Reward for a puppy, Facebook and immigration plots.

Via the inestimable Tabloid Watch, I note that the puppy meant to have stamped to death by yobs has been found to have, err, in fact died of a virus. The Express wasn't the only paper to declare this a huge story: the Sun also felt sufficiently angered by it to offer a reward of £2,500 to anyone who helped catch those responsible. The first person to call the news desk with the good news and then ask for the reward will be, err, suitably rewarded.

P.S.

Facebook has, predictably, fallen over and played dead. It's signed up with the IWF, probably because it knows full well that the organisation doesn't "drive out perverts" as the Sun seems to imagine it does.

P.P.S

The Sun's editorial team have arrived rather late to the nonsense surrounding Andrew Neather and the claim that somehow the immigration of the last few years was all a plot to create a multiracial hell-hole, but that doesn't make up for just how wrong it is:

That's because Downing Street whistleblower Andrew Neather has revealed that uncontrolled, mass immigration was a deliberate, covert policy cooked up by Mr Brown and Tony Blair to transform Britain into a multicultural melting-pot.

Err, except as Neather himself said:

"There was no plot," said Neather. He pinpointed a shift in immigration policy in 2001, when he wrote a speech for Roche outlining changes to make it easier for skilled workers to come to the UK. The speech followed a sensitive report on migration from the Downing Street performance and innovation unit.

"Multiculturalism was not the primary point of the report or the speech. The main goal was to allow in more migrant workers at a point when – hard as it is to imagine now – the booming economy was running up against skills shortages," Neather wrote in the Standard.

He admitted he had a sense from several discussions at the time that there was a subsidiary purpose of boosting diversity and undermining the right's opposition to multiculturalism, but Neather insisted it was not the main point at issue.

"Somehow this has become distorted by excitable rightwing newspaper columnists into being a 'plot' to make Britain multicultural. There was no plot. I've worked closely with Ms Roche and Jack Straw and they are both decent, honourable people who I respect … What's more both were robust on immigration when they needed to be. Straw had driven through a tough Immigration and Asylum Act in 1999 and Roche had braved particularly cruel flak from the left over asylum seekers."

The Sun has even further distorted Neather's original point into it somehow being Brown and Blair as the scheming geniuses behind this sinister plot. Obviously they can't imagine the average Sun reader will be able to recall Jack Straw, let alone Barbara Roche, which says a lot more about them that it does about their actual customers.

So when Mr Johnson admits it has caused a "strain" on jobs and public services, remember this:

It did NOT happen because Labour took its eye off the ball. It was done on purpose and in secret. The result was a catastrophe.

We used to have rely on Margaret Hodge to help the BNP. Now it seems the Sun is willing to take up the reins. And of course:

We have repeatedly voiced those views. But, like all opponents of Labour's lunatic open-door policy, we were branded "racist" and ignored.

The Sun, ignored? Chance would be a fine thing!

Disgrace-space.

I thought that with the undeniable triumph of Facebook as social networking site of choice for almost everyone, with the exception perhaps of bands who favour MurdochSpace and various media luvvies and others who like Twitter that the Sun had put a lid on its Facebook-bashing. They couldn't apparently resist the temptation to splash today though with "DISGRACEBOOK", because Facebook isn't vetting every single profile on the site:

Andrea, 39, said: "It is time somebody introduced controls which stop people putting up false information. The people who run Facebook have a responsibility."

Well no, they don't. They provide a service. If you somehow think you can stop people putting up "false information" without infringing the privacy of everyone, you haven't thought it through clearly. The Sun for its part, without mentioning MySpace (prop. R Murdoch), drops hardly the most subtle of hints with the bringing up of the Internet Watch Foundation:

Facebook and Twitter are the only major social networking sites which are not members of the Internet Watch Foundation.

The paper continues the argument in the leader:

As Ashleigh's devastated mother Andrea tells The Sun today, Facebook MUST now face up to its responsibilities and do more to stop perverts.

It is wrong to think nothing can be done about manipulative monsters who use networking sites to stalk victims.

There IS an organisation dedicated to making the web safer: the respected Internet Watch Foundation.

Facebook bosses have no excuse for not joining forces with it. Other similar sites belong.

The Foundation works with child protection agencies to track down internet perverts before it is too late.

The Sun urges Facebook chiefs to read Andrea's heartbreaking words.

And then, for Ashleigh's sake, join up.

Err, except the Foundation doesn't. The IWF is the body which blocks child pornography, criminally obscene content ("extreme pornography") and material considered to incite racial hatred. It might report material posted by someone to the police, as it did in the case of Darryn Walker, and it works with child protection agencies, but it doesn't "track down internet perverts", unless it is going well beyond its remit. The IWF couldn't have done anything to prevent the murder of Andrea, and it wouldn't be the slightest surprise if her murderer had also in the past used other social networking sites in exactly the same way. Bebo and News International as a whole are members of the IWF, but all membership brings is that rather than simply blocking material through "Cleanfeed", the IWF issues them with takedown notices. That the IWF is not "respected" in all quarters, is also one good reason to not sign up with it: it's a completely unaccountable organisation which acts a censor when it does not have legal jurisdiction to decide what is illegal and what isn't; it just decides what is and isn't according to its own legal advice, which is not the same thing.

That then is a damning front page and damning editorial aimed at a commercial rival which is based on the idea you can police the internet when you can't and on the idea that the IWF can when it doesn't. One wonders if Facebook will play dead in the same way as the BBC when attacked by the mighty Murdoch press. Oh, and I almost forgot, back in 2007 it was found that 29,000 sex offenders in America had profiles on MySpace. The Sun strangely didn't have anything to say about it, despite the rest of the press thinking it was important enough to.

Facebook-bashing returns?

I'm not going to go too to town over two stories in today's Sun which are essentially Facebook-bashing pieces - the first an interview with the victim of the "cyber-bully" who was successfully prosecuted last week, the second a ream of bullshit about how serial-footballer shagger and Celebrity Big Brother racist Danielle Lloyd had a "nervous breakdown" after she discovered a Facebook group called "I Hate Danielle Lloyd" - but it's worth wondering whether if either story had involved MySpace, owned by Sun parent company News International, rather than Facebook they would have been given such prominence or if the social networking site would have even been mentioned, especially considering how the Sun failed to name MySpace when it came to the gang banned from posting "intimidating" pictures on such sites.

Remarkable reticence.

The Sun is delighted that a gang from Manchester have had their internet privileges proscribed:

DECENT people should salute Judge Clement Goldstone, QC.

He has banned 10 gang hoodlums from posting sickening group photos of themselves on the internet.

The Manchester yobs had used a networking site to boast about their vicious activities.

Judge Goldstone told them: "The courts will not stand idly by when youths maraud menacingly like packs of wild animals."

Thank you, Judge. Other courts please take note.

The gang in question is the Fallowfield Mad Dogz, as the Sun's report makes clear. Both the Sun's editorial and article are remarkably reticent though about just what "networking" site the Mad Dogz had been using. Other reports are much more clear:

MEMBERS of a street gang have been banned from posting photos of themselves together on the web.

In a landmark ruling, 10 young men - all members of the `Fallowfield Mad Dogs' group - could be locked up if they put pictures of themselves on social networking websites.

...

An image of the youths in thuggish poses posted on MySpace was used as evidence of their gang membership.

And indeed, a Google search for the Fallowfield Mad Dogs brings up as the very first result the gang's MySpace page, untouched since late last year, where you can see over 36 photographs of the members in various "sickening" and "thuggish" poses. Doubtless the fact that MySpace is owned by the Sun's parent company News International has nothing whatsoever to do with how the paper couldn't name the most easily accessible place where "decent people" could see why they should salute Judge Goldstone.

MySpace's new rival?

I guess it was only a matter of time before this started: after having numerous articles having a go at Bebo and/or Facebook, the Sun has moved into Twitter-bashing.

It's only three short paragraphs about how brothels are allegedly using it to tout for business. However, given that it is the third anti-Twitter article in two weeks, it implies that Twitter is considered to be the new rival to the Murdoch-owned MySpace.

The thing is, the Murdoch-owned Sky News has its own Twitter correspondent, so it can't be that bad for News Corp!

Facebook-bashing rears its ugly head.

One of the things we look out for on this blog is not just articles that are obvious bullshit or propaganda, but signs that the Sun is cleaning up its act. It was therefore in a fit of good vibes that the above banner suggested that the Sun was dropping its animus towards News International's main rival in the social networking game, Facebook, and coming clean about its own shortcomings. After all, the last time there was a purge of "pervs" from MySpace, the Sun strangely didn't so much as print a single word about it.

It soon becomes obvious why the Sun has decided to trumpet the fact that so many "sex offenders" have been removed from MySpace - because, obviously, they're all now on Facebook instead!

MYSPACE has banned 90,000 sex offenders from its site — but the pervs may be turning to rival Facebook.

New measures to make online social networking safer resulted in the MySpace purge.

But technology experts claimed last night to have found 8,000-plus sex fiends on Facebook.

John Cardillo, a former New York City cop who runs internet security firm Sentinel, said: “We’ve identified and removed 90,000 sex offenders from MySpace.

“But Facebook could still be a haven for such people. We found 8,487 registered sex offenders on Facebook in just a few days by doing a basic search that any user can access.

“So that’s a small percentage of what is there.

“If you look at the size of its community, there could be as many as 100,000 sex offenders or paedophiles on Facebook.”

Yep, that's right, this entire piece is only appearing for two reasons: to crow about MySpace's great success in deleting the scourge of modern life from their site, while at the same time acting as PR for John Cardillo's company, employed by MySpace; and to bash Facebook for not being so cautious. Also, incredibly coincidentally no doubt, today just happens to be Facebook's 5th birthday; its rival wouldn't be trying to spoil the party, would it? Surely not.

If Facebook is telling the full story, than Cardillo's programme seems to be incredibly crude in any case: it seems to search for the names of registered sex offenders and little else, which MySpace then removes. Either that, or Cardillo, when applying his software to Facebook, just searched for the names and didn't remove the false positives for propaganda reasons.

The Sun had actually seemed to be letting the rivalry with Facebook go, perhaps because Murdoch himself is wondering whether his purchase of the company was worth it when Facebook is both far more popular and objectively a better site. That might still be the case, and the Scum was just determined to pop Facebook's own publicity bubble. Regardless, any real newspaper when dealing with such a story would have pointed out the obvious huge conflicts of interest: the Sun instead just treats its own readers as fools and ciphers in their own propaganda war.

It all depends on the joker in question...

With Ross and Brand having blown itself out, the next target for the permanently outraged was Jeremy Clarkson, having joked on Top Gear about truck drivers murdering prostitutes. While the Mail initially went to town, it toned the outrage down after the public failed to get behind it in a similar way to the former scandal. It wasn't helped, as Five Chinese Crackers points out, because the Sun, unsurprisingly considering it employs Clarkson, decided that the joke was funny.

Murdering prostitutes though is one thing; dead babies are obviously quite another:

"INTERNET sickos who mocked DEAD BABIES were banned last night after protests from grieving mums.

...

Lauren Elliott, 20, of Belper, Derbys, who has suffered two miscarriages, said: “It’s upsetting to make fun of such a heartbreaking subject.”

Could the fact that these jokes were being made on Facebook, the direct rival to the News Corporation owned MySpace possibly have anything to do with the Sun's apoplexy? Surely not.

A knife for the girls.

Another teenager dies as a result of a stabbing, which means the Sun just has to find someone or something to blame, and in this instance it happens to be Katy Perry. Yes, her of the kissing girls and liking it song.

The Sun has decreed that she must apologise for this heinous insult to all the families grieving as a result of knife crime. Perhaps if the photograph was recent, or as they describe it, from a recent shoot, she would have done: instead, the Katy Perry forum suggests that the photograph is two years old, and was residing until a Sun journalist spotted it, on, you guessed it, Perry's MySpace gallery. This friends is how you invent a scandal and make money out of it.

Much longer post on this over at mine.

Failing to extract the rafter from their own eye.

When there's not a lot of news about, journalists with pages to fill and editors to appease can fall back on one of those hardy perennials: revisiting an old story or banging out a highly similar successor.

The Sun has today done just that. Back at the beginning of July the Sun "exposed" a bunch of teens brandishing weapons in photographs they had posted on the social networking site Bebo. The problems with the article were obvious: we had to take the Sun's word that these images had indeed been on Bebo, as the site admins had removed them after being alerted by the Sun; and that they featured teens in this country.

Today's collection is much the same, albeit with less photographs than the effort in July. It features the same idiotic immature little children pretending to be men by posing with weapons about three times their size of their penises, and with the same lack of proof that such images were on Bebo, with no screen grabs and little chance of finding the profiles with much of the information provided. Thankfully however, the name of one of those featured is "Ironiik Starr", which is somewhat unique and gives us something to go on. His profile seems to still exist, although there is no picture corresponding with one presented by the Sun. He does however have two other images featuring baseball bats and guns, but trades that off by featuring an anti-gun crime song on his profile.

More interesting though is the other results which a quick Google of Ironik Starr gives us. Mr Starr has a profile on another social networking site, MySpace, owned by none other than the same parent company of the Sun. Like with his Bebo profile, there's no images of guns here. We do however have a link to another member of the group of which he's a member, a certain Hektiiq Starr. His profile is far more interesting: his background is an image of the character from the Hitman games, his add me box features two handguns, and lo and behold, his gallery contains this self-portrait:


Could this possibly be the image which the Sun describes in its piece as:

"The profile of a wannabe gangster called Ironiik Starr, from Luton, Beds, included a snap of a boy of no more than 12 with a sub-machine gun."

It just might be, mightn't it? Only it's on MySpace as well (Hektiqq Starr's profile on Bebo with the picture as his main photograph is here). The Sun probably hasn't featured this photograph because it's pretty apparent, even to someone like me with no knowledge of guns whatsoever, that this "sub-machine gun" is either a toy or an Airsoft rifle.

It does however prove the wider point: that focusing on one social-networking site, in this case Bebo, is wholly unfair when all of them contain much the same content from the self-same absorbed little gangs that will most likely grow out of waving weapons at cameras. To do a proper expose of this sort of posturing, if it would be worth the effort, would cover all the networks with examples from all of them, which are fairly easy to find. The Sun however can't do this, because criticising MySpace is something it simply can't do. It instead picks on a rival while at the same time continuing to perpetuate the nonsense of "Broken Britain". Considering that Bebo has been doing much more than MySpace to try to understand and combat knife and gun crime, the site might well want to consider whether it wants to make clear both the Sun's hypocrisy and its conflict of interest. And indeed, they might want to ask Patrick Mercer whether he think the Sun's sister company's hosting of the same material he was asked to condemn is also "deeply irresponsible".