Tag Archives: norway attacks

Journalisted Weekly: Phone hacking, Eurozone, Norway, Somalia and Stepping Hill Hospital

Leave a reply

Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations. Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

Phone hacking, Eurozone, Norway, Somalia, Stepping Hill Hospital and more

for the week ending Sunday 24 July

  • An unprecedented ‘covered lots’ section – the Journalisted team have rarely seen such a busy news week
  • Phone hacking, Eurozone crisis, Norway terror attacks, Somalia, Stepping Hill Hospital and the Space Shuttle Atlantis all covered lots
  • General Petraeus stepping down and four Kenyans winning the right to sue the UK government covered little

Covered lots

  • The phone hacking scandal continues to unfold, 1258 articles (including the Murdochs undergoing a select committee grilling, 346 articles, and David Cameron setting out the terms of the Leveson Inquiry, 89 articles)
  • The Eurozone crisis, 455 articles
  • Terror attacks in Norway, carried out by right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, claim over seventy lives, 168 articles
  • Famine in Somalia worsens despite increased foreign aid, with Britain giving £90m, 137 articles
  • The suspicious deaths of patients at Stepping Hill Hospital, Stockport, with a nurse charged with causing damage with intent to endanger life, 115 articles
  • The Space Shuttle Atlantis returns home to the Kennedy Space Centre for the last time, 79 articles
  • Singer Amy Winehouse, found dead at her Camden home on Saturday afternoon aged just 27, 107 articles
  • Artist Lucian Freud dies aged 88, 69 articles

Covered little

  • General Petraeus hands over command in Afghanistan to General John R. Allen, 3 articles
  • Four Kenyans, who claim they were tortured during Mau Mau uprisings, win the right to sue the UK government, 18 articles
  • The Princess Diana Memorial Fund to close after fourteen years, 3 articles

Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)

Celebrity vs serious

  • Zara Phillips, the Queen’s grand-daughter, who marries rugby player Mike Tindall this Saturday, 19 articles vs. Judge finds that undercover police officer Mark Kennedy acted unlawfully, 16 articles
  • Wendi Deng stands up for her husband, Rupert Murdoch, at the select committee, 104 articles vs. the UK hands over control of Helmand’s capital, Lashkar Gah, to Afghan forces, 48 articles
  • The Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding dress goes on display at Buckingham Palace, 35 articles vs. Prince Andrew steps down as the UK’s trade envoy, having been criticised over his links to a controversial businessmen, 27 articles

Arab spring (countries & current leaders)

Who wrote a lot about…’The Norway terror attacks’

Peter Beaumont – 6 articles (The Guardian/The Observer), Andrew Ward – 5 articles (Financial Times), Mark Townsend – 5 articles (The Guardian), Tim Lewis – 4 articles (WalesOnline), Roger Boyes – 4 articles (The Times), Tom Peterkin – 3 articles (Scotland on Sunday), Duncan Gardham – 3 articles (Daily Telegraph)

Long form journalism

Sign up to the campaign for a public inquiry into phone hacking at hackinginquiry.org
Visit the Media Standards Trust’s new site Churnalism.com – a public service for distinguishing journalism from churnalism
Churnalism.com ‘explore’ page is available for browsing press release sources alongside news outlets
The Media Standards Trust’s unofficial database of PCC complaints is available for browsing at www.complaints.pccwatch.co.uk

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

Daily Mail columnist hits back over quotes in Norway gunman’s manifesto

3 Replies

Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips has spoken out after being cited in a manifesto believed to have been written by Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik and sent out shortly before Friday’s attacks.

Phillips is quoted twice by Breivik in the 1,500-page manifesto, which is severely critical of journalists in general and included detailed plans for a possible attack on a journalism conference.

Writing on her blog, she hits back at Liberal Conspiracy blogger Sunny Hundal, who flagged up the references to her in a blog post yesterday. Hundal’s post included a disclaimer stating that “there is no suggestion that his actions were inspired by Melanie Phillips, nor am I making that claim”, but Phillips accuses him of singling her out by only referring to her and Jeremy Clarkson being quoted, and none of the other writers, philosophers and politicians who are also mentioned by Breivik.

The manifesto also cites Winston Churchill, George Orwell, Edmund Burke, Muhatma Gandhi, and John Locke, among others.

Phillips goes on to accuse Hundal of a “crude attempt to smear me by a writer who has long displayed an unhealthy obsession with my work”.

Golly. Is Hundal suggesting that my writing provoked the mass murder of some 93 Norwegians? Doubtless with one eye on the law of libel, he piously avers:

“…there is no suggestion that his actions were inspired by Melanie Phillips, nor am I making that claim”.

Yet apart from a glancing reference to Jeremy Clarkson, whose remark about the flag of St George is also cited in this ‘manifesto’, I am the only person to whom Hundal refers to in this blog post, quoting at some length both my article and Breivik’s comments on it. He therefore gives the impression that I play a major role in this supposed ‘manifesto’, which he describes as warning of the ‘Islamic colonisation of western Europe’.

But in fact, there are only two references to me or my work in its 1,500 pages. Those references are to two articles by me published in the Daily Mail, a mainstream British paper – one on mass fatherlessness in Britain, and the other on the revelation by a former civil servant of a covert Labour government policy of mass immigration into Britain. There is no reference whatever to my writing on Islamisation.

Phillips also accuses the left of “wetting itself in delirium at this apparently heaven-sent opportunity to take down those who fight for life, liberty and western civilisation against those who would destroy it”.

According to her post, she has already received emails from members of the public relating to the manifesto, including one saying “I congratulate you on your part in the Norway massacre”.

Breivik, who has admitted being behind the deaths of more than 70 people in a bomb and shooting attack on Friday but denies criminal responsibility, appeared in court yesterday behind closed doors. Reports suggest that the press were banned from the hearing in part due to a fear that he may attempt to convey coded messages to accomplices.