offenders, nor do the police have any purpose in doing so.
Where the nationalities have been recorded in crime reports, it would appear [...]

So the police don't have to record offenders' nationalities. Where then do these confident figures of rises in Romanian crime come from? If they're genuine, could the rises be attributed to officers being more likely to record Romanian nationality after Romania's accession? Has the Daily Express sent out FOI requests to every police force in the UK?

FLAT EARTH NEWS

SINCE I started wtiting this blog, I've often felt as though I was stumbling around in the dark, occasionally finding my way around but sometimes bumping into things and making an idiot of myself.

I don't have any inside knowledge of the world of journalism. I know how to spot bullshit when I see it, but that's about it. I've pulled a lot of tabloid stories apart since I started - some more successfully than others, it must be said - but there has been one question I've been unable to answer no matter how many stories I've looked at. Do the journalists and their editors who produce such misleading claptrap know they're misleading people, or are they presenting an honest account of their view of the world?

Of course, I had my suspicions (unfavourable ones for the hacks and editors), but now I finally have a much better idea thanks to Nick Davies' 'Flat Earth News' and the research that led to his making the conclusions he did. There's a good review by Roy Greenslade, which includes a neat rundown of what others have been saying about it, and I have to say it's heartening to see so many people with inside knowledge of their own largely agreeing with this book since it does shed such a lot of light into the darker recesses of the press.

The research taken out for the book shows that the same number of journalists now as there were 20 years ago have to do three times the work. At the same time there have been swingeing cutbacks in the funding for the investigative journalism of the past. This has meant that journalists barely have enough time to check facts, let alone uncover their own stories - so they have been forced to rely more and more on ready made stories from news agencies and PR companies, which often get chucked into the paper almost word for word. According to the reasearch, 60% of news articles come pre-packaged from news agencies and 19% were derived mainly or wholly from PR agencies. This, argues Davies, is the result of decades of newspaper owners and editors treating their newspapers merely as moneymaking products without regard to the quality or truthfulness of their content.

News agencies have been suffering from the same problem as newspapers, with several suffering cutback and merges until they're totally incapable of providing newspapers with anything like the service they used to. Fewer reporters stretched across larger areas mean that it's impossible for them to cover the entire country, and fact checking journalism isn't their role anyway, since they mainly report the barest of facts about what people have said without offering conclusions as to their accuracy or truthfulness.

As if it weren't enough that the papers rely on stories from news agencies that aren't entirely reliable, they also tend to favour official sources, leaving them open to regurgitating the most ludicrous propaganda, which Davies illustrates with the Obsever's unquestioning support for the invasion of Iraq. It looks so obvious with hindsight, but at the time the editor's reliance on official government and intelligence sources may not have semed so unreasonable.

All in all, it's a depressing view of the press. Davies uncovers a world of overstretched and sometimes clueless journalists who don't even have the time to check to see whether what they're blithely splashing across the front pages is true. 'Churnalists' whose lack of time and resources lead them to spend money on acquiring intelligence from criminal sources who bribe officials, steal information and wade through bins to get what they're after. Apparently, within hours of the news of Dr David Kelley's death emerging, the Telegraph and the Times had both paid for copies of Kelly's phone bill - not because it might contain anything of special interest to readers but because it provided them with a handy tool for contcting eople for information about Kelly's state of mind.

Until I got as far as the last chapter, the book had confirmed some of the other things I'd read about the American media - the reliance on news agencies and official sources and so on - and I was still wondering whether journalists maliciously spread falsehoods or did so unwittingly because of time constraints and lack of funds over here. Had I been unfairly judging the papers here? The last chapter answered that.

The last chapter is about the Daily Mail - the only tabloid the study and Davies' book examine in detail.

Here's some of what Davies says about the Mail:

The first thing to recognise about the Daily Mail is that it is the most successful and powerful newspaper in Britain.

[...]

The second thing to notice about the Mail is that, more than any other newspaper in Britain, it deals in falsehood and distortion.

And later:

Sometimes, this is a matter of the Mail taking the truth and distorting it - attacking the BBC by misquoting an internal memo; criticising a High Court Judge by misquoting from a speech he made. In others, the problem is pur falsehood - the prisoner who was falsely said to have been given legal aid to sue because he had missed his breakfast; the man who ws falsely accused of running a feud with his neighbours; the married couple who were falsely described as treating their twelve-year-old daughter so badly that she had run off with a US marine.

The Mail, it seems, hadn't suffered from the same kind of pennypinching cutbacks as other papers, since it is the only one of them to consistently grow and increase its profits.

The reason for this is Paul Dacre's uncanny ability to give his readers exactly what they want. As I'vepointed out in 'Dacre's Rant' and more recently, once you decide your paper is for telling its readers one kind of thing over and over again rather than telling them the truth, the truth becomes an optional extra to be discarded wherever it doesn't fit.

This goes further than choosing not to cover evidence that doesn't support the paper's viewpoint, or even lying about it until it seems as though it does. It goes beyond lying about immigration statistics, or unfairly focusing on particular groups. Davies includes several examples of this kind of thing:

I spoke to a man who had worked for the Daily Mail for some years as a senior news reporter. He said: 'They phoned me early one morning and told me to drive about three hundred miles to cover a murder. It was a woman and two children who'd been killed. I got an hour and a half into the journey, and the news desk called me on my mbile and said, "Come back." I said, "Why's that?" They said, "They're black."

Plently of people who work or had worked for the Mail apparently had similar stories about sympathetic articles being dropped when it emerged that their subjects were black. Of course, the paper have no qualms about printing stories about black criminals - and that's even with the paper's treatment of Stephen Lawrence.

The chapter pretty much confirms all your worst fears about the Mail. The paper's hacks are so beaten down, and not to mention well paid, that they put up with being bullied by their editor into the kind of falsehood and distortion I've come to know and hate after a couple of years wasting my time here. Apparently, any articles that go against the accepted line can be spiked, sometimes by the editor slapping a headline on that goes against the entire article. Which explains why sometimes headline and article don't match.

Since the Mail is the one paper that can afford to follow stories so doggedly over such a long period, they ofte get picked up by the 'churnalists' at other papers and repeated, making them look more convincing than they actually are.

This is an excellent book, which everyone who reads newspapers should read. I have criticisms (Davies says corporations who advertise in papers have little power over what they report - and yet uses the example later in the book of the Observer losing a couple of advertisers after breaking with the government line over the Suez crisis - he goes with the idea of Dacre only supporting Stephen Lawrence because his father had done some work for him, which I've rad conflicting accounts about), but I've found it especially helpful in letting me know more of what's going on behind the scenes to make the papers so full of rubbish.

Davies is pessimistic about what we can do to right the situation. I am too. There's little if anything anyone can do to stop the rot.

As far as carrying on with this blog is concerned - if only a handful of people read something I've written here and stop believing what they read in the Mail or the Sun or the Express, or even look at it in a different way, it will be enough.

Expect more whingeing, swearing and boring coverage of figures in the future.

PC GONE MAD AS BLOG GETS 'BERLINER FORMAT' MAKEOVER

The old format of this blog has been banned by my left wing, NuLabour council because it offended people of other faiths, so I've made some changes around here.

There may be a slight shift in the content too, but nothing drastic. More on that later when I haven't wasted all my time farting around with templates and pictures and that.

Enjoy!

The chamber starts to echo, echo, echo

The intrepid seekers of truth from the Express have undertaken their own in-depth investigation read the other papers' coverage of the story I covered in 'Can I be a martyr too, please?' Part I and Part II, and spiced it up a bit more for the Express readership in 'Worker sacked for stopping Muslim 'insult' to the cross'.

As I said in 'Can I be a martyr too please? Part II', the Mail is excellent at giving its readers just enough information to draw their own conclusions. The Express, however, is shit at that. It must draw every conclusion explicitly for its readers.

The headline is a great example - where the Mail waits for its readers to reach the point in the story that explains that three Muslims were in the prayer room before they find the Muslim connection, the Express bungs it right in the headline. Not only that, it calls it a 'Muslim 'insult' to the cross' to spice things up a bit further. It's now not only an insult to cover a cross, but a Muslim insult. As if this is a common thing Muslims do on purpose to offend Christians.

Given that I don't believe in any of this pretend person in the sky stuff, it's difficult for me to see how this is supposed to be an insult. I know Muslims aren't supposed to worship idols, so I can see why they'd cover things up that they considered to be idols while they were praying. I can't for the life of me work out why this would be considered an insult.

The story is illustrated by a picture of Nadia Ewedia, the BA employee who demanded that she be allowed to wear a visible cross. She is perfect for the Express to create a ham-fisted connection with, since as far as the Express readership is likely to be aware, all she did was ask to be allowed to do something she said others could do. The crucial difference is that the porter in this story is alleged to have assaulted someone and thrown about racist language.

So, there was a Muslim insult to the cross and the person involved in the headline is like Nadia Ewedia. No, not an insufferable godsquadder who made a series of unreasonable demands - the sanitised version of her the tabloids painted. The poor victim. Thus is the reader of this article armed before it even starts. Poor victim sacked for stopping a Muslim insult.

Then the fun really starts.

The opening paragraph says the porter was devastated last night after being sacked. Standard bit of misdirection to make the story sound newer than it is, since it appeared elsewhere days ago.

After telling us that the porter became increasingly angry after seeing the crucifix and statue of Mary regularly covered up without actually corroborating that claim, the story tells us:

On one visit he discovered three Muslims – two patients and a consultant – inside the prayer room with the two icons masked by a cloth. A picture of the Virgin Mary had also been placed face down.

There's one incredibly vital piece of information missing from this. What were the Muslims doing in the chapel?

From this account, you'd be forgiven for thinking that they were in there to cover up the cross and the statue and put the photo face down as an insult rather than praying, which they almost certainly were doing. After all, if they'd really wanted to insult the Christians, they'd have taken the things away.

This is followed with:

Mr Protano is alleged to have uncovered the symbols and stood the picture back up before leaving the room. But minutes later there was a “confrontation” in the corridor after the group followed him out.

The Muslims accused Mr Protano of using racist language and assault, but he strongly denies the charges against him and claims they verbally abused him.

Look carefully at the picture the paper is painting here. The porter walked into the chapel and uncovered the symbols and put the photo face up without any incident at all, and there was only confrontation after he left the room. How likely is that?

We also get:

Police released him after four hours of questioning following the assault complaint and passed a file to the Crown Prosecution Service to decide if he should be charged.

A senior detective told the Daily Express: “I do not believe there should be any action over this, but the decision does not rest with me.”

Perhaps the senior detective thinks there should be any action because the alleged assault might have taken place in the Chapel where there were no witnesses other than the people involved, but we're still given the impression that there should be no action because the Muslims are lying.

Appropriately, the porter's friend asks:

“Maybe he should not have done what he did while the group was inside the prayer room, but do you deserve the sack? Would this have happened if it had been the other way round?”

What would have happened if it had been the other way round?

The Express wouldn't be painting the Muslim who entered the Chapel and rudely covered things up as the victim, that's for sure. Nor would the paper be downplaying the assault allegations.

One thing that probably would have happened exactly the same is that it would have included the 'Have your say' question 'Should Britain's Christian traditions be defended?' but just with the lead in slightly changed. You'd still have got exactly the same comments too.

This kind of thing is pretty common now. I mentioned how the Mail covered the story of the boy who had alledgedly been attacked by the Slovakian woman with a metal bar before, but there was also the incident of the 'race clashes' at a dairy in Windsor, in which a dairy owned by Muslims was firebombed and some of the dairy's vehicles were smashed up. This was reported in the Mail and Express as Muslims causing trouble. Even the Sun appeared to know that Muslims were unlikely to be responsible for that one, even if it did go on to report about Muslims hounding soldiers out of their new home in Windsor when they actually didn't.

We know all too well what would have happened had the situation been the other way round. The same as happened this way round. The Muslims would have been reported as the aggressors, regardless of the facts.

The Sun and Telegraph haven't covered this one. Yet.

How many million again?

In 'Ten million, or is it nine? Five million, or is it under four?', I looked at last Friday's headline in the Daily Express.

Note to editors - that's 7 million immigrants, right?

'TEN MILLION IMMIGRANTS', it screamed. The figures looked shoddy, although the Express claimed:

Britain's soaring immigrant population will double in the next two decades to almost 10million, a shocking report warned yesterday.

As regulars will be aware, I am a plank, so I emailed the IPPR asking for a copy of this shocking report.

I got a reply today. I had wanted to show what the report actually said so we can see exactly how much the Express had misquoted it, but I can't because the IPPR never sent me a copy.

Because there is no report, shocking or otherwise. Now we know why there are no direct quotes.

The figures the Express claim come from a shocking report actually come from a conference presentation that looked at possible future scenarios for migration. Well, I say they come from the conference presentation, but they don't because the paper has exaggerated them so much that they bear no resemblance to the actual figures in the presentation.

The presentation apparently didn't say that the immigrant population would double from 5.4 million. It didn't say that it would rise to 10 million. It didn't even say that it would rise to 9.1 million. And that's not just because the presentation was about a hypothetical situation where the number of immigrants might reach a certain level rather than being an absolute prediction, although that is also true.

The hypothetical rise in the presentation was from 5.4 million to 6.8 - 7.3 million by 2030. That's right, the upper limit is almost 2 million less than the Express's lowest figure.

Every claim made by the Express about the figures in this article is false, aside from the fact that they were mentioned by the IPPR. There isn't a shocking report. The figures that do exist don't state that the number of immigrants will rise to any level by 2030, they're just projections of what might happen for use in a hypothetical scenario. Last, but not least, the actual rise the figures represents is about half that suggested by the headline, and the headline's total is exaggerated by around 3 million.

We're not talking honest mistakes because of time constraints here. This is a front page headline that is a blatant lie.

Again.

Can I be a martyr too please? Part II

Anyone clicking the link to 'Porter sacked by hospital after he asks for 'multi-faith' prayer room crucifix be made visible' in my last post will find that the article has been disappeared from the Daily Mail website, and get a 'not found' error.

Instead, there is a much abbreviated version of the story at 'Christian porter sacked by hospital after argument over a crucifix in a prayer room'. Note the 'multi-faith' bit isn't there any more, scare quotes or no.

A copy of the older version is available here. It should go without saying that I don't endorse the wingnut forum it's on and I'm only linking for the purposes of showing the original article, but I'm saying it anyway.

I didn't quote all the relevant bits in my last post, so here are the important bits of the story that have been dropped.

After pointing out that the porter was released by the police without charge after being questioned over an alleged aggravated assault, the original version had this:

He denies the allegations and must wait to see if police take any action.

He said he was unable to comment on his sacking as the police probe and his plans to appeal were ongoing.

And the last line of the original said:

Police said a file had been passed to the Crown Prosecution Service for a decision over any further action.

These references have gone. Of course, removing these makes it look as though the assault allegation has been dismissed and it's all over, when it isn't. It makes the porter look more reasonable.

This has also been dropped in the new version:

The friend said Mr Protano went into the prayer room about six times a day to check that the statue and crucifix were not left covered because he felt could be upsetting for visiting Christian parents to find them covered up.

A guy who goes into the chapel six times a day to check if the cross has been covered up sounds just a tad less well adjusted than someone who just happened into the room and noticed it was covered.

The changes could be because the original article seems to be directly lifted from this one in the Manchester Evening News 'Hospital porter fired in crucifix row', but whatever the reason, the result is an even more one sided version of events that even further downplays the porter's alleged actions and paints him in a far more favourable light.

Contrast the paper's treatment of this story with the one I covered in 'Who always starts the race row?', 'The Mail, balance?' and 'Chuck Berry?', in which the paper reported that a 10 year old boy had been attacked by a Slovakian woman with a metal bar after throwing a berry at her, despite other reports pointing out that the police had said there was no evidence that a metal bar had been used, and that the berry throwing incident had come the day before and involved a different woman, whom he also allegedly punched.

Why is this one treated differently? You'd get a much better tabloidy headline out of 'Hospital porter sacked after 'aggravated assault' on patients', if not better.

Of course, the trouble is if the paper had reported things that way around, the Christian would look like the religious nutter and the Muslims would have looked like victims. Can't have that, can we? Have to make it look as though the alleged assailant was in fact a victim if the actual victims are Muslim. Or the wrong sort of foreign.

Nice one, the Daily Mail!