Andy Hayman CBE, QPM; Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations at the Metropolitan Police – the Copper who led the initial investigation into News of the World phone hacking situation.

His recent appearance before the Home Affairs Select Committee (12th July 2011) was reminiscent of a small but aggressive child accused of raiding the biscuit barrel. When asked by Lorraine Fullbrook (MP for South Ribble) if he – while a police officer – had accepted money from News of the World parent company, News International, Mr Hayman (CBE, QPM; Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations at the Metropolitan Police) replied with biscuit barrel indignation:

“Good god! Absolutely not, I can’t believe you suggested that! That is a real attack on my integrity!”

Before we have a look, the image used to illustrate this piece is from the News International (well, NewsCorp) The Times newspaper and shows all the writing that Mr Hayman must have done for that paper after he retired from the police force of course.

Podcast: Play in new window

Ah, the BBC had three of the UK’s most unpleasant people on one show last Sunday. Derek – Deggsy – Hatton, Peter Hitchens from The Daily Mail and former News of the World hack, Paul McMullan.

The show was Sunday Live. A usually quite lightweight outing. The event was McMullan owning up to the fact that he hadn’t been home for five days because the police want him to come in for questioning.

Enjoy.

Podcast: Play in new window | Embed

The Guardian has broken a story regarding Gordon Brown’s statement regarding hacking and blagging by The Sun and The Sunday Times.

It details depraved reporting and methods. The image here shows what resulted. The Sun editor at the time: Rebekah Wade.

Among the accusations:

• Abbey National bank found evidence suggesting that a “blagger” acting for the Sunday Times on six occasions posed as Brown and gained details from his account;

• Brown’s London lawyers, Allen & Overy, were tricked into handing over details from his file by a conman working for the Sunday Times;

• Details from his infant son’s medical records were obtained by the Sun, who published a story about the child’s serious illness.

Source: The Guardian

UPDATE: Let’s hope that Gordon Brown hasn’t handed NewsCorp a tiny sight of defence.

The Sun issued the following statement today July 12th 2011:

• Following allegations made yesterday by Gordon Brown against The Sun, we have been conducting an inquiry. This is in line with normal practice and procedure.

  We are able to assure the Brown family that we did not access the medical records of their son, nor did we commission anyone to do so.

  The story The Sun ran about their son originated from a member of the public whose family has also experienced cystic fibrosis. He came to The Sun with this information voluntarily because he wanted to highlight the cause of those afflicted by the disease. The individual has provided a written affidavit this afternoon to a lawyer confirming this.

  On receipt of the information, The Sun approached Mr Brown and discussed with his colleagues how best to present it. Those colleagues provided quotes which were used in the published piece which indicated his consent to it.

  We believe that the article was written sensitively and appropriately. We are not aware of Mr Brown, nor any of his colleagues to whom we spoke, making any complaint about it at the time.

  The publication of the story and the further responsible, sympathetic and informative coverage The Sun continued to give to the disease resulted in renewed interest for those affected by it. Donations to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust nearly doubled over the next year.

  We continue to inquire in to other allegations made by Mr Brown, and implore him to provide details to us so we can establish the facts.

Source: Channel 4

I have had a response from the Press Complaints Commission regarding the complaint I filed over The Daily Mail’s story linking the death of Sophie Howard to the teachers’ one-day action last month. As expected it’s vacuous.

My story, “Grief Intrusion by the Daily Mail” questioned how TDM could make the link.

Here is the response from Simon Yip at the PCC. I’m making limited comment on it for now until I’ve thought some more. One thing stands out, however, is this:

“As such, we contacted Cambridgeshire Police, and the college she attended, immediately after the story broke to offer our support, and make clear how we can assist in all press-related issues.”

Why? Surely it is not for the PCC to ‘offer to assist on all press-related issues or offer support to the Police or the College?’ Surely this is a waste of the PCC’s time?

“Thank you for making a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission about coverage of the tragic death of Sophie Howard.

We have received numerous complaints about the article in the Daily Mail, most of which relate to the headline of the article as it originally appeared online. The complaints have been lodged primarily under Clause 1 (Accuracy) and Clause 5 (Intrusion into grief or shock) of the Editors’ Code.

As you would expect, we will, in the first instance, have to consider the wishes of the family of Miss Howard before we take forward any complaint relating to her death, with particular regard to intrusion. As such, we contacted Cambridgeshire Police, and the college she attended, immediately after the story broke to offer our support, and make clear how we can assist in all press-related issues.

In addition, the PCC contacted the Daily Mail in regard to the online headline, and it responded on Friday afternoon to make clear that – even before we had made contact – the headline to the online article had been amended in view of direct concerns raised. The article in the newspaper, which appeared on 2 July, did not have the same headline.

In the circumstances, we will determine whether the Howard family wishes to complain about the article, and revert to you shortly once the position has become clear.

A copy of the Code of Practice can be accessed using this web link: http://www.pcc.org.uk/cop/practice.html .

Further information about the PCC can be found on our website www.pcc.org.uk .

Simon Yip
Administrator

Press Complaints Commission
Halton House
20/23 Holborn
London EC1N 2JD

Tel: 020 7831 0022
Website: www.pcc.org.uk”

I’ve filed a Press Complaints Commission complaint on this for what it’s worth. The Daily Mail like all newspapers has an agenda, I understand that but this is way, way too far.

The story does not even contain quotes from the girl’s parents, instead it states that, “Sophie’s parents Martin, 49, and Laura were today too upset to comment on the tragedy. The family live in a three-bedroomed home in a cul-de-sac in Yaxley.”

Therefore I have to assume that the Daily Mail Reporter (either no one was proud enough to get a by-line or the story came via a local stringer) doorstepped the parents in order to try and get a quote.

The parents and teachers of Sophie Howard must be devastated.

Source: Daily Mail but please don’t give it hits.

The story itself is merely using the death of a young woman to make an ideological point regarding the strike. On another day the Mail would have left it as it interferes with the paper’s usual anti-health’n'safety agenda.

As a side note. My usual views count on Twitpic by the way, is about 12. Twitter users appear to be equally as appalled as I am.

Please go to the PCC and file a complaint regarding the source link below.

Since Twitter got hold of the story – retweets by Charlie Brooker and Robin Ince drove that – the Daily Mail has altered its headline. As you can see from the image to the left.

As another update, I thought I’d also show that, although The Daily Mail retain its mendacity crown, bot the Telegraph and the Mirror also opted to attribute the teacher’s strike to the death of this child.

UPDATE: The local paper – The Hunts Post has run a story more soberly entitled: “Parents pay tribute to ‘beautiful daughter’ who was killed by falling branch in Cambridgeshire park” which does quote the parents as stating:

“We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our friends and family for their support at this difficult time. Sophie has a twin brother who is also suffering greatly.

“Our beloved daughter’s death was a tragic incident, which occurred only 24 hours ago, and we do not want it to be connected to any other events.”

So it would appear that Rob Setchell, the Hunts Post reporter was able interview the parents, unlike Daily Mail Staff.

Read the full story at The Hunts Post.

Finally, as has been pointed out by commentors on this site and via Twitter, you can use Itsyotsy to read the news without delivering hits and boosting their ad arguments.

So, The Guardian ran this story about some Chinese local officials:

“For government officials in Huili, a distinctly modest county in a rural corner of south-west China, attracting national media coverage would normally seem a dream come true. Unfortunately, their moment in the spotlight was not so welcome: mass ridicule over what may well be one of the worst-doctored photographs in internet history.”

The picture calls out for some fun.

So, realising that there is no actual news in The Daily Mail outside of celebrity, women-hating and sport I decided there must be some use for it.

Therefore I’ve decided to make pictures based on one screenshot’s worth of side-bar images from the UK’s tabloid news-comic.

Creating the image is a downright annoying business and adds nothing to the sum total knowledge of the world you live in. So, I like to think that matches its subject in a very definite way.

In which the glorious Betrand Russell gives his views on the validity or otherwise of Christian belief.

The, even then, old philosopher has a twinkle in his eye as he answers questions on why he isn’t a Christian. Using an onslaught of what is apparently logic and rational thought he leads the interviewer through his reasoning in a few minutes.

Watch the end, however, to see how is also quite capable of pulling a ‘fact’ or statistic out of the air with no basis in actual empirical evidence. He’s almost smiling when he does it.

Of course, as I report this I remember BR’s quote:

“A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”

As someone who blogs now and then, and who also writes fiction, I have been – I was going to say intrigued but I’ll come out with it and say ‘disgusted’ – but not surprised by the sheer selfishness of Tom McMaster.

In case you’ve not been up with the issue, McMaster has pretended to be a Syrian lesbian. He has pretended this to the extent of carrying out a six month Internet relationship with another woman, who he now has to apologise to – but not in the media spotlight.

It’s the media spotlight that Mr McMaster appears to have wanted, initially you believe him purely for his well crafted writing, and then if you believe him to overturn myths of liberal Orientalism.

The man, who conned at least 750,000 people into investing into the life of ‘Syrian woman’ Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari, has now been all over the media apologising that he “got carried away in the moment’ and also apologising ‘if people thought’ that they had been were mislead.

The standard non-apology apology of all conmen caught.

His blog, of course in order to offer this kind of apology, remains live (here). While his blog offers blandishments to the liberal and apologies to anybody who will read, this interview with The Guardian seems to show the real measure of the man who mistook fact for fiction.

Dear Anonymous,

Picking on Sony’s PlayStation network as some form of evil. Surely you can do better?

Previously you had not issued a Jihad against consumers. You’d left the people alone. You had apparently defended Wikileaks.

Now it seems that you’re just DOS. That’s not even elegant.

Now you’re achieving nothing. You are just undermining revolutionary acts.

I hope you’ve spoken to Mitnik. I hope you’ve not just felt entitled to your knowledge. I also hope that you’re keeping up with with hacktvists in Syria, China, Saudi Arabia, the USA, Venezula – or at least that you are going to your local ‘special schools’ or soup kitchens.

I hope that you’re looking at people like Paul Foot or John Pilger or George Steer.

I hope you’re not just looking at:

“Hack means I will be noticed. Being noticed means that I’ll be employed by a corporation to stop other people like me.”

I hope you’re not just entitled narcissists. If you are, you’ll make $$$ and protect your own information like lawyers chewing a divorce. You’ll run your own company and will lose love.

Tim