NewsBiscuit » tabloids

Daily Mail apologises for printing rational, balanced letter

mattvaughan — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:00:19 +0000

'Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but . . . '

The Daily Mail was forced to publish a humiliating apology today after it mistakenly ran a sensible, cogent and well-reasoned letter submitted by a reader. Susan Elsbury of Hemel Hempstead raised a number of valid concerns about the prospect of high-speed rail links in the UK, before conceding that ‘as a layman she perhaps wasn’t in the best place to comment’, and ‘maybe these things should be left to those in charge’.

Editors acknowledged that the offending letter ‘stuck out rather’ from the more erudite dissertations on mosques appearing on former church premises and the carcinogenic threat of watermelon, before Richard Littlejohn launched a furious attack on page 12 on the declining standards of modern tabloid readership.

C-list Tweeters switch to voicemail and beg tabloids to listen in

Des Custard — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:10:17 +0000

Dozens of minor celebrities have abandoned their Twitter accounts and are giving their voicemail codes to News of the World hackers instead.

As controversy continues to rage around allegations that the tabloid paid spies to tap the mobile phones of the rich and famous for sleazy details, demand for low security voicemail accounts has soared.

Publicity guru Max Clifford has established Famous for Five Minutes, an agency that introduces nobodies to hackers for a small fee.

Long-forgotten Big Brother evictee Sauvignon Blank said: ‘It’s brilliant. Nobody ever followed me on Twitter but I got three new mobiles today and I gave the numbers to Famous for Five Minutes and I’ve been talking dirty on all of them. The lads mags are queueing up.’

Scare Flu spreads from tabloids to the broadsheets

Oxbridge — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 06:00:39 +0000

Scientists have confirmed that Scare Flu has now spread from the red top newspapers to the so-called ‘quality press’ which was thought to be more resistant to alarmist reporting. Doctors have warned that the ongoing outbreak of stories in the media about Scare Flu has now reached pandemic proportions. Fears are growing that the lethal infection may spread throughout the country, potentially causing mass panic on a scale not seen since a Scottish swan was supposed to have died from Bird Flu.

The outbreak began a few days ago with a few localised and moderate stories in the broadsheets about deaths in Mexico. Since then, it has spread with astonishing speed, infecting not only the newspapers but also the 24-hour news channels and the internet. ‘What is worrying us most is not just the speed of the epidemic but the way the scare story is mutating,’ said Dr Sean Russell, a specialist in viral media at Kings College Hospital in London. ‘One strain in the mid-market tabloids seems to be causing house prices to fall and illegal immigrants to pour into Britain. Another has caught on via websites, causing thousands of unfunny puns about ‘being pig sick’, putting ‘oinkment’ on or ‘coming out in a nasty rasher’. It is desperately worrying.’

Symptoms of Scare Flu panic vary but they typically include talking in an unnaturally sombre voice, excessive hyperbole and severe restrictions on the ability to process information rationally. Many victims have also suffered severe memory loss; completely forgetting that every other pandemic panic from the Ebola virus to Bird Flu has never amounted to anything and that cancer and heart disease are far more likely to kill them.

Doctors are advising people to be very worried about this new strain of flu for a week or so, after which it is probably safe to start panicking about stabbings, terrorism or global warming instead.