Ooh, ah, gone too far? Dramatic four-paper apology to begin today

Sweaty-palmed news watchers expecting a slow news day in print tomorrow are to be given something special, as the Guardian's Roy Greenslade reported in his blog tonight. It seems that the Daily Star and Express have ended up giving themselves the media story of the year so far.

The tabs, which were set to be laden with figures further detailing the economic slowdowns and the snore-inducing minutiae of the McCartney divorce, have announced a decision to carry front page apologies this morning, in addition to some hefty out-of-court damages. Their weekend editions are expected to follow suit.

The newspapers have already updated their websites with similar leads, headlined ‘KATE AND JERRY MCCANN: SORRY’. The Express's piece notes that the step of taking out a splash is ‘unprecedented.’ The articles both carry a footnote, no doubt very much willingly written, saying ‘Please note that, for legal reasons, we have disabled reader comments on this article.’

The 75p it costs to buy the two papers tomorrow will for once be money well spent, if only for the reminder the cuttings will provide of the need to practice self-restraint in journalism.

Update, daytime of March 19: It seems that someone neglected to tell the sub working on p 68 of today's issue about the grave apology being made on page one, meaning that the paper's overseas property section bears the cringe-inducing headline ‘Luz yourself in Spain.’ Not quite the sensitive touch there.

Contemptuous

Having read Clive Coleman's piece in the Times earlier this week, headlined online as ‘Kick out our contempt laws’ and less insistently in print as ‘Will the internet kill off our creaking contempt laws?’, I was only too aware of the pressure being put on the Contempt of Court Act by technological advances.

However, reading the tabloids on many days, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the laws are already nothing more than quaint memory of an up-tight past. This morning was no exception, with the News of the World following up Friday’s recovery of Shannon Matthews and the arrest of her supposed captor with this rumor-mongering relating to the man being questioned by police, which leaves few aspects of his character and previous behaviour unquestioned.

Shouldn't the press leave it to the courts to decide rather than forcing their hand?

The ‘innuendo’ of political reporting

For those who missed it, yesterday's big item of journalism news was that the BBC's Political Editor Nick Robinson had become the subject of an early day motion in which 77 MPs condemned the ‘innuendo’ that appeared in this post in the reporter's blog.

Just over a day later, Robinson's robust defence of his original comments in his follow-up post had gained a swarm of interest, and going on 500 posts from largely supportive regular readers and what must have been a significant cross-over audience from other news sources.

The UK Parliament website carries a list of the signatories, who included prominent MPs Keith Vaz and Lembit Opik.

The problem is that political journalism in particular has to rely so much on the language of comment and the formation of theories (the blog posting in question was even explicitly titled ‘Theories on the Speaker’) to convey a true sense of the thought processes underlying politics.

There's just no way round it, and I was saddened that MPs were resorting to this albeit half-hearted measure to try and curb reporting freedoms. We know, by way of comparison, that most voices dissenting against their party lines in Westminster are not going to want to be named whenever a journalist simply reports that there are dissenting voices to be found - it's something we have to accept. When journalists started reporting at the end of last year that the Labour ranks were almost certain that an early election would be called, no one felt the need to press for the sources or to condemn the journalists concerned for making vague allusions. Similarly, when rumours of the antipathy in the Blair-Brown relationship began to circulate, or when in 2003 the rumour was spread that Lord Ashcroft had hired a private detective to trail a Times journalist, there was no expectation that these claims should be investigated.

In political reporting, simply parroting the messages that the parties are putting out (which would be the only way to engage in truly ‘hard’ political coverage) is not going to reveal the real and underlying motivations behind the actions of parliamentarians. Today politicians are coached in what is ‘on message’, so they are almost never going to confess their thoughts by being caught off guard.

A journalist, political or otherwise, has to use documents and interviews as the basis for his or her work, but to stop there would be a fallacy. There has to be some attempt to supply the reasons behind policy decisions – this is what the public need to know to judge whether politicians are truly acting on their behalf. The way to avoid this process turning news into comment is to take that theoretical element and apply the principle of balance to it also: by canvassing opposing opinions on intentions too.

So this must be a fast news day

Not having watched the news since late last night while trying in vain to find a channel showing the Oscars ceremony, I was astonished this evening to turn on to to the most astonishing single day's news I've seen for a long time.

With the the uncovering of increasingly horrific details in a series of cases involving the abuse of those in care at the Haut de la Garenne children's home; Kirklees Council staff and police working in droves to search for evidence of missing girl Shannon Matthews; the discovery, which would undoubtedly have delighted RD Laing, of the serious possibility that antidepressants simply ‘do not work’ and are a fraud perpetrated by drug companies; and the rather lighter news of a first live broadcast from North Korea and an Oscar win for a universally popular British actor have left literally only a few seconds of airtime for the irrational and surely election-losing move by Hilary Clinton's campaign team who released a picture of Barack Obama in Oriental dress.

It seems likely that for once tomorrow I won't be the only one in my newsagent queuing up with an armful of papers.

Live in Pyongyang

‘Let's go live now to our correspondent in Pyongyang.’

Unless you're a citizen of North Korea you won't have heard those words before. And if you blinked and missed it, at 22:20 this evening the BBC had a report (flickery though it was) carried live from the willow city.

It was a miniature media event lasting just three minutes including a brief prerecorded package, but a joy to see.

Article of the day: ‘Black Britain's darkest hour’ - Sarfraz Manzoor

The best article in today's papers was this 4300-word article detailing the impact of Enoch Powell's speech to the Conservative Association in a Wolverhampton hotel in 1968: the so-called Rivers of Blood speech.

The piece shows how Powell drew on what were until then buried resentments, changing many parts of the country from places where there was ‘not antipathy of any kind’ into places where workers could expect to see gangs lying in wait for them.

What makes the article special is the excellent set of quotes gathered from interviews with locals, including people who were new to the country at the time, who had felt that shift take place. Seeing a list of the quotes alone would be readable enough, but the writing serves to fill in the logical gaps between them, taking us through why people thought what they did. The piece is also rich with long-forgotten facts showing the impact of Powell's speech in other ways - like the fact that a special Royal Mail van was tasked with delivering the 100,000-odd letters of support sent to Powell in the weeks after he sent up what he called his ‘rocket.’

There's also an attempt to question exactly why Powell, then Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South West, of whom a neighbour said ‘Nobody knew who he was’ and who in 1964 pledged to resist racial discrimination, decided to prepare to give the nation a firebrand speech.

This has everything you'd want in a feature: a strong, almost academically well-supported argument; impressive evidence of some serious legwork; a sprinkling of trivia and a weighty closing line – and all given enough space to develop fully.

Daily Paper: The Times

• Accounts of the crimes of which Steve Wright was yesterday found guilty fill today's papers, this one being no exception with five pages of coverage. (pp 1, 6 & 7, 8 & 9.) It is in the nature of court reporting that we miss out on the detail of what it was that convinced the jury that Wright murdered the girls rather than stopping at picking them up for sex. However, it does make for strange reading when looking at these pages which reproduce in diagram form many of the exhibits from the case and we still don't quite know how the pieces fit together. In any case, the articles seem handled as sensitively as you would expect from a broadsheet, with background pieces being well-researched.

• Reading the foot of page 4 of today's edition, we are given a summary of the current rendition-related story, which states that the tropical island involved ‘is British only in name.’ Surprising, then, that the island is called Diego Garcia. Diego does not feature in the top 100 boys' names.

• Today's stand-out article is on page 19, written by Gerard Baker who looks at the personal feelings behind the Democrats in general and the Obama camp specifically, showing that:

‘it is a trope of the left wing of the Democratic party that America has been a pretty wretched sort of place [over the last quarter-century] . . . espousing policies and striking a rhetorical pose . . . well out of the mainstream of American politics.’
The sub's desk goes a stage further than Baker by headlining Obama as a ‘dangerous leftwinger.’

• A factlet for journalists writing on religion. The foot of page 24 reports that a study by UN researcher Asma Jahangir has shown that previously standard figures showing that 72% of the population is Christian are out of date. ‘The report claim that two thirds of British people do not admit to any religious affiliation.’ The article goes on to note that, rather presumptiously, the report ‘calls for the disestablishment of the Church of England.’

• One of the most important political quotes of the day, which is one of those statements by a leading figure likely to weigh in decision-makers' minds, is relegated to page 38 today. Bill Clinton was talking about his wife's chances:

‘If she wins Texas and Ohio I think she will be the nominee ... If you don't deliver for her, then I don't think she can be - it's all on [the voters].’

Personal of the Day

• VERY UGLY WOMAN, 60, looks much older, down market, no education, no style, no presence, no interests or conversation, seeks pseudo-modesty matches hers.