Jon Slattery…

Lord Hunt, PCC chairman since October, told Exaro in an interview with David Hencke: “At the moment, it is like the Wild West out there. We need to appoint a sheriff.”

His initial plan for online media is to invite bloggers who write on current affairs to volunteer to be regulated by the replacement body for the PCC.

Lord Hunt wants a ‘kitemark’ style badge for bloggers, who will have to pay for the privelige.

When this type of thing was suggested for the papers at last years Editors Cose review it was given no thought at all. I realise that the PCC was Baroness Buscombe then, but still. The idea of regulating blogs was also raised by the PCC then, and the response was a big resounding no by bloggers. How would it work? Who would it cover? It would just be unenforcable etc.

Lord Hunt should concentrate on getting together a proper regulatory process with proper sanctions before trying to widen his remit.

Until then, Lord Hunt can go fuck himself.

Upponnothing…

My thoughts on Clarkson’s comments are simple: make them on TV and you can expect to get lots of complaints and outrage; make them in a newspaper and you’d be handsomely rewarded as a ‘star’ columnist. If anything, Clarkson has just provided a perfect example of the kind of jokey hyperbole he gets away with in print without a whisper of outrage being deemed as the work of Satan just because he said it on TV.

There is a very interesting double standard in this country when it comes to what is acceptable on TV compared to what is acceptable in print. Just imagine – for example – a TV news broadcast flicking from a serious news story to an upskirt shot of some female celeb getting out of a taxi or a video report about what Suri Cruise has worn during the week or how ‘she looks all grown up’. It, of course, would probably crash the phone network as outraged masses call in their disgust and complaints.

Yet this is what we get in the tabloids. It seems to me that British Society finds the medium of TV inherently more offensive than the medium of print.

This (.pdf) is one of the most pleasant things I’ve read in a long time…

Florida based celebrity photo agency Mavrix have filed suit against the British newspaper for multiple copyright infringements, and are seeking statutory damages of $150,000 per infringement. With up to 10 images involved the total sought comes to $1.5m plus attorney’s fees and “any such other and further relief as the Court may deem just and appropriate”.

In court documents Mavrix accuse the Mail of “a pattern and practice of intellectual property piracy”:

“One of the Daily Mail employees who Mavrix interacted in the past regarding Mavrix images was Elliot Wagland, the Daily Mail Online Picture Editor. Defendants with Mr. Wagland’s assistance have a history of copyright piracy conduct. Indeed, the pattern and practice of Defendants is to ignore the demand of photo agencies or photographers to agree to rates before use and to simply take the pictures and use them without compensation or to then offer token compensation.”

h/t @waxnip

The Daily Mail has suprised everyone this morning by, steady yourself, admitting winterval is a myth

We stated in an article on 26 September that Christmas has been renamed in various places Winterval.

Winterval was the collective name for a season of public events, both religious and secular, which took place in Birmingham in 1997 and 1998.

We are happy to make clear that Winterval did not rename or replace Christmas.

Dave Cross a written a few words that doesn’t need me adding to it, except to ask, can we get the Mail to admit Christianity is a myth?

I must also add that Kevin Arscott and his paper The Winterval Myth had a big part to play in this.

You’ve heard of the Leveson Enquiry, haven’t you? Lord Justice Leveson is looking into pretty much all aspects of the press, from the practices and ethics to the regulation.

The press are gonna do all they can to make sure Leveson gets the impression that things aren’t too bad, actually. “We’re better than we used to be” they’ll say. “It was only the one rogue reporter, well maybe two.”

“We always strive for accuracy” the press will purr seductively in the good Lords’ ear, “and we always, always correct mistakes.”

You know that’s not the truth, though. What Leveson needs is a counter balance. There are already some organisations doing that. Hacked Off and FullFact.org are two of them, and they need our help.

This page on the FullFact site will give you a guide as to what the Leveson Inquiry is after. Basically, if you or anybody know or care about has been affected by the press or even if you just have an opinion about how things do or should work, get in touch with them:

generalenquiries@levesoninquiry.org.uk

or by post

Leveson Inquiry Team
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London
WC2A 2LL

It would be better by email, if you could, though.

Our press needs YOU!

The dreaded EU has struck again…

Under the rules, children under the age of eight are no longer allowed to blow up balloons, if they are unsupervised.

Teddys have to be washable, too. Not only that but ‘scratch and sniff’ has been banned because they contain, yes, chemicals!

Something has been banned because of chemicals? Yes, it’s the Daily Mail again.

Party blowers – which unscroll when blown – are categorised as unsafe for under-14s under rules governing toys that children put in their mouths. EU officials claim bits of blower could come off and cause choking. They can no longer be sold unless they pass strict new tests.

Some children’s musical instruments, such as recorders and whistles, are also banned because they may come apart and pieces of them could be swallowed.

How dare they ban toys that could come apart in childrens mouths and choke them to death. I’ve choked to death more than once as a kid. Never did me any harm. In fact I got sent to my room with a clip round the ear for being so stupid. Made me the man I am today, it did.

The Mail does add a single line which justifies this measure…

This measure follows cases where children have swallowed small magnets which have then disintegrated and pulled intestines together, causing severe injuries.

Teh Telegraph (h/t FullFact.org) does an equally rabid report on the banning of children children being able to live life on the edge complete with a quote from an EU official that, to me at least, doesn’t read like a real quote…

Another EU official admitted that the new regulations could be difficult to understand but insisted that safety experts knew best.

“You might say that small children have been blowing up balloons for generations, but not anymore and they will be safer for it,” said an official.

But in the end, balloons and shit haven’t been banned and these regs aren’t new…

Several newspapers have claimed that “Brussels” has imposed new rules on the UK banning children from blowing up balloons or using party whistles. This is wholly untrue.

EU legislation on toy safety aims to protect young children from death and injury and reflects expert medical advice – and simple common sense.

Balloons and other toys placed in the mouth can and do cause death and injury.

The EU rules referred to date from 1988. They state that ballons made of latex must carry a warning to parents that children under eight years should be supervised. Stronger plastic ballons do not need to carry this warning.

They also state that all toys aimed at children under three should be large enough to prevent them being swallowed.

The Child Accident Prevention Trust says that each year, in the UK, over 15,000 children under five and a further 10,000 children aged between 5 and 14 are treated at accident and emergency units after choking. Only half these incidents involve food.

US research by the Consumer Product Safety Commission shows that ” Of all children’s products, balloons are the leading cause of suffocation death”. So similar rules exist in the US.

So what’s so unreasonable about these regs, again? Regulations that are so draconian that other countries independent of the EU have similar ones?

Oh, yeah, their ‘imposed’ on us from those bloody Europeans.

Bastards.

Is this really all The Sun had to say about the News Corp AGM?…

£1m Milly Dowler hacking payouts

Published: Today

NEWS Corp chief Rupert Murdoch yesterday confirmed he has personally donated £1million to charities chosen by Milly Dowler’s family.

The company, owner of The Sun, confirmed it is paying the murdered schoolgirl’s family £2million after the News of the World hacked her phone.

Mr Murdoch told a News Corp shareholder meeting in Los Angeles there was “simply no excuse” for the scandal.

They don’t mention anything about what else happened…

At the company’s annual meeting in Los Angeles on Friday Murdoch made a defiant and uncompromising address, insisting News Corp’s history was the “stuff of legend.” However, he was berated by shareholders and some of the world’s largest investors voted against his re-election, and that of his sons, to the News Corp board. They also did not approve of the $33m (£21m) he was paid as chairman and chief executive this year.

Murdoch owns 12% of the company but controls about 40% of the votes because of News Corp’s two classes of shares. But the fact that major investors voted against his re-election and that of his sons and other directors is a major blow for the 80-year-old chairman and chief executive.

News Corp plans to release the full details of the vote on Monday. Before the meeting, shareholders told the Guardian that James Murdoch was likely to receive the biggest vote of no confidence. If the votes go against him, it will cast further doubts on his future at News Corp. The youngest Murdoch son is already facing questions about evidence he gave to a parliamentary inquiry into the News of the World hacking scandal and shareholders at Murdoch-controlled BSkyB have called for his resignation.

Hmmm. I wonder why?

Do you fancy a pint?

The gang behind The-Sun-Lies, Mailwatch, Expresswatch and numerous other media watching blogs are having Their second annual Media Watch Meetup. The first one, held in August just gone was such a success they couldn’t wait another twelve months so it’s being held in a couple of weeks.

Do come along for a drink or two and a chat about the papers, blogging or just to say hello. Best of all it’s free (apart from the beer which you’ll have to pay for yourself. We’re not *that* nice). There’s no entrance fee and you won’t need to buy anyone a beer to gain access to any of our top bloggers and you can stay as long as you want or until the pub kicks us all out. You can just turn up or or go to the Facebook event page and let us know to expect you.

So, are you coming then?

The Monarch pub, Chalk Farm Road, Camden (map).
Saturday 29th August October
3pm on

Everyone fucks up. You do, I do. Everyone does sometime or other. We either say the wrong thing, misunderstand something or as happened tonight at several newspapers, press the wrong button.

Amanda Knox won her appeal against her conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher. Several papers, as the verdict was given, published their stories. The problem was that they jumped the gun a little and published stories about Knoxs’ conviction standing. The Sun did it. The Guardian did it.

Knox was found guilty of slander against a bar (or was it a hotel) owner she accused of the murder, and it was this guilty verdict declared by the judge that these papers hit the big red ‘publish’ button on. Ooops!

All three papers corrected themselves pretty quickly, as you can imagine, and in itself isn’t a problem.

Since the beginning of time, newspapers have always raced to get the story out first. On an occasion such as this, the newsdesk will have written two stories. One for a ‘guilty’ verdict and one for an ‘innocent’. In their rush to be first, these papers fucked up and published the wrong story.

That might’ve been that last of it, apart from a lil’ bit of ribbing on Twitter.

What this mistake has done, however was call into question, again, the use of anonymous sources and how can we be sure someone actually did say what the paper says was said?

You see not only did the Mail publish their story about Amanda Knox staying locked up, they also included in it quotes from one of the prosecutors team that were made up…

Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that ‘justice has been done’ although they said on a ‘human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail’.

This quote along with other details such as…

Following the verdict Knox and Sollecito were taken out of court escorted by prison guards and into a waiting van which took her back to her cell at Capanne jail near Perugia and him to Terni jail, 60 miles away.

…are complete fabrications thought up by someone in London.

Now, we all suspect that these nameless ‘sources’, ‘insiders’, ‘someone close to…’ and ‘…who wished to remain anonymous…’ are sometimes made up, only real in the head of the reporter or editor, but because of the presses right not to reveal their sources it is extremely hard to pin down the actual source of a quote.

There is one little difference between this nameless source and the usual anonymuos quote: There is a tracability to the false quote. The quotes aren’t quite anonymous.

The prosecutor is Giuliano Mignini. There is your starting point. I’m sure a better blogger then me, or even a proper journalist, could get an official denial/confirmation from him.

But what of this big fat lie? Well, the Press Complaints Commission are unlikely to do anything. The story was written in advance and published by mistake and quickly taken down again. It was never put into print for there to be any need of a correction and the amount of people who would’ve actually seen the article would be relatively small. As far as the PCC would be concerned, there is nothing for them to do.

What it shows is that the Daily Mail is prepared to lie about a fairly big thing. With a path to be able to fact check it’s quotes from a major player in the story.

If the Mail feels it can make up a massive part of it’s story with made up quotes from one of the major people in an event, then what about the smaller stories, the ones that feed the papers agenda?

Is the Mail really going to go to the trouble of getting a quote from Joe Bloggs who’s been passed over for a council house in favour of a Somali pirate seeking asylum or because of the equalities commission isn’t allowing him to call a lesbian a dyke in his office or are they just going to print what Paul Dacre thinks and attribute it to “someone close to Mr Bloggs”?

The Mail fucked up. They made a mistake anyone could’ve done, but with that mistake they’ve revealed so much about the dishonest way they conduct business.

The Daily Mail got caught using photographs without permission. Well, they’ve owned up to their ‘mistake’…

Speaking to Amateur Photographer (AP) magazine last night, a spokesman for Mail Online said: ‘The pictures were published in error due to a breakdown in internal communications.

‘We regret the error and have now settled the matter amicably with the photographer.’

What? It happens, even in such slick operations as the Mail.

But reverting to type, the statement is still full of shit…

However, Taylor says she has not yet settled with Mail Online ‘amicably’, though she hopes to.

via @LouiseMensch