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Though the BBC News website coverage of the Telford child abuse scandal has now been 're-buried in Shropshire' under the headline Telford abuse: Victim numbers 'sensationalised' says police chief, the story continues to unfold. The Mirror is now putting the police themselves under its searchlight:

Police slammed over memo saying Telford child sex abuse was 'consensual'

Officers investigating child sexual exploitation in the town were sent an internal memo telling them “in most cases the sex is consensual”

The report says:

A person under 16 cannot be deemed in law to have consented to sex, but the word “consensual” was used to describe offences involving children four times in the memo. 

I see on Twitter that Sarah Champion MP is angry about this:

Police slammed over memo saying Telford child abuse was 'consensual' Grrrr! When will people understand that a child cannot consent?!?

As Laura Perrins of The Conservative Woman says, "This is incredible. Under section 5 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, rape of a child under 13 is a strict liability offence. Consent is irrelevant".

Hopefully the BBC will be asking questions of West Mercia Police about this - though given how they've dealt with the story so far that probably isn't very likely. 

One of Our Papers is Missing

The Sunday Mirror was missing from Andrew Marr's collection of newspapers this morning. (It was nowhere on his table.)

I had a suspicion it would be.

Its main story looks like the latest manifestation of the 'Asian grooming gang' scandal, this time erupting in Telford:

It's an absolute shocker. Well might it be said, "Not again. 'Let's keep quiet about teenage sex slavery because we're tolerant.' Wilful blindness is not tolerance."

Let's hope "Not again" can't also be said of the BBC's response to this story.

Suspicious Minds

Fair dos to last night's Newsnight for leading with the hacking scandal at Mirror Group newspapers. 

Given the wall-to-wall coverage the BBC gave the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World, owned by the BBC's main UK rival, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, you would have expected the BBC to 'go big' on this story as well - especially as the hacking scandal at Trinity Mirror is now apparently much bigger than the one at the NOTW...

...and yet, overall, the BBC hasn't given the Mirror scandal anything like the saturation coverage it gave the scandal at the Murdoch Empire, has it? They've certainly covered it, but without any of the frenzy of their NOTW coverage.

Is that because the BBC doesn't see the Mirror Group as a serious rival (unlike News Corp)? Or because Mirror Group leans to the left (unlike News Corp)? Your guess is as good as mine. 

One of the criticisms often made of the BBC's NOTW coverage (on blogs like this) has been that the BBC seemed to have been working hand-in-hand with the Guardian to build the story into a scandal of some proportions that it would destroy Rupert Murdoch's power in Britain - as if they were Siamese twins.

No one could excuse last night's Newsnight though of working hand-in-hand with the Guardian in their reporting of Guardian rival Mirror Group's legal travails, could they? 

Yes, Newsnight's editor and former Guardian deputy editor Ian Katz had invited Guardian-columnist-turned-BBC-media-expert Steve Hewlett to present his Newsnight report, and Steve Hewlett's 'media expert' was none other than the Guardian's resident media pundit Roy Greenslade, but surely no-one would read anything incestuous into that, would they?

Or to the fact that the honest, repentant ex-Mirror journalist interviewed in the studio after Steve's report, Graham Johnson, has also written for the Guardian and worked on the BBC's Panorama - and received the backing of Hacked Off and Nick Davies of the Guardian during his trial? There's nothing incestuous about that either, is there?

One rule for one, one rule for another

Except for the Guardian, the remarkable under-reporting of the phone hacking scandal at Mirror Group Newspapers is really striking - especially in comparison to the massive coverage of the News of the World scandal. 

And it's not just the media. Even Roy Greenslade at the Guardian seems taken aback at the Labour Party's behaviour:

The current Labour leadership, and all those Labour MPs who kicked up about the News of the World’s misbehaviour, should have issued statements and spoken out loudly in public about similar activities having occurred at the Daily and Sunday Mirror and Sunday People.

I’ve searched the Twitter file of Tom Watson, for example, and can’t find any condemnation from him following the statement at the high court about hacking being “rife” at Mirror group.

I did the same search for comments about the Mirror by another Labour MP who used to speak so often about the disgrace of the News of the World hackers, Chris Bryant. Silence, a deafening silence, on the subject once again.

By ignoring the Mirror’s hacking Labour is tending to indicate that it was, after all, playing politics when it was so critical of David Cameron in 2011.

Why should the party let Trinity Mirror off the hook? Because its papers support Labour and there’s an election coming up? Because its papers aren’t owned by Murdoch? Because the Mirror’s hackers didn’t intercept the voicemails of John Prescott (a Sunday Mirror columnist)? Because hacking is yesterday’s news? 

None of these excuses stands up. Labour should show some principle by treating the Mirror the way it did Murdoch.

As should the BBC. There's more to the story than just Alan Yentob.

Of Hacking, Hypocrisy and Weasels

The BBC (and the Guardian) pursued the Murdoch empire relentlessly over phone hacking. 

You'll doubtless recall the countless lead stories on the website, the innumerable 'Newsnight' reports, the endless updates on 'PM', all those Robert Peston blogposts, etc, etc, etc. Pretty much every twist and turn in the story received massive attention from the BBC. 

Murdoch's Sky is, of course, the BBC's major rival, so they were never going to be a disinterested party. The outrageous thing was how little effort they made to hide the fact. 

Of course I could be wrong, and if the BBC reports the growing Mirror Group hacking scandal with the same obsessive focus as it reporting the 'News of  the World' scandal then I'll have to eat my words, won't I? The BBC will have proved itself to be disinterested as the Mirror Group isn't a major rival of the BBC in the way that News Corp is. We will have to see.

At the high court today the Mirror Group stands accused of phone hacking "on an industrial scale" - a scale dwarfing that at the Murdoch newspapers. 

According to the FT,

David Sherborne, barrister for the victims, told the High Court that the trial would look at the “size and scale of unlawful activity” at Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), where he claimed phone hacking was carried out by “scores of journalists”.

He told the High Court that the “vast” amount of phone hacking carried out throughout the three national newspapers “makes News of the World look like a cottage industry and a small one at that”.

How is the BBC reporting this astonishing claim? Well, it is reporting it. It's seventh in its running order on the news website. And the BBC News at Six on BBC One reported it as its next-to-last story, 24 minutes in, just before the 'weasel riding on the flying woodpecker' story - and after two 'Jihadi Mohammed' stories, including more propaganda from CAGE. 

Hmm. Yes it's been a day full of of big, harrowing domestic stories - the report into "industrial scale" abuse by grooming gangs in Oxford, the report into the maternity unit scandal at Furness Hospital - but had this been a damaging Murdoch empire story then I suspect it would have featured a good deal more prominently, and not been merely the warm-up-story to the weasel riding on the woodpecker's back. 

Plus, David Sillitoe's report for BBC One didn't even mention David Sherborne's most striking claim: that phone hacking at Mirror Group Newspapers made 'News of the World' "look like a cottage industry and a small one at that". 

The same cannot be said for the Guardian, which makes that very point its main angle and features thestory far more prominently than the BBC. The Mirror Group is much more of a rival for the Guardian than it is for the BBC, of course.

Everyone seems to be behaving according to their own interests here, don't they? 

Incidentally, another of the Guardian and the BBC's go-to-men during the whole course of the 'NOTW' scandal, Labour MP and prolific tweeter Tom Watson, is unusually quiet on Twitter today. He's tweeted nothing about hacking at Mirror Group. [And neither for that matter has Robert Peston]. It's most unlike him not to tweet about hacking. What's gotten into him? Just what is it about the Labour-supporting Mirror Group that isn't exciting his righteous anger as much? 

Is the smell of hypocrisy hanging heavy in the air today?

Rumours - NOT by Fleetwood Mac

Oh dear, it looks as if certain sections of the media - old and new - never learn.

Rumours that the violent attack on a prison officer at HMP Full Sutton had been led by Parviz Khan - a Muslim extremist found guilty of plotting to behead a British soldier - have been splashed by several newspapers and, inevitably, many on Twitter and, unfortunately, also on blogs followed suit.

The Ministry of Justice press office, however, then put out this categorical statement on Twitter:

MoJ Press Office ‏@MoJPress 4hr
Individual named by media in connection with incident at HMP Full Sutton was NOT involved and is NOT at that prison #fullsutton

As I say, oh dear!

As far as I can see it was the Daily Mirror that got it wrong first, with the Huff Post and Daily Star coming much later.

The Huff Post has very properly left its original article for all to see but added prominently - at the head of the article and in bold type - the following update:

UPDATE: It was reported that the attack was masterminded by Muslim fanatic Parviz Khan, who is serving a life sentence for plotting to behead a British soldier, but it later emerged he is not an inmate at Full Sutton.

That is admirable behaviour.

The Daily Mirror, in contrast, has been far less honest.

Google News still records what their article originally said when it was published many hours ago -

Woolwich attack: Terrorist thug jailed for plotting to behead soldier batters prison ...

Mirror.co.uk - ‎15 hours ago‎

Prison staff feared their colleague, locked in a room and being attacked by crazed extremists, was facing the same gruesome death as murdered soldier Lee Rigby. Leading the thugs was al-Qaeda fanatic Parviz Khan, serving life for plotting to behead a ...

The Mirror has simply, as the phrase goes, "stealth-edited" its original article (ie. leaving no trace via a date stamp or any mention of an update) to remove Khan's name, with no acknowledgement of their mistake and not the slightest whiff of contrition - which is the sort of thing that gets the press a bad name #leveson. 

The Daily Star still hasn't got round to correcting its article, which is still bearing a photo of Khan with the word "monster" below it. 

It's at times like this when you can see that the BBC's cautious approach to reporting these sorts of story can  appear to be the wiser route to take.

'If you didn't laugh you'd cry' is a bit of a cliché now, but I thought of it as I read this comment which appeared on Twitter whilst I was writing this post:

VerseCannon ‏@VerseCannon 21m
Muslim Fanatic Parviz Khan Led Stabbing Attack On Prison Warden in UK , Reports Say
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/05/28/muslim-fanatic-led-stabbing-prison-warden_n_3344869.html?utm_hp_ref=uk?ncid=GEP …

That person had obviously failed to notice the whopping UPDATE on the Huff Post's article before tweeting away to the entire world. #jeez!