The Media Blog

Woolwich images divide newspaper readers

The terrible events in Woolwich on Wednesday have once again sparked debate about what balance, if any, the media needs to strike in covering such news without appearing to gratuitously exploit shocking images.

TV broadcasts carried warnings about the images. People had time to look away or switch over if so inclined. Images raced through social media, but we all have a choice of clicking or not clicking.

More inescapable though, for those not wishing to confront the horror of this story, were the front pages of today's newspapers, most of which carried graphic images of a bloodstained killer still wielding a knife, his victim visible in the background in some pictures.

It is an issue which naturally divides people because everybody's threshold for such detail is different. A survey of Media Blog readers today found 56 per cent of respondents said they believe the papers were wrong to run the images on their front pages, while 36 per cent said they believe the papers were in the right.

Based on 1,136 responses.

Respondents also had the opportunity to leave a comment. Below is a selection from more than 240 comments which illustrates just how divided people are on this issue: 

"I think papers should show a little responsible restraint instead of the all out sensationalism. There's no need to show such pictures on the front page. I'm not saying they shouldn't run them at all, but there's no need for them to be splashed, so large, in such a prominent position."

"The images reflected the horror of the event and were therefore not gratuitous."

"I am truly astounded at the decision taken by the papers to use such horrifyingly graphic images on their front pages!"

"We must see these images to believe them and to truly comprehend what happened. Words like "brutal" and "horrific" are tossed about too easily these days, speaking as a shameless tabloid hack; such language in copy on the front without the pictures just wouldn't sink in." 

"It simply seems to be giving the criminals the publicity they yearned for and is completely inappropriate and disrespectful to the family of the victim."

"It would appear that newspaper editors have played right into the Woolwich attackers hands by giving them the publicity they wanted."

"I think it is right to emphasise the full horror of situations like this, we can't hide from it."

"Sensationalism sells - I understand that - but I feel this is too much."

"Of course it is important to shield our children from the ever present violence and terror of today's world. However, the press have a duty to report the news as it is, reserving the front page for the most important news stories and the Woolwich murder was indisputably the most important national news story."

"People need to see and know the whole truth about incidents like the one that occurred in Woolwich."

"I don't think they were right to, but I also think they were left no choice after ITV had broadcast the video. From their point of view, they would have looked out of touch with events not to publish once they were in the public domain."

"It's not the media's job to censor news. These images reflect the horror of the killing, and not to report this event in the fullest manner would be negligent. If you don't like the news, look away. We need to bear witness to these terrible crimes."

"Having watched the video of the attacker I feel I'd be a hypocrite to complain about the front pages."

"It was pure sensationalism, didn't add anything to the story. I actively didn't buy a newspaper today because of it."

"Such horrifying photos should not be shown on any media. That is the blood of someone's son. We live in a country where the breasts of a Royal can't be printed but a murdered man is shown and his killer is published wielding weapons, covered in blood. It is wrong."

"The images have already spread around the world on social media, internet and television. No point in censoring them now."

"The newspapers are there to report the news as it is, not sanitise it."

"Ghoulish and unnecessary. I don't believe graphic images are warranted for anyone to appreciate the seriousness of the incident."

"I don't think the news should be censored - it was a bloody, brutal and shocking massacre and it happened on a suburban street here. People shouldn't be sheltered from it. Censor this and other things will be censored to avoid offending people."

"If you don't want to see the images, don't buy the papers. Life isn't always pleasant."

"The screen grabs coupled with repeating the words of the attacker as a headline were too much. If the terrorists could have designed their own posters, they couldn't have done a better job than that."

You can add your own comments below.

This May be wrong...

Battling through the wind and the driving rain, my shoes soaked through and a ruined umbrella long since discarded into a dustbin, one recent front page headline kept going round and round in my head...

"Driest May on record", The Express, 30 April 2013. The paper's source for this story was  Jonathan Powell from Vantage Weather Services. 

[Updated]: But it seems The Express too has now noted that this May is lacking many of the hallmarks of a drought - not least the necessary absence of driving rain. In fact, The Express now reports there is rather a lot of rain about...

 

"Brollies at the ready", The Express, 14 May 2013.

 

It seems The Media Blog's prediction from back in April may yet turn out to be a little more accurate than the drought prediction...

 

@TheMediaTweets, 29 April 2013

 

A new niche for the Mail Online

The Mail Online today has struck upon a new niche in its endless pursuit for opportunities to ogle and judge women: 

"For most women a police mug shot is the most humiliating photograph that will ever be taken...But these pictures of 10 women arrested in the U.S. have shown that some women have managed to maintain their looks in their mug shots..."

That's right girls, arrest and capture is no excuse to let yourselves go - because it's not just the judge who's going to be judging you nowadays:

An arresting line-up from the Mail Online.

The whole thing reads like an advert for a specialist dating website:

"Lorena Taverna appears to be pouting for the camera after being arrested for shoplifting while Toni Lee Hopkins does not seem at all intimidated after she was arrested for violating statutes governing sexually oriented businesses..."

Not to mention Rachel Kathryn Lemler who "still looks good" despite being arrested for drink driving. Well done her.

What say we move on...?

When it comes to the coverage of German football in the media it seems we are destined to always hear the same old tired lines.

On Tuesday, football commentator Clive Tyldesley – a man apparently constructed in an ITV laboratory out of an idiot and some old episodes of Dad's Army – greeted Borussia Dortmund reaching the Wembley final of the Champions League with a cry of "THE GERMANS ARE COMING".

I imagine he was standing up in his commentary box waving a bayonet with one hand and his standard issue ITV tin helmet with the other.

The Sun also went with "THE GERMANS ARE COMING" once Bayern Munich had secured their place in the Wembley showpiece alongside Dortmund, riffing topically upon a war which ended 34 years before the oldest Bayern player was even born:

THE GERMANS ARE COMING... and to prove it, here's a picture of Dutch footballer Arjen Robben.

For those impressed that Tyldesley and The Sun had at least managed not to declare "ZE GERMANS ARE COMING" there is always the Daily Star:

Non-sequitur of the week

For something to stand out as one of the stupider comments on Twitter during any given week is no mean feat. But here's Daily Mirror journalist Kevin Maguire passing comment on the news that former broadcaster Stuart Hall has pleaded guilty to 14 charges of indecent assault: 

It was inevitable that some sections of the press would try to score points against the BBC on the back of these awful crimes. Some people are incapable of walking past a political football without kicking it at the windows of the BBC.

But Maguire petulantly and opportunistically suggesting Hall's terrible crimes - and the fact he happened to work for the BBC at the time - in any way puts the entirely unrelated Leveson Inquiry in a changed light, or even raises questions about the even-handed nature of media regulation really puts the boot in to taste and reason.

This is news...?

This is an actual news story from today's Telegraph:

"The 'pristine' appearance of the Duchess of Cambridge and her sister Pippa Middleton when they were schoolgirls made other families feel 'rather hopeless', a mother whose daughter was at the same school as the sisters has revealed."

Did I mention the Telegraph put this story on the front page?

"The mother, whose child was in the same house as the Duchess at Marlborough College, said every item of clothing belonging to the Middletons would have "a beautifully sewn-in name tape"."

It seems strange that somebody would know such a detail, let alone remember it for perhaps 15 years or more and still be talking about it to this day. But not as odd as a newspaper considering these strange rememberings from the dim and distant past to be worthy of front page news.

It's not like the story gets any better:

"She said the pair also had the "smartest" tennis rackets and had enormous picnics on school sports' days."

"Enormous picnics". That may be the detail that clinched the front page spot. Though for the enormity of a picnic - that happened well over a decade ago - to be newsworthy I'm imagining a picnic blanket of at least half a mile long boasting a feast of such Epicurean splendour that the £10,000 per term Marlborough College had never seen its like before or since: a flock of roast swans, a solid silver paddling pool full of caviar and a life size marble rendering of the Trevi fountain, spewing Veuve Clicquot into crystal champagne flutes (for the parents, obviously).

"There was always something slightly galling about having your child at school with the Middletons."

...added the mother who may well have not stopped talking about it ever since.

"It made other families feel rather hopeless."

How empty must somebody's life be for them to be laid low with feelings of hopelessness over another family's picnic or the spiffingness of their daughters' tennis rackets?

And how empty must somebody's news list be to put that on the front page?

Ed Balls

As an admirer of The Times' front page wraps - especially those during the Olympics - it was tempting to imagine how they might have marked the nonsense of Ed Balls Day:

Ed Balls.

Perhaps unsurprisingly The Times decided against - or more likely didn't even think about - giving Balls his own front page wrap. Though I like to think* they might be kicking themselves now.

(* They won't be.)

If only déjà vu cured cancer

The Daily Express is once again leading with a front page story - as it did last month - telling us that there are seven golden rules to a longer life. In the past the number of golden rules has varied from four to ten, as the below sample shows.

If only déjà vu could cure cancer: The Express is convinced there are are either four, seven or ten steps to a longer life.

However they dress them up, in each of these stories the golden rules generally - understandably - revolve around four common sense guidelines: eat more healthily; drink less alcohol; don't smoke and get some exercise. Sometimes healthy diet and exercise combine to provide a fifth common sense guideline of maintaining a healthy weight. 

Sometimes, when the story stretches these to seven or ten golden rules it's because healthy eating is broken into sub-categories, such as eating more fruit and vegetables and lowering salt and calorie intake, or reducing the level of saturated fats or red meat in the diet.

None of which of course is rocket science and how long such common sense continues to be considered front page news is anybody's guess.

But occasionally there is a bit of a curve ball to freshen things up. For example, today's seven golden rules, while focused on healthy eating and exercise make no mention of smoking. Odd you might think. But the reason seems to be that Imperial College who conducted the research were testing a preset seven factors rather than testing a range of factors to determine the seven best, as the Express's headline might suggest.

Obama puts the boot in to CNN

Over in the US, President Obama has waded into the debate surrounding CNN's craptacular coverage of the Boston bombing and subsequent manhunt. Speaking at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner, Obama joked:

"I know CNN has taken some knocks lately, but I admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate."

Zing!

Our very own Piers Morgan (though America, you're very welcome to keep him) was also singled out by comedian and US talk show host Conan O'Brien speaking at the dinner. O'Brien questioned CNN's judgement in replacing "the popular Larry King with one of the scheming footmen from Downton Abbey".

Pippa who? Tabloids fall for Amanda Thatcher

When Amanda Thatcher turned up at her grandmother's funeral you could practically hear the 'posh totty' klaxon going off at picture desks across London. Forget the old lady in the coffin, her grandaughter was instant front page news:

We should probably just be grateful the Star didn't go for a headline like 'Mandy Makes Us Mourny!' or 'Mourning Glory!' 

The moment the cameras settled on Amanda Thatcher at the funeral, people watching the coverage and commenting on Twitter knew exactly how the story was going to play out because we'd seen it all before with Pippa Middleton and the media's obsession with her bottom:

Rosamund Urwin over at The Standard has written a good piece, declaring that Pippa Middleton's bottom can probably now be retired from tabloid duty. The papers have moved on to somebody who caught their eye at a funeral. Their posh totty correspondents have fresh quarry. Today's Daily Star is unequivocal about that fact - 'The Iron Lovely' (see what they did there) is the new Pippa Middleton (formerly 'Her Royal Hotness'):

The Irony Lovely: As prediced by pretty much everybody, The Daily Star has crowned Amanda Thatcher 'the new Pippa'.

They're breaking news...

CNN today reported...

This was followed with...

Then...

And then...

That basically sums up a pretty bad day at the office for US journalism, because it wasn't just CNN who was making an almighty hash of this story, the misinformation was spread far and wide. Buzzfeed has captured it all here.

See also:
Twitter's shameful Boston chancers

Twitter's shameful Boston chancers

Whenever tragedy strikes, the temptation now is to look away from Twitter because in the hours and days following any major incident we tend to see some of the behaviours which consistently let Twitter down - from sensationalist and wildly inaccurate media reports to clumsy ambush marketing attempts and vile jokes or hateful comments.

This has certainly been true of the terrorist attack in Boston. Whatever the motivation there are inevitably those who see a tragedy as an opportunity - to drive web traffic, to sell products, to gain twitter followers or simply to spread hatred and cause offence.

Of course, Twitter remains a powerful source of instant news and communication at such times but that is often lost amid sensationalist misinformation - both wilful and accidental:

More than 1,700 shared the New York Post's misinformation.

As soon as news breaks, people seem unable to resist the urgent need to create a defining role for themselves in the telling of the story, tweeting or retweeting the most alarming details they can find - or think up - in order to set themselves apart from those who are holding out for actual news. People look to flood the news vaccuum with misinformation.

Simon Ricketts over the Guardian has written a good piece about this.

Prejudice

Others meanwhile rush to judgement, shamefully seizing upon the opportunity to give vent to their hateful prejudices. In this instance people were quick to blame everybody from President Obama to North Korea for the terrorist attack in Boston.

And unlike somebody holding forth in a pub pointing the finger at who they believe is guilty - or speculating about a death toll or motive - those sharing ill-informed theories on Twitter can very quickly become part of a gathering storm which has a speed and a scale unseen in the real world.

Inevitably some of the nastiest comments by far on Twitter have come from vile hate mob the Westboro Baptist Church who have threatened to picket the funerals of victims and claim the attacks were God's punishment for same sex marriage. 

Marketing opportunity

Another hallmark of major news breaking on Twitter seems to be that there is always at least one brand which inevitably tries to piggyback on public interest in unfolding events to market products or services.

Remember Gap taking advantage of the deadly hurricane Sandy to promote its online shopping services to New Yorkers trapped indoors?

With the Boston Marathon terrorist attack it was food website Epicurious:

Who honestly looked at a tragedy in which people had been killed and thought it was a good opportunity to publicise their recipes and drive traffic to their website? Epicurious - which boasts over 300,000 followers on Twitter - deleted these tweets and swiftly apologised following an angry reaction (hat tip Rich Leigh).

The tweets from Epicurious were certainly stupid but probably crass and clueless more than malicious. We've seen such tweets enough in the past to know somebody will always get it wrong.

However, far more baffling was this attempt to exploit the tragedy, from somebody pretending to be comedian Lee Evans:

15,000 retweets but charities should not hold their breath waiting for the £30,000 - it seems the real objective here was simply to get retweeted.

The sad and desperate behaviour of some people on Twitter is often bemusing to the rest of us, but exploiting a tragedy simply to get retweets for a fake Twitter account is utterly perplexing.

We can safely assume this bogus tweeter will not make good on the sizeable donation owed and they have now deleted the tweet and changed their account overnight.

Human failings

As with most things which occur on Twitter, such behaviour is often an exaggeration of human failings. Tasteless jokes and ideas which might previously have drawn a shocked reaction from just a handful of people down a pub can now reach thousands or even millions of people.

The chancers - from the clumsy and the insensitive to the downright twisted and hateful - who would exploit a tragedy may previously have done so anyway in some real world way, but Twitter makes it easier and increases the reach. The result is often a bad taste left in the mouth and another dent in our faith in humanity.

Daily Mail v Mumsnet

You may remember back in February a journalist writing for the Daily Mail got a very public dressing down over at Mumsnet after she posted a rather loaded question about the NHS (see: Daily Mail journalist learns not to mess with Mumsnet).

It seems the Daily Mail has never really been a fan of Mumsnet, but since that incident the paper has published a couple of particularly negative articles about the parenting website.

You may spot a theme in the headlines: There was "Why I hate negative, judgmental Mumsnet" by TV presenter Amanda Holden and there was "Why I hate the smug bullies on Mumsnet!" by journalist Shona Sibary.

Past headlines have also included "I hate Mumsnet: Why one mum thinks the parenting website is smug, patronising and vicious".

But the latest piece has backfired slightly after the Mail was forced to publish a correction and clarification.

Not because Shona Sibary described Mumsnet as:

"...an insidious website inhabited by self-satisfied mothers whose sole purpose in life, it seems, is to lord themselves over other women."

And not because the article referred to Mumsnet members as "monsters" and a "cliquey, elitist bunch of witches".

It wasn't even because the writer suggested "behind closed doors" Mumsnet members are probably all "popping Prozac and deeply resenting the loss of identity and lack of short-term gratification that motherhood brings."

No, it was because Sibary appeared to suggest the level of bullying on Mumsnet may make members commit suicide:

"There's been much in the news recently about... a concerning social network site... that has been blamed for the tragic suicides of several teenagers. Well, welcome to the adult version - Mumsnet."

That has resulted in the following clarification being published by the Mail this week:

"The article may ...have suggested that bullying behaviour by [Mumsnet] users could encourage suicide. We are happy to clarify that no suicides have ever been linked to Mumsnet and that its members offer valuable support to those in distress or suffering mental illness."

You can bet the Mail probably wasn't really that happy about having to publish a clarification.

BBC quotes bear little resemblance to headlines

The story of a BBC Panorama team posing as members of an LSE student trip to film undercover in North Korea has led to fierce criticism of the BBC.

However, forget for a minute the specifics of the story and just marvel at how anybody managed to get this headline...

MailOnline, 14 April 2013

...out of this quote, used in the same article, from Ceri Thomas, head of programmes at BBC News:

"I need to be absolutely clear that if we had any suggestion that lives were at risk or anything approaching that - either the BBC team's lives or the lives of the students - then we wouldn't have gone anywhere near this."

It's not exactly "risking students' lives was worth it".

And it's not just the Mail. The Independent also went with the headline "Panorama was worth risking lives for, says BBC chief" despite running an accompanying video alongside the article of Thomas stating quite clearly:

"There is absolutely no evidence that we were risking the lives of these students. Had we had any kind of assessment that said we were putting lives at risk we would have pulled out of the trip."

In case you have missed this story, a storm has been brewing over the weekend after the LSE accused the BBC of endangering students by sending Panorama journalist John Sweeney and a cameraman into the country, posing as members of an LSE student trip. It has been claimed the BBC misled students taking part in the trip. The BBC has denied any suggestion it endangered students or misled the party.

You can catch up on the story here:

LSE anger at BBC Panorama over North Korea trip [BBC]
LSE professors 'at risk' over BBC's film on North Korea [Telegraph]
BBC refuses to drop North Korea Panorama documentary [Guardian]

Confusion over Tory 'photo fakery'

The Mirror today has accused the Conservative party of "photo fakery" after finding a picture of some fresh-faced young Conservatives on the Tory's website which the paper claims is actually a group of Australian students:

The Mirror's exclusive.

The Mirror is certainly right that the group isn't really a group of young Conservatives but it seems there's a very good chance they may not be Australian students either, even though The Mirror has found the same picture being used on an Australian student website.

The original version of the picture is in fact just a stock image, called 'Large group of happy people holding a billboard', available on a number of online stock photo galleries, such as Big Stock Photo:

Not young Conservatives: Probably not Australian students either.