Mid-Market tabloids ban religion

Critics reacted with fury as popular newspapers that like to think of themselves as better than red-top tabloids airbrushed Christ out of Christmas in recent days.

In several headlines, the Daily Express and Daily Mail BANNED the word 'Christmas' and replaced it with the more 'inclusive' words, 'festive' and 'seasonal'.

The Express even went as far as including one politically correct term on its December 13 FRONT PAGE with the headline, 'OUR £6BN FESTIVE SHOPPING BONANZA', and has replaced 'Christmas' THREE TIMES in the last two days in 'LOTTO PLANS 25 FESTIVE MILLIONAIRES', 'SCOTS IN LATE STAMPEDE FOR FESTIVE HOLIDAY SUN' and 'SIX OF THE BEST FESTIVE DRINKS'.

What's the point?

Slim pickings around these parts recently, for which I apologise.

A few things contributing, but one of the main ones is the demoralising spectacle of the News of the World phone hacking scandal diminishing back into obscurity, looking less and less likely to actually go anywhere as time goes by. The ludicrousness of trusting the police to investigate a case in which they themselves have been accused of previously pursuing without due vigour has been exposed with witnesses threatened with being treated like suspects, thus successfully discouraging anyone from coming forward. Job done. 

The Baroness and the Groan

Via the nice person behind exclarotive (which is one of the many fine new additions to my blogroll on the right - check 'em out), I have stumbled across this interview with Baroness Warsi in the Guardian.

Since I'm obsessed with myths like the one about Winterval, exclarotive knew I'd zero in on this bit:

Winterval: The beast that wouldn't die!

Winterval.  It's probably one of the most famous PC Gone Mad myths there is.  Just like every teacher told the story of someone at their last school who leant on the back legs of their chair and broke their back to scare us into sitting properly, the papers have used Winterval alongside classics like Baa Baa Green Sheep to scare us into not thinking about things like inclusiveness or bothering to be polite to people if they're not white, male, British, straight or able-bodied for over a decade.

Ho ho ho! Happy Winter Festival!

Hello people. It's another one of those posts where I tell you I'll be away for a bit because I'm going on holiday. I am you know. At Christmas and everything. To a Muslim country. I am the PC Gone Mad daddy!

Comment moderation will be on for a week while I heathen it up. In the meantime, entertain yourselves with this Winterval related post at TabloidWatch.

Merry Winter Light Day!

How to write a 'Christmas is under attack' scare story

Okay, imagine you're a tabloid reporter.  No - don't top yourself!  You can go back to being you after.

You're a tabloid reporter, and being a tabloid, your paper loves the 'Christmas is banned' scare stories and all that 'PC Gone mad' rubbish.  You come across a story that could be turned into an 'Oh my god why are they banning Christmas?  Won't somebody think of the children?' scare, but you're aware that it's most probably bollocks.  What do you do?

Bingo!  You write the story anyway!  Just follow this handy template and you're away.

Still not banning Christmas

 A couple more, "they're banning Christmas," style stories from the Mail.  I've been prevented from looking at these by catching the dreaded swine flu, so you get two for the price of one in this post.  Lucky old you.

'Pull the other one! Christmas cracker gags to keep the PC brigade happy' is a story that has been picked up by the Express, Telegraph and Sun.  According to the Mail, this is what happened:

The police have banned carol singers!

Clever old Daily Mail.  The paper didn't fall for any of that nonsense about Dundee Council banning Christmas lights.  It's only the genuine Christmas bans you'll hear about in the Mail.

Did you know the police had banned carol singers.  Seriously.  'Scrooge police 'ban' Christmas carol singers because of stranger dangers'.  When will we stop the encroachment of the nanny state?

Political Correctness is FASCISM and NAZISM and BANS CHRISTMAS! (Updated)

Political Correctness Gone Mad has its hands full.  When it's not busy being MARXIST and STALINIST, it's goosestepping all up the place being NAZI.  Makes sense really.  Why do you think there's a PC BRIGADE, huh?  What do you think we spend all our time polishing our boots and ironing creases into our uniforms for?

Evidence of the PC Brigade's NAZI roots abounds in the Mail's 'How Hitler's Nazi propaganda machine tried to take Christ out of Christmas', an article so ironic, given the paper's facist sympathising past, that it could generate the entire wardrobe for the next Iron Man sequel and leave enough to kit him out with a new bile generator weapon to shoot from his mouth.

These 'they've banned Christmas' stories start earlier every year!

They don't actually.  Last year, the Observer reported on 2 November that Oxford City Council had banned all reference to Christmas in its WinterLight Festival (which was nonsense).  This year, it wasn't until the 13th that the Times managed 'Christmas lights switch-on ceremony renamed ‘Winter White Night’'.  Guess what?  It's nonsense!

Merry Christmas

The headline says most of it. Sorry posting has been non existent for a while. I've managed to get a stomach bug just at the time of year where it most looks like I'm skiving from work. Blech.

I'll be trying to eat my Christmas lunch without worrying that it'll cause a mad dash to the loo, shortly. At the in-laws, which will add to the fun by making the experience extra weird.

Anyway - Merry Christmas eveerybody!

Smellyface Christmas, Everybody!

Ah, Smellyface (for those of you who have been scratching their heads about who Smellyface is, see here). Just a day after I looked at how a PC Brigade organisation supposedly responsible for banning Christmas actually advertised Christmas events on its website, one of which involving things that Smellyface has claimed have been banned by the PC Brigade, he comes out with a column with a lovely little bit about how Christmas is being banned. Hurrah!

Merry WinterLight

Hello people. Remember this?
Christmas is axed in Oxford

Council leaders in Oxford have decided to ban the word Christmas from this year's festive celebrations to make them more 'inclusive'.

Here's how the ban is enforced on Oxford City Council website (below the jump):

Here comes the non-gender specific parent of Winterval!

That's it! I must download the whole thing NOW! And then send this guy around to every editor on Fleet Street
Ho ho ho, children! Merry Winterval, you naughty motherf-!

They've banned Christmas - it's PC Gorn Mad

Damn that left wing media

Gah! They've gorn and done it again. Another year, another made up nonsense story about axing Christmas when it hasn't been axed hits the papers. This year's wheeze involves a Council having a winter festival some time around Christmas that isn't called Christmas and doesn't actually replace Christmas - and a paper screaming that Christmas has been axed.

The villian in this pantomime is Oxford City Council.

BOOOOOOOO!

This year, it's having a festival called WinterLight.

HISSSSSSS!

The hero is the Daily Mail.

HOOORA-

no, hang on - it's not the Mail. It must be the Sun

RAAAAAY-

no - it's not the Sun either. It's, um, the Express?

Hooray?

Nope. It's the Observer.

This year's tumbleweeds

Now that I'm aware this film exists, I am duty bound to see it

Sorry for the slim pickings here at Five Chinese Crackers recently. Lots of things contributing - one very important one being the loss of broadband connections and another being the inevitable breakdown and refusal to refund of a cheapy PC World laptop (I've never heard a good word about their customer service, ever - shouldn't have gone there in the first place). Plus work on banning Christmas has kept me busy.

But, for now - here I am! Rock you like a hurricane!

Loads has been happening in my absence from blogging in the last few weeks. Probably the biggest and best at the moment, and this is connected to what I do here even if only tangentially, is the BBC actually doing what journalists are supposed to do for a change and checking some facts. If only they did it with other things, eh?

My favourite of the other stuff operating on the same usual tabloid droning level is the Mail's take on the Express's screeching from last month about all new jobs going to migrants. Apparently, the Mail thinks it's only 80% - although it thought that nonsense was worthy of a front page headline, too. They're both wrong. Actually, 80% of British people have been taken over by migrants since 1997. My real name is Pavel and I come from Budapest. The real Five Chinese Crackers is in a gulag for saying the word 'poof' when he was describing something disappearing into thin air in 2002. He would have been alright except the council found out he wasn't even really Chinese.

A big surprise for me is being wrong-footed by the tabloids into actually overestimating the extent to which things they describe as PC Gone Mad actually happen. In one of my last posts, 'This year's baubles', I looked at the emergence of a campaign by the Sun for stories about schools having non-Christian Christmas plays. In it, I said this:

The Sun should get at least some examples this year, since schools are educational institutions that have obligations to teach their pupils about other religions and will probably use Christmas as a springboard to do that. You'd probably be hard pushed to find a school that doesn't use Christmas as an opportunity to teach about other religions, since that's their job.

Admittedly, I thought the paper would lie and distort to create some nonsense stories from a kernel of truth, like some schools mentioning that other religions exist during Christmas presentations or something, but I'm still surprised to see what the paper has managed to turn up.

What they've managed to turn up was probably best described by a gloriously drunk man I once saw get called up on stage by Paul Daniels and asked to tell the audience what Daniels had hidden in a bag he was holding up.

'Ffffuckhall'.

That's right. No stories about any plays being changed to make Jesus a Muslim. No Christmas songs played in a style that is usually associated with - gasp - black people. No plays turned into clumsy blaxploitation versions of the nativity. Although I'd pay good money to see one of those, sucka.

Instead, in a fantastic echo of last year's pretending that loads of companies had banned Christmas decorations to avoid offending people of other faiths, all the paper could manage is one school who decided not to use fairy wings on the angels in its nativity play because of health and safety reasons in 'Elf [sic] 'n [sic] safety ban on angel wings'. Of course, the hack here tries to make it look as though the story isn't as limp as the lettuce in a supermarket sandwich by saying:

TEACHERS have banned primary school kids from wearing angel wings in their nativity – because of health and safety worries.

They fear pupils carrying candles in the play could set the festive costumes on FIRE.

when what he actually meant was A TEACHER in A SCHOOL, but his best efforts doesn't cover the fact that there's a nativity play at the school in the first place.

Another, closely related story is 'School’s Christmas card axe', which made a lot of the right wing cack sheets and at least one of the apparently left wing posh papers. It was about kids being banned from sending Christmas cards. Except they weren't. Obsolete demolishes this nonsense in characteristically good fashion.

In the absence of any actual evidence, one familiar development this year is replacing any real articles about anything the paper claims is happening with jokey-jokey-ha-ha parodies about what the paper is pretending is happening but actually hasn't. Seriously, these are really funny. Like slamming your willy in a drawer. Or hitting your chests with a flyswatter if you're a lady.

First up is 'Away in a Fair-Trade manger'. This one really did make me laugh, chiefly because of how badly the page is built, with the story shunted into the right hand column and the 'More' button taking you nowhere. The bones of it are some side-splitting made up pretend things that are supposed to be wrong with the traditional nativity play. Which schools aren't having anyway because they've been banned.

The second is 'Behold the PC nativity scene' which is pretty much the exact same thing in reverse. Lots of actually very funny* things that should be included in a PC nativity play, except the PC brigade have banned nativity plays. My head hurts. (There's a whole website of this cack, with mystery meat navigation and everything).

The funniest thing about this is this brazen bit of cobblers:

We have highlighted a ban on DECORATIONS in case they offend other faiths

The paper never highlighted a ban on DECORATIONS because of other faiths - it made one up!

What's the betting that next year somoe of the things in one of their really actually hilarious spoofs is quoted as being true?

I want to send the paper a pink cricket ball for Christmas, with the message 'WANKERS!' scratched on it. Through the window. Except PC killjoys have made that ILLEGAL. Maybe there's something to this PC stuff after all.

* I lied then, for no good reason.

How PC Gone Mad stories spread like Urban Legends vol. umpty-umpty-ump

Wot no Winterval?

Last year, because the Sun couldn't actually come up with any examples of any companies banning Christmas decorations to avoid offending people of other faiths, it decided to showcase those where plans had been changed for health and safety or other reasons instead.

One of the resulting stories was 'Baubles Banned in Job Centre' about a Job Centre in South London that didn't have Christmas decorations so that the poor people visiting didn't feel bad for not being able to afford their own. I'm sure I saw a story from a few days later saying the manager involved had relented, but I can't seem to find it now.

Anyway - via Rhetorically Speaking comes this gem from the Times, 'Christmas is cool, says equality boss':

Examples of the erosion of the traditional Christmas festival are becoming increasingly easy to find. Last year Tower Hamlets council in east London banned decorations at JobCentres.

So, a Job Centre in South London that didn't have decorations (that later probably relented) because of not upsetting the poor becomes Job Centres across Tower Hamlets banning Christmas decorations to avoid offending people of other faiths in one quick jump. I wonder if this will acquire the same Urban Legendary status as Birmingham's banning of Christmas in favour of Winterval. (Incidentally, the illustration at the top is Birmingham City Council's homepage. Note the word 'Christmas' in massive letters in several places all over the page. Note the distinct lack of the word 'Winterval' anywhere).

Also included is reference to the IPPR's rabid calls for banning Christmas, which seem to have entered the official PC Gone Mad Christmas ban mythology despite not actually havinig been published anywhere yet. Oh, and despite the fact that the IPPR report doesn't say what the Times says it does.

Still, doesn't seem to have stopped Trevor Phillips being caught hook, line and sinker. That is, of course, providing the paper is honestly reporting his comments and not just fibbing about them. See, even this article could be another example of confected outrage about banning Christmas. It's not always easy to spot where the baubles end.

This madness must stop!

This year's baubles

The Sun has a new save Christmas campaign this year, different from last years moronic 'Kick 'em in the baubles' one.

Here's the 'previously, on LA Law' style flashback montage of last year's campaign in the Sun. You have to imagine the screeching saxophone, big haired women in shoulder pads and that bloke out of 'Clash of the Titans' walking about yourself:

Objection!

Employment law firm Peninsula claimed to have conducted a study that showed that around three quarters of companies admitted to banning Christmas decorations so as not to offend people of other faiths.

This prompted the Sun to start a campaign to decorate workplaces in defiance, looking for examples of firms banning decorations to avoid offence to people of other faiths so the paper could name and shame them.

It didn't find a single firm that had done that, and included examples of companies disallowing decorations on health and safety grounds (Greggs the bakers - fancy some tinsel or Blu-Tack dropping in your pasty? Me neither) and disallowing cotton wool from being glued to the walls because it would ruin the paintwork instead.

The best the paper could manage was a job centre that didn't have decorations so the poor people going in didn't feel bad about not having any themselves. Lame, but not the same.

In the middle of the campaign, the paper was so desperate for support that it took comments from Tony Blair being sceptical of the idea that anyone was banning Christmas decorations and pretended he actually said the opposite by selectively quoting him. Or 'fibbing', if you prefer.

And in this year's episode:

The article fibbing about Tony Blair has disappeared from the site completely.

The original version of the 'Kick 'em in the baubles' launch article 'Tree's a silent nightmare' isn't on the website anymore either. There's a heavily cut version with most of the original taken out - maybe because of complaints about how misleading it was. Who knows?

The Sun has decided to focus on schools rather than workplaces, and on religion rather than decorations. It all kicks off in 'Don't take Christ from Christmas', by Canon David Meara, which ends with this little appeal:

IS your children’s school staging a Nativity or simply an end-of-year “celebration”? Do they learn carols or modern-day substitutes? Email us at features@ the-sun.co.ukor ring us on 0207 782 4344. Don’t worry about the cost – we will call you back.

From the paper's point of view, this is an excellent idea. Now, any example of any school doing something for Christmas that isn't specifically about the Nativity can be used as an example of a Politically Correct Gone Mad attempt to ban Christmas - even if the school does other things that do celebrate the Nativity. Last year, the Mail managed the article 'Christmas play axed in celebration of political correctness' about a school that had classes doing presentations about Christmas and Christingles as well as carol singing in the local shopping mall, a Christmas tree and a traditional Chritmas dinner - all because it also had a presentation about Diwali and one about Hannukah.

The trouble is, the Sun itself usually enthusiastically embraces non-Christian elements of Christmas, with its insistence on Christmas trees and liberal usage of the word 'Yule', which refers to a pagan festival. Still, the paper's never been one to avoid hypocrisy.

The Sun should get at least some examples this year, since schools are educational institutions that have obligations to teach their pupils about other religions and will probably use Christmas as a springboard to do that. You'd probably be hard pushed to find a school that doesn't use Christmas as an opportunity to teach about other religions, since that's their job.

The scale down of the ambitiousness from last year's damp squib is a little disappointing though. It's a bit like finding out that MacKenzie Brackman had moved out of their swanky LA skyscraper in favour of a business park in Manchester, hung up their shoulder pads and started ambulance chasing for business by conducting shoddy polls to scare companies into thinking they need to consult about whether they can have Christmas decorations.

Here's hoping there's more to come with the paper having a big, brash cavalcade of made up nonsense possibly involving thinly-veiled racism. It wouldn't be Christmas without one.

Selective quoting bans Christmas

When I originally posted about the IPPR study "The Power of Belonging: Identity, Citizenship and Community Cohesion" and how the papers decided it argued for banning Christmas, I emailed the IPPR asking if they could point me toward a copy I could access.

Just under two weeks later, the think-tank have come through and emailed me a pdf version. It's a 57 page document covering all sorts of issues about multiculturalism, so naturally, I turned straight to the section about Christmas to see if the papers had been accurate about it.

Or, I would have if there was a section about Christmas. There isn't. The word 'Christmas' appears once in the entire document, in the middle of Chapter 5 - 'Multiculturalism and Citizenship'. This chapter examines whether the state should be made more culturally neutral, and looks at the argument against multiculturalism that says the state should not favour any culture over another or give any special attention to any one. The chapter argues that those things that can be made more neutral should be, but that since some things can't, other minority cultures should be recognised by the state. Christmas is just used as an extreme example of something that is so deeply ingrained into the national culture that it can't be made more neutral - and the inclusion of 'even if we wanted to' in the mention of it is a signal that the report's authors don't actually want to make Christmas more neutral, or 'downgrade' it anyway.

Which brings me to the actual quotes from the papers. The word 'downgrade' doesn't appear once. So its inclusion in quotation marks in the headlines of the Mail and Express versions is misleading from the get go. Of course, the report doesn't argue that Christmas should be scrapped or banned either. Both of those are inventions.

Sticking to the Christmas quotes from the papers for now, the Mail claims that the report says:

"Even-handedness dictates that we provide public recognition to minority cultures and traditions.

"If we are going to continue as a nation to mark Christmas - and it would be very hard to expunge it from our national life even if we wanted to - then public organisations should mark other religious festivals too.

"We can no longer define ourselves as a Christian nation, nor an especially religious one in any sense.

"The empire is gone, church attendance is at historically low levels, and the Second World War is inexorably slipping from memory."

This quoting is very selective. The first sentence is only partial. It actually begins with the words 'In these circumstances,' because the context is further explained by what leads up to it. The circumstances are ones in which some things can't be done away with or changed. The chapter itself is two pages long, and the Christmas quote appears at the bottom of the first page.

More importantly, the third and fourth sentences don't immediately follow the first two like they do in the quote. They come three pages later, in a completely different chapter about national identity. Mashing the two sets of quotes together creates a new context to the original quotes, making the idea that the report is calling for a downgrading of Christmas seem more likely. Instead of Christmas being an example of part of the national culture that is so deeply ingrained it couldn't be expunged even if we wanted to, it becomes something we should expunge because it's an anachronism.

The Telegraph - as well as saying the report tells us to scrap Christmas - claims the report says:

"If we are going to continue to mark Christmas - and it would be very hard to expunge it from our national life even if we wanted to - then public organisations should mark other major religious festivals too.

"Even-handedness dictates that we provide public recognition to minority cultures and traditions."

Here, the context that leads up to the Christmas quote is not only removed as in the Mail, but the lead in sentence is switched so it comes after the conclusion to make it look like the conclusion itself. It makes it look as though the report is arguing that we should be even-handed with regard to the treatment we give to other traditions to the extent of making them as celebrated as Christmas. In fact, the Christmas quote is followed by caveats about how it's difficult to recognise different identities without encouraging uncritical submission to them and how we should be critical of those identities where we need to be.

The Sun claims the report says:

“National culture will inevitably represent something of a barrier to most new migrants.

“If we are going to continue as a nation to mark Christmas – and it would be very hard to expunge it from our national life even if we wanted to – then public organisations should mark other major religious festivals too.”

As with the Mail and Telegraph, there's some farting around here. The first sentence doesn't actually precede the second in the report, it comes a couple of paragraphs later in the chapter. Putting it first makes it look as though the report has specifically targeted Christmas as being a barrier to new migrants when it hasn't.

That's it for the quotes about Christmas in all the newspapers. There are three different versions of the same quote in these three papers. The Express doesn't give the quote any context, but does go on to say the report has made a conclusion it hasn't (see below). What is surprising is that such a throwaway line about something we can't and don't want to change became the main focus for articles telling us the report says we should change it, or worse still, ban or scrap it.

There are other instances of farting around with quotes about other aspects of the report. The Mail includes a quote about the introduction of '"Birth ceremonies", at which state and parents agree to "work in partnership" to bring up children', whereas the report doesn't mention birth ceremonies once. There is a suggestion that the registration of a child should take on qualities like that of a citizenship ceremony, and that parents, their friends, their family and the state should agree to work in partnership in bringing up the child. But 'birth ceremonies' sounds more wishy-washy and less like a Christening - and eliminating references to friends and family makes it look a bit more loony lefty.

The Express repeatedly quotes the phrase “foster a sense of shared values” and gives the idea that this is what the things the report recommends are supposed to do - especially recognising other festivals alongside Christmas. But the quote doesn't appear in the report. It does say that one thing the government can do is 'foster a set of shared values', and it continues to 'argue these values on their own lack the motivational power to bind a community together'. Of course, 'sense' is more wishy-washy and vague than 'set'. Giving the idea that we should be recognising other festivals to foster this sense of values is also more wishy-washy and cartoon lefty sounding than merely saying that one thing the government can do is foster a set of values, and arguing that this on its own is not enough.

None of this is to say that the IPPR report is a fantastically clear and concise document that any fool can understand. It isn't. It's sometimes difficult to know when it's talking about religion and when it's talking about ethnicity. The idea of cultural neutrality is confusing, and it's difficult to work out whether that just means secular in a religious sense, or lacking in any culture at all. What is being 'culturally neutral' anyway? If we're talking about things being more secular then that's what we should say - since doing so would just make them part of a secular culture. I'm not defending the report as a great piece of work here.

But the idea that the document is about how we should ban Christmas is ludicrous. As for whether we should downgrade Christmas - I could understand how someone might wonder if the report's authors are saying the only reason we shouldn't do that is because we can't, but to show that the report really does argue that Christmas should be downgraded, you have to fart about with quotes, like the papers have done here. Looking back over the newspaper articles, it's surprising how few extended quotes from the actual report there are, and how many single words or phrases are taken out and 'explained' by the papers.

Maybe the blame should be spread around a little, but I can understand how the report's authors would be surprised that a single throwaway sentence in the middle of a report that stretches over fifty pages would become the entire focus of a whole bunch of 'ban Christmas' scandal articles.

'Tis surely the season!

Hurrah for the Graun's 'Comment is Free' section. Hurrah and praise be!

Since my post from yesterday, CiF has published a post from one of the authors of the IPPR study denying claims that his forthcoming report will say that Christmas should be downgraded, scrapped or banned. It's headlined 'Christmas is here to stay'. Thank you, the liberal elite, you're my hero!

The posting isn't as good as Mr Garapich's letter to James Slack from the Daily Mail, but it's enough for me to be saved from eating crow for dinner this evening. Key quotes:

Nowhere in the report do we argue that Christmas should be "downgraded" nor do we describe it as a cultural barrier for minority groups. It would of course be completely absurd to do so.

and:

Let's be clear: this does not mean equivalent public holidays for all faiths - no one is asking for that.

I would say that that's a relief, but it's not enough of a surprise to be a relief.

It's also not surprising that this little urban legend spread like wildfire. That's what urban legends do. It's no surprise that some people who read the press coverage believed it and regurgitated it. It's easy to underestimate the ability of the tabloids to just make shit up.

The only papers (or bloggers) guilty of actually making shit up here that I've seen are, either or both of the Daily Mail and Daily Express (depending on whether either or both had access to the report) for inserting the word 'downgrade'. The Sun for increasing the nonsense by adding the words 'ban' and 'scrap' and Carol Malone for introducing the idea that the government called for the downgrading. Everyone else just fell for stories that are designed to be convincing in the first place. It really is easy to underestimate the tabloids' capacity for making shit up.

One thing that depresses me, and I have to disagree with, is a comment by Ally Fogg on the Cif article that says:

My argument was basically that by raising this issue in this context, there was only ever going to be one reaction from the right wing press. We all know how they work. The details of the report don't matter, the accuracy of their reporting doesn't matter. The point is you handed a gift-wrapped political-correctness-gone-mad scandal to the tabloids. I fully accept that your intentions are benign, but the effects are incredibly damaging. Either the IPPR did not realise what the press would do with your suggestions, in which case you are foolish, or else you did not care what the press would do with them, in which case you are highly irresponsible. Which is it?

Have we really got to the point where the right wing press has so much power that we have to be careful about saying certain things because we know they'll lie about them?

It probably has, sadly. And that's partly due to the genius of shouting 'PC Gone Mad' at every turn, and partly due to the fact that the PCC really is the press watchdog - meaning it belongs to the press and protects it from the public, rather than the other way around.

But saying left wing think tanks like the IPPR should not say things in a certain way because the tabloids will lie about them is surely blaming the victim. The right wing tabloids should change the way they do things and stop bloody lying, since lying is actually wrong and making an argument isn't. Blaming the IPPR here is like telling off a victim for not staying away from their bully.

It's also a bit premature to blame the IPPR for being irresponsible or stupid for producing this report since it hasn't even been published yet.

Blame the right wing press. They're at fault.