Mr Wallace said that he was satisfied that his techniques were robust and could detect whether people inside tents. The apparent “disappearance” of protesters behind the cold canvas was due to the time taken for body heat to transfer to the external surface, he said.
Peter Preston
Matt Wilkinson
Catherine Gill'Following our story about the assistant head now facing investigation over lewd comments and bad language on Twitter, should we be taking care what we put "out there" into the wilderness of the web, or should employers respect freedom of speech and opinion, and our rights to put whatever we want on Twitter? Have you ever been in trouble because of something you've said online? Or would you like to take the opportunity to do so now?'A question which, in the circumstances, was pretty much an interactive red rag to a charging online bull. The responses don't make pretty reading.
WHAT DO HARPER BECKHAM, WILLIAM & KATE AND HARRY POTTER HAVE IN COMMON?
Harper Seven Beckham may have been born into the most famous family in the World, but she now has a new claim to fame after becoming the subject of a list of brand new bingo calls, by Mecca Bingo.Dubious celebrity tie-in, check. Illiterate capitalisation in the first line, check. Get ready for a classic. But this could still work, if we're short of a picture story or something...
Harper Beckham (number seven), joins Will and Kate (number eight) and Dumbledore (number four) in a brand new list of modern day calls suggested by Meccabingo.com customers, to celebrate Mecca’s 50th Birthday on Wednesday, 19th October.Hmmn, we can see what's going on here. This is just a list of numbers which rhyme with celebrities - or in the Beckham/seven case, kind of rhyme with celebrities. Still, we have elderly readers - if this is what they're using down in the bingo hall... oh, wait a minute...
Whilst bingo calls are not actually used anymore, modernising the traditional calls to reflect today’s culture is a fun way to mark Mecca’s 50th Birthday in a one-off game.So, let's get this straight. This is a random list of celebrities with tenuous links to random numbers, compiled by the PRs of a bingo company which no longer uses bingo calls, in a spurious attempt to get a name-check in a national.
Know this. In my experience, people who turn their noses up at skiing holidays – which, for those of you still languishing in the dark are the BEST HOLIDAYS IN THE UNIVERSE (and yes, I am including a free go on the Millennium Falcon in that) – are women who are obsessed with handbags, shoes and make-up, and lazy, lazy men.
Oh boo hoo, you have to wrap up in salopettes. Boo hoo, you have to wear ski boots. Boo hoo, you have half your face covered up in goggles. Boo boo boo boo booing hoo.And from there it continues - and is so bad it's definitely worth reading in full. There are more random capital letters. There is talk of zumba on Primrose Hill. There is a sentence which reads simply, 'The end.'
I just can’t understand who, once they’d gone online and read the headline and the report, would then go, “Ooh, I’d like to see this horrendously sad and tragic thing for myself.”
Basically: “I’d like to see a two-year-old little girl left to die in the street.” Could they not imagine it sufficiently vividly? Who presses Play? And when — during their lunch break? At home, after they’ve tucked their own children up in bed? On their phone, because they’ve got five minutes to kill between meetings? Waiting for their nail polish to dry?And while choosing to watch a video of someone's death may be the ultimate horror, newspapers come in for a real bashing too:
Last Thursday, on the day Gadaffi was captured and killed, there’s a snuff movie on my television, playing again and again across all the news channels: behold the battered, bleeding 69-year-old man begging for his life.
He’s about to die! He’s all bloodied! Pause, rewind, freeze-frame — it’s all yours! This ... this thing is on the home page of The Guardian’s website and starts playing automatically, forcing you to watch for the seconds it takes to scramble away from the page. Links to photographs of his corpse are pinging up all over the social media, should you fancy that instead. Meanwhile, if you’re feeling a bit Libya-ed out, the broken, dying Chinese two-year-old is still one click away...
...I don’t care if they were a heinous dictator or an innocent little child — I just don’t want to see... Neither, incidentally, does my seven-year-old: I had to dash down the stairs ahead of her on Friday to ensure all the papers that had been delivered were face-down on the kitchen table to shield her from the picture of Gadaffi, who was very much face-up across every front page.Whether you agree with her or not - and on balance, we probably don't - it's a well-argued point. But the singling out of the Guardian is a little unfair. In fact, FleetStreetBlues only hopes that India manages to dash down the stairs ahead of her seven-year-old this morning too, as she rushes to have a look at Mummy's column.
Bath licensee Ashley Van Dyck points out that he did not support police use of an airport-style scanner to check people on a night out for knives and drugs. Our article of September 25 repeated a quote to the BBC by Mr Van Dyck, chairman of Bath Pubwatch, saying only that he welcomed extra police officers being deployed to curb anti-social behaviour.But Mail-haters fear not. Forget the slightly grudging tone in the first three apologies - there's one mistake that the paper is clearly absolutely mortified by:
Last week we printed the Union Flag incorrectly in a tea towel promotion. The thick white lines of the St Andrew’s Cross should have been above the red St Patrick’s Cross on one side of the flag and below it on the other.The kind of mistake we can all agree the corrections and clarifications column was designed for. No excuses, Mail on Sunday. Letting yourselves and the readers down...
David Cameron's right-hand man Oliver Letwin has been caught dumping secret papers in park waste bins.
The PM's blundering policy adviser was seen on five separate days throwing away sensitive correspondence on terrorism, national security and constituents' private details.
The Cabinet Office minister disposed of more than 100 papers in the security breach in a park near No 10.Forget the story itself - it's hardly Watergate, with most of the paperwork apparently letters from constituents - and celebrate instead the way in which he was caught.
Indy suggests Fox should resign. However, as he hasn't had formal training as a minister, they'll presumably settle for a four-month course.
Dave plans to buy Angela a new engagement ring. By coincidence, they both have the same surname.
The couple have been together for four years but they hadn't married because they couldn't afford it, she said, although she has changed her name to his.The reference has been removed from the revamped MailOnline story now, and of course in the wider scheme of things, it's not the world's biggest blunder. But somewhere in the process from press conference to article, whether it was written into the copy by the reporter or added by an editor, the wrinkle was ironed out the wrong way. An assumption became fact. Never assume.
You know that Dr Johnson remark: 'Every man thinks less of himself for not having been a soldier.' You could say that every man thinks less of himself for having become a journalist. My father always used to say: 'Why don't you get a proper job?'
After leaving university I spent some time working on the editorial side of [the publishing group]'s rickety hyperlocal platform. Though the sites were ostensibly community news hubs, any serious reporting of local events was way down on the list of priorities. It was all about the business directory lurking in the background, which explains why sales outnumbered editorial ten to one.
From where I sat I was fully exposed to their God-awful banter and sales patter. Any rare moments of quiet would soon be punctured with a bellow of 'I'm not hearing enough noise, sales!' from the sales manager, which would bring on a renewed flurry of cold-calling. That said, I wasn't without sympathy for their plight. Life in the sales team, as with the gladiatorial arena, was brutal and short.
Each month a new batch of fresh meat would arrive for induction. After two days of being schooled in the dark arts while munching on M&S party platters, they'd be let loose upon the phones, only to be out of the door in a matter of weeks when they failed to convince enough recession-hit small business owners to part with their cash. Most of them barely had time to claim their basic, let alone their bonus.Still, if you think we have it bad, check out what they have to deal with Down Under. Another reader writes:
God, I remember a bell ringing when targets were met on the Oxford Journal group back in 1986 - moved on since then and thankfully most newspapers in the Uk still have a clearly defining line between the two departments.
Sadly, since moving to Australia in 2003, have discovered there is no such line in regional press - where sales managers try to tell reporters what to write. One regional paper in NSW, where I was deputy editor, blocked all council reporting for fear it would knock their $500k advertising budget!
No real estate stories, no courts - 'it's too bleak an outlook on our community' said the GM. 'People want to read good news - not hear of crime.'
Then I was instructed by a new GM that no council stories were allowed unless 'checked' by him. The word 'censorship' came up in a heated debate. He is - was - a salesman, with no journalistic training. This idiot even then tried to instruct a reporter how to write a court story, once I had managed to get court reporting back on the newslist.
Regional newspapers in Australia are ad driven and the poor journo has to play second fiddle. Thankfully, I walked away and have since returned to metro papers - in Perth - where you don't see a sales rep on the news floor. They're not allowed without a prior invitation...The best anecdote, though, came in the comments from 'Laura Cheese'.
I've overheard quite a few corkers from the sales team, but my favourite is when one of them told a potential client that we had an 'internet-based website'.
Did he see the Observer profile suggesting he was going downhill? "Yes, you turn the page and think, 'Oh God'." He says he didn't read it closely, but closely enough to notice it said he was at school at Charterhouse – a factoid added to his Wikipedia entry by an over-enthusiastic Old Carthusian. "It is slightly depressing that people recite this as fact," he says. "I have never set foot in the place."Ouch. We've said it before and we'll say it again, although it's hard to believe we have to: Wikipedia is not a source.
Today Brian Cathcart, professor of journalism at Kingston University, interviews him for the FT's Saturday magazine, and while much of what he says is unsurprising, it's worth reading in full. (Like most of the FT's content it's behind a registration wall, but you can access it immediately by clicking through from Google).“I remained oblivious of the extraordinary media interest even the day after I was released,” Jefferies recalls. He could not return to his flat so he stayed with friends who also hesitated to discuss the press coverage. It was only when he “blithely proposed”, as he puts it, to head off into Bristol to buy some clothes and washing things that matters came to a head. This prospect “so alarmed the solicitor that he rang to say that if my friends couldn’t persuade me not to do that, he would himself come down from London in order to persuade me that this was a very bad idea”.Nonetheless, friends and family who were aware of the blanket coverage were shocked and appalled:
He had spent Christmas with relatives in Derbyshire and had planned to visit an aunt in Cheshire for New Year. 'She was obviously one of the first people that I telephoned after I was released and she was … extremely relieved to hear me. She said she felt as if the experience of those three days had aged her a hundred years. Those were the words that she used.'There's also plenty of examples throughout the piece of just how skewed the coverage of his arrest was - including this gem.
The Mirror blew up one picture to show that Jefferies had an A-Z of Bristol in his car, adding the caption: “Evidence … maps were on the back seat”.It's worth noting though, that as much as he's angry at the media, Mr Jefferies is if anything much angrier at the police. He compares the entire experience to 'a kind of rape', and is currently suing Avon and Somerset police for false imprisonment, breach of his human rights and trespass. While the case against the media is settled, thanks to a full apology and £500,000 payout last July, his complaint against the police is still very much ongoing.
Bella Quinn'The issue of the construction of a small stage area in advertising was raised. TP reported that the publisher was very keen for this to happen and that it will go ahead. On the specific issue of activity on the stage clashing with sensitive phone calls; these must be planned when making such outgoing calls so that they are not made when the stage is in use. The stage is not in constant use and will involve attendance by editorial staff on certain occasions. (Last month’s Brilliance winner was Dan Martin from editorial, for instance). If such a phone call was received the recipient should explain what is going on and offer to call them back.'If anyone at the Mercury is reading, our email is fleetstreetblues@hotmail.co.uk. Let us know how that's working out for you.
For the first time in my long 40-year-old career I have started to work off Fleet Street in New Fetter lane and my local is El Vino's, where old hacks never die.
Fleet Street, today more regarded as a heritage tourist stop where people reminisce about print and hot metal, will now become the venue for a new cyberspace revolution - the rebirth of detailed investigative journalism on the web.David will be working for Exaronews, a City-funded, subscription-based investigative news website. It's run by Mark Watts, formerly chief investigative reporter on Sunday Business and, appropriately enough, author of The Fleet Street Sewer Rat, and according to its website, they have an editorial team 24-strong 'and growing'. Nice to see journalists back where they belong.
Since taking up pen, typewriter then laptop about a quarter of a century ago, I’ve written almost 5,000 newspaper and magazine articles. Ranging across most of the major issues affecting Britain or mankind — global warming, the Iraq war, the fall of Margaret Thatcher, the folly of Afghanistan, world population growth, the global economic crash, the madness of Gordon Brown — I’ve advanced lofty arguments.
I’ve come up with a plan for reorganising public transport in the UK, a future for Britain’s remaining colonies, and ideas on independence for Scotland and Wales. Times readers have had the benefit of my advice on the reform of libel laws, the direction of British foreign policy, and the existence of God.
None of these great essays — not one — has had the smallest impact. All (in the 18th-century philosopher David Hume’s words) “fell stillborn from the press”. None stirred the nation. None made a difference. None are remembered.
Only three things I’ve written have ever lodged themselves in the national consciousness. Only three ever excited my readers in large numbers. Only three got anyone going.Alas, resistance is futile. If journalists know that readers want odd things, then editors know that for the most part they should be given them. Two thousand words on soap dishes, armpits and the perils of stuck pubic hair duly followed. It was the fourth best-read article of the day.
The first was about squirty milk sachets. The second was about the evils of shampoo. The third was about the disadvantages of shower gel over soap.
