Posted by dnotice
October 31st, 2011
While media watching, one thing you notice is a repeated confusion between the European Union (EU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) (run by the Council of Europe, CoE).
This may be completely inadvertent, but the Sun, Daily Mail and Express do make this mistake on a regular basis, amongst other “errors”.
I thought I would help them out.
Wikipedia has the following diagram showing how the jurisdiction of various European bodies overlaps*, as well as a few extra bits**:
As you can see there is a clear overlap between the EU and CoE/ECtHR – in fact to join the EU you must be a member of the CoE/ECtHR – but it is clear that there is a significant difference between the two, even when simply looking at the members of each.
The main difference is that one is more trade-related; one more co-operation related.
The EU was set up in 1958 by various western European countries, but not the UK (which created the European Free Trade Association in response), to help them trade with each other. In fact, the basic idea of the EU is to create an economic bloc between various countries via a single internal market.
The CoE was set up in 1949 – by the UK among others – is more of an inter-governmental co-operation organisation, kind of like a Europe-only UN, with a specific focus on civil rights by the European Convention on Human Rights, which the UK drafted, and a less obvious focus on pharmacology standards.
So while it can be seen that there are similarities between the two, there are obvious differences.
Hopefully, the tabloids will read this and take note, especially as the EU has already attempted to point this out, albeit without success.
* There are a few bodies which aren’t shown on the diagram, including the Central European Free Trade Agreement (which will probably be swallowed up by the EU in the future given the EU’s Candidates and Potential Candidates), and the Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia which is rarely mentioned in the UK.
** The other items are the European Free Trade Association; the European Economic Area; the EU Customs Zone; and the Schengen Area; as well as showing non-EU countries countries which have agreements to mint €s, but not those which decided to use it, without reaching a formal agreement, due to historic reasons.
Categories: EU |
1 Comment
Posted by dnotice
October 31st, 2011
You may or not know that the <a href=”http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049659/Corrections-clarifications.html”>Daily Mail has recently</a> started up a “Corrections and Clarifications” column.<br />
<br />
It appears <a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/oct/12/paul-dacre-leveson-inquiry”>to be in response</a> to defend the current status of media self-regulation, which is currently being investigated by <a href=”http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/”>the Leveson inquiry</a>.<br />
<br />
By way of keeping track of what is published <a href=”http://blog.dave.org.uk/2011/10/daily-mail-corrections.html”>Dave Cross has started up a site</a> which feeds the Mail’s corrections into one place: <a href=”http://mail.fellowtravellers.org.uk/”>Corrections and Clarifications</a>.
<br />
<br />
As Dave points out:<br />
<blockquote>
It’s a pretty half-arsed affair for many reasons. The only way to find it is by <a href=”http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?sel=site&searchPhrase=corrections+and+clarifications&orderBy=dateDesc”>searching for it by title</a>. There’s no link for it anywhere on the site and it doesn’t seem to have been given its own section. Most bizarrely, the corrections don’t appear in the <a href=”http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.rss”>main web feed</a> for the paper.</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote>
<br />
None of the corrections link back to the original story and in many cases you only get a vague description to help you work out which story they are talking about. And even if you work out which story they’re talking about, it’s often impossible to find the story on the web site as it has been removed.</blockquote>
Any suggestions can be emailed to <a href=”mailto:corrections@mailonsunday.co.uk”>corrections@mailonsunday.co.uk</a> or sent via post.
You may or not know that the Daily Mail has recently started a “Corrections and Clarifications” column.
It appears to be an attempt to defend the current status of media self-regulation, which is currently being investigated by the Leveson inquiry.
By way of keeping track of what is published Dave Cross has started up a site which feeds the Mail’s corrections into one place: Corrections and Clarifications.
As Dave points out:
It’s a pretty half-arsed affair for many reasons. The only way to find it is by searching for it by title. There’s no link for it anywhere on the site and it doesn’t seem to have been given its own section. Most bizarrely, the corrections don’t appear in the main web feed for the paper.
None of the corrections link back to the original story and in many cases you only get a vague description to help you work out which story they are talking about. And even if you work out which story they’re talking about, it’s often impossible to find the story on the web site as it has been removed.
Any suggestions can be emailed to corrections@mailonsunday.co.uk or sent via post.
Categories: Housekeeping |
No Comments
Posted by sim-o
October 20th, 2011
Categories: Front Pages |
3 Comments
Posted by sim-o
October 10th, 2011
Do you fancy a pint?
The gang behind The-Sun-Lies, Mailwatch, Expresswatch and numerous other media watching blogs are having Their second annual Media Watch Meetup. The first one, held in August just gone was such a success they couldn’t wait another twelve months so it’s being held in a couple of weeks.
Do come along for a drink or two and a chat about the papers, blogging or just to say hello. Best of all it’s free (apart from the beer which you’ll have to pay for yourself. We’re not *that* nice). There’s no entrance fee and you won’t need to buy anyone a beer to gain access to any of our top bloggers and you can stay as long as you want or until the pub kicks us all out. You can just turn up or or go to the Facebook event page and let us know to expect you.
So, are you coming then?
The Monarch pub, Chalk Farm Road, Camden (map).
Saturday 29th August October
3pm on
Categories: Housekeeping |
Tags: meet-up | 2 Comments
Posted by Merk
October 4th, 2011
Read Mailwatch posts on how the Mail jumped the gun on the Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito verdict here and here.
Categories: Front Pages |
7 Comments
Posted by Tim Ireland
October 3rd, 2011
Amanda Knox has just been found not guilty of murdering her room-mate Meredith Kercher. An Italian court upheld her appeal against a 26-year sentence, and similarly overturned a 25-year sentence imposed on her ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.
Below is a screen capture from an article published by the Daily Mail soon after the verdict. This article by Nick Pisa was clearly published in error, as it declared that both Knox & Sollecito were found guilty, when nothing like this happened:
But what is more significant is that we know this article was prepared in advance of an event that no-one at the Daily Mail could possibly have witnessed… which means that Nick Pisa and the relevant editing staff at the Daily Mail were prepared to print the following eyewitness accounts as if they were genuine, when everyone involved with preparing this article must have known that they described events that had yet to happen:
“Amanda Knox looked stunned this evening after she dramatically lost her prison appeal against her murder conviction….”
and
“As Knox realized the enormity of what judge Hellman was saying she sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears.”
and
“A few feet away Meredith’s mother Arline, her sister Stephanie and brother Lyle, who had flown in especially for the verdict remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family.”
In the same article, the Daily Mail of all papers has the temerity to sniff at the “media circus” around the trial; one caption even labels them ’scum’. But I can only see one ‘news’ paper inventing reactions from the prosecution following an event that never happened:
Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that ‘justice has been done’ although they said on a ‘human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail’.
The Daily Mail even give a full account of events that didn’t follow the event that didn’t happen:
Following the verdict Knox and Sollecito were taken out of court escorted by prison guards and into a waiting van which took her back to her cell at Capanne jail near Perugia and him to Terni jail, 60 miles away.
This is a clear-cut case of entirely invented detail that cannot be explained away as part of any standard verdict-preparedness process. In fact, it goes well beyond the ‘X actually said this to my face’ antics of Johann Hari, but I doubt very much if we will see Nick Pisa admitting to any wrongdoing or offering to attend journalism school anytime soon.
UPDATE (4/10/11 10:28): Tim emails Nick Pisa for a quote.
Categories: News |
23 Comments
Posted by dnotice
October 3rd, 2011
You may be aware that Amanda Knox has been cleared of murder.
However, if you’d stumbled upon the Daily Mail’s website, you would have thought otherwise.
This was published on the Mail’s website as soon as the judge said “Guilty”. However, he was referring to her being “guilty” of defamation, not murder.
Nevertheless, it appears that whoever publishes articles on the Mail’s website jumped the gun. A piece went up with the URL slug-words: Amanda-Knox-verdict-GUILTY-appeal-murder-conviction-rejected.
The artice has since been removed, but a screenshot was taken by @syn for posterity.
While it has captions including “Media scum”, what it interesting is that the Mail’s erroneous article has “quotes” from the prosecution.
The killer paragraph is:
Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said “Justice has been done” although they said on a “human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail“
Clearly they would only make such comments upon there being a guilty verdict. Even ignoring the fact that she was innocent and so the quotes would never have been made, the timing of the article on its own (8:50 p.m.) would suggest that the “quotes” are fake.
Categories: Media, News |
3 Comments
