MailOnline and children, again

January 14, 2012 – 12:51 pm

This week saw Daily Mail picture editor Paul Silva face the Leveson inquiry. During the questioning he was asked about the privacy of children, here is a summary from the free speech blog:

Silva agreed with a celebrity asking for privacy for their children, and that he “would go along with whatever they ask”. He said it was the paper’s policy that images of children would be pixellated, and when asked by Lord Justice Leveson whether it was questionable that photographers should be taking such pictures in the first place, he responded, “possibly, yes.”

When the inquiry came to talk about MailOnline Silva made it clear that he only deals with pictures for the print edition of the newspaper, not the website. Which begs the questions: who is responsible for the pictures used on the Mail website, and why are they also not appearing in front of the inquiry?

The trouble with the Mail website is that children aren’t merely shown in pictures without any attempt to remove them or pixellate their faces, it is that they often are the story. Take this, for example:

This is just one example of a story that appears daily on the Mail website. The MailOnline business model is based around photo-led (the article contains 5 pictures) ‘stories’ in which photographers stick their long lenses into the private public life of a celebrity. We have a media model that thinks it is perfectly normal to photograph children, babies and families whilst they play in the park, walk down the street, get in a car, eat in a restaurant, play on a beach or perform even the most mundane task. How is profiting from the constant harassment of young children and families acceptable?

Just because we live in a society that provides a willing and paying audience for this invasive drivel, doesn’t mean we have to allow amoral websites like the MailOnline to provide it.

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By Uponnothing | Posted in Press intrusion | Tagged , | Comments (3)

New Journalism project

January 11, 2012 – 11:18 pm

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will probably know that I have created a new website called ‘The New Journalist’ and that I’m looking for writers and contributors.

The basic idea is this: I have blogged about the terrible state of the UK media for a few years now and whilst I do believe that this is a worthwhile pursuit, I also acknowledge that it is also never really going to make any real difference in the way that the mainstream media functions. I have therefore decided rather than just criticise the current state of a lot of media output, I would actually create a platform for young or aspiring writers to get their views into the public sphere to counter the increasingly dishonest and irrational content currently inflicted upon us by large swathes of the media.

Whilst many individuals may have a blog or want to start one, few people can properly afford the time and effort to build up a readership and many good writers often fall by the wayside because of this. What The New Journalist aims to do is offer them a well publicised shared platform to which they can make the occasional contribution, allowing them more time to research the topic that interests them and put together an article that they can be proud of [avoiding the late-night rushed blogging that so many of us suffer from].

I want to give a platform to younger writers in particular because so often they bear the brunt of negative media portrayals or indeed political decisions without necessarily having any real right of reply.

I have built the site on a spare domain somewhere ready for activation, I now just need writers to provide the site with some content. You can write about anything really because this is never going to attempt to be a news site [impossible given the constraints], but rather more considered articles on contemporary matters – or articles on topics of interest that are not covered by our throwaway news industry. General categories will be:

  • Arts & Culture
  • Education
  • Science
  • Environment
  • Business
  • Politics
  • Life
  • Technology
  • Human rights
  • Technology
  • Health
  • Essays

Here is what I expect from contributors [some of these adapted from NUJ code of conduct for journalists]:

  1. All contributions should be as accurate as possible. This includes hyper-linking to all online sources used and referencing all other offline sources of information using endnotes.
  2. All information disseminated should be honestly conveyed, accurate and fair.
  3. Opinion pieces should clearly be marked as such, and should not contain any confusion between fact and opinion when creating an argument.
  4. Any information within the article must be obtained by honest, straightforward and open means, with the exception of investigations that are both overwhelmingly in the public interest and which involve evidence that cannot be obtained by straightforward means.
  5. Produces no material likely to lead to hatred or discrimination on the grounds of a person’s age, gender, race, colour, creed, legal status, disability, marital status, or sexual orientation.
  6. Avoids plagiarism.

Furthermore, contributors should notify the editor as soon as possible if they spot any mistakes in their article/s or would like to add any form of clarification.

The editor reserves the right to publish only the articles that meet this criteria.

If you are interested in becoming a regular contributor, please email editor AT thenewjournalist.co.uk with details on yourself, what you are interested in writing about and preferably an article. All articles will be edited if needed before publication and for the time being no payment can be offered. What I do hope to offer budding writers is the chance for their work to receive a decent amount of readers from day one.

thenewjournalist.co.uk does exist but is currently just a holding page. The website will be launched as soon as a team of writers are in place. I made a resolution that in 2012 I would get my projects going, and this is the main one, but it cannot succeed without your help. Please spread the word, follow The New Journalist on Twitter and visit the new site when it is launched.

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By Uponnothing | Posted in Projects | Tagged | Comments (3)

MailOnline fakes Austrian snowstorm picture

January 11, 2012 – 12:21 am

MailOnline have an article on heavy snow in Austria, and have decided to claim that a photograph taken in a famously snowy region of Japan is actually of one of the locations in Austria that they describe in the article. Here is the photograph from the MailOnline homepage (note a pretty dire headline fail as well):

In the article itself the photograph is accompanied by the following caption:

Tunnel vision: The road into Ischgi was briefly open before being closed because of avalanche fears

If you do a search for the image using TinEye you get 142 results clearly showing the Japanese origins of the photo. Here is a link to one blog that not only contains the picture from the Daily Mail article, but also lots more lovely snow pictures to look at to take your mind off of the mild, grey winter we’re experiencing this year. Also, check out the date of that blogpost: 29 December 2010. The Mail is claiming a picture that is over a year old has just been taken in Austria. Not to mention that the cars in the picture are driving on the wrong side of the road for Austria.

What baffles me is how the Mail ever thought they could get away with this obvious deception – a deception that has been pointed out numerous times in the unmoderated comments under the article. You would have thought everyone would be on their best behaviour whilst the Leveson inquiry was ongoing. Obviously not.

UPDATE:

Whilst is appears that the Mail website has now removed this image, they did not have time to remove it from the print edition of the Daily Mail:

The photo includes the same caption as the original online version of the article, claiming the photo is from the recent snowstorm in Austria. This is embarrassing considering the Daily Mail’s photo editor – Paul Silva – is currently appearing in front of the Leveson inquiry.

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By Uponnothing | Posted in Newspaper Lies | Tagged , | Comments (2)

Daily Mail still not exactly racially sensitive

January 7, 2012 – 1:39 pm

In the week that Paul Dacre tried to claim credit for bringing two racist murderers to justice the Daily Mail website is quickly returning to form with some standard comment moderation in which racially abusive comments are happily let through, even though the comments section clearly states that all comments are being moderated. The story is the police investigation into alledged racism that supposedly took place during the Liverpool – Oldham game last night and which resulted in a young black player breaking down in tears.

Considering what has happened in the last week, and considering the way in which Paul Dacre lorded his newspaper’s moral superiority over us all you would think that the comments would be closely moderated – even more so given the reputation MailOnline has for not letting through many a sensible, non-abusive comment if it doesn’t agree with the editorial line. But, sadly this is not the case:

Way to take the high ground, Daily Mail. Still, what most of these comments are saying – ‘grow up you baby, people have heard worse’ – only echoes what Steve Doughty wrote a couple of months back:

So, Mr Evra and Mr Ferdinand, I know you feel insulted. But perhaps in this case you could just put up with it and get on with the game.

The Daily Mail: institutionally racist even after the Stephen Lawrence case.

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By Uponnothing | Posted in racism | Tagged , | Comments (3)

Daily Mirror falsely claim Liverpool fan ‘arrested on suspicion for racial abuse’

January 7, 2012 – 12:01 am

The Daily Mirror have reported that Liverpool FC have been ‘hit by new racism row‘ and more specifically that:

a fan was arrested on suspicion of racially abusing Oldham player Tom Adeyemi…

Eyewitnesses saw two fans wearing Luis Suarez t-shirts, and heard one of them clearly shout “You f***ing black b*****d.”

Police immediately moved in to restrain the two suspects, and later confirmed arrests had been made.

However, the Guardian allegedly also reported that arrests had been made – only to remove all references to arrests shortly afterwards. Furthermore, BBC Sports Correspondent Dan Roan has tweeted that:

LFC & M’side Police say they are investigating “an incident” that occurred in the 2nd half v Oldham “to establish details of what happened” …but police “can confirm no one has been arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated behaviour during the match at Anfield”.

Once again Twitter is full of many different reports from many different sources. Whilst the Daily Mirror that eyewitnesses clearly heard racial abuse, Twitter users claiming to have been at the match and witnessing the incident deny that any racial abuse. Indeed, the BBC’s Nick Parrott was at the game and tweeted:

No fan was ejected following Adeyemi incident. I spoke to fans nearby who claim “Manc bastard” was the only thing shouted.

He was then able to confirm:

No #LFC fans were arrested on Kop tonight. Three were ejected, but this was unrelated to the #Adeyemi incident. I was there & spoke to cops

Before addressing the false claims in the Mirror he also commented that:

There were black and Asian fans near the fan who hurled abuse at #Adeyemi, I didn’t see them react to the fan. #LFC stewards didn’t react

What is clear is that the sheer speed at which information travels through social networks can both clarify and confuse situations. The Mirror clearly jumped at the initial incident, without first checking if any reliable sources could shed more light on the matter. Clearly a BBC reporter at the game should be considered a reliable source – and it seems according to those tweeting about the incident that the Guardian certainly corrected their article pretty quickly. It remains to be seen how long the Daily Mirror will take to correct its article – especially now that Merseyside Police have confirmed via Twitter that no arrests have been made – but an investigation into an incident is taking place.

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By Uponnothing | Posted in Newspaper Lies | Tagged | Comments (0)
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