The libelling of Sylvia Henry.

For those of you who want to cast your minds back to the deeply depressing days of late 2008 and the furore following the conviction of the three individuals found guilty of causing the death of Peter Connelly, you might remember that shortly afterwards the then Sun editor Rebekah Brooks gave the Hugh Cudlipp lecture, in which she defended her paper's "campaign for justice". She certainly had no regrets:

Campaigns provide a unique connection to the public especially when the subject matter is of a serious nature. For me, nothing can illustrate this connection better than our recent Baby P campaign.

The public outcry was deafening. And we began our fight for justice with a determination to expose the lack of accountability and responsibility for Baby P’s brutal death.

...

We received many many thousands of letters at The Sun about our Baby P coverage.

I’d like to read you one: ‘I have never been a huge fan of The Sun, however I thank you for the coverage of Baby P. I am so grateful for the campaign. This is not a modern day witch-hunt but a petition for justice. Please, please do not relent.'

In contrast, I’d like to quote from an article in... The Guardian.

“Full of fury and repellent hysteria, but isn’t that part of the game? This is less about the creation of public emotion and more about its manipulation."

This knee-jerk tabloid kicking reaction is just dull.

But total disregard and respect for public opinion never ceases to amaze me.

They demanded accountability.

And as a result of the campaign, some, just some, of those responsible were removed from office without compensation.

Or as this Sun reader wrote: ‘The tabloid press, which the arty-farty press like to look down on so much, has shown that it prides morality over political correctness.’

Brooks is now spending most of her time as chief executive of News International trying desperately to contain the ever growing phone-hacking scandal, having first claimed with a straight face that it was all lies and that the Guardian had likely deliberately misled the British public. Even then though her approving quoting of a reader who described her campaign as "morality over political correctness" was questionable: she knew full well that her determination to target not those genuinely responsible for Peter Connelly's death, who couldn't at the time be named, but instead the social workers at the centre of the case had led to two of them becoming suicidal. Her paper's website had allowed readers to leave comments encouraging Maria Ward to take their own life, such was the hatred the paper was well aware it was helping to whip up.

Today in the High Court the Sun had to admit that its targeting of Sylvia Henry, one of the Haringey social workers who had worked on Connelly's case, was based on completely inaccurate information. Henry was one of the five individuals the paper demanded be immediately sacked for having failed to prevent Connelly's death. The paper's campaign continued even after the BBC's Panorama had disclosed that Henry had wanted Connelly taken into care in 2006, following his admission to hospital with what she suspected was non-accidental injuries. She was overruled, and had no further role in Connelly's case after that point.

The paper however was absolutely certain of her culpability. In around 80 separate pieces over four months she was described as "grossly negligent", "shameless", to "blame for his appalling abuse and death", "lazy" and that she had "generally shown an uncaring disregard for the safety of children, even in cases where they obviously required urgent protection". It really doesn't get any more potentially libellous but the paper couldn't have cared in the slightest, not only of the damage to Henry's reputation, but also of the potential danger their vituperative articles posed to her personally: both Sharon Shoesmith and Maria Ward received death threats, with Shoesmith advised to avoid tube stations in case someone recognised her and pushed her under a train.

For once, the paper's apology is about right, both in length, its clarity and hopefully also in prominence, although it will be interesting to see where it appears in tomorrow's paper. She should never have had to pursue such a lengthy libel action though: if the Sun had bothered to investigate the case anything approaching properly in the first place they would have found, like Panorama, that she had worked conscientiously and with Connelly's best interests at heart throughout. Instead it was far too concerned with painting a picture of Haringey as a whole as out of touch and unaccountable. As the paper's leader had it at the time, "a price must be paid for his little life". That price could well have been paid in blood. Morality never even began to enter into it.

Has there ever been a more pathetic newspaper than the Sun?

Today's Sun editorial asks a rhetorical question (temporary link, leader in full follows at the end of the post*):

HAS there ever been a sleazier sporting organisation than FIFA?

If there has, then the Sun couldn't have possibly been as conflicted about them as it has FIFA. This happening upon the iniquities of world football's laughably corrupt governing body suddenly came to the paper the day after England's bid for 2018 World Cup was rejected, the rattle being thrown out of the pram in a fit of petulance not even the stroppiest of teenagers would sink to. FIFA BUNGS RUSSIA THE WORLD CUP it screamed, deciding that it had to have been backhanders and not our dire campaign which resulted in the pitiful 2 votes we picked up.



It was oh so different only a couple of days earlier. First the paper attacked the BBC for daring to broadcast a Panorama special on FIFA's easily bribed insiders, misrepresenting the documentary as not containing any new allegations of wrongdoing when the opposite was the case, the editorial being doubly hypocritical for referring to an investigation by its sister paper, the Sunday Times, which went over highly similar ground as a "legitimate inquiry". The following day it led with a truly pathetic "open letter", all but begging FIFA to ignore the BBC's traitorous outbursts and instead back England's bid. "Your brilliant tournament" it grovelled, tongue wedged firmly up Sepp Blatter's backside, Britain's supposedly most trenchant anti-establishment, irreverent and outspoken scandal sheet reduced to genuflecting before the sleaziest sporting organisation ever to have existed.

As is traditional, the editorial finishes with a flourish:

Who needs FIFA anyway?

Our Premier League is the world's greatest football competition.

So long as FIFA is in charge, the World Cup will not be worth winning.

The Sun will doubtless then put no pressure whatsoever on the England team come 2014, nor will it hype up our chances for months beforehand. Who knows, now that the daily paper of record has said it's not worth winning, we might just triumph.

*

HAS there ever been a sleazier sporting organisation than FIFA?

If the World Cup can only be hosted through bribery and corruption, England are well out of it.

Ex-FA chairman Lord Triesman reveals the favours he says FIFA executive members demanded for backing England's 2018 bid.

One wanted a knighthood. Another, vice president Jack Warner, allegedly sought £2.5million for a schools project - with the cash channelled through his own pockets.

A third asked for lucrative TV rights, while a fourth demanded: What have you got for me?

MPs investigating why England's bid failed also have evidence another two chiefs took bungs for backing Qatar's successful 2022 bid.

Two more FIFA bosses have already been banned, meaning a third of FIFA's top team is implicated. Yet FIFA president Sepp Blatter sees no need to quit.

As sport secretary Jeremy Hunt says, these allegations if proved should prompt a criminal investigation.

Who needs FIFA anyway?

Our Premier League is the world's greatest football competition.

So long as FIFA is in charge, the World Cup will not be worth winning.

The Sun misleads over BBC, Panorama, and the World Cup.

There's something almost wearingly inevitable about the Sun criticising the BBC for daring to broadcast last night's Panorama on corruption within Fifa, coming as it did only 3 days before the body decides on the host of the 2018 World Cup. After all, this is the same paper that back in March claimed Basil Brush was biased against the Conservatives, in one of its most insane outbursts since the days of the attacks on the "loony left" in the 80s.

As only a paper owned by an Australian-American can be, the Sun is nothing if not cynically patriotic. It doesn't then matter much if our bid never had much of a chance in the first place, the idea that even the possibility of "bringing football home" could be put in jeopardy by an outbreak of investigative journalism is wholly repugnant. At least, this would be the position the paper would take if it could; unfortunately, the Sun's sister the Sunday Times only 6 weeks ago exposed two members of the committee that will decide on which country hosts the tournament as either agreeing to take money in return for a vote or asking for a payment which would influence it.

Not even the Sun could be brazen enough to ignore entirely the actions of their fellow prisoners in Wapping, and so this puts the paper in a rather difficult position. How to criticise the BBC without coming across as completely and utterly hypocritical? Well, it's easy as it happens. Just misrepresent the programme broadcast entirely, as the Sun's article does. Both in the main body of the text and the "explainer" panel it claims that Panorama's accusations were either "re-hashed" or contained "few fresh allegations". While the programme did deal with previously aired claims of corruption within Fifa, Issa Hayatou's name had not been raised before in connection with what is known as the International Sports and Leisure affair. Likewise, while Jack Warner previously donated $1 million to charity after Panorama showed he had sold 2006 World Cup tickets to touts, the claim that he tried to do exactly the same thing again this year, only for the deal to fall through, was new. Both Hayatou and Warner will be among the 23-strong committee voting on the various bids. Worth noting is that through portraying Panorama in such a way, the paper is taking exactly the same line on the programme as Fifa themselves.

The paper's leader doesn't even bother to suggest that Panorama's allegations were a unnecessary dredging up of the past, or even that as the claims don't involve specific accusations of vote buying that they're irrelevant to the bidding process. Instead it just concentrates on the timing (temporary link, leader is quoted in full below):

WELL, that should do our chances of hosting the 2018 World Cup a power of good.

The BBC chose last night of all nights to accuse FIFA members of corruption - as they gathered in Zurich for Thursday's vote.

Don't the Beeb want England to win?

The timing of last night's Panorama TV investigation, targeting the very officials deciding England's fate, seemed calculated to inflict maximum damage on our bid.

Legitimate inquiries earlier by The Sunday Times, a sister paper of The Sun, have already revealed dodgy dealings involving FIFA members, for which two were suspended.

The BBC could have shown its film any time. Why pick the worst possible moment for English football?

Dismayed England bid chiefs fear our prospects could be wrecked.

Is this what we pay our licence fee for?

The reason for the timing is simple, as Tom Giles explains over on the BBC Editors blog. The key information behind the new allegations was only obtained in the last month. As for the argument the Sun appears to be making without actually setting it out, that the BBC should have delayed it until after the vote, if we ignore the risible claim that the corporation has deliberately set out to sabotage the English bid, isn't this exactly the time that such revelations should be made? It might not be exactly earth-shattering to learn that individuals within Fifa may well be corrupt, yet the very fact that those on the body which decides whom to award the tournament to have been alleged to have either taken back-handers or tried to sell tickets on the black market should cast into doubt their ability to make a decision based on the merits of the respective bids. Also of note is how the host country has to enact special legislation for the duration of the tournament, protecting the chosen sponsors, who also have to be given tax exempt status along with Fifa. Then again, seeing as Rupert Murdoch has in the past tried to avoid paying his fair share of tax in this country it's not surprising that his papers make nary a peep about such demands. The public, as the likes of the Sun would normally doubtless protest, have a right to know such details ahead of the decision being made, rather than after it.

In any case, the idea that the Sunday Times investigation, denounced by Fifa's "ethics committee" for sensationalism and twisting the facts has been forgotten because it happened more than 3 days before the bid is made is nonsense. Also worth remembering is the Mail on Sunday's truly unnecessary publication of an indiscreet conversation the then FA chairman had, which involved unprovable claims that the Russians had been bribing referees for the Spanish, who in return would vote for their bid for the 2018 cup. The Mail, strangely, came in for very little actual criticism from its rivals who instead focused on "rescuing" the bid. Dog doesn't always not eat dog in what used to be known as Fleet Street, but what is clear is that the right-wing press always bites the BBC, regardless of how it would never allow such concerns expressed in the Sun's editorial, even patriotic ones, to influence when and what they decide to publish.

The Sun's investigations into suicide chat groups.

There's a couple of posts over on my place concerning the Sun's coverage of the suicide pact between Joanne Lee and Steve Lumb. We thought it best not to reproduce them here due to the potentially distressing and sensitive nature of the material covered.

Porn at 16? We used to support it, now we don't...

First off, apologies for the relative lack of posts here. It's not because there's been a dearth of material, as the paper's coverage of the election can be crudely categorised as falling into two camps, firstly smearing Labour and the Liberal Democrats while indulging in some truly stomach-churning sycophancy towards David Cameron, but more because the election itself is detaining me more than I thought it would.

Here though is the latest attack on the Liberal Democrats, which is not just only slightly less ancient than the Daily Mail's splash last Thursday, but also somewhat hypocritical:

FURIOUS mums have slammed Liberal Democrat plans to let 16-year-olds watch and star in PORN films.

The controversial policy has faced blistering criticism in the chatrooms of Mumsnet, a popular website for mothers.

Under the Lib Dems, the legal age for viewing or appearing in adult movies will be cut from 18 to 16.

But the policy - overwhelmingly passed at the party's conference in 2004 - has now been savaged on the internet by women who claim it is "essentially legalisation of child porn".

We'll ignore the "FURIOUS MUMS" part and just focus on the policy itself, which is perfectly true, if not really mentioned or discussed since 2004. The BBC's news report from the time puts across the party's justification, which is more than adequate in pointing out the disconnect between the age of consent and the age at which you can watch other people engaging in sex:

Mr Foster made the case for allowing 16-year-olds to view pornography during a censorship and freedom of expression debate.

While he had worried the proposals would encourage pornography into schools, "the reality is sexually explicit material is already readily available to 16 and 17-year-olds on the internet", he said.

"Our current policy on censorship and freedom of expression is not only out-of-date, it's inconsistent and it's confusing," Mr Foster said.

"We still do not allow 16-year-olds to watch sex, despite the fact they can currently have sex, lawfully marry and indeed, a woman may choose to have a baby at 16.

"This certainly seems out of date given that as Liberal Democrats, we would extend to 16-year-olds full political and social rights ...

"The proposals are intellectually sound - 16 and 17-year-olds in this country are living in a twilight zone between childhood and adulthood, having lost their children's rights, yet only gaining adult rights in a piecemeal fashion, some at 16, some at 17, some at 18.

"This motion merely proposes consistency on the suitable age for obtaining adult rights in line with the well-established Liberal Democrat policy on 16 as the common age of majority.

There is no mention of allowing 16-year-olds to "star" in pornography incidentally, but then that's where the Sun's hypocrisy enters into it. After all, if we're going back 6 years here, why don't we go back slightly further and remember the fact that the Sun, along with the likes of the Star and Sport, were more than happy not so long ago to err, allow 16-year-old girls to pose topless on their third pages, as Samantha Fox, Maria Whittaker and Debee Ashby to name but three did? Why shouldn't "intelligent, vibrant young women who appear ... out of choice and because they enjoy the job", as former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks (nee Wade) described page 3 models, be allowed to do the same today? Or has the Sun changed its mind in these paedophile-plagued times? The law itself certainly has been, as the 2003 Sexual Offences Act regardless of permission now outlaws 16-year-old topless models, and you somehow doubt that it would be a Liberal Democrat priority should they enter into government with either a Commons majority or as part of a coalition to change it.

Still, another Liberal Democrat policy unearthed and exposed as mad, and if the quote floating around from the paper's political editor Tom Newton-Dunn is accurate, hopefully another step towards ensuring that his job is well and truly done.

A massive feminist victory for the Sun!

Back in December the Sun revealed the truly incredible news that a Premier League football manager had been visiting a brothel - although as a good majority of them are it was "disguised" as a massage parlour. It didn't however name him, claiming that they had been stopped from doing so by "creeping privacy laws".

Today the paper has named the manager, although I'm not going to because the paper, as then, has provided absolutely no evidence that he actually paid for sex. Even if he did, it seems that his wife couldn't care less, and has defended him.

A couple of wider points: the Sun's initial article resulted in a predictable wave of guessing at just who the manager was, most of them completely wide of the mark. Most fingered was probably Phil Brown, manager of Hull City, who had his Wikipedia page defaced as a result. Second, despite the Sun's claims about being silenced by the privacy aspects of the Human Rights Act there's still no ruling up on bailii.org referring to the case, and as it's far more interested in the lurid aspects of the story rather than the legal side, we don't learn anything about just how and why it was blocked from naming the manager until now. Lastly, and hilariously, the paper even tries to portray itself as cutting a dash for the women who had been working at the parlour, with a helpful quote provided by the charity Eaves:

"It is very damaging that a public figure could behave like this with seemingly relative impunity.

"We would prefer this issue to be highlighted so that the vulnerability of the women involved is not merely hidden from view.

"The conditions these women work in are often dangerous and, frankly, awful. Many live in fear of their lives and earn little, if any money."

Well, they certainly won't be earning any money now: as a result of the Sun's story the landlord has ended the parlour's tenancy. Presuming that the women working there were vulnerable and in danger, they'll almost certainly be in a worse overall position now. Another massive victory for the Sun's crusade for truth and morality!

It's that dastardly Human Rights Act again!

Shocking news in the Sun - a Premier League football manager has been caught visiting a brothel! It isn't the amazingly banal story we're interested in though, but the paper's claim as to why it can't name him:

Creeping privacy laws in the UK, based on the Human Rights Act, mean we are barred from naming him.

A nice try, but no. I might end up eating my words, but my guess at what's happened here, based so far on how there seems to be no specific news from other sites, no postings of rulings on bailii or boasts about representation on the usual media law firms sites, is that the Sun has been given an injunction barring it from naming the man until a full hearing has been heard, something which has been standard for years and has nothing to do with the HRA as yet. Indeed, yours truly was given an injunction back in 2006 by the lawyers of News of the World hack Mazher Mahmood for the heinous crime of posting photographs of the man over on my main blog. Also key here is that the Sun has not received a so-called "super injunction" like that which the Guardian did in the Trafigura case which prevents the paper from even mentioning the fact that it has been gagged.

Still, always worth a go blaming the Human Rights Act. That Times Newspapers (prop. R Murdoch) were one of the first to use the newly passed HRA to try and get out of a libel payment is neither here nor there, OK?

Thatcher, sick pics, some contempt and 40 years as the Eye sees it.

Wednesday. The easiest day of the fortnight for the Media Watch editor of this place.

This fortnight, after a bit of a drought recently, Private Eye has served up a couple of juicey bits.

First of all shocking pictures...



This being the story in question.

The next is an example of the Sun showing contempt for the Contempt of Court Act 1981...



...with a nice little dig at the Met Commissioner, too.

PE couldn't let 40 years of the sun go by without it's own little corner, either...



That last headline is a cracker, isn't it? There was an apology, in the only place it should've been for headline as wrong in every way as 'Straight sex cannot give you AIDS - Official': page 28. /sarcasm

Adam Macqueen, in 2006, writes about a similarly scarey, and dangerous, headline "Killer Plagues", about AIDS & HIV riddled Bulgarians and Hungarians invading Britian.

And to finish with, something a little lighter...

Going "soft" on perverts.

If there was ever a chance that Dominic Mohan would be less overbearing compared to his predecessor when it comes to the protection of children, then that's gone out the window with today's "exclusive" claim that a "[Q]uarter of pervs go free", as alluded to on the front page. The actual article, by Brian Flynn, has to be one of the least illuminating and most lazy examples of supposed investigative journalism in quite some time:

THE Sun can today reveal how Britain's soft justice system allows hundreds of child sex fiends to escape court action.

In a special investigation, we found more than a quarter of child abusers are let off with a caution by cops.

The shock figures emerged in responses by 33 police forces to Freedom of Information demands by The Sun.

This then is a method which has been previously pioneered by the mid-market tabloids, where they submit FoI requests to the country's police forces, not all of which reply, with an article to write already in mind. Both the Express and the Mail have used this to supposedly show how many "foreigners" are either committing murders or rapes in this country, and has been dealt with in the past by 5CC. Those requests though have been much narrower in scope to this one, and also far better defined and explained. The Sun's request, presumably, as it is never properly outlined, is for the numbers of individuals who have been charged and cautioned with "sexual and physical abuse offences against kids", their best description, not mine. This understandably covers a whole multitude of sins, some, but which by no means all, are covered in this document explaining the changes which came in under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

To start off with, only 33 forces have responded when there are 44 in total, so the statistics are by no means complete. Here though are the shock figures:

In total, 8,043 people who committed sexual and physical abuse offences against kids were charged in the year to April, while 2,764 were given a caution.

Just to illustrate that these 2,764 given a caution hardly cover the most serious offences, the paper then gives the only breakdown in actual offences in the entire piece:

Even beasts who rape under-age children can get just a ticking off. The statistics included 20 who raped girls under 16 and eight who attacked young boys.

So only 28 who admitted to rape were given a caution. For someone to only be given a caution for such a serious crime, especially against a child, there has to be significant mitigating circumstances. One of these is explained in the above document on the Sexual Offences Act 2003: since the act was passed, anyone under 12, regardless of whether they consented to sex or not, is considered to have been raped if they take part in any sexual activity involving penetration. This still applies even if the person they have sex with is 13 or below the age of consent themselves. Since it's hardly in the public interest to prosecute to the full extent of the law young children for such serious offences, a caution will often be the best option. The changes in the law were additionally not meant to be used when, for example, a 15-year-old consents to sex with a 17-year-old, unless there was abuse or exploitation involved, but this is not always the case, hence a caution will again sometimes be given. Other examples of where a caution will be considered the better option will be where the offence involved a member of the family of the victim, which the SOA expanded to include step-family members and others. The Sun also adds its own explanations as to why a caution rather than a prosecution will sometimes be best option:

Legal sources said reasons for the caution option include victims not wanting to go through a court process, perhaps if the attacker was a family member.

Evidence could also be flimsy, meaning a fiend could get off whereas under a caution guilt is assured. But one source said: "It must always be a last option."

Well, precisely, and the Sun has provided no evidence whatsoever that suggests this isn't the case. All it has done is present some out of context figures with no information whatsoever as to what offences have actually been committed, which would help us to ascertain whether a caution is a reasonable end result to the offence or not. It's also provided no comparison figures as to whether the number of cautions has actually gone up or down year on year, which would further help to show whether or not this is a change in policy and genuine further evidence of it being a mockery of Labour "being tough on crime". In short, it's a typical piece of tabloid journalism, so flimsy that as soon as you look at it in any detail you notice that it's coming apart at the seams. It's an example of doing the very bare minimum as an attempt to prove an already held hypothesis.

This is without even considering the Sun's leader column on the subject:

SHOCKING figures show one in four proven child abusers - including child rapists -- get off with a caution. That means almost 3,000 known paedophiles are on the loose - many of them likely to re-offend.

The Sun presents nothing whatsoever that justifies calling those given a caution paedophiles, and it also hasn't the slightest basis for claiming that "many of them" are likely to re-offend. This is just base scaremongering using the terms which are most likely to cause fear in both children and adults.

Raping girls under 16 - or even gang-raping a boy - goes virtually unpunished.

Except the article shows that only 28 cases of rape out of a total of 10,807 offences were concluded with a caution - we can't even tell how many cases of rape were prosecuted as the Sun doesn't provide us with those figures. That's hardly going virtually unpunished. The Sun does however have an explanation:

But there is a culture of idle incompetence at the very top - with both politicians and police chiefs. The message from on high is: Jails are full so turn a blind eye.

This is abject nonsense. The jails being full has very little to no influence whatsoever on the CPS deciding who to prosecute and who to not. The courts and judges may indeed be influenced by lack of space when it comes to passing sentence, but the CPS simply decides on the merits and circumstances of the case. The possibility of prison doesn't enter into it.

This stunning failure of justice is a crime in itself.

And innocent children pay the price.

As will innocent children and adults who believe the fearmongering which the Sun fails to even begin to back up.

From Bulger to Edlington.

Probably one of the worst moments in this country's recent media history was the hysteria which followed the murder of James Bulger.  In one sense, it was to be completely expected: Bulger's death, at the hands of two 10-year-old boys, with the toddler snatched from his mother in a matter of minutes, was the most appalling, shocking and inexplicable of crimes.  It was also one of the rarest: although we have since gotten sadly used to slightly older teenage boys knifing and even shooting each other, not since Mary Bell had those so young committed a crime so grave.  It was one of those crimes which managed to affect the psyche of the nation, even if only temporarily: the Daily Star's headline the day after the identities of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were revealed still remains to this day one of the most disgusting and despicable, quite possibly of all time: "How do you feel now, you little bastards?"  It was, in fairness, shouted by someone in the public gallery, and probably reflected a mood which many felt, yet it also just highlighted that many had completely forgotten that those in the dock were children, regardless of whether or not they understood or could comprehend what they had done.

The effects of Bulger's murder are still with us today, with politicians reacting in much the same fashion as the media did.  Labour played off of it appallingly, much as the Tories do today with their "broken society" meme, but the real damage was inflicted by Michael Howard, who declared that "prison works", a position which has been only built upon by Labour.  For better or worse though, considering the major controversy over how their sentence was imposed and served, both Venables and Thompson came out of a system which so often fails those older, and genuinely were reformed.  If they were "evil" or "monsters" when they went in, there is nothing to suggest that they still were or still are now that they're living under their new identities.  Some will baulk, understandably, at how those who murdered got might what might well be described as preferential treatment because of the seriousness of their crime, yet surely the ends in this instance justified the means.

How little we've, or rather the media have learned, is reflected in the coverage today of the case of the two brothers in Edlington who more by luck than apparent judgement failed to murder the two other little boys with whom they had been playing, in circumstances similar to that in which James Bulger was murdered.  The differences though are surely important: neither Venables or Thompson had anything close to the record that these two brothers apparently had, although there were some similarities, and also the key, most terrifying detail of the Bulger murder was that he was snatched from his mother by pure chance, something not the case here, and dragged along for hours, in front of numerous witnesses.  Nonetheless, much the same attitude pervades, as typified by the Sun's editorial.  These two brothers are, variously, "hell boys", "evil", "monsters", "dangerous predators" and guilty of "sickening bloodlust".  Not once are they actually described as what they are, despite everything they've done, which is children.  It reproduces a litany of those who failed, in various guises, as well as those who failed to protect the "innocent children" from these savages, but it doesn't even begin to suggest that maybe it was these two brothers who were failed more than anyone else.  That would take the blame away from them, or rather undermine the stated fact that they had "a measure of evil" beyond even the normal "feral" child.

You can of course argue endlessly over whether those who kill or attempt to kill are created by nature or by nuture.  A background similar to that which these two brothers had can be a signifier for such crimes, but equally it would be an insult to those who have struggled through such deprived backgrounds and came out of it without being damaged to suggest that explains it all.  Likewise, you can blame anything else you feel like: the Bulger murder led to attacks on both video games and "video nasties", even though there was no evidence whatsoever that either of the boys had actually watched "Child's Play 3" as the media came to claim he did.  The very mention of the "Chucky" films by a supposed "relative" makes me wonder about the veracity of her comments; it seems far too much of a coincidence that the exact same series of films featuring that same doll would be brought up again.  With that in mind, it is however interesting to note that the same source claims that the boys were dealt with harshly by their father, maybe far too harshly.  That rather undermines the Sun's refrain that "consistent discipline" is the only means by which to tame them, and even Iain Duncan Smith, a proponent of "tough love", made the point that the discipline they received may well have had the opposite effect.

The most distasteful part of the Sun's leader though is that "intimidation is long overdue", as the court in which the brothers plead guilty apparently "bent over backwards" to "show them kindness" by the judge and lawyers wearing suits rather than their usual garb.  This has far less to do with kindness and much more to do with ensuring that they understood properly what was going on, even during a relatively short session in which they plead guilty to lesser charges rather than the attempted murder which was initially proposed.  Intimidation would probably be the very last thing which they need, something already presumably provided by their father.  Then there's just the complete failure to perform a reality check, calling regimes in youth custody "disastrously lax".  These would be the same regimes which are currently using force more than they ever have, leaving little surprise when they fail just as much as prisons at preventing re-offending and reforming as well as punishing.

The hope has to be that same almost made up on the spur of the moment detention regime which Venables and Thompson went through, which involved not young offender's institutions but secure units, held separately, with both going through therapy as well as other programmes is also at the very least attempted in this case, although the sentence the two will receive is doubtful to be as harsh as that which Bulger's killers got, and how they will handle the fact that the two are brothers is also likely to be difficult.  It is though also worth reflecting, as the chief executive of Barnardo's Martin Narey did, on how close angels are to demons.  His suggestion, meant to stir debate,that Baby Peter may well have grown up had he survived to be a feral yob , the kind which are dismissed and demonised without a thought, inflammatory as it was, was the exact thing that the Sun did here.  If evil is inherent, then nothing can be done to prevent it or cure it; if it isn't, and naive liberals such as myself will protest profusely that there is no such thing, then it can be.  These two might not become "pillars of the community" as the Sun puts it, but to abandon hope in children and to demonise them in such a way is to abandon hope in humanity itself.

Social workers aren't evil after all? Who knew?

There's some sickeningly cynical back tracking in today's Sun leader:

SOCIAL workers must sometimes wonder why they bother getting out of bed some days... it sure ain't for the money.

They are vilified for horrific cases like Baby Peter - where criticism is justified. But for every case of child cruelty there are many more where timely intervention has brought hope without headlines.

Wait a minute, is the Sun actually being critical of itself for the first time ever? No, of course it isn't: even though it inadvertently admits that it vilified those involved in the Baby P case, its criticism was "justified".

It's worth recalling a letter sent by a blogger on the Community Care forum to the Sun, which outlined their more than legitimate concerns about the paper's coverage:

This pursuit was unnecessary - Ward will be investigated in the usual way - and it marred the whole profession. It alienated talented social workers nationwide. Since your campaign, evidence has already begun to emerge from our readers and elsewhere that some social workers have decided to stop practising and vacancy rates in London are approaching crisis levels. It is also likely to discourage bright students from entering the profession, undermining efforts to recruit much-needed social workers into children's services.

The Sun more than helped to create the current crisis, and in the bargain also nearly, although indirectly, caused both Maria Ward and Sharon Shoesmith to consider suicide. Now though the Sun is going to make everything right again:

The fact is there are too few trained social workers - many risking danger on doorsteps where even the police fear to tread.

So The Sun is backing movie and pop stars like Samantha Morton and Goldie in their campaign to recruit 5,000 new staff.

If we want to help vulnerable children, we need the right people to do the job.

Jolly good: now that movie and pop stars on the case the Sun has a cause it can get behind. If you want to help vulnerable children, you also might not want to vilify social workers as a whole as the paper did, and you also might not want bring the mob down on those who fail to save a child: some parents will always be determined to hurt or even kill those in their care, regardless of how closely monitored they are. You also might not want to splash them on the front page of your newspaper when you think they might have fathered a child, but perhaps we should let the Sun learn one thing at a time.

(P.S. Yesterday was Dominic Mohan's first "official" day as the paper's new editor. Is the above perhaps a dig at dear old Rebekah that she perhaps went too far in her helming of the Baby P campaign?)

Repeated corrections.

The Sun, probably due to Dominic Mohan taking over as editor, seems to be going through one of its periodical fits of declaring that everything wrong with everything is either the fault of political correctness and/or health and safety. Hence today it's time to turn on those bastards in the public services that look after their own safety first rather than those they're called out to help. I can't comment on the first three examples the paper highlights in its editorial, but it really should have known better than to use the tragic death of Jordon Lyons as a stick to beat police community support officers with:

Two police support officers just stood watching as a 10-year-old boy drowned, claiming they didn't have the correct training.

The Sun had to correct their original report after Greater Manchester Police complained to the PCC:

Mr David Whatton, Assistant Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, complained that the newspaper inaccurately suggested that Police Community Support Officers had stood by while Jordon Lyons drowned and did nothing to help.

Resolution:

The complaint was resolved when the newspaper published the following apology:
“Our reports on the inquest of Jordon Lyon who drowned trying to rescue his sister (September 2007) stated two Police Community Support Officers from Greater Manchester Police stood by and did nothing. We wish to clarify the two PCSOs arrived after Jordon disappeared under water and they summoned help and directed other emergency services to the scene. We apologise for any distress our report may have caused.”

Not only then had the boy likely already drowned when they had arrived, but they summoned further help, with the police themselves arriving within minutes of the support team arriving, far from "doing nothing" or "standing watching", as the Sun puts it today.

I'm sure the PCC will come down on the Sun like a ton of bricks for repeating something it's already had to correct, or err, it'll probably just do naff all as usual.

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.

"It wasn't me, it was the other three!"

BBC...

Claims back-from-the-dead canoeist John Darwin smuggled his memoirs out of jail using a rule allowing correspondence with lawyers are to be investigated.

What's this got to do with the Sun? Well, the Sun serialised them.

Christopher Hutchings, a media lawyer told the BBC there was currently no law that prevented criminals selling their stories.

"However, the Press Complaints Commission, which governs the newspaper and magazine industry, does have in its code of practice provision preventing such a situation," he said.

Very true. Item 16, part i) of the PCC code states...

Payment or offers of payment for stories, pictures or information, which seek to exploit a particular crime or to glorify or glamorise crime in general, must not be made directly or via agents to convicted or confessed criminals or to their associates – who may include family, friends and colleagues.

The Sun received the memoirs through Darwins' lawyer. Only Darwins' lawyer wasn't a lawyer but a fraudster and they both then abused the rule allowing confidential correspondence between lawyer and client.

This arrangement is used to lovely effect by the Sun to deflect the attention of breaking the PPC code of conduct back on to the Ministry of Justice...

However, the Sun claims, the Prison Service failed to carry out basic checks which would have revealed that Darwin's new "lawyer" was really a conman who was freed on licence earlier this year.

I've seen an attitude like that before. Now where was it...?

Street of Shame pt. 94.

Here's the Sun's mentions in today's Private Eye Street of Shame column (1242), which you'll need to click:

The hypocrisy machine.

The Sun's exclusive on Theresa Winters, the woman from Luton who has had all thirteen of her children taken into care and is now pregnant with her fourteenth, ticks all the paper's buttons. Broken Britain, scrounging feckless layabouts and of course the bourgeois journalists working for a "working class" newspaper sneering at their own target market. It doesn't really make much difference that I can't think of anything less feckless than being perpetually pregnant, and that yet again the paper is pushing for benefit reform by finding the most extreme case it can, regardless of how the kind of reform it demands would punish those who are deserving as well as those who "aren't". Combine this with the casual dehumanisation which infects all such stories, with Winters described as the "Baby Machine", leeches and slobs and you have a classic example of a newspaper providing its readers with a target they can hate without feeling bad about doing so.

The ire directed at the couple is based around how they've cost the taxpayer "millions" with their selfish ways, and of course how the benefit system encourages such behaviour (it doesn't; they've just abused it, but never mind). Yet when the BBC's Look East went round to their flat in an attempt to get their own interview, they were informed that they'd signed an exclusive contract with a national newspaper which prevented them from giving one. I can't obviously comment on whether such a contract involved the couple being paid for being abused and used as scapegoats by the Sun, but it seems doubtful that they would have done so unless their was something in it for them. Rather then than it being we have an underclass because we "fund it with handouts", which only someone who occupies an ivory tower from which they can't even begin to see the tops of the houses from could believe, it seems that the Winters will be able to rely on income from a national newspaper should she decide to go for baby fifteen. Encouraging and abetting such selfish behaviour? The Sun? Never!

No shame over Amy Winehouse.

The Sun has led the last two days on Amy Winehouse's ex-husband's story of life with her, the paper having bought it, doubtless for a huge wad of cash.

This is despite the fact that the newspaper on numerous occasions directly blamed Blake Fielder-Civil for Winehouse's descent into drug addiction, and which it is now handsomely profiting from, with such eye-opening exclusives as the fact that Fielder-Civil saved her from an overdose, and that she stole cocaine from Kate Moss's bag. Winehouse herself in fact claimed that Fielder-Civil saved her, as reported by the Sun at the time, except with the added aside by the paper that FC then left her in hospital to go and collect another fix. Doubtless though, the Sun was merely misinformed, and reports headlined "Amy's lag hubby has no shame", "Amy and Blake back to worst", "for God's sake, get help Amy!", "Amy stop your brainrotting", and "You should be ashamed Blake" were mistakes, all now rectified thanks to a bulging cheque. The Sun of course, when it comes to circulation and making money, has no shame over such reverse ferrets.

Rebekah Wade snared in phone hacking.

As might have been expected, Private Eye (1241) has some additional information on the phone hacking scandal:

"... There was, however, one bit of evidence he [Nick Davies, at the Graun's appearance before the Culture committee last week] omitted. A file seized by the Information Committee from private investigator Steve Whittamore in 2003, which was later obtained by lawyers for Professional Footballers' Association boss Gordon Taylor, included a personal request for Whittamore to trace someone's address via his phone number. The request came from Rebekah Wade when she was editor of the News of the Screws.

Davies was asked to keep quiet about this by the man who accompanied him to the committee hearing, Grauniad editor Alan Rusbridger, who feared that the skirmishes between the Grauniad and News International would turn into all-out war if there were any mention of the flame-haired weirdo who has now become NI's chief executive.

This may also be why the Guardian has yet to reveal that the secret payment of £700,000 in damages and costs to buy the silence of Gordon Taylor was not a mere executive order. It was decided by the directors of News Group Newspapers Ltd, the NI subsidary which owns the Sun and the Screws, at their board meeting on 10 June last year. If their involvement were revealed, it could cause grave embarrassment for the directors of News Group Newspapers Ltd - not least one James Murdoch."

The latter more or less came out yesterday, when we learned that James Murdoch had known about the settlement and agreed with it. The Wade revelation is though entirely new, and while there is no indication that Wade was using Whittamore for anything specifically illegal, it is an example that editors at the Screws knew about the "dark arts" and even personally used them. That makes it all the more ridiculous that both Andy Coulson and Tom Crone were so ignorant about what was happening all around them. It's also surprising that Wade herself was so tenacious in accusing the Graun of being "deliberately misleading" when they had such information on her; either she knew they wouldn't dare use it, as PE suggests, or shedecided to try to tough it out. Either that, or she didn't know.

By far the best comment on yesterday's reprise of Manuel from Fawlty Towers was from Peter Burden, who also interpreted their body language.

The Sun: supporting Our Boys by stealing their footage!

Another dismal leader in the Sun today, supporting the unwinnable war in Afghanistan to the hilt by claiming that leaving the country to the Taliban will obviously mean that the bombs killing "Our Boys" out there will quickly be coming here

More interesting though is a video clip which the Sun are predictably claiming as an exclusive, showing British troops in action near the Inkerman base in Helmand province and which they've slapped their logo on.

The Sun has in fact stolen the footage, as you might have expected. It was first posted on Liveleak on the 7th of July by someone called campbell. The Sun has simply cut it so that only the video and not the identifiers remain. Nice work, and doubtless whoever campbell is will be contacted so that he can paid for the paper using his video without permission.

Hacks of the news.

As you perhaps might have expected, the Sun has not had a single word to say about the rather high profile elsewhere news that the News of the World had been hacking into the mobile phones of at least hundreds of various celebrities and politicians, or at least has not mentioned it on their website. Doubtless this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that some of this occurred under Rebekah Wade's watch, and instead that the Sun is simply concentrating on more serious news. Like the fact that a tennis player has had the size of her breasts reduced. I'm sure they'll get onto it tomorrow...