The Daily Mail responds at last!

For those who came in late:
Bloggerheads – Julie Moult is an idiot
Bloggerheads – The Daily Mail: let’s kick arse and take names

Judith Townend – Campaign against Julie Moult ‘smacks of bullying’, says Mail Online: A widespread internet campaign against one of the Daily Mail’s reporters ‘smacks of bullying’, according to the editorial director of its website. Speaking to Journalism.co.uk today, [Martin Clarke, editorial director of Mail Online] said the comments on the article in question were not published, because the story was already a few days old, and this was not an act of censorship. Users should use the feedback button on the site, which sends requests directly to Clarke, to complain about a story, he added. “If you want to complain about a story some days after it’s published you have to take a more traditional view of things and write to the editor, the same as you would as if it was in the paper. We don’t publish all the letters we get,” he said. Clarke confirmed that 60 comments had been made on the article, but these remained unpublished as of Friday afternoon – until Ireland’s original post was set live. ‘[I]n an ideal world we’d get every [non-libellous and inoffensive] comment published’, but ‘it’s a hell of a job moderating 7,100 comments every day’, he said. “We are reviewing our entire moderation policy. This is becoming more and more of an issue for us. We get more comments than we can possibly deal with and our moderation side hasn’t been able to keep up. We’re not into censoring comments – if that comment had been posted on the day or even the day after we would have probably got it up there.”

Thank you, Judith Townend, for finally getting us somewhere with these people. I was beginning to feel like a forgotten member of the great unwashed for a bit there.

Let me just fire off a quick letter to Julie Moult before we proceed, because there are obviously hurt feelings to be nursed and boo-boos to be kissed:

Dear Julie,

I currently have plans for a little music-video victory dance and some prize-giving when the first real image results come in, and that’s it, so you can relax.

I am sorry for being a little bit mean, but I think it is fair to say that you’ve given your fair share of grief in service to your evil overlords, so please understand when the apology section of this letter cuts short rightabouthere.

Don’t expect any sympathy from me over anything reasonable that carries on beyond this without my help, unless it somehow goes Teh Full Kilroy, and you have to change your name and your face and your hair and go to live on a small island somewhere, and even there people are writing “Julie Moult is an idiot!” on walls because they saw it on a nearby island that has internets… in which case I might be inclined to think that maybe you’d had enough.

But even then I’d want to review some of your latest articles first, just in case I was wrong.

See, I did my homework, and you really have been an idiot. If you’re somehow not totally responsible for all the stuff published in your name, then you’ve been an idiot for allowing the people who are truly/equally responsible to continue to put your name to their idiocy.

It is my sincere hope that one day soon you will be able to stop being an idiot, and from that moment you can count on me to defend your honour against all comers.

Everyone makes mistakes, that’s why Nazi racoons have self-destruct mechanisms.

Cheers

Tim Ireland
www.bloggerheads.com

(ahem)

Thank you. You’ve been most patient.

And now, for Martin Clarke, editorial director of Mail Online, I have this:

1. Julie Moult is no innocent flower, it could have been far, far worse if I’d so much as pushed the snowball, and I find it delicious to be half-accused* of bullying by the Daily Mail.

[*Next time, fellas, don’t be so shy. It’s important that you stand up to bullies when you can and not show fear when you do.]

2. It is my own personal experience that even reasonable comments made in a timely fashion fail to make it past Mail moderators most of the time. Of course, these could be false memories implanted by magical Googlebomb pixies, so I invite the Daily Mail to share with me records of each and every comment submitted under my name (‘Tim Ireland’), so we can see what’s what.

3. And if they must stop accepting comments after a week, or maybe even “a few days”, they should at least have the decency to do as The Guardian does and deactivate the comments facility when it is no longer in use. Look, here’s another article I submitted a comment to over a year ago. I just captured this image of the page and, as you can clearly see, comments are still officially open and the text actually invites you to make a comment. All of the Mail’s ‘comment-ready’ articles appear to be like this, and it’s simply not good enough:

Try harder.

4. On his lecture about the correct or preferred ways to give feedback, I will remind Mr Clarke that the feedback link he describes is a lot further from the article than any invitation to submit a comment, is tucked up snug as you like in an upper navigation bar giving no indication of its purpose other than the name it was born with, and is such a recent addition to proceedings that it’s still marked ‘beta’:

No... harder.

5. I also wish to hush Mr Clarke mid-word on ‘complaint’. Yes, comments do allow one to make complaints, and the Daily Mail are not expected to publish every complaint, even if one isn’t dealing with the limitations of print. But Mr Clarke is not going to lead me down that path quite so easily. This was more than a mere complaint. This. Was. A. Correction. It contained a complaint of sorts (about the fact that the correction was first issued by Google but someone didn’t listen) but it was, I am sure any reasonable person would agree, a fair attempt to address a major factual error that even contained valuable new information (about the miracle of relevance; one of the “several factors including popularity” that would otherwise have passed without mention).

6. This, too, is what comments are for. At least, it is in the part of the internets where I come from. (I know of at least one influential blogger cheat who differs on that point, and the rules appear to be different in his neighbourhood.) But if the Daily Mail are willing to try doing things my way for a bit, I’m sure I can attempt “a more traditional view of things” from time to time in return.

7. “It’s a hell of a job moderating 7,100 comments every day”

a) It’s a job, isn’t it? And you’re not out in the weather or digging ditches. Be grateful! (beat) That is what I imagine a Daily Mail reader might say to that. But I could be wrong.

b) Oh, boo-hoo. I’ve heard this one before, but it doesn’t hold water. Either the Daily Mail can cope with their commitment to accepting comments on every article or they can’t. They should not have articles live that give the impression that they been subjected to scrutiny and passed without comment when this simply isn’t the case, as this betrays of the trust of readers.

8. OK, so 60 comments were submitted. I’m ready to believe that many of the later ones were along the lines of “Julie Moult is an idiot”, but by the time the later comments were arriving, most web users would have assumed that there was no way anything was going to be published, and probably wished to make their displeasure known to the mods via comments they knew were never going to see the light of day (e.g. comments not unlike “Suck my fat one, you cheap dime store hood!”, which is a fun phrase to slip into any busy paragraph that’s likely to be read by a lawyer sipping hot coffee). If Mr Clarke does reveal any of these, I’d appreciate him not suggesting that any comments made by people frustrated by selfish moderation are the cause of selfish moderation. Nadine Dorries tried that trick, and it got her more laughs than support.

9. OK, so 60 comments were submitted, but from all of those comments, no-one mentioned anything worthwhile, such as the obvious problem with the practice of Google bombing supposedly starting “in the early 90s” (i.e. 5-6 years before Google existed)? Seriously? Happy to hear otherwise. Over to Mr Clarke on that one, I guess.

[Prepare for facepalm. I repeat: Prepare for facepalm.]

10. OK, so 60 comments were submitted. While I’m happy that they’ve finally published something, I’m really quite astonished and disappointed that this is the ONLY thing they’ve finally published under that article:

Oh, FFS.

One. Comment.

/facepalm

[For regulars only: Does No. 10 seem like the kind of thing Uncle Iain would do before huffing; “Well, that’s what you *wanted*, wasn’t it? Tch. There’s no pleasing you!”.. or is it just me?]

UPDATE – Far be it from me to point out the blindingly obvious, but if the Daily Mail introduced the simple measure of comment registration, the rate of flippant and ill-thought-out comments would drop enormously. Immediately. If the system included user profiles that allowed readers to follow a hyperlink under a comment contributor’s name to a profile, with that profile providing details of how long they’d registered and what other comments they’d contributed, *then* they’d have something approaching a sensible solution. This kind of thing will become more and more important as a general election approaches, as both of the main parties are shameless astro-turfers. (And to be fair, I should point out that The Guardian had registraton in place from the get-go over at CiF, but took ages to introduce profile links/pages.)








Posted in Old Media | 3 Comments

They’ll be saying I pick on girls, next…

*deep sigh*

I’m just going through some data and I’ve happened across a little something that I missed in an earlier conversation….

The other day, Jennie Rigg was giving me stick for pursuing Iain over his ongoing lies, instead of just ignoring* him.

(*Ignoring him and thereby – in theory – rendering his efforts inert. Once the trend is a little more universal, of course.)

Now, I do not want to pick on Jennie, I don’t want to make a big thing of this, and I can see and understand the temptations involved. I will also readily admit that I have it much easier than most other political bloggers, as I am a long way from having to struggle for an audience.

(Because of the way many people seeking to cloud this issue have been playing this, I need to waste a sentence here to point out that the latter observation is not a dig. At anyone.)

But c’mon… what is this?

“The best thing you can do – the best thing we ALL can do – is ignore [Iain Dale]. The more people talk about him, the more he becomes interesting. If we all stop talking about him (and yeah, I know, I’ve been guilty of that myself the past few days) then he ceases to be relevant.” – Jennie Rigg, Aug 31 (source)

What Jennie refers to in the above comment is a criticism of Dale over Facebook pokery, but what appears below is an extract from the post she refers to earlier in the conversation (i.e. the little something that I missed). In that post, it turns out that she completely fails to ignore Iain Dale and instead encourages her readers to play his reindeer games. This is not “talking about” Iain Dale but actively fuelling his main attention-seeking machine (which, ingeniously, runs on other peoples’ wishes for more attention):

“Iain Dale wants your votes for political blog of the year. I’d be very amused if nobody at all voted, but there’s little chance of that, and I’d probably be more amused if lots of liberal and leftie blogs made it into his charts. Vote Mortimer! Of course, for your vote to be eligible, it has to be for a blog that’s already on the TP blogroll. You can submit blogs to the blogroll here [link].” – Jennie Rigg, Jul 21 (source)

When Iain Dale is not passing his poll off as an unscientific bit of fun, he is bolstering it with claims that it is representative, and he would not be able to do this if enough people from the left refused to take part in it in any way. For a signal of the importance of this point is to Iain, note how Iain plays down the importance of any boycott in his final flourish.

Jennie may have a point when she says that my attempts to highlight the flaws behind the poll merely promote the poll itself (and it is a compelling point, as Iain Dale is a consummate bullshit artist, resilient even to evidence that he himself has published proving him to be a cheat), but her capacity to argue that point with any credibility goes up in a wee puff of smoke when she participates in the poll herself… right down to carrying a badge for the result on her blog:

So if any blogger who didn’t participate in Iain’s poll and isn’t carrying one of his little badges of approval on their website wants to have a go and pick up where Jennie left off, the floor is open.

Otherwise, I still say that Dale’s deeply flawed poll warrants scrutiny over weary acceptance.

UPDATE – Bugger. I note that I posted this at the same time that Jennie was announcing that that she was taking a pre-conference break. Still, it does nothing to change the fact that she’s left an opening, so do step forward if you think you can fill it. I’m sure we can stick to the point while leaving any comments on Jennie’s specific actions for later, when she’s around and able to have her say on it.








Posted in The Political Weblog Movement | Comments Off on They’ll be saying I pick on girls, next…

The bolder the lie, the bigger the laugh

Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan tell us in a candid moment that the U.S. presidential race is over. In their view, because of Palin.

Video and transcript here.

But in her most recent column, Noonan says pretty much the exact opposite.

Enjoy the laughs.

PS – Alaska is close to Russia! Alaska is close to Russia!








Posted in George W. Bush, Video | 2 Comments

The Daily Mail: let’s kick arse and take names

[UPDATE (06 Sep) – Exciting NEW link! –> The Daily Mail (actually, genuinely) responds at last! <-- Will have no impact on this post, as its work is done and plans are afoot. Mwahahahahaha!]

[You know this is going to be a fun post, because it comes in two exciting parts. Please stand by to share with family and friends and any bloggers you might now… there’s plenty of names to be taken and arses to be kicked.]

Part One

It is now a week since I first went on the record and declared that Julie Moult is an idiot.

The article that started all of this is riddled with errors and fallacies, but the two that most people find easiest to grasp are as follows:

1. What Moult describes is not a Google bomb, and Google themselves have pointed this out.

2. Google bombing did not start “in the early 90s” (i.e. 5-6 years before Google existed).

Got that part?

Good.

I now invite you to take a closer look at the article… just to see if you can see what I can see:

Daily Mail grab #1

Have you spotted it yet?

No?

Maybe you’d care to look closer:

Daily Mail grab #2

Yes, for starters, it’s apparent that the article has not been updated since 11:25 PM on 22nd August 2008, despite the presence of two glaring errors.

Many bloggers and other web users are aware of those glaring errors. In fact, literally tens of thousands of web users have taken an interest in my article, those errors and the author behind them (including people at 36 different workstations at Associated Newspapers, according to my stats).

As I mention here, I initially sought to bring one of those errors to their attention via comments (the good people at the Daily Mail make a big deal about their allowing comments under every article, yes they do).

I submitted this; “What you describe here is not a Googlebomb, but what Google regards to be relevant image result. Google themselves told you that, but you didn’t listen.”

And…. ah, I see that almost everybody out there can now see what I see… but just in case there is any lingering doubt, let’s zoom in even closer:

Daily Mail grab #3

Yep, that’s right.

No comments. Not one.

Let’s take a look at that again, just in case we missed one:

Daily Mail grab #3

Nope. Not a sausage.

After thousands and thousands of visitors that have dropped by knowing that there is something wrong with this article, not one comment has been published about it and not one change has been made.

And if that’s not bad enough, The Daily Mail then go on to lie about it:

Daily Mail grab #4

“No comments have so far been submitted”…?

What a pack of lying bastards.

Rather than admit that they made a mistake, the Daily Mail have instead followed the example set by Iain Dale; they have let outright falsehoods stand, resisted any attempt to address the matter via comments, and also given the false impression that the article has been subject to reader scrutiny all this time.

And it looks like they’ve been at it for years.

MINI-UPDATE – As I write this, I discover that Stewart Kirkpatrick submitted a comment, too. I’m sure there are plenty of others who have shared a similar experience involving this article alone. This self-serving censorship happens all the time at the Daily mail website and every savvy web user knows it.

Part Two

I waffled on a bit in that first part. I’ll try to be more direct and to the point in this next part. How’s this for starters?

Would like a word

This Googlebomb nonsense is the mere tip of the iceberg. I’ve seen far worse, and odds are that you have too.

I’ve had a gutful of the Daily Mail making their readers worry about stuff just isn’t real. I think they’re well overdue for some serious scrutiny and I find myself in a unique position to do something about that… with your help.

Bigdaddymerk runs Daily Mail Watch, which is currently one of the top search results for ‘daily mail’ and only a quick refit away from being a serious contender for top search results relating not only to that tabloid’s name, but also key articles, issues and columnists. I’ve been in touch, and he’s keen to play ball.

– I’ve just brought a dozen or so editors together for The Sun: Tabloid Lies. It’s early days, but I think I’m onto something with the specialty-based work-sharing and the tactic of documenting clear and obvious cases of this tabloid deceiving the reader.

The rest writes itself.

If you are the author of an established weblog, and you would consider committing maybe an hour or two a week to documenting the lies and falsehoods of the Daily Mail (focusing on a subject, speciality or columnist of your choosing), then I’d like you to get in touch using the following email address:

bloggerheads DOT com AT googlemail DOT com

[Note – Make sure to include the URL of your weblog (and/or links to any past articles you have written about the Mail), plus any task preferences you may have and/or any special skills you can bring to the table. I’d also like to hear from anyone who thinks they can help with the practical side of the build and/or anyone who would be more interested in targeting The Sun… or maybe even The Express, a tabloid that’s full of righteous anger and owned by a pornographer.]

Then, shortly, we’ll all sit down with Bigdaddymerk and have a private chat about tasks, missions, and tactics.

Ideally, the broad aim of the new Mail project will be to waste less time barking at the liars, by instead reaching out to the readers who are subjected to their lies on a daily basis.

Those readers will probably never change their politics or stop worrying about young people causing cancer and affecting house prices, but they may calm down a bit and they might even stop buying the Mail every day if they realise that a lot of the stuff in it has been invented, misrepresented, or blown out of all proportion.

So what do you say, internets?

I say those bastards at the Mail are due a jolly good kicking.

I say the time has come for us to form an ugly mob orderly squad and pile on blindly cut into their circulation with surgical precision.

Shouty Lewis Prothero in V for Vendetta

UPDATE – Heh. Don’t be afraid to throw your hat in, but I’d best point out before it’s too late that competition for the Richard Littlejohn gig is already fierce.

:o)








Posted in Old Media | 2 Comments

Sarah Palin; pregnancy rumours and reality

Just so you know, according to Kuro5hin, the unpleasant rumours about Palin’s family started life as a troll on SomethingAwful.








Posted in Teh Interwebs, US Presidential Election 2008 | Comments Off on Sarah Palin; pregnancy rumours and reality

OK, so what are my options?

Iain Dale has ignored my specific request not to be involved in his inherently biased weblog poll, and has just deleted this comment of mine from under this post on his ‘weblog’:

I don’t believe you, Dale.

I blogged about this, and I even emailed you about it weeks ago.

I did not want to be part of this charade, and I said so very clearly and quite specifically.

I regard it to be damaging to my reputation to have anyone in this field think that I would endorse your poll or participate in your poll in any way. That includes allowing myself to be included in it and ranked by it…. even if you do pass it off as a bit of fun when it suits you.

We even went over this A YEAR AGO when you got in touch and were forced to drop me from your Who’s Who for this same reason.

And yet you’ve gone ahead and done it anyway.

WTF?

Have you seriously gone to print including my name and weblog in your charts when I have refused to take part in the past and have clearly expressed my wish to NOT take part this year?

I seriously do not want to appear in his book of charts, and I told him so. Apparently, it’s already gone to print and today I find out that – despite my wishes – Iain has me listed as a participant in the poll.

What are my options?

UPDATE (03 Sep) – May I begin by pointing out that Iain Dale is a big, fat liar?

“Yes, you emailed me privately. And I do what I always do with all of the hundreds of other emails which you hassle me with. I put it straight in the Junk box. And then I did the same with the next one. And the next.” – Iain Dale (Aug 29)

I keep all the emails I get from Ireland. You never know when they might come in useful. I can find no email from him saying he didn’t wish to be included in the poll. Normally when he goes off on one he barrages me with copies of various emails has sent. Some of his emails go straight into my Spam folder anway, so it’s perfectly possible that this one did.” – Iain Dale (Sep 02)

(Note – He wasn’t talking about the ‘poll’ email specifically on Aug 29, but one of the hundreds dozens I’ve sent him earlier this year. These number in the dozens only because Iain keeps ignoring them or pretending not to have seen them. It is also possible that Iain will inisist that there is no lie or contradiction here because he used the word ‘junk’ and not ‘delete’.)

Not that his not seeing the email matters, as Iain himself described my actions as a ‘boycott’, and unless he’s going to claim that he doesn’t know what the word means, my post alone should have been enough for him.

But it’s nice of him to acknowledge – in his own special way – that he would have acted differently had he seen my email.

Then again…

“But either way, I don’t really care if he wished to be included in the poll or not.” – Iain Dale (02 Sep)

Ah. My bad. So what Iain is saying here is that – even if he had known for sure that I didn’t want to be involved in or associated with this poll in any way – he would have included me anyway.

The following point has already been raised (and ignored), but it’s similar to the point I raised with Total Politics yesterday (gosh, I hope they get my email) and it applies now more than ever:

Instead of honouring this request, Iain Dale went ahead and included me anyway, the upshot being that the poll is now – through no fault of mine, because I DID NOT WISH TO BE INCLUDED – actually specifically biased against my weblog because I was included in the poll (against my wishes) as I urged my readers not to vote.

Dale knows this. He’s not a complete idiot, and he must know how voting works because he lost an election once.

UPDATE (04 Sep) – Well, there you have it. I sent several emails seeking a reasonable and peaceful solution to this yesterday, and Iain ignored them all.

Iain Dale, who goes on and on and on about how he gets picked on for no reason, has decided to go ahead and be difficult about it by including me in this chart and peppering this post, which includes the following highlights:

“Liberal Conspiracy encouraged a boycott of the whole exercise…”

No. They didn’t. Sunny Hundal did. Iain knows this and was reminded of it several times. But it’s in his interest to make something more of it than there is, so he just lies about it. Speaking of which…

“Absolute Unique Visitors (is now) the yardstick by which blogs are judged…”

Pfft! As if Iain doesn’t recall why this is the case for him especially. And he’s lecturing newspapers for their misleading use of meaningless use of metrics?

Well, he’s clearly taking the piss.

Remember this any time Iain tries to get anyone to take this poll of his seriously (trust me, he will) or asks you to trust him with any position of power; he diddled this result just to have one over on me.

He’s a vagina.








Posted in The Political Weblog Movement | 16 Comments

Memo to flying monkeys (all sqaudrons)

Closing this thread was not, in my view, an evil conspiratorial act of net censorship.

I wish to make that ab-so-lute-ly clear.

Cheers all.








Posted in The Political Weblog Movement | 4 Comments

“Crazy Ivan! Crazy Ivan!”

(Hey, I did warn you…)

I’ve put out an initial post on the subject of Page 3 today, but apart from that and some action over further image-nickery (later) the Sun-watch project will be chugging along happily without my help for the next week and a bit… because right now I’m in the mood to give The Daily Mail a long-overdue kicking where it hurts.

All those in favour?

(Wait for it, wait for it…..)

[Psst! If you’re a blogger and you’d like a head-start on the action, start browsing through any past articles you’ve written about the Mail now.]








Posted in Old Media, Updates | 1 Comment

Google is *such* a tease

Spotted by Haku, a chap whose recently-installed b3ta.com user signature (*** Julie Moult is an idiot ***) contributed to this result:

The first sign of change in Google Images [screen capture].

It’s only text so far, but it’s a start and an Images database update has come about a lot earlier than expected.

For those who came in late.

UPDATE (01 Sep) – Google Images is still sniffing around b3ta.com, *plus* Daniel’s blog and Bloggerheads, which appears on the bottom row this evening [screen capture].

(Well done, Daniel, who appeared as the first weblog result to get a text mention in Google Images this morning. About 6 hours ahead of me. The bastard.)








Posted in Old Media | Comments Off on Google is *such* a tease

This just in: hating the lies of hate-filled liars makes you a hater!

1.

Thank you, Charlotte, for your concern.

2.

Facebook group: “The Daily Mail really are a bunch of fucking twats” (via)
No. of members: 8,213

Facebook group: “I Love the Daily Mail”
No. of members: 20

Not sure what that means exactly, but moving on…

3.

A fresh item about the only other national newspaper stupid enough to hire Julie Moult:

The Sun: Tabloid Lies – Setting up “investigations” with only one possible outcome: Occasionally, the Sun likes to take a break from attacking the “work shy” and on benefits just in print and decides to set-up a fallacious test to prove just what a bunch of layabouts those on benefits are… This time the paper has been completely caught out by its own readers, which happily saves me the bother…

A very promising entry that you should read and take some time to think about if you’re a regular here. I think now more than ever that we stand a very good chance of reaching at least a small percentage of Sun readers with this new project.








Posted in Old Media | 2 Comments