Paul Dacre's evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee

In the last week or so, editors of the two papers I look at most often here appeared before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee to give evidence about press standards, privacy and libel. The evidence both of them gave is astonishing in its lack of connection with reality, leaving both of them looking like little kids with chocolate smeared around their chops pretending it wasn't them who ate the Easter eggs.

Roy Greenslade looks at the most obvious 'mistakes' in Express editor Peter Hill's evidence, so I won't rehash those. I do want to look in a little more detail at Dacre's evidence, on video over at the Parliament website, since it shows how his first instinct is to deny charges that are obviously true to anyone who spends more than a few minutes reading his paper. Handily, he later contradicts a lot of these defences himself to reveal the truth behind his claims so we don't have to.

Where am I?

Hello people.

Sorry there hasn't been much in the way of posting here, but I've been having a long, hard look at Paul Dacre's evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee and knocking together a post about it. The evidence session was quite long, but there's lots of nice stuff in there, not leas of which being his laughable claim that the Mail never ran an anti-MMR campaign.

Straight outta Orwell!

Bit slow on this, but I like it.

Click for bigger
Via jamesholden.net. And here's the Flickr pool, except I'm not a Flickr member.

The Mail thinks the government has kept out too many migrants? Has the world gone mad?

Not six months ago, Phil 'if this one's my arse, which one's my elbow again?' Woolas was hawking his latest tabloid-pleasing carnival sideshow - his 'Australian-style' ponts system. Well, he called it 'Australian-style' despite the Australian system being lenient in comparison, but he explained away the inaccuracy by saying, "If you ignore the Sun reader in this debate you are not going to move it forward."

The Mail and suicide

I have a new post up at MailWatch, based heavily on this great post from Uptonothing.

Go and gawp at both of them. Plus all Uptonothing's other stuff at the Angry Mob.

Gawp!

I said 'gawp', damn you!

Nick Fagge, quality journalist

Picture: FAIL
When you're used to reading the tabloids, there are certain subtle clues you can spot that signal that what is to come is going to be exaggerated, distorted or just plain made up. The odd word or phrase here and there should be enough for you to reach for the salt shaker and start pinching away. You can find them yourself with a little practice.

Ian Tomlinson - a quick clarification

I have quite a comfortable time here, looking at the tabloids and writing posts on the things that take my fancy when I have time (which is in very short supply at the moment). I type my stuff and bugger off. I sometimes comment on other blogs here and there, but for the most part I stay out of right vs. left blog stuff. Sure I like kicking Richard Barnbrook, but who wouldn't? It's easy and it's fun.

Is this the start of the smearing of Ian Tomlinson?

I wrote most of 'Ian Tomlinson and the tabloids' last night, before posting it up earlier today. At the time of writing, I hadn't seen any of today's coverage and to be honest I expected it to be continuing yesterday's reverse ferreting that followed the Guardian's release of video footage. I had thought about mentioning the smearing of Jean Charles de Menezes and the Koyair brothers following those fiascos, and wondered if we'd see similar here, but since there was video footage of Mr Tomlinson being attacked from behind I thought it unlikely.

Ian Tomlinson and the tabloids

At around 7.30pm on Wednesday 1 April, a man caught up in the G20 protests despite not bing a protester, died. The coverage of Ian Tomlinson's death laid bare the inadequacies of the popular press in dealing with events such as this. The main and most obvious failing is the over-reliance of the press on official accounts, but there were other factors at play that led to the pretty dismal reporting. This abysmal coverage would probably not have been challenged in the tabloids had the Guardian not released video on Tuesday of Mr Tomlinson being assaulted from behind shortly before his death. Here is the footage, which isn't very nice:

Assault course

I went on an assault course recently. It was rubbish. They didn't teach me to beat anyone up at all.