The Sun reads Bloggerheads

This entry was posted on
Wednesday, January 12th, 2005
at
10:59 am and is filed
under Rupert ‘The Evil One’ Murdoch.

(Cheers to ScaryDuck for the heads-up on this one…)

Here’s a Sun journalist visiting the site in late December.

Blogstats1

This IP address – 143.252.80.124 – doesn’t bring up any WHOIS info at the moment, but here’s someone from Usenet who tracked this IP address back to News International in Jan 2004. I think you’ll agree that its’ a pretty Sun-centric story (Won’t somebody pleeease think of the children?). Perhaps a Lexis-Nexis user would care to seek out a Sun story based on adoption guidelines in late January or early February 2004. If you wish. No big deal.

The tracking doesn’t reveal which four pages he/she visited, but it’s a pretty sure bet that they included at least one of these pages (perhaps even as an entry-point):
December 29, 2004 :: Murdoch: Fox-watching and Xmas Xtras
December 23, 2004 :: Rupert Murdoch and the ‘War on Christmas’ Campaign
December 22, 2004 :: News Corp declares War on Christmas
December 17, 2004 :: The War on Christmas is global
December 15, 2004 :: The Sun: ‘Tis the season to be sarky
December 14, 2004 :: The Sun: staying on-message
December 13, 2004 :: The Sun: taking Christmas on tour
December 10, 2004 :: The Sun backs Santa Claus backing The Sun
December 9, 2004 :: The Sun: All your Christmas are belong to us

That one’s just to let you know that I’ve been paying attention. Here’s the really fun one…

This is what I suspect to be another Sun journalist viewing this site in early January.

Blogstats2

This IP address – 143.252.80.110 – can be traced directly to News International:

woki1.newsint.co.uk = [ 143.252.80.110 ]
Domain Name:
newsint.co.uk
Registrant:
News International Newspapers Limited
Trading As: News International Newspaper Limited
Registrant’s Agent:
News International Newspapers Limited [Tag = NEWSINT]
Relevant Dates:
Last updated: 01-Jun-2004
Name servers listed in order:
ns0.newsint.co.uk 143.252.80.3
ns1.newsint.co.uk 143.252.80.205
WHOIS database last updated at 10: 30: 02 12-Jan-2005

The logs seem to have missed when the visit took place, but I’m going to take a wild shot in the dark here and suggest that this visit involved a visit to the front page and the page linked below on Jan 5 or Jan 6:

January 5, 2005 :: The Evolution of Crazy Frog – from Deng Deng to Ringtone

The reason for this guess is this Jan 7 article from The Sun by Sean Hamilton about… the origins of the Crazy Frog ringtone.

To: Sean Hamilton
From: Tim Ireland
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 10:58 AM
Subject: Crazy Frog

Dear Sean,

I’m so glad you found my research useful for your Jan 7 Crazy Frog article:
https://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2005/01/the_sun_reads_b.asp

Perhaps you’d care to chew on this for your next article:
https://www.bloggerheads.com/abu_ghraib/

I have it on good authority that a certain tabloid largely ignored the plight of men, women and children suffering in Abu Ghraib and actually gave more coverage to a puppy that was thrown off an overpass (you’ll have to scroll to the bottom of this page; sorry to put you to so much bother):
https://www.bloggerheads.com/x-archive.asp?viewblog=20040527&date=27/05/04

I think this would make a good story. You might want to mention it to Rebekah Wade. Especially the bit about the children:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/7/14/193750/666
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/07/15/hersh_children_raped.html
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2004/07/15/hersh/

Cheers

Tim Ireland
www.bloggerheads.com

UPDATE

1. Yes, I’m aware that News International IPs may also indicate visits from other minions of Murdoch, such as those from NOTW and The Times. It’s just that my belief if coincidences has been strained lately.

2. Sean Hamilton was nice enough to return my email, and clever enough to blame a nameless fact-checking sub for the visit I detected (with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek, of course). Sean is now on record as saying that his first visit to this site was his visit today. So my headline is true; The Sun does read Bloggerheads. See? I’m lurning…

;o)








About Tim Ireland

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