Tag Archives: journalism

Mark Pack

Hackney Council under fire over allegations it misled public about who was standing in election

By Mark Pack | Fri 9th July 2010 - 2:20 pm

The excellent Jack of Kent legal blog has the full details of the brewing story in Hackney, where the council had already been accused of wrongly excluding the manifesto of the Conservative Party’s Mayor candidate, Andrew Boff, from the booklet sent to the public. (The Mayoral elections in Hackney have similar rules to those for Mayor of London, whereby all candidates submit artwork which is then collected in a booklet and sent out to all electors.)

In addition, Hackney Council is now accused of repeatedly misinforming members of the public, telling them that in fact not only was there no …

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Posted in Election law | Also tagged and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Mail blunders over Twitter, again

By Mark Pack | Sun 27th June 2010 - 7:20 pm

Fresh from the Mail’s triumph of journalism where it exposed an MP sending tweets in the middle of the night (only a pedant would point out that the Mail’s journalist read the time wrong and in fact the tweets were sent during the day), we have the Mail’s splash on how Steve Jobs may be planning to recall iPhone 4s (and again only a pedant would point out that the Mail’s journalist failed to see the words pointing out that the Twitter account is a spoof).

Makes you want to work for the Mail so you can share in …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

New twist over News of the World phone hacking allegations

By Mark Pack | Thu 24th June 2010 - 7:42 pm

In an unusual and dramatic turn in the long-running story of the News of the World (editor at the time, Andy Coulson) and the hacking in to the voicemail systems of people in the public eye, a lawyer whose claims were initially dismissed as wrong by the Press Complaints Commission is now sueing for libel.

As The Guardian explains:

Peta Buscombe, the baroness who chairs the Press Complaints Commission, has been sued for libel by a solicitor.

Writs have also been issued against the PCC itself and the Metropolitan Police by a London-based solicitor, Mark Lewis.

He is claiming damages for libel, including

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Did you know that two-thirds of people don’t pay income tax?

By Mark Pack | Wed 23rd June 2010 - 11:20 am

No, I didn’t either.

But that’s what Polly Toynbee says:

… it does nothing for the 62% of adults who earn too little to pay tax.

Oh hang on, what’s this Lord Bonkers is saying?

It’s not that 62 per cent of people don’t pay tax, it’s that 62 per cent do pay tax.

How out of touch with the lives of ordinary people do you have to be to make a mistake like that and not spot it? It hardly encourages you to have faith in Toynbee’s judgement as a columnist.

You think someone at the Guardian would have spotted it though.

Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 28 Comments
Mark Pack

The Press Complaints Commission: dealing with individuals or dealing with journalism?

By Mark Pack | Mon 14th June 2010 - 10:20 am

A common thread running through the Press Complaints Commission’s defence of its work is that it has been primarily created to deal with individual complaints, rather than being a regulator whose role is to improve the press overall. That’s why, for example, the PCC emphasises the proportion of complaints made to it which are concluded with the complainant happy with the outcome rather than, for example, focusing on how widespread certain practices are and whether they are increasing or decreasing.

To give an example: if a blogger were to complain to the PCC about a newspaper taking their work and reusing …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

Is the Mail on Sunday in a different time zone? Or how it got a string of facts wrong

By Mark Pack | Sun 30th May 2010 - 2:18 pm

The Mail on Sunday appears to have made a basic and repeated series of factual errors in a piece today about Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone.

In the piece the paper repeatedly claims that Lynne has sent tweets in the middle of the night: “1am tweets”, “one post, made at 1:38am…”, “at 12:29am…” and so on. There’s even a screenshot apparently verifying this pattern of middle of the night tweets.

Except, if you take a look at the Twitter website and look up the tweets in question you see they are all time-stamped with different times. Take the two in …

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 19 Comments
Mark Pack

Opinion poll reporting: who did it best this year?

By Mark Pack | Mon 17th May 2010 - 12:20 pm

Since the start of the year, The Voice has been tracking how newspapers do at reporting the political opinion polls they commission. Each time a newspaper reports on such an opinion poll, the report gets scored out of 30 against a set of basic criteria. The scoring system has generally worked well, though it doesn’t catch the nuance of newspapers commissioning poll questions about political matters and then not reporting certain ones which happen to contradict their editorial line (such as on this, this and this occasion).

How then do the different newspapers come out of this all? Here are the …

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Posted in Polls | Also tagged and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

So, what do you make of this journalism?

By Mark Pack | Wed 12th May 2010 - 7:13 pm

Journalists from both The Guardian and Independent on Sunday have been trawling the online world explicitly asking Liberal Democrat members who are unhappy with the coalition to get in touch. Not asking for members to let them know their views. But only asking those with one specific view to get in touch. Hmm…

UPDATE: The Independent on Sunday says, “That’s just the viewpoint I was asked to find. Don’t worry, we have plenty of positive voices”.

Posted in News | 47 Comments
Mark Pack

Andy Coulson under fire over fresh phone-hacking allegations

By Mark Pack | Tue 4th May 2010 - 4:20 pm

The Guardian reports:

David Cameron’s close adviser, Andy Coulson, has come under fresh attack after the disclosure of new evidence of the News of the World’s role in the illegal interception of the royal household’s voicemail messages during his time as editor.

The evidence is in the outline for a book planned by the private investigator at the centre of the affair, Glenn Mulcaire. The outline was written before Mulcaire signed a deal with the paper which stopped the book’s publication and gagged him from speaking about the scandal.

The outline directly contradicts the News of the World’s claim that Mulcaire broke the

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

“Let’s take on the tabloids”

By Mark Pack | Sun 2nd May 2010 - 12:20 pm

That’s the message from the two online campaigning groups Avaaz and 38 Degrees. One of their emails says:

The tabloid press is doing all it can to skew the election result by bullying and scaring voters. The political editor of The Sun has been given clear instructions from Rupert Murdoch: “It is my job to see that Cameron f****g well gets into Downing Street”. Murdoch and his tabloid press friends think they’ve got the right to decide who governs us.

Together we can stand up for our right to choose who we vote for and expose this cynical manipulation. Let’s shame the tabloids, and …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

Exclusive poll: newspaper hostility makes voters more likely to back Lib Dems

By Mark Pack | Wed 28th April 2010 - 11:24 am

A poll carried out exclusively for Lib Dem Voice shows that opposition from the Daily Mail, The Sun and Daily Telegraph to the Liberal Democrats actually makes people more likely to vote for the party.

Asked the impact on their voting intention of those papers opposing Nick Clegg becoming Prime Minister, 15% said it made them more likely to vote Liberal Democrat and only 4% said it made them less likely, making for a net +11% saying they are more likely to vote Liberal Democrat.

Of the rest, 19% would vote Liberal Democrat regardless, 35% would not vote Liberal Democrat anyway and …

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Posted in Polls | Also tagged , , , , and | 15 Comments
Mark Pack

Dear Ian Cowie…

By Mark Pack | Sat 24th April 2010 - 1:42 pm

Dear Ian,

I’m a bit confused by your article about hung Parliaments in the Telegraph, where you wrote:

The last time a British election failed to produce a decisive result, in February, 1974, the FTSE All Share Index – a broad measure of the stock market – fell nearly 15pc in a month and ended the year more than 50pc below where it began.

The piece even has a graph starting in January 1974 and going through to late 1974.

Why does this leave me confused? Well, I’m sure on most financial matters you know far more than me. But even I know …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

Daily Mail: big boost for Lib Dems in poll – but editorial line even more striking

By Mark Pack | Sat 17th April 2010 - 9:16 am

There’s straight-forward good news for the Liberal Democrats in today’s Daily Mail:

A Harris poll for the Daily Mail, the first in-depth survey of the public response, showed him decisively ahead of David Cameron and Gordon Brown on measures of energy, honesty and strength.

The survey of over 1,000 people who watched the clash found 32 per cent intended to back Mr Clegg’s LibDems – level with the Tories – and just 26 per cent Labour.

Those poll results are dramatic – and reflect what we’ve seen in other polls too. But most striking is the Daily Mail’s …

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Posted in General Election | Also tagged and | 29 Comments
Mark Pack

Social media’s impact on political reporting

By Mark Pack | Thu 15th April 2010 - 5:20 pm

At the weekend I did a session for the Radio Academy on social media, journalism and the general election.

Here it is as a podcast – so enjoy!

Posted in News, Online politics and Podcasts | Also tagged | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Well fancy that! Another unreported poll finding

By Mark Pack | Fri 9th April 2010 - 3:50 pm

Continuing my occasional series of opinion poll results that newspapers have paid for but then not published (all for reasons of space you understand, nothing to do with editorial lines and not liking the result, oh no of course not) we have the latest YouGov poll for The Sun:

Do you think the following will or will not happen if the Conservatives win the coming election?

The number of crimes committed each year will fall: 22% will, 47% will not – net -25%
The quality of education in state schools will improve: 25% will, 46% will not – net -21%
Britain’s economy will …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Well fancy that! A poll finding you won’t have seen reported

By Mark Pack | Wed 7th April 2010 - 2:02 pm

I’ve commented before on some of the poll findings that papers pay for but then don’t report (all for reasons of space you understand; never because they don’t meet the desired editorial line; not at all; no way).

Here’s another one, courtesy of The Sunday Times and YouGov:

A group of 23 business leaders have written to the Daily Telegraph newspaper backing the Conservative announcement that they will shelve part of next year’s rise in National Insurance. Do you think that the business leaders are…

Speaking out in the country’s interest 18%
Speaking out in their own interest 50%
Both 22%
Don’t know 11%

Pretty …

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Posted in News and Polls | Also tagged | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

An email to the editor of the Daily Telegraph

By Mark Pack | Fri 2nd April 2010 - 8:50 am

I’m rather puzzled by the story that your paper has run questioning the use of weighting in YouGov’s polls (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7546322/YouGov-pollster-gives-Labour-an-unfair-advantage.html).

Indeed, the piece takes such a suspicious attitude towards weighting that it puts the word in inverted commas and talks about YouGov having “admitted” that it uses weightings.

My puzzlement is quite simple.

Every single political opinion poll published by The Telegraph during your time as editor has also involved weighting.

If it’s such a questionable act, why hasn’t your newspaper shopped itself first? And will you be abandoning your own practice of publishing weighted figures?

Yours,

Mark

Note: I do think there are some reasonable …

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Posted in Polls | Also tagged , and | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

Your handy guide to how to be a journalist

By Mark Pack | Mon 29th March 2010 - 8:45 am

There’s nothing like a practical example for learning a skill. So here’s a little example of how to take a story and then carefully apply journalistic skill and judgement to make it into one of those proper stories they put in newspapers. Or something like that 🙂

The core of the story is this: child climbs up tree, child climbs down tree, stranger walks up to child, school staff walk up to stranger, stranger walks off, police have a word with stranger.

Fact 1: “At no point was any child ever stuck in a tree”.

How do you report this? Easy:

  • TEACHERS LEAVE BOY

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

Those of a statistically nervous disposition should look away now

By Mark Pack | Wed 24th March 2010 - 9:44 am

A double triumph in the Mirror today: for Vince Cable and for British journalism.

For Vince Cable – congratulations on another poll putting you the most popular choice for Chancellor (32% versus 23% for Darling and 21% for Osborne).

For British journalism – take a bow at a story that uses phrases such as “plunges” and “it’s all the fault of George Osborne” when in fact the poll results are, er…, not statistically significantly different from the previous poll by that pollster. (The changes are all within the margin of error.)

Perhaps next time we’ll have a footnote, “Hey, the above …

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Posted in Polls | Also tagged and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Were there two YouGov polls for the Sunday Times?

By Mark Pack | Sun 21st March 2010 - 7:04 pm

I only ask, you see, because in the newspaper online I read of the unions:

Their intransigence is beginning to hurt the government’s standing, as the YouGov/Sunday Times poll shows today.

But in the full polling tables up on the The Times website I read:

Will the strikes, and the prospects of disruption for BA’s passengers, change the way you vote in the election?

Yes, it will make me less likely to vote Labour: 4%
Yes, it will make me more likely to vote Labour: 1%
No difference: 80%
Don’t know: 15%

That’s about as tepid a finding as you could get: a measly net +3%.

A …

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Posted in Polls | Also tagged and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Well done, Evening Standard

By Mark Pack | Mon 8th March 2010 - 10:52 pm

A quick update to my post which pointed out how the media had comprehensively misreported findings about how many people are registered to vote, painting an unduly pessimistic picture. The Evening Standard at least has now corrected its report.

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Mark Pack

How did newspapers do at reporting their own polls? (February update)

By Mark Pack | Mon 8th March 2010 - 12:50 pm

This year we’ve tracking each month how good newspapers are at reporting their own political opinion polls. Getting your own story right isn’t perhaps the highest of bars to set newspapers, but on past experience it’s one they often seem to miss. But what’s the actual evidence? Who does best? Who does worst?

In order to provide answers, each time a newspaper publishes a political opinion poll we’re giving the report a score out of 30 based on how accurate the report is and whether it meets the British Polling Council’s own rules for political polling. (For details of the scoring …

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Posted in News and Polls | Also tagged | Leave a comment
Malcolm Coles

The Independent View: Why it’s time to replace the PCC

By Malcolm Coles | Thu 25th February 2010 - 1:50 pm

Surprise, surprise. The Press Complaints Commission rejected the complaints about Jan Moir’s nasty attack on Stephen Gately.

If there’s any good to come out of this affair, perhaps it’s that this case reinforces the case for wholesale reform of the PCC. Here’s why.

The PCC is not independent

The PCC claims to be independent. One of the advantages of self regulation ought to be that it keeps the press out of the hands of politicians while still holding newspapers to account.

The PCC fails on both counts.

The Chair of the 17-member Commission is Baroness Buscombe, a Conservative member of the House of Lords. Her party …

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Also tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

“Report blows a gaping hole in the News of the World’s line that only a sole rogue reporter was involved in illegal hacking of phones”

By Mark Pack | Wed 24th February 2010 - 12:14 am

Reacting to the DCMS select committee report on “Press standards, privacy and libel”, which has just been published, Chris Huhne has said:

This report blows a gaping hole in the News of the World’s line that only a sole rogue reporter was involved in illegal hacking of phones, and reveals enormous worries about the feeble response of the Metropolitan Police in investigating what was clearly widespread illegal activity.

There are very serious issues at stake here for the privacy of the citizen and the report highlights deep concern at the weak reaction to these illegal intrusions by News International, the Press Complaints Commission ,

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

A polite round of applause directed towards The Times

By Mark Pack | Mon 8th February 2010 - 11:18 pm

I wasn’t expecting that.

The Times has reported its latest opinion poll. It has reported the changes in party share of the vote.

And then Peter Riddell has said,

These shifts are within the margin of error

Why’s that impressive? Because nearly every opinion poll only shows changes within the margin of error (you’ve usually got to look over a wider pattern to see statistically significant changes), but that doesn’t stop newspapers writing up their stories as if the changes in support are significant and therefore ones we can be sure actually happened.

It’s as if the newspapers think, “Look, we know the poll doesn’t …

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Posted in Polls | Also tagged , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Twitter, Taxpayers’ Alliance and claims of dodgy journalism

By Mark Pack | Thu 28th January 2010 - 9:18 pm

Well well well, this is a bit of a rum turn of events in Cornwall.

Councillors send tweets during council meeting.

Western Morning News runs a story about this, taking a few potshots and quoting The Taxpayers’ Alliance slamming the councillors for this behaviour.

One of the councillors then points out that someone from the TPA was actually sending them messages on Twitter during the meeting asking them questions.

But TPA then say, no – they weren’t being hypocritical for criticising councillors for tweeting whilst also encouraging them because the quote they gave the press was in fact in response to being …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

EXCLUSIVE: Standards Commissioner rules four journalists broke Parliament’s rules

By Mark Pack | Mon 25th January 2010 - 6:31 pm

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, John Lyon, has ruled that Martin Bright, Melissa Kite, Andrew Neil and Fraser Nelson all broke Parliamentary rules by failing to fully declare their financial interests in the Register of Journalists’ Interests. The ruling follows a complaint I lodged with the Commissioner.

They have all been lobby journalists, giving them special access to Parliament and politicians. Given the possibility of lobbyists and interest groups paying members of the lobby to raise issues on their behalf, there is a financial register which – in theory – provides a degree of transparency and hence protection against abuse of …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

This is why the Editors’ Code of Practice needs reforming

By Mark Pack | Thu 21st January 2010 - 10:19 pm

It’s a small, but telling example.

The Evening Standard ran a piece from Simon Jenkins, which included a bit of myth-recycling about what the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health had said about people clearing snow from outside their property.

There were two problems.

First, either Simon Jenkins or a sub-ed dropped the word “probably” making the quote sound far more definitive that in the original version reported in other newspapers. (I suspect it was no innocent error because there was also a similar distortion of what Lord Davies said in Parliament.)

Second, the quote was – even in the full version – wrong. …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Alex Ferguson forced to unban BBC

By Mark Pack | Wed 18th November 2009 - 1:10 pm

A follow-up to my post When is it ok to ban a journalist?, about the habit in football of clubs banning journalists who say things they don’t like (can you imagine the uproar if a public sector body tried to do the same?):

Sir Alex Ferguson will have to end his six-year ban on giving interviews to BBC reporters under newly agreed rules coming into force next season.

A motion was passed at a Premier League board meeting last week which made post-match interviews with all media rights holders mandatory for league managers, reports The Daily Telegraph.

Manchester United supremo Ferguson has not

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

When is it ok to ban a journalist?

By Mark Pack | Tue 10th November 2009 - 1:50 pm

Portsmouth FC have banned a local newspaper journalist from their ground after taking  dislike to a piece that he wrote. Although the club has neither suggested the article broke any law nor is libellous, it has decided to ban Neil Allen for an “indefinite period” from home matches, press conferences, speaking to the players and coaching staff or visiting the club’s training ground.

As Hold The Front Page reports,

News sports editor Howard Frost told HTFP: “It seems a bit petty. If (manager) Paul Hart wants to take exception, that’s his prerogative.

“It’s generally normal for managers and journalists to fall out

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 2 Comments
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