The (grown up) family newspaper

Back in May, Apple wouldn't let The Sun appear on an iPhone app because it reckoned the paper's Page 3 was obscene.

The Sun responded by claiming, as it always does, that it is a family paper and page 3 is just fun. Which is a little odd as not many families I know enjoy ogling young ladies' breasts together.

But now, with the arrival of the Sun's iPad app, there has been some sort of a climb down.

The Sun is allowed on to Steve Jobs newest platform and get by his 'no porn' policy by having customers confirm they are 17 years of age or over.

(As an aside, I find Apple's choice of 17 as a restricted content age a little odd as the law for this kind of thing is 18 years.)

If The Sun is admitting that its paper is for adults, shouldn't it be moved up a shelf or two at the newsagents and if it's got content that itself is admitting is age restricted, it might be fun, but is it really for the family?

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...

Ignoring other parts of the paper

Would it be a bit rich for the columnist of a newspaper that has had a topless girl on it's third page for nih-on thirty years, many of them only just 18 and even 16 before the law was changed in 2003, to be wailing about early sexualisation of children? Apparently not.

Nadia Knows...

“Why are girls having sex so young?” Jane Moore demands in today’s print edition of the Sun. Her article is inspired by the number of 14-year-old girls having abortions – which has increased from 135 to 166 over two years. (On a side note, that’s an increase of 31 girls and may have something to do with rising population.)

However the statistics are interpreted, no one would argue that 14-year-olds having abortions isn’t worrying. But the way Moore discusses the issue shows a disregard for the context in which she writes:

“A spokesman for the Department of Health said extra funds had been invested in contraceptive services… It’s not the bloody point.

The issue here is self esteem… the early sexualisation of young girls.”

This of course is the paper where 18-year-old Rosie from Middlesex can happily strip off on Page 3. I’m not familiar with Rosie’s work, but one might guess this high-profile shoot isn’t her first. But she’s 18 now. So that’s OK.

Mackenzie is sensitive no longer.

Kelvin Mackenzie makes an appearance in Private Eye 1248 too.

It seems that some words, in Kelvin's mind, are now perfectly acceptable on the BBC that weren't not so long ago...

Goodbye George

After nothing in Private Eye's Street of Shame for a couple of issues, the latest issue, 1248 has four entries for the Sun, although being strict, only one is suitable for this blog.

And how suitable that it is the out-going political editor, George Pascoe-Watson, who should get one last mention on these pages...

The misleading has begun already.

Splashed across yesterday's Sun front page were those ordinary voters who like the paper had decided that Labour's lost it. Alongside those who would blame the government if it rains was one Ros Altmann, a former adviser to Tony Blair and now a governor at the LSE. The Sun's report of her comments was thus:

I thought we had a chance to make a difference. But Brown wanted people to spend, spend, spend and thought that will generate growth.

That is not the way economics work. We needed radical change. But we got radical complications. We have the world's lowest state pension, but also the most complex. I am hopeful for David Cameron. I don't think he can make a worse mess of pensions. I can see why The Sun supports him.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the Tories, but Hugh Muir in the Grauniad Diary has more:

For sure, the economist has strong criticism of the pensions and economics polices pursued by Gordon. But there it ends. "What I said to them in answer to the specific question: 'Do I now support the Tories?' was 'No'," she tells us. "I said I don't know what their policies are so I can't support them. I said I can understand that some people no longer support Labour. There has been a bit of poetic licence here." Such is war.

And as could have been predicted, David Cameron today gives the paper an interview, unveiling 10 pledges, all naturally Sun-pleasing and many also naturally counter-productive or just wrong-headed. Reassessing every person on incapacity benefit? Stupidly wasteful in both time and cost terms. Replacing the Human Rights Act with a piss-poor "British" bill of rights substitute when the Tories almost certainly won't withdraw from the European Convention of Human Rights will just delay justice. And as for reforming inheritance tax to "encourage saving", words fail me. One new one, although not included on the 10 pledges itself, is that Cameron will institute a "war cabinet" on Afghanistan should the Tories come to power, something demanded by the Sun only a few weeks back. It doesn't seem to matter that such a cabinet would be pointless when it's the military and not the politicians who are helming the fighting, but then the Sun has always loved symbolism far more than well thought out and implementable strategy.

Pssst! Wanna make some money?

From this week's Private Eye, we have two items appearing in the Street of Shame from the Sun, both featuring money-making opportunities.

The first concerns the double standards produced by the Sun's firewall (again) and...



...and the second, about a different way to make money...

Gordon [insert joke here] Smart

Well, who would've guessed?

Gordon Smart has got himself a joke writer. I should've been obvious really, because it is actually quite a funny joke. Although he had to make it his own by including an unnecessary reference to the targets' sexuality, as usual.

Who's coming up with the jokes for him? Popbitch.

I wonder if they'll have anything I can use in the title?

Making it personal

Jon Gaunt featured in Matthew Norman's Diary yesterday.

Matthew started of his column taking about Liz Jones of the Daily Mail but soon gets to Gaunty...

Gaunty's grudge

Over at The Sun, another leading columnist has, for now at least, survived a change of editors. Jon Gaunt ploughs elegantly on in his Friday slot under new boss Dominic Mohan, and on current form, no wonder. In his own special way, Gaunty is barely less committed to sharing his life with readers than Liz, and while Friday's effort fell short of the memorable account of how he used to masturbate over the underwear of the stepmother known to his teenage self as "the slag", there was much else to delight. His update on a continuing struggle with the debt-collection department of David Lloyd Leisure was particularly enthralling. If there's one thing that marks the great columnist apart, it's the courage to use public space to execute private grudges. Well done, Gaunty.

Yes, well done indeed.

The problem with content like that is, should the Ed put it on the outside of the paywall to entice visitors to pay for more, or on the inside once NewsCorp have got the money? Tough decision.

Getting yourself a reputation.

Gordon 'Ironically Named' Smart...

MEGAN FOX has signed up to play Catwoman in the next Batman movie.

I presume it's by Gordon. There's no byline on the article, but it has all the hallmarks of one of his efforts...

• Crap jokes - check


• Letcherous, 'I'd give her one' type comments - check


• Completely false story - check

I'll spare you any more quotes from him but on the 26th of September Megan had definitely signed up to be Catwoman.

But alas, Gordon in his handrubbing eagerness to show us a mocked up picture of Megan in rubber, well, something takes a rumour as truth...

"It's rumor. It's not true," a source at Warner Bros. told Access Hollywood. "There is no script. There is no project to be cast in."

Megan's 'people' deny it too.

I think Gordon might finally be making a name for himself over in America...

While a new “Batman” is inevitable, when the time comes to report something definite and real, chances are a column in the Sun already known for fabricating the fab won’t have the exclusive.

Should the Sun carry a health warning?

The Media Blog has an excellent spot in the Sun this morning...



Just what I needed yesterday on a long driving day. A big can of energy drink.

But why would that make it into the Sun Lies? Surely there can't be any hypocrisy going on with a drinks promotion, can there? Especially a non-alcoholic drinks promotion?

There has been a little controversy in the past about these types of drinks. All that concentrated caffeine and what-not can't be good for you, really. Just like any responsible company, The Sun and News Corp wouldn't want to do anything that might harm their customers, so maybe The Sun/News Corp didn't know about that side of it.

oh...

ENERGY drinks like Red Bull can cause heart attacks and strokes...

er...

ENERGY drink Red Bull may claim to give you "wings" but it could also give you a heart attack

um...

RESTLESSNESS, headaches, agitated behaviour and chest pains.
These are some of the symptoms of caffeine addiction, a growing problem among Britain's schoolkids.

Consumption of caffeine-enriched drinks such as Red Bull and Diet Coke is soaring among youngsters.

ah...

THE father of an 11-year-old boy found hanged has blamed his death on energy drinks.
Lee Johns said son Tyler had mood swings after becoming hooked on popular caffeine-filled drinks

*shrugs*...

...a worrying study at the Cardiovascular Research Centre in Adelaide, Australia, showed a single can of sugar-free Red Bull could have a damaging effect on the heart within 60 MINUTES.

None of these articles name Relentless, but as The Media Blog point out...

one can of Relentless contains 160 mg of caffeine. That's twice the amount of caffeine in a can of Red Bull

"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...?

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...

"Totally false".

Yesterday's Sun ran "sensational" claims about the autopsy of Michael Jackson, claiming that he was a virtual skeleton when he died, had four puncture wounds near to his heart from attempts to revive him, broken ribs, covered in bruises and was totally bald.

The response from the those who actually carried out the autopsy, the Los Angeles coroner? Ed Winter said:

"I don't know where that information came from, or who that information came from. It is not accurate. Some of it is totally false."

Tonight's big story on the Sun's website? Photographs from the rehearsals for Jackson's shows in London, showing the singer in what looks to be good health, if thin. As a former hack on the paper said, you couldn't make it up.

P.S.

The paper seems to be in a similarly confused mood over the royal family. Says the paper's leader column:

THE Government could learn a lesson or two about economy from the Royal Family.

The 83-year-old Queen is hardworking, devoted to public service - and notoriously thrifty with taxpayers' money.

The monarchy raises more in tourist revenue than we spend keeping them in castles, cars and corgis.

And they cost just 69p a head, less than half the price of a lemonade shandy all round.

Now that's what we call value for money.

While meanwhile the paper rages against the costs of, err, the royal family:

TAXPAYERS forked out £250,000 to do up Princess Beatrice’s university digs, The Sun can reveal.

...

Two tours by Prince Charles — to South America last March and Japan, Brunei and Indonesia last November — cost taxpayers almost £700,000 EACH in travel bills alone.

That, fact fans, is over 100% more than the BBC executives claimed in expenses over 5 years, and which the paper was furious about last week.

Weddings and Iranian funerals.

This tells you just how important the Sun remains, despite the arrival of the Twatter generation, in the estimation of politicians:

When Rebekah Wade, Sun newspaper editor and one of Britain's most powerful women, married horse trainer Charlie Brooks this weekend, she didn't so much invite a guest list to the reception as a power list.

Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Wade's boss Rupert Murdoch attended a Saturday afternoon reception at Brooks' family estate near Chipping Norton.

Of course, they might have just turned up so they could chat to the actual boss, knowing he'd be in attendance, and while the Sun remains undecided about who it will support at the next election, despite it seeming more than likely that it will back the Tories, there is as they say everything to play for. Can you imagine both leaders of the main political parties being invited to say, the wedding of the Guardian editor, or the BBC director general, or even the Telegraph editor's do?

Stephen Brook also provides us with some apparent information as to when Wade herself might be moved upstairs:

But Murdoch has extracted a promise from her that she will continue to edit the Sun until the general election, before handing over the reins.

Not that the editor makes much difference: it's the master that sets the tone.

P.S. The Sun's editorial today deliberately conflates two completely unrelated issues:

THE dodgy "election" of hardline fanatic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to another term as Iran's President is bad for his country - and terrible for the rest of the world.

With the backing of the ruling Ayatollahs he is likely to continue with Iran's nuclear build-up and keep backing terror groups throughout the Middle East.

But just as important to us is the evidence that growing numbers of young British men are fighting with the terrorists in Afghanistan.

Our soldiers have already told of hearing Birmingham and Manchester accents among Taliban fighters.

And yesterday it was reported that a dead insurgent had an Aston Villa tattoo on his body.

You have to hand it to the writer of this leader column - that's a good connection, and one specifically designed to make the reader believe that Iran and the "terrorists in Afghanistan" are either one and the same thing or being funded by them. Iran might well support and fund Hizbullah, and to a lesser extent Hamas, which is a Sunni Muslim group, but the idea that Iran is doing the same with the Taliban is ridiculous, and not just because Iran originally co-operated with the overthrow of the Talibs in 2001. Iran might well sponsor Sunni jihadism in the form of Hamas, but it does so only because that group has no world view, and is instead dedicated only to the liberation of Palestine. Getting into bed with the Taliban, even the sections of it which are more moderate than the al-Qaida supporters which it also contains and connives with is similar to communists working with fascists (and before someone says Molotov-Ribbentrop, that was cynicism on both sides, knowing that war was inevitable but had to be delayed); they want to destroy each other, not work together.

Equally, the idea that there are "growing" numbers of Brits fighting in Afghanistan is plausible, but not especially likely. The fact that one "insurgent" had an Aston Villa tattoo is neither here nor there; in case the Sun hasn't noticed, the Premier League is global. In any case, I might be in the minority here, but that a tiny number of British Muslims might be fighting those they could have gone to school with, while a cause for concern, is not terribly terrible. Far better that they become insurgents and usually find themselves getting killed in the process than carry out attacks back here. The real problem, much more troubling than Brit Muslims fighting in Afghanistan is them coming back having been trained and graduated from the real "universities of terrorism" which are the camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan; security might be lax in some prisons, but they're not going to learn how to make TATP in there.

If we don't, we are simply playing into the hands of men like Ahmadinejad - who jabbers about democracy while locking up his opponents and supporting our enemies.

If the Sun wanted to do something useful rather than scaremongeringly bleat about terrorists, it would be supporting the young of Iran in what looks increasingly like a potential uprising against the Ayatollahs, but then you rather suspect that the Sun, like Israel and others in both Washington and London secretly wanted Ahmadinejad to stay in power so that the status quo ante, so important to all, stays unchanged.

Fishing for exclusives

From the Eye...

It's a hard life

One of Roy Greenslades commentors pointed him in the direction of Tatler magazine. The particular piece in the mag is not online, but it is all about Rebekah Wade and her husband-to-be, Charlie Brooks.
So from Tatler via Roy...

When Charlie Brooks wakes up in the mornings at his barn in Oxfordshire, he likes nothing better than to fly to Venice from Oxford airport with his soon-to-be-wife Rebekah Wade, the dazzling redhead editor of The Sun, for lunch at Harry's Bar.

Later in the day, after shopping and sightseeing, the couple fly back to London for dinner at Wiltons in Jermyn Street.
...
When they're not in Venice, Charlie and Rebekah go on holiday with the Freuds on their boat... the Oppenheim Turners at their house in St Tropez... and with the Daventrys in the country.

They spend their weekdays at their flat in Chelsea Harbour... and weekends at their two-bedroom taupe-painted barn outside Chipping Norton... [where] a portrait of Rebekah by artist Jonathan Yeo, flame-haired and smiling, sits almost forgotten against a side wall...

Their weekend routine includes shopping at Daylesford, the most extravagant supermarket in England. They call it 'the mothership'... On Sundays they throw the occasional lunch for 20.

Tax cuts for the rich, anyone?

Going off half cocked

The MOD banning page 3? What are they thinking?

Probably the same as News International, which owns the Sun, according to the Guardian's Media Monkey:

...maybe the Current Bun should be launching a similar campaign much closer to home. Sun hacks have in the past been unable to access the site at its HQ in Wapping as it is rejected by News International's strict internet firewall.

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink

Matthew Normans' Diary:

The Sun last week devoted many pages to covering the subject of violence committed by women against their men folk. "I want society to understand domestic abuse DOES affect men," said Ian McNicholl, whose former partner has been jailed for seven years for maltreating him horrifically, on the front page.


In Tuesday's edition of the paper there was extensive pictorial evidence of the abuse the victim sustained, presnted under the headline "Punched, burned, glassed & broken...by my wife-to-be". Among much else, the poor chap had a steam iron branded on to his arm, his lap doused with boiling water and cigarettes stubbed out on his penis.

All of which brings us to the inaugural Humphrys-Paxo Question of the Month. A day after all this appeared in the newspaper for which he writes, my favourite columnist Jon Gaunt interviewed Mr McNicholl on SunTalk the internet radio station which proudly describes itself as the Home of Free Speech.

"So you weren't enjoying it or anything?" asked Gaunty. "I wasn't enjoying it at all," replied Mr McNicholl. Well, it was hardly being tied to the bedposts with fluffy pink handcuffs, or having drops of hot wax dribbled on to his nipples, was it? Still, always best to make sure.

Flee! Run for your lives!

This post was just gonna be a quick media-watch post with a snippet from Matthew Norman:

Kelvin MacKenzie has a pop at the remade Reggie Perrin starring Martin Clunes. I thought the first episode was hilarious, but that seems the minority view, and Kelvin took grave umbrage. "Some between-jobs idiot at the BBC decided it could be updated," he harrumphs. "Having seen the first show, the answer is clear – no it couldn't." Well, he has a point. It can be pitiful when people try to reinvent a memorable triumph of old. Kelvin's paper, meanwhile, featured Gordon Brown's face in a 60 watt bulb beside the headline "Will The Last Young Family To Leave Britain For Australia Or New Zealand Please Turn Out The Lights".

Presumably the quote came from Kelvin's column of the same title, with the same light bulb picture.
A read through of Kelvin's piece this morning shows that either Matthew Norman is mistaken and was obviously thinking of a different Kelvin Mackenzie or the bit about trying to re-invent old triumphs was removed. As The Sun doesn't let Google cache its pages we shall never know...

Anyway, I read Kelvin's piece and, after much scrubbing of the eyeballs, thought it needed a few things pointing out.

All the time he [Brown] took credit for the global boom, never once criticising the bankers, the private equity guys or the hedgies.

He loved them because they paid huge taxes and he was able to conduct his Scottish social experiment of giving money away to the useless and the layabouts, making sure that the great unwashed would vote Labour for ever.

Ah, of course, anyone without a job or is unable to work are naturally layabouts and useless and I also seem to remember the Sun being huge fans of New Labour before Gordon rose to the Premiership.

With our vaults deserted thanks to his profligacy, the economic tsunami hits us and then it becomes a global phenomenon.

His solution is to borrow even more, knowing, of course, he is going to be thrown out in a massive humiliation next June. But then it will be Cameron’s problem.

Perhaps that’s considered, in his twisted little obscene world, to be clever politics. But perhaps I could remind you, Mr Brown, that it’s OUR money and OUR future you’re playing with, not yours.

'OUR money and OUR future'. Man of the people is citizen Mackenzie. But he seems to forget that his paper and editor also plays with people lives.

Well, it’s time to do something about it. Normally I would advocate going up to No 10 and punching him firmly on the nose...

Because violence really does work, normally, but these are exceptional times.

...but if you have a family and are under 40 years of age could I urge you to take another course — desert our country as swiftly as you can and head for Australia or New Zealand and a new life.

Yes, you read it right, The Sun advocating immigration! It's ok though, because this is different. This is Brits going abroad, so it's emigration and everyone loves us Brits. Except those evil Muslims that want to destroy western civilisation, of course.

I thought that the Sun was supposed to be patriotic? First sign of trouble from a party that the Sun helped install and keep there for over twelve years and its ex-editor columnist is advising us all to swamp another country.

After all, we won’t have paid the debts run up by the socialist swindlers until 2032, so the only thing you will be missing is rubbing shoulders with the thick and the skint.

If everyone buggers off, won't it take longer for the debt to be paid off?

Such a move will upset your parents, but what with email, mobile phones and the low cost of flying you’ll probably hear and see more of each other than you do at the moment.

I doubt it very much. If you don't see or hear much of your family when you're in the same country, why would you when you're the other side of the planet?
Yes, there is email and to begin with, you may send photos and stuff back to family but that will taper off as you get used to the place. There are mobile phones, but what that has to do with anything, I have no idea. Has Kelvin seen the prices for calling Europe, where we are all supposed to be equal, never mind Australia?
And the flights, yes they are cheaper, but £500 is still a lot of money for some people and with 12 hours of flying and then the jet lag, it's not quite feasible to pop over for the weekend.

And now we see who Kelvin is really talking to...

Personally I will miss you because you think like me. You don’t want state handouts, you simply want to do your work, come home and be with your family without the state constantly looking over your shoulder or stealing 50 per cent of your money

People earning over £150,000, not the more common (as in more of them) reader who earns much less.

When Trevor Kavanagh warned us about the flight of the rich, I wasn't expecting the same paper to be urging them to leave.