Davblog

In which someone you've never heard of writes about things you have no interest in

Posts Tagged ‘daily mail’

Mailbait

We’re in the middle of one of the biggest paedophile scandals that this country has ever seen. And yet, the Daily Mail still thinks that it’s appropriate to report on Elle Fanning‘s Halloween costume with the headline

Lady Liberty! Teenager Elle Fanning shows off her womanly curves as she pays homage to New York Statue

The article continued the theme:

Elle was a posing professional as she wore a metallic maxi dress which looked rather demure at first glance.

Although it covered up her chest area and thighs, the design featured a high split which allowed her to pop her leg out of the side.

When she turned around, flesh was on show as the cut-out material scooped to just above her derriere and featured clasps which fastened at the centre of her neck.

Elle Fanning is 14.

This creepiness didn’t go unnoticed. There was soon plenty of criticism of the headline both on Twitter and in the article’s comments. Later on the headline was updated to the simpler

Lady Liberty! Teenager Elle Fanning pays homage to New York Statue

And the article was edited to remove the worst of the content. Although the author still insisted that Fanning “was eager to show the lady she is becoming”.

The Fanning family must be getting used to this. The Mail were similarly creepy about Elle’s older sister Dakota when she was 14.

The Mail has been very vocal in its coverage of the Savile affair. But, of course, they seem to see it more as yet another stick to beat the BBC with rather than actually understanding what the real problem is here. If they really understood the problem, would they publish so many stories containing the creepy phrases “older than her years” and “all grown up“?

Two weeks ago Melanie Phillips wrote an article where she blames the “liberal left” for making paedophilia acceptable. In her survey of organisations that promote the sexualisation of underage girls she somehow omits the Mail and its “sidebar of shame”. Alan White has written an open letter to Phillips inviting her to comment on the Mail providing this useful service for paedophiles. I await her response with interest.

Finally, I highly recommend that you take twenty minutes to watch Martin Robbins‘ brilliant talk on this subject from the Pod Delusion‘s third birthday bash.

Thick As A Brick

But your new shoes are worn at the heels and
Your suntan does rapidly peel and
Your wise men don’t know how it feels to be thick as a brick.
[Jethro Tull - Thick as a Brick]

Yesterday was a fun day on the internet. It was one of those days where a Daily Mail writer writes something spectacularly stupid and the internet (or, at least, the small part of it that follows the UK media) spends a few pleasant hours taking the piss.

Yesterday it was the turn of Samantha Brick. She wrote an article called ‘There are downsides to looking this pretty’: Why women hate me for being beautiful. You’ve probably read it, but if you haven’t the summary is that she thinks she is really attractive and this means that random men often do nice things for her, but random woman often take an instant dislike to her.

There are so many holes in her theory that it’s hard to know where to start. I’d guess that a lot of women don’t warm to her not because they are jealous of her irresistible beauty, but rather because she comes across as a bit of a shallow airhead who defines herself by her level of attractiveness to men. Oh, and about that irresistible beauty. I don’t want to sound rude, but I think she’s slightly deluded there.

If that article wasn’t enough for you to form an opinion of her, I invite you to peruse the list of previous articles she has written for the Mail. Just reading the titles should be enough. No need to wade into the content unless you have a particularly strong stomach.

So the internet had its day of fun laughing at Ms Brick and her nonsense. And it would have probably ended there, but the Mail just wouldn’t let it lie. Today they bounced back with two follow-up articles. One was reporting on how Ms Brick had become an “internet sensation” (where the Mail sees a sensation, the rest of us see a laughing stock) and the other was by Ms Brick herself. In it she claims that yesterday’s reaction just proves that her original theory was right.

Once again she shows that logical thinking is not her forté. Let’s bring the argument down to the simplest level and see if we can spot any flaws.

Ms Brick: Most women hate me because I’m so beautiful.
The Internet: You’re wrong and here’s about a billion reasons why.
Ms Brick: See! Everyone hates me. My original theory was right.

I really don’t think that stands up to the slightest amount of scrutiny, do you?

The article includes a photo of Ms Brick standing next to her husband. She’s wearing the same purple dress that she wears in a lot of the photos from  the last couple of days. But he’s wearing combat fatigues and carrying a rifle. Which takes on a slightly worrying meaning when you read what she wrote a few paragraphs below the photo when talking about her husband’s reaction to the furore.

At first, he shrugged it off, saying they were just the spiteful remarks of a few jealous women. But as the storm brewed . . . well, I’ve had to hide the worst of it from him; the tame few I’ve read out have riled him enough to want to take his own form of action.

Have you got that? Be nicer to her or her husband will come after you with his rifle.

Of course, Ms Brick and her delusions of superiority aren’t the real issue here. The real issue is the way that the Mail (and, in particular, Mail Online) have become so good at drawing in visitors who wouldn’t normally go anywhere near the paper. The Mail’s core audience obviously don’t spend as much time on the internet as the readers of some other papers. So the Mail have come up with a couple of strategies for getting readership from outside their core audience.

The first of these is the “sidebar of shame” so brilliantly reviewed by Steven Baxter recently. And the second is the liberal outrage strategy that we all fell for yesterday. I guess this was a lesson they picked up from the Jan Moir/Stephen Gately sage a couple of years ago. If you print things that annoy the (still largely liberal) Twitterati, then they will tweet and retweet their outrage. And every tweet brings more clicks. And every click brings more advertising revenue. As long as you don’t go too far (as Jan Moir did) and end up having to remove adverts from the page everything is wonderful. This morning I read an estimate that Samantha Brick’s article could have made the Mail £100,000 in advertising revenue.

This is what istyosty was about. Allowing people to read Mail stories without giving the clicks. And that’s, of course, why the Mail had it closed down. It hit them in the bottom line and they really didn’t like that.

I don’t have any solutions. I’m as guilty as anyone of passing round Mail links in order to spread the outrage. I wish I could just ignore them, but they’ve got under my skin. I even run a site which exists purely to link to Mail stories. I’m addicted to the outrage.

[Note: I wasn't planning to blog on this topic. But a friend pointed out the Jethro Tull link and I knew I just couldn't resist. Thanks Gareth.]

Update: Chris shares some thoughts about reading (and sharing) Mail content without giving them the clicks.

Parking in Balham

You’ll often hear people saying that Mail writers live in a different world to the rest of us. Actually, I think that they live in the same world as us, they just like to think that they live in a different one. The fun and games start when they discover they are wrong and that the real world doesn’t appreciate their over-developed sense of entitlement.

Here’s a good case in point. Melissa Kite lives somewhere near me in Balham. Melissa is a serial parking offender. Of course, Melissa doesn’t see it quite like that. Melissa describes herself as being a victim of “bear traps” laid by councils to trick motorists who dare to park on their patch. When she parked up at Balham tube station “at 8pm for ten seconds in order to pick up a friend who was coming to stay with me and who was weighed down with luggage” she was appalled to be given an £80 fine.

And there’s that sense of entitlement. This is what really annoys me about people like Melissa. There are parking restrictions around Balham station. They have been there for as long as I can remember and they are clearly marked. But because they are inconvenient for her, she feels she is perfectly justified in ignoring them. Balham station is at junction where two busy roads cross. The parking restrictions are there for a good reason (and, no, not to make money for the council – to prevent congestion). They aren’t there to trick people like Melissa.

But we can find out more about Melissa’s parking problems with Wandsworth council. She wrote about a very similar incident in the Evening Standard a year ago. This gives more details of the offence. She was parking in a taxi rank. The taxi rank is a relatively new innovation. It’s been there three or four years. But, once again, it’s clearly marked. And, once again, Melissa chose to ignore that because it was inconvenient for her. She also mentions four other offences where she was picking someone up or dropping them off at the station and chose to park in a restricted area.

Amusingly, she even describes a telephone conversation she had with someone from Wandsworth council.

I rang Wandsworth council to tell them this but their spokesman sounded distinctly unimpressed. “Well, I don’t know what you were doing there,” he said.

“But I’ve just told you,” I said. “I was picking up a friend.”

He sighed: “People come up with all sorts of stories.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re asking me to assume that everything you’re saying is the truth.”

At which point I confess I raised my voice a little: “Yes I am!”

“Right,” he harrumphed, “you’re shouting, I’m ending the call.” And he slammed the phone down.

So I rang the parking department, where someone called Angelo explained that when running errands I should always stop on single yellow lines

There’s that sense of entitlement again. She honestly seems to believe that “I was picking up a friend” is a reasonable excuse for ignoring the parking restrictions. Balham Station Road would be in chaos for most of the day if everyone chose to ignore the rules because they were “just picking up a friend”.

Then there’s this lovely paragraph from the end of her article.

Very soon, Westminster council will abolish free parking on a single yellow line in the evenings. And when they do so, I will stop going up West on a Tuesday night as I have done for the past six years to meet a group of friends with whom I have dinner in a Lebanese restaurant.That restaurant will lose us as regular customers forever, and goodness knows how many others.

If only she lived in a city where there was a quick and efficient public transport system. Perhaps something that whisked passengers to their destination through underground tubes. I know travelling on the tube can be a bit of a nightmare in rush hour. But on a Tuesday night, it should be fine. Or perhaps people like Melissa are too self-important to mix with the rest of us in a confined space like that.

There may, of course, be a serious point to her objections. Perhaps the parking restrictions are too draconian. Never let it be said that I object to a nice bit of civil disobedience to protest against bad laws. But you need to be prepared to take the punishment. You can’t expect to have the fine waived just because it’s inconvenient to you.

Actually, this is all academic to me. Like the vast majority of sane Londoners we don’t have a car. Most weekends I walk to the supermarket and carry the shopping home. If it’s going to be a huge shop then we’ll order on the internet and get it delivered. And if friends arrive at Balham station overburdened with luggage then we’ll offer to meet them there and help them carry it home. If we’re feeling particularly lazy we might offer to pay for them to get a taxi. From the rank right outside the station. Assuming it’s not full of idiots with 4x4s and an over-developed sense of entitlement.

Winterval

From today’s Daily Mail corrections column:

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.

This is amazing stuff. The Mail has been one of the main papers pushing the “Winterval” myth for many years. At the recent media bloggers meet-up someone said that our constant debunking of this myth was beginning to have some traction, but I didn’t expect to get a correction from the Daily Mail quite so soon.

On the Mail Corrections site I like to link back to the original story. And in this case it seems to be a column by Melanie Phillips where she claimed that “Christmas has been renamed in various places ‘Winterval’”. This, as the Mail now admits, didn’t happen. She ties this non-event in with the recent furore about the BBC banning the terms BC and AD (something else that didn’t happen). Phillips strongly defended her view in an email discussion with Kevin Arscott, so it’s nice to see even the Mail admitting that she was wrong.

Of course, it’ll be interesting to watch what happens next. Will all Mail writers get a memo telling them to stop repeating the lie? It’s approaching prime Winterval season, surely Richard Littlejohn or Peter Hitchens will want to write about it soon.

As always when discussing this myth, I need to link to Kevin Arscott’s forensic investigation of the evidence which is the most thorough debunking of a tabloid lie that I’ve ever seen.

Update: The Mail has updated Phillips’ original column to remove the reference to Winterval and to add the following note at the bottom:

A previous version of this article stated 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.

That’s the first time I’ve seen them explicitly update a corrected article like that. I hope it’s the start of a trend. This has been a good date for tabloid accuracy in Britain.

Update 2: Tabloid Watch has a fascinating article about how this correction was negotiated

Daily Mail Corrections

The Daily Mail, along with its sister paper The Mail on Sunday, has recently started to print a corrections and clarifications page.

It’s a pretty half-arsed affair for many reasons. The only way to find it is by searching for it by title. There’s no link for it anywhere on the site and it doesn’t seem to have been given its own section. Most bizarrely, the corrections don’t appear in the main web feed for the paper.

None of the corrections link back to the original story and in many cases you only get a vague description to help you work out which story they are talking about. And even if you work out which story they’re talking about, it’s often impossible to find the story on the web site as it has been removed.

I thought I could probably do better than that. So today I’ve built the Corrections and Clarifications site. It has a list of all of the corrections and clarifications that both papers have published and (where I’ve been able to find it) a link to the original story on the Mail site. I’ve also tagged the corrections so we can hopefully start to build up a picture of the kinds of corrections the Mail is printing.

I’m assuming that the Mail’s approach is so sub-standard because their content management system is prehistoric or because the people who worked on the project didn’t really think it through. If that’s the case then I’m more than happy to try to help them to fix this problem.

History Repeating

Last week I thought that I had traced the origin of the Mail’s recent obsession with BC and AD back to Peter Hitchens column on September 18th of this year. In this article, Hitchens wrote:

The BBC’s Chief Commissar for Political Correctness (whom I imagine as a tall, stern young woman in cruel glasses issuing edicts from an austere office) was hard at work again last week.

On University Challenge, Jeremy Paxman referred to a date as being Common Era, rather than AD. This nasty formulation is designed to write Christianity out of our culture. Given the allegedly ferocious Mr Paxman’s schoolgirlish, groupie-like treatment of various prominent atheists in recent interviews, maybe he favours this far-from-impartial view.

This morning I was considering writing a post listing all of the stories the Mail has published on this subject in the last two weeks. That’s a lot of articles so as research I searched the Mail web site for the phrase “BCE”. And I found this article by Peter Hitchens[1] from January 2006. In this article from over five years ago, Hitchens says:

Who told Jeremy Paxman that he had to use the expression ‘BCE’ (Before the Common Era) instead of ‘BC’ on University Challenge last Monday? And why does Mr Paxman go along with it? Is there a BBC committee that decides these things? Who sits on it and where does it get its authority? What exactly is wrong with ‘BC’ and ‘AD’? Who has ever complained about them, and why should anyone pay attention to them? In Muslim countries, this isn’t even 2006, but somewhere in the 15th Century, and in Israel the year is currently 5766.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that Hitchens was equally annoyed by exactly the same thing on the same programme five years ago as annoyed him last month. But you have to admit that it all looks a bit suspicious. At the very least it punches a huge hole in the Mail’s claims that the use of BCE and CE is a new initiative at the BBC.

I promise I’ll find something else to bang on about soon.

[1] It’s not obvious from the article page that it’s by Peter Hitchens, but it says that on the search results page.

BBC BCE Addendum

A couple of interesting new developments in BCE-gate.

Firstly, the BBC have apparently had a large number of complaints about this issue and yesterday they published a response on their complaints page.

Complaint

We received complaints from people concerned about press reports claiming that the BBC has replaced the reference terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) with BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era).

BBC Response

It is incorrect to say that the BBC has replaced date systems BC and AD with Before Common Era (BCE) and Common Era (CE). Whilst the BBC uses BC and AD like most people as standard terminology, it is possible to use different terminology, particularly as it is now commonly used in historical research. The BBC has issued no editorial guidance on date systems, and the decision rests with the individual editorial and production teams. It should also be noted that for every BCE or CE reference, there are still a great many BC and AD references used across the BBC.

All of which is pretty clear and should see the end of the story. It won’t though, of course.

Another thing that was bothering me about the story was the timing. Why did it suddenly blow up last week? As I said yesterday, I suspected that it was just because Peter Hitchens happened to see BCE mentioned on University Challenge and complained about it in his column. But in Delingpole’s article he says:

From now on, it will use initials which strip our traditional Gregorian calendar of its offensive religious context.

Notice that “from now on” which heavily implies that this is a new ruling. He goes on to state that the new ruling is explained on a Q&A section on the BBC Religion site. That’s clearly a reference to the FAQ that I mentioned yesterday.

So Delingpole clearly believes that this is a new BBC initiative. And I think that it’s his belief that informs Chris Hastings’ front page story on Sunday.

But just how new is that section of the FAQ? I had suspicions that it had been around for a while (it was built using a technology that the BBC no longer uses for new web development) so I sent an email to the BBC to ask them how long that answer had been on the FAQ page.

I haven’t yet received an answer to my email, but the same question occurred to the people at Tabloid Watch who got in touch with the BBC Press Office for clarification. The response they received was that the FAQ had been on the site, unchanged, for over four years.

So let’s review what we know:

  • The BBC does not have a policy in place forcing programmes to use BCE and CE in place of BC and AD
  • There is a policy on the BBC Religion web site to use BCE and CE on that site[1].
  • The Religion web site policy has been in place for at least four years

There is simply no story here. The story that the Mail has been peddling for the last few days just isn’t true. And the tiny grain of fact at the centre of the Mail’s story has been there for many years.

The Mail has embarrassed itself here. The echo chamber of its writers (I almost wrote “journalists” there but stopped myself just in time) has spun this story out of nothing. Writer after writer has repeated and expanded this story. If any of them had stopped to check facts they would have realised what fools they were making of themselves.

You just can’t trust anything you read in the Mail.

[1] However, it’s worth noting that every page on that site which talks about Christianity seems to break that policy and uses BC and AD.

The Birth of a Meme

It’s not often that you can trace a tabloid meme back to its beginnings. Over the last week we’ve seen the birth of a new tabloid meme and, luckily, we’re able to see where it comes from.

Here’s the seed. It’s from the Frequently Asked Questions page on the BBC Religion religion web site.

Why does bbc.co.uk/religion use BCE and CE instead of BC and AD?

In line with modern practice bbc.co.uk/religion uses BCE/CE (Before Common Era/Common Era) as a religiously neutral alternative to BC/AD. As the BBC is committed to impartiality it is appropriate that we use terms that do not offend or alienate non-Christians.

There is something important to notice here. From reading the answer to question, it’s clear that it’s only talking about the BBC Religion web site – this is not a BBC-wide policy. Also note that this page has been there for some time. There’s nothing at all that indicates that this is a new rule. But that’s not how it seemed to various Mail columnists.

In the Mail on Sunday on 18th Septamber, Peter Hitchins wrote this:

The BBC’s Chief Commissar for Political Correctness (whom I imagine as a tall, stern young woman in cruel glasses issuing edicts from an austere office) was hard at work again last week.

On University Challenge, Jeremy Paxman referred to a date as being Common Era, rather than AD. This nasty formulation is designed to write Christianity out of our culture. Given the allegedly ferocious Mr Paxman’s schoolgirlish, groupie-like treatment of various prominent atheists in recent interviews, maybe he favours this far-from-impartial view.

I’m guessing that Hitchens just happened to be watching University Challenge, got annoyed by the use of “Common Era” and decided to use it at the end of his column to have a little go at the BBC. It probably wouldn’t have gone any further if it wasn’t for James Delingpole.

On Saturday Delingpole wrote a piece for the Mail entitled “How the BBC fell for a Marxist plot to destroy civilisation from within”. I swear I’m not making this up. The piece reads like something from The Onion but, amazingly, he seems to be completely serious. It’s Delingpole who links Hitchens’ annoyance to the FAQ page I quoted above. He writes:

No longer will [The BBC's] website refer to those bigoted, Christian-centric concepts AD (as in Anno Domini – the Year of Our Lord) and BC (Before Christ). From now on, it will use initials which strip our traditional Gregorian calendar of its offensive religious context. All reference to Christ has been expunged, replaced by the terms CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before Common Era).

But the BBC isn’t doing this because it has been flooded with complaints, you understand. Nor is it responding to public demand. No, as it primly explains on the Q&A page on the section of its website bbc.co.uk/religion, it is doing it to be ‘in line with modern practice’.

He’s getting it completely wrong, of course. As we’ve already established, the FAQ page is only talking about a single section section of the BBC’s web site. But Delingpole isn’t a man who ever lets facts stand in the way of a good rant. Building on a non-existent foundation he spins a magnificent conspiracy theory about pernicious left wingers destroying the British way of life.

BBC turns its back on year of our Lord
Then, on Sunday, Chris Hastings ties it all together, building on Hitchens’ annoyance, the BBC FAQ and Delingpole’s rantings to produce a front-page story with the headline “BBC turns its back on year of Our Lord: 2,000 years of Christianity jettisoned for politically correct ‘Common Era’”.

But, of course, the story doesn’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny. In fact it is full of internal contradictions.

The Corporation has replaced the familiar Anno Domini (the year of Our Lord) and Before Christ with the obscure terms Common Era and Before Common Era.

A bold statement which is rather shown up by the following sentence which admits that University Challenge and In Our Time “are among the growing number of shows using the new descriptions” – indication that the BBC’s evil plan isn’t quite as advanced as Hastings would like us to think. It’s also interesting that he uses the phrase “new descriptions” as the terms have been around for 150 years.

If you get to the end of the article, he has asked the BBC for a statement on the issue. They say:

The BBC has not issued editorial guidance on the date systems.

Both AD and BC, and CE and BCE are widely accepted date systems and the decision on which term to use lies with individual production and editorial teams.

A lesser man would have realised that this statement completely overturns the argument of the article and may even have thought better of submitting the story. Hastings, however, knows that most Mail readers don’t get past the first couple of paragraphs of a story and decided to press ahead safe in the knowledge that very few people would get to the end and realise the embarrassing truth. And it seems he was right to do so, as this story currently has over 1,500 comments, the vast majority of which are from people who obviously didn’t get far past the headline.

I thought that would have been the end of it, but this nonsense now seems to have gone viral. Yesterday the Mail published “Our language is being hijacked by the Left to muzzle rational debate” by Melanie Phillips (don’t read it – really, you have been warned) and “The BBC just loath anything that smacks of tradition” by Reverend Peter Mullen. Neither of these articles show any evidence of the authors having taken any time to investigate the story at all. The story has also moved beyond the Mail and has been covered by other papers like the Telegraph.

So there you have it. The birth of a new anti-BBC meme. One throwaway remark from a Mail writer and within a week the BBC is under attack for something that it hasn’t done. Well done Peter Hitchens. And the brilliant thing (as far as the Mail is concerned) is that the BBC is in a lose-lose situation here. If programmes stop using BC and AD then the paranoia of the Mail will be proved correct. If, however, (as seems far more likely) a mixture of the two systems continue to be used as it has been for several years, then the Mail will be able to point out every use of BC and AD as a triumph for its campaign.

One more nail in the coffin of rational debate in this country.

P.S. For more detail on the story see these two great posts over on Tabloid Watch.

Update: I’ve just seen this in an old article on the Daily Mail site:

A comparison of this latest finding with city walls and gates from the period of the First Temple, as well as pottery found at the site, enable us to postulate with a great degree of assurance that the wall that has been revealed is that which was built by King Solomon in Jerusalem in the latter part of the 10th century BCE.

And, you know what, not a ripple of complaint in the comments.

The Mail on Teenage Abortions

A lot of tabloid watchers have obviously been looking elsewhere today, but the Mail still manages to peddle its usual level of bullshit.

I was particularly drawn to this piece [istyosty link]. In it they examine recent Department of Health figures on the number of girls of sixteen or under who have an abortion.

The Mail line is predictable.

Campaigners warned that the alarming figures, revealed by the Department of Health, were representative of a society where abortion was ‘on demand’ – even for very young girls who legally should not be having sex.

But there’s another way of looking at this data.

Here’s the table that the Mail published.

Now I’m not saying for a second that this is an acceptable level of teen abortions. Obviously anyone would hope for those figures to be far smaller – zero even. But take a close look at the figures for the last four years.

The number of abortions carried out on girls of sixteen and under has fallen every year since 2007. In fact the figure is now 15% lower than it was at its peak.

Surely that has to be seen as a good thing. That’s a substantial fall over four years. But no. The Mail looked at these figures and decided to spin it as a comment on our over-sexed society rather than the success story that it undoubtedly is.