The Media Blog

Express mangles language figures and 'migrant' facts

Today's Express is up in arms about the number of migrants who are "shunning the English language". 

But it's worth taking a look at the facts of this story. 

The Express claims "4 million people living here hardly speak [English]".

Which might be a lot of people "shunning the English language", if it was true.

But it isn't.

Citing Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures, The Express says:

"More than four million migrants cannot or rarely speak English." 

But the ONS states:

"Of the eight per cent (4.2 million) of usual residents aged three years and over with a main language other than English, 79 per cent (3.3 million) could speak English very well or well."

So, in order to get its headline figure of four million who "hardly speak" English, The Express has included 3.3 million people who do in fact speak English "well or very well".

They have also decided 726,000 census respondents who said they speak "some English" belong in this "cannot or rarely speak English" category.

By definition, people who speak "some English" can speak English. They might also use what little English they speak every single day meaning it may be wrong to say they "rarely" speak English.

This means as many as 4.026 million people may be wrongly classified by The Express as being among the 4 million people who "cannot or rarely speak English".

As The Express does admit further down its article, the census found only 138,000 respondents who categorically "cannot speak English".

There is also an issue with assuming these people are all migrants.

To get its big number The Express has classed "all usual residents aged three years and over with a main language other than English" as "migrants".

Which clearly isn't true.

This group will include all British citizens who said their first language isn't English. It will also include all British citizens who said sign language is their first language.

So where does this leave us? It seems The Express's claim that '4 million migrants have shunned the English language' falls down on two important points.

Firstly, the number is out by between 3.3 million and 4 million.

Secondly, they definitely aren't all "migrants".

Mail follows "leggy beauty" with "all grown up" teen

The Daily Mail has followed up a controversial article yesterday which branded an eight-year-old girl a "leggy beauty" with a story today about an "all grown up" 15-year-old girl.

As has been widely pointed out elsewhere, "all grown up" is a phrase used regularly by the Mail to signpost photographs of young girls who might be close to the age of consent or alternatively former child stars who are now over 16.

"All grown up" at just 15 according to the Daily Mail.

A Google search for "all grown up" throws up a host of results from the Daily Mail like this:

Of course, the sexualisation of young girls is not only grossly distasteful it is also incredibly hypocritical from the Mail which has published many an article about young girls feeling forced to grow up too quickly by what they read and what they see in the media.

Consider these words published by the Mail Online just this month:

"Sexualisation — the forcing of a sexual identity onto a child — was a term originally applied in cases of child sex abuse. Today, it’s a problem that’s seen in every primary school, and few girls escape it... Never before has girlhood been under such a sustained assault...Something has been happening to poison their lives."

Now, who could that be, telling young girls they are "all grown up" when some are just 13, 14 or 15 years old...

A selection of Daily Mail headlines.

The Daily Mail turns the creepiness up a notch

The Daily Mail's questionable interest in young girls has been well documented but even by its own uncomfortably low standards the Mail Online has turned the creepiness up a notch today with a story about Heidi Klum's eight-year-old daughter, who the Mail thinks is a "leggy beauty":

She's eight-years-old.

In the article itself the Mail Online has four pictures of the eight-year-old girl being picked up from a gymnastics class, wearing gym shorts: 

"It looks like Heidi Klum's daughter might be hoping to become a model just like her mother... Heidi's eldest Leni clearly stole the show with her workout attire..."

What "show" is this? She's being picked up from gymnastics in her gym kit?

The Mail's caption writer adds beneath one shot:

"All eyes on me: The eight-year-old showed off her best model walk through the parking lot..."

And when the Mail says "all eyes" were on the eight-year-old girl, what they mean is "a photographer waited outside a kid's gym class to take these photos, knowing we buy pictures of very young girls".

The very young girl in question is doing nothing more attention-seeking than walking out of a gym class in her gym kit, into the no-doubt uninvited glare of a paparazzi's camera yet the Mail's "all eyes on me" premise suggests a child wearing a gym kit to a gym class is somehow shameless attention-seeking by an eight-year-old girl. Similarly, the Mail's suggestion that an eight-year-old girl was doing her best "modelling walk" and also "putting on her best modelling face" are part of the same weak justification.

The Daily Mail does an increasingly implausible job of holding itself up as some kind of moral arbiter yet its online editors seem to see no reason why an eight-year-old girl should be allowed to go to and from a gym class without comments being passed on her body.

Update:
The Mail has been roundly criticised online and by its own readers for this article. The best-rated comments posted on its story all make a similar point:

The Mail has responded by removing the phrase "leggy beauty" from the promotion of the story in its right hand column:

The Mail has also removed two of the pictures of the child from its story. However the article still makes for very uneasy reading.

Another great People "exclusive"

The People last week took a lot of criticism after it emerged it had apparently made up an "exclusive" interview with James Bond actor Roger Moore.

So this weekend it seems the paper is sticking to safer territory with its front page "exclusive" - reporting a story instead which was all over television news, local news and other newspapers' websites for much of Saturday:

Some of the quotes The People has used, attributed to an anonymous eyewitness, have not appeared elsewhere. But nor have they moved the story on at all or set The People's version of events apart from anything else out there.

For example, The People reported:

"The eyewitness, who did not want to be named... [said]... "He burst into the bookies with a gun and demanded the cashier hand over money...when he turned round one of the guys in there managed to grab him and get him to the ground."

But This is Plymouth had already reported:

"Another local resident  ...who asked to remain anonymous... said the man had burst into the bookmaker's wielding what she described as a "firearm". The woman said she had been told the man had died after bookies staff and punters restrained him."

And the police statement issued on Saturday appears to contain all the facts reported in The People's story:

"...it is understood a man entered the betting shop sometime around 6.45pm wearing a gas mask and holding a pistol-type firearm... People in the shop immediately tackled the man and were able to restrain and disarm him... The man was held down, still wearing his gas mask, while police were called."

 

'He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy'

The Swansea ballboy whose on-pitch antics and pre-match Tweeting brought him 100,000 new Twitter followers in just over 24 hours has addressed his new disciples for the first time.

It's hard to imagine what the assembled hoardes were expecting by following a Twitter account which had surely already had its 15 minutes of fame. But it probably wasn't worth the wait: 

Give it another week or two and it's easy to imagine the vast majority of the 100,000 won't even remember why they're following some teenager from Wales. 

In the meantime, this story has already been given the animation treatment by Taiwanese news-manglers NMAtv who have brought their unique brand of reporting to it: 

Dodgy lookalike of the day...

Hold the front page! This is Kent is reporting that a David Beckham "lookalike" sent Tunbridge Wells into a spin today when short-sighted locals mistook him for the former England and Real Madrid midfielder.

The headline asks "Is it him or isn't it...?"

It clearly isn't: 

However, hearty congratulations to the woman in the picture for doing an absolutely textbook 'shocked person in a local news story' expression.

How to pick up 80,000 Twitter followers overnight

Grant Shapps take note: If you want to pick up more than 80,000 followers on Twitter overnight, here is a foolproof plan.

1. Get a job as a ball boy at a football match
2. Tweet about your intention to disrupt the game
3. Disrupt the game
4. Hey presto

 

Ball boy Charlie Morgan tweeted about his intention to time waste ahead of the Swansea v Chelsea League Cup semi-final. 

Famous for 15 minutes: Morgan picked up more than 83,000 followers overnight after his tweet about his plan went viral. (Hat tip @BBCSporf).

His new followers are no doubt eagerly awaiting his next tweet.

Harry turns his guns on newspapers

All of the newspapers today have run versions of the same Prince Harry interview, despite one area covered in detail being the intrusive way he believes the UK press still behave towards him and his family.

As a result some have had to pick their quotes very carefully.

There is clearly no love lost. The animosity was obvious from the moment the Prince explained to ITV why he was doing interviews this week:

"I never wanted you guys to be out here but there was an agreement made to invite you out on the deal that the media didn't speculate before my deployment. That's the only reason you lot are out here."

Welcome to Afghanistan!

The Sun's decision to run a naked photo of the Prince cavorting in Las Vegas was clearly still a particularly sore point.

The Prince said:

"I probably let myself down, I let my family down, I let other people down. But at the end of the day I was in a private area and there should have been a certain amount of privacy that one should expect... the way I was treated [by newspapers], I don't think is acceptable."

The Sun has used parts of this quote but edited it carefully to include a further detail about the party guests in Las Vegas which makes it look as though the Prince's ire was aimed at the people who took the photo, rather than the newspaper which put it on the front page:

"Harry ...said he wished that what happened in Vegas had stayed in Vegas.

"Strangers he invited to his Sin City VIP suite last August told how no attempt was made to confiscate their cameraphones.

"But Harry insisted: "I was in a private area and there should be a certain amount of privacy that one should expect."

Readers of almost all papers will have missed out on the Prince discussing the upset and anger newspapers can stir in him:

"If there's a story and something's been written about me, I want to know what's being said. But all it does is just upset me and anger me that people can get away with writing the stuff they do. Not just about me... My father always says, 'Don't read it'. Everyone says, 'Don't read it, because it's always rubbish'."

"I'm surprised how many in the UK actually read it.

"Everyone's guilty for buying the newspapers, I guess, but hopefully nobody actually believes what they read. I certainly don't."

One example the Prince gave of media intrusion was the pressure and press speculation which he says forced the early announcement of William and Kate's pregnancy.

"I think it's very unfair that they were forced to publicise it when they were. But that's just the media for you."

The majority of papers seem to have missed that quote too. And a crack about phone hacking at News International didn't make the cut for many editors. 

It's probably safe to say he's not a fan. It will be interesting to see how the media now responds. 

Anyone for pricket?

Every now and again, wading through Ofcom's Broadcast Bulletin of the complaints it has investigated throws up a rare gem of regulators and lawyers arguing over something truly surreal.

Today's update included a dispute between Ofcom and ITV over a trailer for comedy panel show Celebrity Juice, which aired before the watershed and featured the pop star Example and host Keith Lemon (played by Leigh Francis).

The point of contention which exercised the lawyers was whether or not the trailer featured Example wearing a pink strap-on dildo.

Ofcom tells us:

"There was... one shot featuring Example with Keith Lemon... Example was shown wearing around his waist and over his clothes a pink object which, in Ofcom's view, appeared to resemble a strap-on dildo."

Having been caught out by the eagle-eyed dildo-spotters at Ofcom, ITV was left to argue its case and claimed the item was not a dildo at all but a "pricket bat" - "an implement to play an invented game called "Pricket".

"[ITV] said: "The pricket bat was not a strap-on prosthetic phallus... If it had been a strap-on dildo, we would obviously never even [have] considered including it in a pre-watershed trailer."

Got that? It definitely wasn't a strap-on dildo. It was a "pricket bat" which is totally different and should under no circumstances be confused with a strap-on dildo:

Anyone for pricket? Definitely NOT a strap-on dildo.

Is that a pricket bat in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?

Sadly, ITV's creative protestations fell on deaf ears and Ofcom found ITV in breach of Rule 1.3 which governs the protection of children from unsuitable material by appropriate scheduling.

Michael Winner's finest hour...?

Whatever you might think about the late Michael Winner's movies or his car insurance commercials, here he is in 1994 telling Richard Littlejohn exactly what he thought of him. Hopefully this clip makes it into the evening news obituaries...

See also:
[Guardian] Michael Winner dies aged 77 

The Mail doubles up on 'Blue Monday'

Today's Daily Mail reports:

Which is odd. Because last Monday's Daily Mail reported:

Every January we hear about 'Blue Monday' and how it is "the most depressing day of the year".

Now it seems we're getting two of them.

It all stems from a press release, written eight years ago to sell more holidays, for which a 'scientific formula' was created that showed the Monday during the last full week of January was the most depressing day of the year. 

It has since gone into newslore and remains a popular and effective PR 'news hook' to this day.

Last week's Daily Mail story was trying to sell us windows:

"A new study suggests say there may be a simple way of combating 'Blue Monday' - sit by a window… Melanie McDonald, of Anglian Home Improvements, which commissioned the study, said: "The survey shows a clear link between natural daylight, mood and motivation."

This week's 'Blue Monday' story in the Daily Mail was based on exactly the same research from Anglian Home Improvements.

Now, if anything tells us how arbitrary this day really is it's the fact the same newspaper can't seem to decide from one week to the next which day it should fall on and doesn't remember running exactly the same story the previous week.

Newspaper apology of the week

Quite some correction here from The People...

(hat tip @TabloidWatch)

Channel 4 taunts "morally questionable" Daily Mail

Earlier this month the Daily Mail beat a quiet retreat and dropped its faltering campaign against Channel 4 and The Big Fat Quiz of the Year.

But having seen off the Mail's protests it seems Channel 4 isn't ready to now let the paper forget the debacle. Last night Channel 4 taunted the Daily Mail and the handful of readers who were recruited to complain to Ofcom.

Introducing a new series of 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Channel 4's on-air announcer warned "readers of morally questionable newspapers" that the programme "contains comedy".

Touché.

See:
The Daily Mail's 'Big Fat' storm in a teacup 
Why Ofcom should now ignore 'Big Fat' complaints 
The Daily Mail limps on with 'Big Fat' campaign

True grit: Spokesman name of the week

When it comes to stories about gritting our icy roads and the perilous nature of untreated roads, there is only one expert the media should be speaking to this week...

(Hat tip: The News Quiz)

Journalists: How to spot the 'blue tick' trick on Twitter

There is a rich history of media outlets being fooled by spoof Twitter accounts. Remember the Daily Mail falling for a fake Steve Jobs Twitter account back in 2010? Or ITV falling for a fake Thierry Henry account last year?

And those accounts didn't even display Twitter's well known 'blue tick' which is supposed to denote a verified account.

Worrying then that a blog post from computer security expert Graham Cluley has pointed out today just how easy it is to add a fake blue tick to a Twitter profile. 

Here's one I made earlier:

Not really verified: But a carefully placed blue tick on a header image can make it look like you are.

Journalists who rely upon celebrity Twitter accounts for their news would do well to pay close attention.

Cluley told The Media Blog:

"There have been numerous occasions when journalists have been duped by news posted on Twitter from seemingly legitimate accounts, and then reported it as fact. There's a real risk that journalists will be more likely to be hoodwinked if the spoof Twitter account has used the "verified account" trick to appear legitimate."

Fortunately the cheat is far from robust and easily checked out if you know what to look for. But it is very easy to do and could certainly trick people who only take a quick look at a profile page online or on an application where the header image is displayed (such as Twitter's iPhone app).

Verified Profile

First of all, it should be stressed Twitter does seem to have already thought about this potential cheat. And the company has put in place an easy way to verify it.

As Cluley points out, if you hover your mouse over a verified tick, a caption should pop up stating 'verified profile'. It should disappear again if you move your cursor away. That would not happen with the above crude cheat. 

Alternatively, when trying to verify an account try running a search for the user name and then look at how they appear in the search results - that is somewhere where a verified tick cannot be falsely positioned:

It is not possible currently to fake the blue tick that appears next to search results. As such, don't take a blue tick on a profile page for granted. Try searching for the user's name to see how they appear in search results.

Express coy on Health Lottery link

Today's Daily Express is putting the boot into the National Lottery on its front page. It reports the Lottery is doubling the price of a ticket and cutting prizes.

It should probably be noted that the Daily Express and the Health Lottery are both owned by Richard Desmond:

(Hat tip: Scott Ballantyne)

That's not to say this isn't a story. Other papers have also run with it. After all, a 100 per cent price rise was unlikely to avoid criticism, especially if Camelot is also cutting the prizes at the same time.

In its article, The Express offers the following detail on these cuts to the prizes:

"Camelot said ...the extra money generated would go towards bigger prizes and a new raffle which will give 50 players the chance to win £20,000 every week.

"The average Saturday jackpot will increase from about £4.1million to £5million while Wednesday's top prize will increase from £2.2million to about £2.5million."

So not really a cut to the prizes as such. More an increase. But let's not get bogged down in semantics.

There then follows a whopping great six paragraph quote from the CEO of the Health Lottery criticising Camelot's "protected monopoly position" and telling Express readers "this amounts to an abuse of Camelot's dominant market position", "more competition is needed to allow other lotteries to thrive" and "health Lottery players will face no such price hike".

Again, this may be fair comment even from somebody with such a clear conflict of interests, but the Express doesn't think it relevant to mention at any point its shared ownership with the Health Lottery.

It's probably just an oversight.

See also:
Express turns a blind eye to Channel 5 repeats
Of tabloid editors and football managers

Social media and the rolling news vacuum

When a helicopter crashed in a densely populated part of London around 8am today, next to one of the busiest trainlines in Europe and a large bus station, the news was always going to be broken, within seconds, by members of the public on Twitter, armed with camera phones.

Twitter user Craig Jenner was one of the first to put a picture on Twitter which was shared far and wide:

What happened next is indicative of the way the media are increasingly playing catch-up on such stories, moving from reporting to aggregating (or curating, if you must) - images, eye-witness accounts and videos. Journalists were asking to use the picture with a credit and were trying to get Jenner on the phone:

 

Hat tip: Adam Hall

 

The problem for newsdesks with a story breaking far and wide on social media the very second something happens is it creates an even longer news vacuum for the media to fill with comment and speculation before facts come in.

The race to get on air and the desire to give the impression the story is developing all the time is more aggressive than ever. 

Cue "aviation experts" and eye-witnesses being asked to speculate on what they saw.

In this climate of rapid newsgathering, conflicting accounts and mistaken reports abound and spread very quickly. One eye-witness interviewed on camera praised the emergency services for being on the scene in under a minute. Another said it was 15 minutes.

A lot is taken on faith when putting people on camera who claim to have witnessed an event.

Inevitably, some media outlets were also quick to start asking about terrorism. Naturally, they were just keen to rule it out but it's unclear who was trying to rule it in. Certainly reporting that 'Police believe it is not an act of terrorism' carries a higher degree of sensationalism than saying 'Police believe it was an accident'.

And even after terrorism was ruled out a BBC journalist on the scene was still keen to ask an eye witness if they thought it might have been a terrorist attack:

BBC journalist: "Did you think it was a terrorist attack...?"
Eye-witness: "No."

He wasn't the only talking head not playing ball this morning. Asked to speculate on what may have happened, an aviation expert told the BBC:

"There's far too much speculation at the moment..."

Typo of the day...

Anybody who has ever accidentally typed "pubic" when they meant "public" (as in: "government cuts are likely to target the pubic sector") may enjoy seeing the typo done the other way around:

The Express's 'Frozen Planet' moment

The Daily Express is well known for its wild weather predictions. But the paper was caught out over the weekend using an old photograph on its front page, apparently to support claims the UK was in the grips of far heavier snowfall than it really way (see: Haven't ice seen you somewhere before?).

The paper used an old photo of a snow plough clearing blizzards in Cumbria but claimed the picture was taken on Friday. A quick Google image search confirmed the photo had been used in 2012 by both the Express and the Daily Mail.

It's unclear whether this was just a cock-up. The Express does have previous for putting the wrong picture on its front page. But given the Express's lust for dramatic weather headlines it's all too easy to believe it was over-eagerness to stand up claims of 'snowmageddon'. 

False impression

In the past, the Express has been quick to highlight instances of other media outlets misleading their audiences, whether by accident, oversight or design.

In 2011 the paper suggested the BBC had misled "millions of viewers" with images in documentary series Frozen Planet which had actually been filmed in a zoo.

The Express quoted John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee who said it was:

"...hugely disappointing that viewers were misled. My view has always been that all broadcasters should not seek to give viewers a false impression."

Quite right. And the same should be true of newspapers. The BBC faced questioning from MPs over its fake images. It will be interesting to see if the Express even manages a clarification in its own newspaper in the coming days. 

Not really shot in the Arctic (Frozen Planet, left). Not really the M6 yesterday (The Express, right).

See also:
The 'snowpocalypse' is coming
Remember this...
BINGO! What makes a Daily Express front page?
The facts and figures behind Express weather claims
Met Office puts the boot in to the Express
Weather forecasting Express

"Ill-informed speculation" - whoever could they mean?

The Daily Mail's royal correspondent today suggested on Twitter that the Royal family had been moved to quash suggestions the Duchess of Cambridge might be expecting twins in response to "ill-informed speculation":

Whoever could she mean? Well, there was the Telegraph's ludicrous front page lead last year:

 

But it wasn't just the Telegraph. There was loads of speculation about twins last year.

For example, this from the Daily Mail on 3 December: 

Duchess's rare illness could mean she is expecting twins
The acute morning sickness suffered by the Duchess of Cambridge causes nausea for up to five months of pregnancy or even until the birth - and it increases the chance of having twins.

Or how about this, from the Daily Mail on 6 December:

Duchess of Cambridge more likely to be having twins because of her age and her acute morning sickness
Some experts are predicting that Kate and William will end up with twins – and if they do, there could be more than just the usual parenting headaches ahead for the royal couple.

And then the Daily Mail told us on 10 December:

Former school friend Jessica Hay …said: "Catherine would love twins and a lot of people in their circle in London say it could indeed be the case that she is expecting twins. If it were a boy and a girl, it would be a dream come true for them both."

And then there was the time the Daily Mail showed us what a Kate Middleton look-a-like would look like holding two babies, accompanied with the caption "How Kate's 'twins' might look...":

You get the idea.

But it isn't going to be twins. So all of that was just ill-informed speculation.