Confirmed: Daily Mail retractions now involve contacting other websites too

A few weeks ago that I received an email from the Daily Mail requesting we stop quoting an article they had published, since they had taken their piece down.

Their request was part of a settlement with the PCC, and I wondered if this had become standard for them now.

Looks like it has. Another agreement with the PCC on this retraction involved:

the submission of informal requests for removal on behalf of the complainant to other news sources that had re-published the original piece

So it seems blogs are likely to start getting a lot more requests from the Daily Mail to take down their material in case of a retraction.

It’s still not clear whether the PCC is forcing newspapers to do this, or whether it is voluntary.

hat-tip @grimreaperblog

Update: Five Chinese Crackers has written more on this.

Daily Quail was earlier contacted by the PCC who said the Mail was not forced to do this.

Richard Littlejohn defends Billy Bragg shocker

No really, we’re not even making this up: Richard Littlejohn can write sensibly once in a blue moon.

This week he defends Billy Bragg:

Billy Bragg has become the subject of a campaign of vilification in his home village in Dorset.

Friends and neighbours have received hate mail urging them to run him out of Burton Bradstock, where he has a £1.5 million clifftop home.

He’s accused of being a celebrity hypocrite, because he lives in one of the whitest counties in England while supporting multiculturalism.
The illiterate, anonymous letter also claims he’s anti-English and backs Islamist terrorists.

Billy Bragg is old enough and ugly enough to stick up for himself. I probably disagree with him on just about everything, except for Woody Guthrie. But although we’re ­political opposites, I’ve always considered him A Good Thing.

The author of this nasty, little ­letter is as pig ignorant as he is ­cowardly. No one could ever accuse Billy of hating his country, even though he often disagrees with the direction he sees it heading.
Don’t we all, in our different ways?

His is an old-fashioned variety of patriotism, which used to be quite common on the Left.

He’s even written a book about it, in which he lambasts with equal venom both home-grown jihadists and wrap-yourself-in-the-flag BNP racists.

Billy Bragg is part of an English tradition which you can trace back to the Levellers. And why shouldn’t he enjoy the fruits of his success by swapping his home in London for a rural idyll in Dorset?

Although he was brought up in East London, I’ve always thought his heart lies in Tolpuddle. He’s ­passionate about his beliefs, but unlike so many on the Left, he’s not consumed by hatred and self-loathing. These days, he even votes Lib Dem, for heaven’s sake.

Billy thinks the hate mail is the work of a deranged, disgruntled BNP knuckle-scraper. He’s ­probably right. You should see what they write about me, old son.

You probably need a lie-down after being in agreement with Littlejohn. I sympathise.

Johann Hari vs Richard Littlejohn: the full showdown!

This is a few years old, but the full exchange has finally been put on YouTube, and is definitely worth viewing.

The stupidity of Richard Littlejohn knows no bounds whatsoever.

Jan Moir wages class-war on Clegg family as Daily Mail removes articles

The Daily Mail is behaving most peculiarly these days in its constant attempts to smear Clegg and anyone around him.

Yesterday the newspaper published an article horrified that Nick Clegg’s wife Miriam Gonzalez Durantez was shopping at an affluent lingerie shop.

It screamed – Revealed: The story of privilege behind Nick Clegg’s wife’s lingerie shopping trip.

The picture of the politician’s wife will fuel increasing criticism that Clegg is not as in touch with the man-on-the-street voter he professes to be.

[via Next Left] So who’s waging class-war Mr Dacre?

By late last night however the article had vanished from the website. It now points to this sneering comment piece by Jan Moir with the same pictures.

Yes, Nick Clegg is an agnostic, a self-proclaimed man of no faith, a devotee of long periods of paternity leave for new dads – particularly for new dads called David Cameron. However, it has become bruisingly clear to the electorate during this campaign exactly who wears the trousers and dictates policy at Casa Clegg. Clue; not him.

And if Miriam really is such a hotshot international lawyer, a career woman who is far too busy to join her husband on the campaign trail, what the F-cup was she doing in a lingerie shop on a weekday afternoon for two hours? And not just any shop – it was Rigby & Peller, corsetieres to the queen and purveyors of Britain’s fanciest frillies. These people are not just any old pants peddlers. That is the Labour Party’s job now.

OMG! How dare Clegg spend time with his family? It’s not our society being broken but it does mean the woman is wearing the pants in the family… which is infinitely worse!

And on top of that she’s lingerie shopping while pretending to be such a hot-shot lawyer? Shame on her.

Words faily such stupidity.

Guess the newspaper editor most annoyed with Libdem surge?

That’s 9 stories I counted on the Daily Mail website last night on the ‘Debate’ page. Don’t think there’s much room for debate there other than Paul Dacre’s fury at the recent turn of events.

Disgusting Daily Mail attacks Sarah Brown over her toes

And you thought the sexist coverage in the tabloid press couldn’t get any worse.

The Daily Mail today published an article at 7pm, presumably due to be published in tomorrow’s newspaper, with this story: The Prime Minister’s wife exposes her rather unsightly toes during a visit to Temple

A ‘Daily Mail Reporter’ files this copy:

The wife of Labour leader Gordon Brown should have been putting her best foot forward when she visited a temple in north-west London today.

Instead she unveiled a rather unsightly problem on her left foot – her little toe and fourth toe crossed over one another.

The “newspaper” then goes on to publish pictures of Sarah Brown’s toes and asks: ‘Could something as trivial as the PM’s wife’s unsightly toes affect his election campaign?’

I highly doubt it. It just shows how desperate the Daily Mail is getting at trying to throw any sort of mud at Labour. Give the electorate a bit more credit – “unsightly toes” are unlikely to be high on their list of concerns.

[hat-tip @beaubodor on Twitter]

Mail & Sun apologise over gypsy story; Telegraph doesn’t

Tabloid Watch reports that last year in May the Sun, Daily Mail and Telegraph ran stories claiming that ‘gypsies’ had trashed a £5m police helicopter and caused other damage to property.

But the stories did not stack up and they had to apologise.
First came The Sun retraction:

Surrey Police have not blamed gipsies [sic] for an attack on their force’s helicopter, no staff in their operations rooms were threatened by gipsies and no gipsy [sic] site was being targeted for a raid as we reported on May 14. We apologise for the mistakes and are happy to set the record straight.

Several months later in November the Daily Mail also quietly apologised. But the Telegraph’s article by Ben Leach is still available online even though it seems solely based on the Sun story.

MacGuffin at TW adds:

1. If, as in this case, several newspapers print the same lies, and the PCC then brokers a retraction on one of those articles, the PCC should be pro-active in ensuring the other versions are also removed and an apology published.

2. If the original story was trailed on a newspaper homepage, the apology/retraction/clarification should be trailed there as well.

Would that be so difficult?

We have emailed the PCC to find out the status of the Telegraph article.