Sim-O

Does he really?

Cross posted from The Sun Lies, so leave comments over there.

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Gordon Smart:

…I was disappointed when I heard that Mr PETER DOHERTY, a fine upstanding member of his local community, was meeting BBC bosses on Tuesday for a job interview.

And that job is as a writer, apparently. According to Gordons’ source at the BBC, they (BBC) want a pilot episode of a Skins type drama, and if it’s a good ‘un, they’ll commision a whole series. Very nice, Mr Doherty. Best get cracking.

Only Pete isn’t going to be writing a series, or even a pilot show for the BBC.

The Quietus [my emphasis]:

…the Beeb has rubbished the rumours as “completely false”, telling The Quietus that The Sun knew there was “no truth whatsoever” in the story – published in Gordon Smart’s ‘Bizarre’ column today – before they went to print.

I don’t know The Quietus too well and I am very good at making an idiot of myself, so I thought I would confirm what the Corporation had been quoted as saying, by going to the Corporation.

I asked for the the BBC to confirm or deny if i) Pete Doherty is or isn’t going to be writing/co-writing, or in negotiations with regards to writing a drama for the BBC and if ii) The Sun or Gordon Smart of the The Sun knew the story to be untrue before publishing it (if the story is untrue, obviously).

And a spokesman for the BBC confirmed that i) Pete Doherty isn’t going to be writing a drama for them and ii)

They [The Sun] had our response in advance but didn’t put it in.

Gordon Smart/The Sun knew the was story untrue, but still ran with it. Which means they are either compulsive liars and couldn’t help themselves or they ran with it, looking at the language used, just to have a dig at the BBC to keep things ticking over until the Beeb give them a bigger target.

Jon Gaunt is set to return to broadcasting, according to the Press Gazette.

Jon got the sack from Talk Sport for calling a councillor that wanted to stop smokers from adopting children a Nazi, and since then has only had his Sun column to rage from.

Apparently mainstream radio is run by idiots that are only interested in their bottom line, which of course is nothing like the mainstream press, who do not make up/run made up stories to sell papers, or change the angle of stories to sell as many copies as possible. Mainstream papers are altruistic in the desire to bring the news to the people.

He said: “Mainstream radio is dying because it’s run by idiots who have no interest apart from the bottom line. Now the bottom line is disappearing they don’t know what to do.

“What I love about The Sun is that it is like when I was back having my first job in local radio. They said can you be mischievous, say what you want and have some fun.”

With that in mind, the Sun is giving Jon an internet ‘radio’ phone in show.

With this show Jon has a lot of freedom because…

His new show will not be subject to Ofcom rules on “due impartiality” and “harm and offence” but will instead, The Sun confirmed, be governed by the Press Complaints Commission – which has no rules on taste and decency, or political balance.

Hold onto your hats, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

Good grief. The Sun is on the shortlist for the Press Gazette British Press awards.

So, what awards are they up for? First off there’s Gordon Smart for Showbiz Reporter of the Year. Yes, apprently he’s a really good reporter. It must be true, it’s in the Sun!
Also shortlisted is another showbiz reporter of the Suns’, Richard White. Who?

Next is Tom Newton-Dunn, the Defence editor, who is on the list for Best Specialist Journalist. Again, the words ‘Could do better‘ spring to mind.

Best website and Dickie Pelham for best photographer are next. No comment one way or another on those two.

Our monumental Baby P petition has also been included in the Campaign of the Year shortlist.

I suppose it is worthy of an award, although rather than Campaign of the Year I would’ve thought the Baby P campaign would have sat better in the Best Use of a Lynch Mob catagory.

For the Cudlipp Award, there are two nominees. The Millies and Panoramic Posters. The Millies has failed to impress who they were honouring, namely the ordinary guys and girls in the army and the Panoramic Posters, well I haven’t a clue what that is as the only mention of it with a search on Google is in this page detailing the awards shortlist.

The final two awards are for Scoop of the Year. The first is “Ashley Cheats on Cheyl”, which is really worthy of an award, the private life of a footballer, cheating on his popstar wife. Great.
The second is of a bit better quality, and probably the only one that should be on the list is “Starberks”, about how the Coffee company keep a time running all day wasting a huge amount of water.

The standard of journalism must be pretty low if this is the standard on the shortlist [unfortunatley, I can't see who else is on it as I am on my work computer and the Press Gazette site does work on it for some reason. I'm not at home later either, to update. Oh well.]

I’ve got a new post up at The Sun Lies.

It’s about the Suns’ defence of it’s Baby P reporting.

The Sun:

HEARTBROKEN TV star Lorraine Kelly has told of her agony over the murder of her local Big Issue seller.

Tragic Paddy McDade was found in his flat last month in what police described as a “particularly brutal” scene.

Now GMTV favourite Lorraine has paid tribute to the 37-year-old who worked outside Dundee’s Marks and Spencer store.

The Scottish Sun columnist said: “I used to buy my Big Issue from Paddy whenever I was in Markies.”

Speaking to the mag, she added: “He was always so cheery. He’ll be sadly missed.”

Heartbroken? Agony? Lorraine must’ve known Paddy very well to be in such grief, otherwise Lorraine would just be ‘shocked’ or ‘saddened’.

Could the Sun be exaggerating their columnists feelings?
The Suns’ piece says ‘Speaking to the mag’ so nobody at the Suns’ office has spoken to Lorraine and the piece has been lifted wholesale from The Big Issue…

Lorraine spoke of her sadness when she heard of the death of Paddy McDade, who used to sell the magazine outside Marks and Spencer in Seagate.
“I used to buy my Big Issue from Paddy whenever I was shopping in Markies,” she said. “He was always so chatty, optimistic and cheery even when the rain was hammering down. He will be sadly missed.”

Ah, ‘sadness’. Ms Kellys’ heart is still in tact, spared of agony for someone she barely knew. The words she spoke in the Big Issue are pretty stock for a celeb that had a passing acquaintance with someone.

Thanx to the Sun, though, she has a couple of extra emotions added and viola, Lorraine seems more sensitive and caring and so, when she writes her column, you know she’s not a hard nosed woman, but is writing from the heart and has our best interests in mind.

Cross posted at The Sun Lies.

Aaron has stuck a post up on Tabloid Lies. About the beleaguered BBC and that gob-almighty Jon Gaunt.

As Aaron says…

Now exhausted and emasculated, having been poked, beaten and punched by both the left and right, the BBC has to contend with the flabby frame of Jon Gaunt piling on like an over-excitable school-yard bully.

At the end of the day, if the BBC stood up to the bullies, the response would be the equivalent of the ‘you have to do as I say, I pay your wages’.
With the likes of News Corp. and the Daily Mail on it’s back, the BBC can be kept cowering in the corner, trying not to offend anyone, becoming poorer and poorer until it truly becomes not worth keeping.

The BBC needs to realise that it’s very presence is the reason for the vitriol, not its’ output. The sooner it does, the better it will be to answer it’s critics.

The Mail

An agony aunt has been appointed to a taskforce aimed at improving social services following the Baby P tragedy.

No. No. You’ve got to be kidding?

communitycare.co.uk:

This week, ministers announced the 11 people who will join chair Moira Gibb and vice-chairs Andrew Webb and Bob Reitemeier on the taskforce, which is due to report this summer.

Unison and BASW on social work taskforce

Along with The Sun’s agony aunt, Deidre Sanders

Not everyone’s happy about it on CommunityCares’ discussion forum (the individual posts don’t have permalinks unfortunately)…

“sumag”

My colleague has just suggested that if the social workers go out to collect information they could then write to Diedre and she could in her commonsensical way tell us what to do next! She clearly has both the common touch and the ear of the government, what more could we want to help transform our profession? [Wink]

“lilybright”

More frontline social workers? What would we know about social work? No, the appointment of Dierdre Saunders is clearly inspired and anyone who suggests it’s a populist concession to tawdry media-led witchhunters is obviously a middle-class elitist with a dubious value base who should be drummed out of the profession forthwith.

I look forward to the day when scriptwriters from Casualty and Holby City are appointed to the professional bodies of nursing, medicine and allied health professions to raise standards of practice. It can only be a matter of time before one of those nice actors from Waterloo Road is appointed to the General Teaching Council.

No, it is clearly so eminently appropriate to have celebrities on professional bodies that I am left with only one question: why can’t we have Jeremy Kyle too?

“cb”

I’m also concerned about what message this sends to people about the function and role of social workers more generally if an ‘agony aunt’ is on the task force. Are we to be perceived as ‘talkers’ rather than ‘doers’. Actually the more I have thought about it, the more irritated I become.

fx7

Let’s get one thing straight – the summary dismissal of Sharon Shoesmith was not in the public interest – we had a right to hear the facts – we could have learned some vital lessons in safeguarding children and that this evidence could have been heard within the disciplinary context and this would have established whether Ms Shoesmith is a culpable party in this matter.

The Sun’s campaign against her was clearly a witch hunt – people did not just write into The Sun to complain of this evil woman, The Sun actually invited people to write in and tell them the politicians how evil she is.

As for Dear Diedre’s statement “those working in the professions in the public sector can get cut off from what are seen as common-sense values in the real world where, if you get something wrong, you lose your job. It’s what would happen to me and it’s what would happen to most of our readers”

What planet is this woman living on? I have been spat at, kicked, punched, abused, chased by dangerous dogs all in the line of my duty of protecting children; for these reasons, I stopped this area of work years ago (but I really do admire most of my children and families colleagues for having to do such a dreadful job. I guess most of us have to such nasty sharp-end violence, and that this demonstrates that if anyone is cut off from reality it is her! As for the bits about losing one’s job if you get something wrong – then all the country would be unemployed and unemployable.

As for The Sun getting things wrong – it does it all the time – it is a paper which always seem to be in the courts over allegations of lying and invading privacy – such is the moral compass and voice for the downtrodden masses.

Then Dear Diedre goes on to state “A big problem after Baby P was that Haringey didn’t even want to say sorry to start with, didn’t seem to accept responsibility”

Well in the climate of hysteria generated by The Sun, individuals and organisations get immobilised by the moral panic with which they are beleaguered – apologies – my guess is that no one in the Local Authority wanted to get in Sun’s firing line, for fear a mob would be beating a path to his / her with a view to stringing him / her up from the nearest lamp post.

Dear Diedre concludes

“If our campaign was seen as a mere witch-hunt in the social work sector, it illustrates the communication gap we have in society”

This is exactly the problem – I have this to say The Sun’s campaign against Ms Shoesmith was vindictive and vitriolic – it harked back to Cromwell’s England when Major Generals, our own Taliban, wandered the burning witches or drowning them in ponds. The Sun is a very much like that – it breeds a climate of fear – sure, there is a communication gap between us and The Sun and this is for good reason. An entire city, Liverpool, has stopped this nasty little rag following its rather nasty little piece on Liverpool following the Hillsborough Tragedy.

As for Dear Diedre saying that she was not responsible for the editorial content with regard to Ms Shoesmith, this is bit like saying “I am not responsible for the gas chambers in Auschwitz, I merely stoked the ovens” These “no flies on me” kind of statements sound quite disingenuous.

And as a parting shot to all those those Sun apologists, what kind of filthy little rag has headlines “only ten days to go, Lads, before we can bare Lisa’s boobs?” Surely, it encourages filthy old men to commit sexually illegal against young women.

The interview “fx7″ references is here.

I’ll leave you with the notion that it could just be a damage limitation exercise by ministers, as Emma Maier muses…

… giving The Sun the inside track on the taskforce could be a clever because it is always more difficult to slate something you are involved in.

Hmm.

The Guardian:

The Press Complaints Commission is investigating a front-page story in the Sun newspaper that claimed Islamic extremists were targeting The Apprentice star Sir Alan Sugar.
…
The PCC has launched an investigation and will consider whether Abuislam is Jenvey. The regulator has contacted the Sun and is awaiting the paper’s response.

It is understood that the Sun story originated from a news agency.

The Sun declined to comment on why it had removed the story from its website.

Via Tim

If someone told you a lie, to try and wind you up or manipulate them, you wouldn’t be happy, would you? You’d tell them to bugger off.

If someone asked you why you had someone as a mate when all that mate did was chat shit and try and get you into fights and you replied that, it’s ok, no one believes what they say. You would be laughed at.

So why do people buy a newspaper, when to justify or counter the question of why they buy it, they respond, ‘no-one believes the Sun’ or ‘everyone knows it’s not true’?

If you know it’s full of lies or not true, why buy it?

Oh yes, the football and the racing. Fair enough, but then why not miss out all the bile, hate , contradictions and lies and just buy Shoot* or Racing Post?

If you like fictional stories, go to the library. It’d be cheaper and the stories will be better written too.

The line ‘no-one believes the Sun’ is a lie itself. Because the people behind these news agencies do.

*not being into the girly game of football, I couldn’t think of another footy publication so Shoot might not be the best example of a serious football news resource.