Truth and lies

Interesting article by Richard Peppiatt over at the Huffington Post today about the difference between 'legal truth' and 'moral truth' in newspaper reporting. Have a look, go on.

I'll have to agree that Fleet Street Fox set the goalposts a little narrow in this post about how difficult it is to get a lie published in a national newspaper. Sure, an entirely made up from nothing story about a celebrity rich enough to sue won't make the papers, but there are other kinds of story you can lie in, and a whole slew of levels of lie below 'make the whole story up from scratch' you can use if you like.*

Richard Peppiatt and the top ten ridiculous tabloid editor denials

When I got all annoyed at the Daily Star sinking to the depths of supporting the EDL last month, I said:

One can only hope that any journalists at the Star that have a single ounce of conscience left will be jumping ship quick smart. 

It seems that someone else had a similar idea.

What's this? The tabloids taking PCC rulings even further than they're asked?

A couple of weeks ago, the Daily Quail and some other bloggers were sent a letter by the Daily Mail, requesting the removal of some material from their blogs.

It says:

We have received a complaint from the Press Complaints Commission about this article and have as a result removed it from our websites and agreed to request that you do the same.

Hmm. Would the PCC really do that?

Tabloid bullshit of the month award December 2010

Break out the tinsel, jingle bell music and strong, strong booze - it's time for the December 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award.

A bit of a disappointing field this month, what with a couple of numpties providing the tabloids with juicy quotes about banning Christmas so they didn't have to make shit up themselves. Maybe uponnothing's excellent demolition of the Winterval myth had something to do with that. I bloody well hope so.

We did have the Mail worrying about the number of black and brown people in the country and then having to point out it's not racist or anything; the same paper pretending Blue Peter had burnt something it hadn't; snow PANIC; the Star pretending some shit about Jordan again. That's the sort of thing.

The winner had to be Guy Patrick of the Sun with 'Al-Qaeda Corrie Threat'.  There's no link because it's gone already!

When is a job not a job?

"The £18,000 council job you can't apply for if you are white" says the Mail today. Wow! A council seems to be breaking the law by using racist hiring practices. Barring people from applying for jobs on the basis of their race is illegal, and has been at least since the Race Relations Act 1976. The Mail has uncovered a genuine scandal here.

You can bloody mention immigration! You bloody can!

No time to post at the moment, which is a right pain since we've been lurching from Clegg being laughably accused of saying we're worse than the Nazis to being told prematurely that Cameron has won the election to insinuations of domestic violence in the Clegg household to the Prime Minister mentioning in what he thought was private that a possibly bigoted woman was a bigot.  Fun times.

Maybe I'll do a run down of the campaign bullshit after the election, but I might be too busy pinwheeling my board with a nail in it in a frenzied fight to the death for the last tin of baked beans in the inevitable societal meltdown a hung parliament will cause.

When tabloids want to whip up a moral panic but the facts just won't fit - and why what they do is bad

If you're looking to whip up a bit of fear and panic, you could do much worse than focus on new technologies your readers are unfamiliar with, especially if you can mix this in with the behaviour of young people, also unfamiliar with your readers.  Combine the sort of outrage and complete cluelessness of the early 1980s video nasty moral panic (which actually led to clumsy legislation banning movies like the Exorcist and the Evil Dead) with the teeth-clenchingly embarrassing attack on Emo subculture or the like and you've got a powerful tool for generating fear of something previously unknown.

Andy Coulson lives with the PCC and the Met

Living with homosexual parents is so damaging - I wonder if she grew up to be a phone tapping tabloid hack as a result
It's weird. You go away for a while and mean to come back to write about things other than the tabloids and find out two things that scupper your plans. The first is that the break has taken care of some of the weariness you felt at looking at the same old hateful bilge every day, and the other is that an unusual confluence of events has exposed just how ineffective press self regulation is, and how rotten the whole business can be.

Why you shouldn't vote for the BNP on Thursday

You've probably read half a dozen 'why you shouldn't vote for the BNP on Thursday' articles and blog posts by now. You know about the foreign actors in the leaflets. You've heard about Nick Griffin saying there's no such thing as a black or Asian Briton. You've heard how he said that a big chunk of the England football team and Amir Khan aren't British. You've witnessed the embarrassing climbdown when he proved too much of a pariah to be welcome at the Queen's garden party. You know that life wouldn't be very nice for ethnic minorities if they got into power.

What happens to minorities who can't or won't sue the papers?

Well, they all look the same, dun't they?
Via Rhetorically Speaking, Liberal Conspiracy, Tabloid Watch, the Enemies of Reason and Angry Mob (sorry if I've missed anyone) comes the fantastic news of the Mail being sued for blatantly and deliberately making stuff up.

The BNP, honesty and Mothers Against Knives

Oh, did you think we were from Mothers Against Knives? Whatever gave you that idea?

Back when there was a bit of a flap about Richard Barnbrook, of BNP infamy, getting a blog at the Telegraph, I said I'd be checking in for a regular comedy fix. I have remained true to my word, and the bumbling oaf regularly makes me laugh with his ridiculous proclamations about sticking it to the Assembly when what really happened was that he got told off for eating a banana or something. Well, I laugh until I remember who he is and who he represents, and then my smile dies on my lips, but up until then it's okay.

What his blog reveals, among other things, is the relationship with the truth we'd expect from the BNP. Whether he's making stupid claims that get removed when they're shown to be bullshit, pretending things didn't happen in a video by pointing viewers to the wrong point, or just clearly having a fantasy version of what has happened in meetings swimming around his head, the man is clearly not averse to pointing his readers away from the truth.

One example is the creation of 'Mothers Against Knives', a group that appears to sponsor a petition he circulates on his blog calling for undefined 'tough new measures' to bring about the end of knife crime.

Except it doesn't. There is a real group called 'Mothers Against Knives', which apparently wants nothing to do with the BNP and has asked that the party remove all references to it from its literature.

Now, this could be an honest mistake . The BNP may well have nobody who knows how to use Google to see if there's already a group with the name they want to use for their front organisation.

If this was the case, you'd expect the name of the group to be changed to something difficult to confuse with the existing one, the petition changed to reflect the new name and an apology published so that nobody confuses the two.

The actual reaction has been to quietly change the title of the blog post that introduces the petition (after it's dropped off the front page), leave the petition as it is and make no mention about the change either on the blog or in any of the blog's comments.

That new impossible to confuse blog title? 'Mothers Against Knives Steps Up A Gear' has become 'London's Mother's Against Knives Steps Up A Gear'. Score one for openness and honesty!

If the BNP had no idea they were piggybacking a genuine group and could well be confusing people into thinking there was some affiliation between the two when they set things up - they do now. Adding the word 'London' to the beginning of the blog post that introduces the petition does nothing to inform people who might be tempted to sign the form.

Of course, the party may be in the process of changing everything and in the next couple of days there'll be an apology and everything. But then again, maybe not eh?

**UPDATE**The petition on the blog has now had 'London's' bunged on the top in a different font. That's probably about as honest as we can expect.

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.

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!

The amazing Strawman and Ad-hom!

When you can't actually come up with a better argument than your opponent but you want to get people on your side, there are a few things you can do. Two good ones are:

• Pretend your opponent has actually said something they haven't that you know people will be likely to oppose - known as creating a strawman argument.
• Attack the person making the argument to distract people from what they've actually said - known as an ad-hominem.

You can ignore either type of argument, since they offer nothing to the debate.

Both were utilised to great effect yesterday by the Mail and the Sun in response to new proposals fror changes to sex education.

Perhaps surprisingly, it wasn't the Sun that went for the option of the personal attack. Instead, it went for pretending its opponent argued for something it actually didn't, with 'Condoms for kids call', which claims:

THE Government was today urged to offer free condoms to schoolchildren in order to prevent teen pregnancies.

[...]

It called for all children to undergo a course of sex and relationship classes before the age of 11 - unless their parents opt out - in order to enable them to make "informed choices" regarding sex.

This, along with the use of the word 'kids' makes a link with pre-11 year olds and free condoms that doesn't actually exist in real life. The only places the actual leaflet mentions are bars, and since it's talking about teenage pregnancies, it's unlikely that it's referring to children younger than teenageers.

The language of the article paints the picture of adults approaching schooldchildren to give away condoms to them, but the leaflet only talks about making them freely available in places where young people might go.

Of course, most people will instinctively oppose approaching pre-11 year old schoolchildren and offering them condoms. Having them available in places where teenagers might go is a different kettle of fish. (And let's leave aside the role this paper plays in sexualising teenagers, with its competitions for young girls to take their tops off and its salivating anticipations for underage girls to reach 16 like it did with Charlotte Church and the girl from the harry Potter movies.)

The Mail, on the other hand, goes for the personal attack in ''Captain Underpants' MP who posed on gay dating site wants children as young as nine to be given sex advice'. The main thrust of the article is obvious from the headline. But that doesn't mean it tells the truth in the rest of the article.

It manages to mislead by ommission, with comments like:

Chris Bryant, who made the headlines in 2003 after appearing on a gay dating website in his underwear, also recommended distributing condoms in schools.

Which leaves out the fact that the leaflet only reccommends that schools should consider having sexual health clinics where condoms are made available.

It also lies by, well, lying, by saying:

The MP for Rhondda also warned that many young girls get pregnant deliberately to secure a council flat.

This is what the pamphlet actyally says about the subject, in the first entry of a section headed 'The Myths':

Many people believe that girls get pregnant so as to get a flat of their own from the Council. In fact 90% of teenage mums live in other people’s homes – normally their parents’.

So it actually says the opposite, and calls what the paper is claiming a myth.

Littlejohn proves again that he lives in a fantasy world of his own creation in 'Hey, Gordon, leave them kids alone!', when he says:

Had I discovered that Bryant had been offering my children sex advice at the age of nine, I would have taken a baseball bat to him.

In Littlejohn's world, Chris Bryant is actually responsible for actually writing the advice himself.

It's not as if he's not guilty of a little bit of misdirection himself, with:

I realise that puberty seems to encroach earlier with every generation, but I don't recall reading about any nine-year-old mothers - or fathers for that matter.

Which seems to miss that the actual document he's talking about mainly mentions sex education for under 11s so that they're prepared for the changes that are about to hppen to them. Girls can have their first period before they're 11, and ought to know they're not, you know, dying. Maybe he doesn't know that because he hasn't read the actual report. You decide.

The moral of the story is that if the tabloids actually had a coherent argument against something, they'd use it. The reason you see these types of article, or the ones that exaggerate immigration or the effects of PC is because they don't have a coherent argument. So why do they go with these stories? More on that later.

Liberal elite, where are you?

Following on from Peter Hain's apology for miscategorising a set of foreign workers and the exaggerations and lack of clarity that appeared in our left wing liberal elitist media over the last few days, we have further exaggerations and clear nonsense about the same subject in the press today - the most blatant being, as ever, the Express (which I've been avoiding recently for sanity's sake).

Get them while they're hot. Two lying arse comments in one headline/subheading combo

'MIGRANTS TAKE ALL NEW JOBS IN BRITAIN' screams the headline - which is utter, utter balls. I personally know several people hired in new positions this year who are not migrants. I sit opposite one for eight hours a day.

This story (and the recent storm in a teacup about foreign workers) is a fantastic example of how the right successfully controls the debate on immigration and exposes just how rubbish the idea of a liberal elite closing down discussion on the subject is.

The story goes on to say:

Foreign workers have taken every new job in Britain for the past four years, astonishing figures show. The total of migrant employees since 2003 has soared by 740,000, while the number of Britons in work has gone into reverse and dropped by 120,000. This means that foreign workers filled all the extra 620,000 jobs which were created during those four years.

The figures quite plainly do not show that foreign workers have taken every new job in the last four years. At all. They show that more foreign workers have got jobs in the last four years than were created in the same period. Since the number of foreign workers is higher than the number of jobs, it's blatantly flipping obvious that some of the jobs they have filled will be old ones. Since many migrants come and go, filling new jobs and then leaving at the end of the season, and since probably everyone in the country knows someone who wasn't foreign getting a new job in a newly created post in the last four years, the headline and the conclusion the paper makes about the figures is quite obviously bollocks.

If there really was a liberal elite who shut down debate on immigration, you wouldn't get shitty stories like this one. You wouldn't get stories like the Mail's take on the figures - 'Number of Britons in work falls by 270,000 - because migrants get most new jobs', which says:

The disclosure is a fresh embarrassment to ministers who have had to dramatically revise upwards the official figures on migrant workers.

Which is also bollocks. Nobody's had to revise official figures for anything. Peter Hain's had to apologise for not including a section of people already counted in the official figures in a category when he gave an answer to Parliament. Jesus wept.

Back to the Express, and we get this subheading - 'And they go to the front of the housing queue', which is followed up in the article with this:

The Prime Minister’s discomfort deepened when an investigation was launched into how white Britons are being left behind in the housing queue.

Rubbish.

An investigation has been launched into whether all British people, including the ones who aren't white, are being left behind in the housing queue. Not how specifically white people are. Remember - while filth rags like the Express talk about migration, they're really talking about race, and deliberately blurring the two.

The inevitable withdrawal of the shite claims in the headline and the opening of the Express story comes right at the very end:

But a spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions claimed the figures did not mean that all new jobs have been taken by foreigners as the level of unemployment claim-ants among British workers did not match. He added that a recent fall in the number of Britons employed has coincided with a decline in the working age population.

Employment Minister Caroline Flint said: “There are opportunities for British workers with nearly 660,000 vacancies waiting to be filled.”

Notice how the withdrawal doesn't actually include the real reason didn't mean that all new jobs have been taken by migrants. Which is that people who aren't migrants have occupied new posts. In other words - because it's a cheap lie.

Also, notice the spokesman only 'claimed'. David Davis 'said', Damian Green 'said', Sir Andrew Green 'said'. Claims can be false. And we've already been given what the Express has said is really true. If there really were a liberal elite controlling the immigration debate, the Express article would never have seen the light of day - and not because it dares to be critical of immigration, but because it's lying nonsense made up to deliberately scare white people.

More on the subject over at Lenin's Tomb.

It's only Political Correctness Gone Mad when someone else does it

"Hello Daniel san, Happy Halloween." Hang on. I think I'm getting my film references mixed up

This is a bit old now, but I've been a bit busy and since it's not even Hallowe'en yet, I'll cover it now anyway.

'It' meaning a wonderful example of a Daily Mail Political Correctness Gone Mad story that even uses the term in the headline, 'Political correctness gone mad: primary school cancels Halloween'.

I doubt I've seen a better example. The headline, for starters, is withdrawn later in the story with a quote from the school in question's headmaster:

Head teacher Lloyd Jones said: "No decision has been made yet. All we've done is discuss ideas [about what to name the disco] with the PTA."

So the 'school cancels' bit? Bollocks.

There's more. The local paper, the Neath Guardian, covers the school's reaction in 'Tonna school disco row'. A little gem curiously absent from the Mail:

But the Guardian can reveal the event was not in fact renamed and the school has never held a Halloween disco before.

The school decided to hold a special autumn disco this year to raise funds for a Christmas party – contrary to reports claiming this was a traditional Halloween event.

“Autumn Festival” was just one of the names under consideration.

Ah. No disco ever before, and in a meeting to decide what to call it someone seems to have mentioned that a Hallowe'en disco might upset some people.

But what Politically Correct zealots might be offended by Hallowe'en? The Mail article includes a quote from the local Catholic priest, presumably to show that Christians have no problem with it. Except some of them do. The Telegraph's slightly more accurate version of events, 'School may axe 'offensive' Halloween disco' (but only slightly, as the school never had a Hallowe'en disco in the first place and nothing was being axed) inludes this:

The row comes after the Bishop of Bolton claimed a victory in the battle against gruesome Halloween costumes.

The Rt Rev David Gillett said on Thursday that supermarkets had responded positively to his concerns over the sale of graphic costumes to youngsters.

Following talks with supermarkets, the Church of England says it has a commitment from several chain stores to stock less frightening or graphic products.

So, the incredibly oversensitive religious zealots who are in fact proposing changes to Hallowe'en are the Church of England. Just briefly contrast the way the Mail covers this fact - by not mentioning it and including a quote from a Catholic saying the church has no problems with the disco to represent Christians - with the way the paper covers any censorship blamed on Muslims of any kind.

Last year at around Hallowe'en, the Mail published this gem, 'Halloween party masks 'promote evil and fear', says bishop', about the Bishop of Bolton's campaign. Note the distinct lack of the 'Political Correctness Gone Mad' label in the headline or anywhere else in the article. Note the complete absence of any criticism. Note the way that most of the article is given over to the Bishop's own words, directly quoted.

So, here we have two very different treatments of different people. One who calls for censoring some aspects of a relatively traditional celebration, and one who hasn't called for the censoring of anything. The one not calling for anything to be censored is not just Politically Correct, but an example of Political Correctness Gone Mad. The one who has is given pretty sympathetic coverage. But we're to believe that the Mail is against people trying to censor things they might find offensive.

And what of the one who is calling for things to be altered so as not to offend his sensibilities? Remember this, 'Campaign for a real Christmas: Religious leaders unite against political correctness'? From that story:

The body sent a letter to town halls in the name of Anglican Bishop of Bolton David Gillett and senior Islamic cleric and Government adviser Dr Ataullah Siddiqui. It pleaded for an end to the suppression of Christmas and the restoration of its Christian meaning.

Ah. The guy calling for a change to the way Hallowe'en is celebrated is actually against Political Correctness Gone Mad. The who in the what now?

Remember, kids. It's only Political Correctness when your opponents do it. And if you're the Mail, even when they don't.

Chuck berry?

Light posting at the moment because of real life. Damn you, real life - you and your laminate-flooring-laying-necessitating ways!

Anyway, this is worth a quick belated look. The Independent offers its own coverage of the pipe attack on a 10 year old boy (the Mail coverage of which I looked at in 'Who always starts the race row?' and 'The Mail? Balance?'), in 'School sets example after race-hate incidents rise'.

As anyone would expect, there's a significant difference in emphasis between the two sets of coverage. In the Mail's, the school is a bubbling pot of tensions about to explode. In the Independent, the school is an island of calm in the middle of a stormy sea. That's to be expected, I suppose, and there's not much we can do to work out which version is true.

However, the are one or two details in the Independent that aren't in any of the right-wing papers at all, whether we're talking about the Mail, the Express, the Times or the Telegraph. (I can't find any coverage in the Sun, weirdly). If they're true, they shed a bit more light on the story. They're here:

Matters came to a head 13 days ago when Jake Stedman, a 10-year-old pupil at Luton Junior, was found by his mother outside the family home with two black eyes and a bleeding head after allegedly being chased into an alleyway by a Slovakian mother and beaten, reportedly with a metal bar.

The incident came a day after the boy had confronted another Slovakian woman outside a convenience store, thrown a blackberry at her and punched her on the arm, allegedly shouting "go back to your own country".

Firstly, it seems the alleged pipe attack came a day later than the fruit throwing incident. All the right wing papers give the impression that the woman who's alleged to have attacked the boy did so in a crazed overreaction to the throwing of a berry and a shout.

Secondly, the berry throwing incident involved a completely different person. That might explain how the woman could be described as being in her twenties and 36.

Thirdly, the original incident involved the boy hurling not only abuse and fruit at a woman, but a punch. Now, a punch on the arm from a ten year old isn't that much of a threat - but punching someone is very different from throwing a berry. The range necessary for a ten year old boy to throw a punch is pretty close, and suggests the incident was a bit more close up and nasty than lobbing a berry from a distance and almost politely shouting, 'Go back to your own country.' I'm suddenly put in mind of the football fan who claimed he'd just said words to the effect of, 'It's an early bath for you and no mistake, sir,' to Eric Cantona before finding himself on the receiving end of a rubbish kung fu kick.

But that analogy would only really be accurate if the football fan had been kung fu kicked by someone else a day later, possibly for something else. Maybe something worse.

There's also this:

The reality is somewhat different [from the right wing press coverage]. Kent Police said yesterday a 10-year-old boy had been given an official reprimand after admitting common assault and that a 36-year-old Slovakian woman arrested in connection with the attack on Jake has been released on police bail. It is understood there is no evidence that a metal bar was used and all incidents took place some distance from the school.

No evidence a metal bar was used. I have to say that the idea of a 36 year old woman beating a ten year old about the head and back with a metal bar and leaving only two black eyes sounds a bit suspicious to me. That's not to excuse any beating that might have occurred even if there was no metal bar, but you'd think newspapers would have the responsibility to look through local rumours and at least, you know, ask the police what happened.

It seems that the revelation that prompted the Mail's coverage to be amended to 'Boy 'who was attacked' by Slovakian woman may face racism charge' was that police were investigating claims of assault - and quite possibly on another person entirely. Perhaps that's why there's no outraged follow-up to the story revealing that the boy had been reprimanded - the paper would have to reveal that the boy was reprimanded for common assault rather than inciting racial hatred, and maybe even on someone else to boot.

I have no idea whether the coverage of the right wing press is the way it is as the result of a deliberate desire to suppress one side of the story, or as the result of confirmation-bias driven laziness. I also can't be sure that the Independent's version is any more accurate (although it's not very encouraging for the Mail coverage to discover that comments on the story have been switched off). I'll email some questions to the Kent police to try to find some things out, like whether or not the boy was reprimanded for an incident that happened the day before the alleged beating (although the Independent implies this, it doesn't actually state it), but I shouldn't bloody have to.

Just think of the false narrative papers like the Mail have set up here. Kid gets beaten with a metal bar and then the kid is charged with incitement to racial hatred! Imagine how these papers will now cover the story if it turns out the boy was lying and the woman is found innocent, or not even charged. With judicious use of scare quotes, they've already reported that the woman beat the boy with a metal bar, even though police say there's no evidence of that. And this reporting is of an area where tension has already spilled over into violence. Imagine what oil has been poured on that fire, with wide reports that one side is indeed in the right, and implications that even the authorities are out to get them.

And the Mail gets worked up over the naming of a fucking cat.

But why the manufactured outrage?

Another of the recent tidal wave of immigrant stories for this weekend is 'Labour hands out work permits to 1m non-EU migrants'.

Apparently, since there has been a big increase in the number of work permits that have been granted to non-EU members in the last ten years, this means that Labour are handing them out. Like sweets. But since we have no way of knowing how many applications for work permits were received, we have no way of knowing how true the caricature is. Handy that. It could be that the reduced costs and increased access to methods of travel have meant that the number of people applying has shot up, so the number granted for fufilling the required criteria has risen accordingly.

The trouble with the 'handing out' like sweets image for the Mail - aside from the gross oversimplification of choosing one category for entry in the UK - is that the paper wants to have its sweets and eat them. If the paper wants to argue that we have no control of our borders because of the vast swathes of illegal immigrants here, it can't on the other hand convincingly argue that it's too easy for immigrants to come here legally. If all you have to do to enter the UK legally is turn up, as the paper likes to imply with stories like this, then people wouldn't pack themselves in packing crates, cram themselves in false spaces in the back of lorries or sneak through the Channel Tunnel like rats (not my image, trust me).

These stats are over a month old though. Just like the stats I looked at in my last post. Is there a pattern emerging? I covered the Mail rection to Nick Clegg's calls for some illegal immigrants to be granted an amnesty, including how the paper gave half a page's worth of reaction to MigrationWatch in 'The wonders of the dead tree Mail' last week. One thing I hadn't spotted is that Clegg's comments were almost a month old, too. The paper covered the same comments on 26 August in 'Illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay, say Lib Dems'. Chief Constable Spence's comments have been followed up since last week too, and there do seem to be more anti-immigration stories in the paper than usual. In the last week, the website turns up the following anti-immigration stories in a search for the word 'immigration':

Polish phrase cards handed out to firefighters
Illegal immigrants given amnesty if they stay on run for 10 years, under Lib Dem plans
Romanians living in UK carry out 1,000 crimes in six months
Police force spending over £1 million a year on interpreters due to rise in migrant workers
Citizens' jury: What you are REALLY concerned about
PM's 'ask the people' project is missing the burning issues
Lib Dems say 600,000 illegal migrants 'should be allowed to stay'
Charmless and out of touch: The man who hopes to become the new Lib Dem leader
Belgian police detain 16 for India-Britain trafficking
If the BBC's worried about immigration, can we have an honest debate about it?
Mass migration and a 'fractured' Britain
Peterborough: A city crumbling under pressure from immigrants
French to force immigrants to give DNA samples
Overseas doctors ‘taking too many jobs’
Civil servant faces jail sentence for signing illegal passport applications
Civil servant signed fraudulent passport applications
French riot police battle the migrants queueing to get into Britain
Labour hands out work permits to 1m non-EU migrants
Police quiz Curry Queen linked to Cherie Blair over people smuggling
A fifth of crimes committed by immigrants
Immigrants 'must pay extra for health care and education'
The benefits cheats who built hotel with YOUR £400,000
'We don't even know how many migrants there are in Britain', says minister
Immigrant motorists fuelling rise in road crashes, says police chief

That's 24 in 7 days. Discount the obvious two doubles that are probably different versions of the same story and you still have an average of three negative immigration stories a day. There have been more in the print version for certain, since I've spotted at least two extras that aren't here, including MigrationWatch's piece.

In the week before, there were seven, and one of those was the France DNA story that got repeated in the last week. I haven't systematically checked further back, so don't know exactly how many of the last week's have been repetitions, or references to earlier articles but we know that a lot of the new stories are repeating old news.

So what gives? Why the sudden upsurge of bile? There are a couple of possible reasons. The first is the possibility of an early election. The Mail clearly thinks immigration is a Labour weak point, so beginning a deluge of anti-immigration stories might get the readers worked up.

The more likely explanation though, I think, is included in the 'Labour hands out work permits' story here:

Home Office Minister Liam Byrne is to publish the first comprehensive official analysis of the impact of immigration on public services and British life next month.

Earlier in the year, the Mail published a couple of massively misleading 'estimates' of the level of immigrants arriving from Romania and Bulgaria in the first three months of this year in advance of the official statistics, which came out in late May. The paper did this first by counting the number of Romanians and Bulgarians visiting the UK and claiming they were workers, which gave 60,000. Not content with that, a couple of weeks later the paper published another article estimating the same thing, this time counting the increase in the total number of visitors from all ten new Eastern European EU countries and claiming they were all Bulgarian and Romanian - raising the estimate to 150,000. On May 22, the official figures were released. The total number of Romanians and Bulgarians granted work permits was not 150,000, or even 60,000. It was 7,120. I haven't left any digits off that.

What releasing such unbelieveably exaggerated nonsense figures would have done is set the actual figures up to look pitifully small by the time they were released. Here, I'm guessing the paper is doing the same to poison Liam Byrne's well. By the time his report is released, Mail readers will have been treated to a barrage of anti-immigration stories so that Byrne's report will seem woefully out of whack if it does anything less than say we're 'crumbling under the pressure from immigrants'.

It won't stop there either. When the official count of Romanians and Bulgarians granted work permits were finally released, the Mail claimed that 120 a day had registered to be circus stars. For a start, less than 120 had even attempted to register in total. Even less had actually been granted a permit. Even if you include every outstanding application, the average would be 97 a day. The total number who had actually applied to be circus artistes worked out at 55. Not 55 a day, 55 spread over three months.

So, expect more of the same as we've seen this week. And more of the same after Byrne's figures are published.

The wonders of the dead tree Mail

There are advantages to getting the paper version of the Mail that make up for looking like you might be a proper Mail reader when you pick up a copy and take it away. The one I've been mentioning a lot recently is how you get to see how stories are positioned next to each other and the effect the placement has on the impression created for the reader. Another is that you get to see stuff that never appears on the website.

There's a great example of something that does both in today's edition. The article 'Lib Dems say 600,000 illegal migrants 'should be allowed to stay'' appears in the paper version today, under the headline '600,000 illegal migrants 'should be allowed to stay' (naturally, the Lib Dems don't say that 600,000 illegal migrants should be allowed to stay, but only that some of them should), complete with the lovely plug for MigrationWatch that appears in the online version. It's positioned on the same page as something online readers aren't treated to. A half page comment piece responding to the Lib Dem's suggestions by none other than Sir Andrew Green. Hurrah!

It's a pity this bigger plug for one of MigrationWatch's reports isn't on the site so we can all laugh at it. [*UPDATE* There is a version on the MIgrationWatch site]. It is pretty awful, with some nice outrage that could have been lifted directly from the pages of the Daily Mail - hang on! It is lifted from the Mail!

'Who are these people the Lib Dems are suddenly championing?' Sir Andrew Green asks. He goes on to explain, before telling us how 'they have been doing us serious harm in two ways' here are the two ways:

First, they have been undercutting the wages of British workers. London is the most expensive city in Britain but unskilled wages are the lowest in the country - for the simple reason that there is a huge supply of illegal immigrants ready to work at, and often below, the minimum wage.

Secondly, these workers are enabling unscrupulous employers to undercut honest employers who provide decent pay and conditions for their staff.

These are some nasty people all round here - nasty illegals undercutting honest workers, nasty employers undercutting honest ones - how could we ever put a stop to that? Hmmm . . . let me think. How about, right, removing the incentive of both immigrants and unscrupulous employers to undercut honest people by, I dunno, giving the people earning the low wages the right to earn higher ones at the same time as forcing the employers to pay a minimum? Maybe we could do that by . . . offering amnesty to illegal immigrants! Why hasn't someone else thought of that?

It's worth noticing that illegal immigrants have been harming us by unscrupulous employers paying them. The unscrupulous employers aren't responsible for their actions at all.

After this, we get some sterling reasoning why IPPR estimates for how much amnesty for illegal immigrants who have been here for ten years or more will net £1 billion in unpaid taxes are rubbish and they won't in fact contribute anything. I'm going to pause here and let you guess why. Go on, guess. Did you guess that it was because they'd all be claiming benefits to cancel out contributions in taxes? Hooray for you if you did! If you guessed it was because they'd go on to take our council houses - and their kids too, eventually - you can give yourself an extra sweetie.

This is where Green gets to plug MigrationWatch's report on a amnesty, 'The True Cost of an Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants'. Basically, it says that these people will claim benefits and nick our council houses so that instead of earning us money in unpaid taxes, an amnesty would cost us a billion from their grasping benefit scrounging. The working is characteristically slipshod. The report moans that the IPPR figure for the number of illegal immigrants working (61%) must be an overestimate because they're based on the employment figures for non-illegal immigrants and these include people from developed countries who have a higher employment rate. The brown ones ones from developing countries have a lower employment rate, and more illegal immigrants come from developing countries so the employment rate for illegal immigrants must be lower. Can you spot what's wrong with that argument?

That's it! Illegal immigrants can't get any benefits, so their employment rate must be higher than the average for people from developing countries or they must have some way other than claiming benefits or working to support themselves. Unless they're somehow claiming benefits anyway, in which case an amnesty won't make any difference in how much the unemployed ones claim in benefits since they're claiming it anyway. Ah.

The report is also based on what would happen if quite a high proportion of illegal immigrants were granted an amnesty, when Clegg is pretty clear that it would only be open to some. The Mail article and the comment piece by Sir Andrew Green do the same, funnily enough.

See? Pants.

Anyway - back to the Mail piece. 'What would all this achieve?' asks Green. 'Would it solve the problem of immigrant workers being exploited? The answer is an emphatic no.'

Unfortunately for Sir Andrew, he goes on to explain how there will always be illegal immigrants by shooting much of what MigrationWatch says about immigration in the foot. Apparently, 'there will always be people from the third world and the poorer parts of Europe who will stay on illegally and replace those granted amnesty.' He goes on to explain:

It is essential that we streamline the process [of deporting illegal immigrants] so that we can remove significant numbers of illegals at a reasonable cost. However, it is hardly feasible to march half a million or more people on to an aircraft and fly them home - they would, in any case, simply be replaced by others.

So, here he is admitting that deporting plane after plane of illegal immigrants would be throwing good money after bad, but since he's arguing against the main alternative - granting an amnesty for a significant number - it's hard to see what he's arguing for if it isn't the status quo. The current illegal immigrants being left with their illegal status and not deported.

In other words, uncontrolled immigration.

Unless of course, having some immigrants classed as illegal would mean that immigration is controlled. In which case MigrationWatch's moaning about how immigration is uncontrolled is rubbish.

Oh dear.

He carries on:

On almost every occasion [of amnesties being granted in other countries] there have been more applications than the previous time. There could not be clearer evidence that amnesties simply attract more and more illegal immigrants, as common sense suggests.

Hey, don't mock. I bet there are loads of people willing to put themselves through ten years of working for pittance wages and living in penury so that they can go on to live in penury thanks to the state.

The conclusion is suitably all over the place. The answer is to heavily punish the unscrupulous employers we heard about earlier. You know what? That's something I'd like to see, too. Another answer is to make it harder for illegal immigrants to access National Health and education services. Here's Sir Andrew saying that illegal immigrants already use the health service and state education services. The're 'wide open to people who have no right whatever to even be in this country', apparently. Presumably that means we can wipe the £1780 million and £1590 million in extra costs of an amnesty to health and education services from the MigrationWatch report he's plugging, since the illegal immigrants access these services anyway. There go the two highest costs in one swipe! Poof!

Naturally, he doesn't mention how much it will cost to streamline the deportation process or what the alternative should be to marching them to the airport and putting them on the plane. He doesn't mention how much it will cost to police NHS and education service users to find out what their immigration status is. He doesn't mention what the effects would be of preventing the children of people he already admits are exploited from getting an education. He lambasts Nick Clegg for not knowing how many illegal immigrants there are, or how they'll prove they've been here for ten years without explaining himself how he would uncover illegal immigrants, and how much such policing would cost. The MigrationWatch report goes into great detail of how much an amnesty would cost in terms of benefits (including services he declares are used widely anyway, so no extra cost would be incurred by an amnesty) but says nothing about any alternatives, or what they would cost. Funny that.

The rest offers no answers. It just says people are scared about immigration so politicians need to be firm.

I wonder if part of the reason people are scared about immigration is that anti-immigration lobby groups get their opinion pieces printed in national newspapers.

I wonder if this wasn't put on the website because it would be too easy for bloggers to destroy.

I wonder if Sir Andrew or MigrationWatch got paid for this.

For an alternative view of Clegg's proposals, see the loony lefty commie pinko Economist.

Alice through the bonkers nut nut glass

I don't know if the tabloids are getting more blatant, or I'm getting too used to their lame tactics, but back with the Express again, we have 'Secret 'amnesty' for 500,000 asylum seekers'. The exaggeration and distortion isn't very well disguised, even for an Express article.

I mean, look at the opening sentence:

BRITAIN may allow nearly half a million failed asylum seekers to stay here under a back-door amnesty scheme.

Withdrawing the headline's claim straight away with a 'may'? What is this paper coming to?

Here's what prompts the claim of a [imagine some creepy music please] secret amnesty:

Yesterday, the Home Office confirmed hundreds of thousands of claims would be looked at on a “case-by-case basis”.

The Home Office told everyone about it, meaning it's not a secret. Oh, and there's no amnesty either.

Here's the whole non-story in a nutshell. There's a backlog of some 450,000 failed asylum claims to be sorted through to assess whether any should be given indefinite leave to remain as naturalised citizens because they've lived here long enough to qualify. In other words, there's a backlog - which is bad - and the government have done exactly what they should be expected to do to clear it - which is good. In the Express, this means a vast conspiracy to give them all amnesty. Based on no evidence whatsoever.

What would the Express rather have? Actually, scratch that. I think we already know.

They don't even seem to be trying anymore. Still works though. There's a petition linked to to sign in the comments, from the woman who called for the compulsory sterilisation of immigrants after the second child. That comment's been deleted for being racist, so it's nice to know that the Express stops short of publishing stuff that comes that close to actual Nazi dogma.

Wonder if any of the people in the comments who worry about this amnesty sending the wrong signals to people who might want to falsely claim amnesty realise that the only people sending them those signals in the first place are the Express and the commenters themselves.

Actually, no I don't.

*UPDATE* I edited the 'whole non-story in a nutshell' paragraph, as the applications don't need to be sorted through to see if any claims are valid, since they're all not. So all that's being looked into is how long the people involved have been here.