Hugely embarrassing: Daily Mail jumps gun on “Amanda Knox guilty” story
I'm not sure it gets more embarrassing than this for a news site. In their attempt to be first with the verdict on Amanda Knox, the Mail Online published its pre-written story the moment the judge said the word guilty (no doubt for SEO reasons).
Unfortunately, like many people, the Mail was caught out by the judge finding her guilty of slander - before clearing her of the murder. At the sound of the word "guilty", they hit publish on a story about her appeal being rejected that includes reactions from the family and prosecutors being delighted - reactions that can't have happened as she was found NOT guilty of murder.
But she wasn't guilty ...
The Sun did it too I later discovered.
It's the Sun wot run it
Anyway, here's the story from the Mail's site:
Mail story
And some quotes:
"Amanda Knox looked stunned this evening after she dramatically lost her prison appeal against her murder conviction. ...
As Knox realized the enormity of what judge Hellman was saying she sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears.
A few feet away Meredith's mother Arline, her sister Stephanie and brother Lyle, who had flown in especially for the verdict remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family.
Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that 'justice has been done' although they said on a 'human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail'.
Following the verdict Knox and Sollecito were taken out of court escorted by prison guards and into a waiting van which took her back to her cell at Capanne jail near Perugia and him to Terni jail, 60 miles away.
Both will be put on a suicide watch for the next few days as psychological assessments are made on each of them but this is usual practice for long term prisoners."
And here they are publishing the right story a bit later.
So which is it?!?
And here are the Sun's two stories ...
The Sun's two stories
Embarrassing. (To be fair, Sky News and the Guardian also claimed she'd been found guilty - just not quite in so much detail ...!)
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You're a disgrace. Sensationalistic journalism trying to 'scoop' the news, only to have it blow up right in your faces. The made up quotes and downright lies "Justice was done" who said that then?
You should be ashamed and embarrassed.
Sky, the Guardian, etc, made the same mistake. It's called journalism -it happens. No idea what 'Fergal Hunter' does with his life, but I'd be surprised if he's ever been in a news room in his life.
"Journalism" Johnny Kane? Is that a word for "made up news"?
Johnny Kane: "I'd be surprised if he's ever been in a news room in his life"
Oh come on, isn't that the point? It's intentional deceit. Whether it's 'the way things are' or not we don't need it. Organised crime exists - are we supposed to condone that as well? And at least that is kept relatively in the shadows!
The mistake was saying that she was guilty. The disgrace is fabricating the quotes and the reports of the scene. Maybe if Johnny Kane spent a bit less time in news rooms, he'd be able to recognise that?
"Justice was done" At least they got that right.
Eeep. Very embarrassing. Something I'm guilty of too though. Not on the same scale but for my Kate Middleton website time is of the essence and I regularly write things in advance. But I don't make up people's reactions to things... shameful!
@carly
surely running a kate middleton website is more embarressing?
If it didn't pay my rent, bills, car, food....etc etc maybe.
Plus it's a load of fun as I've built a great community around it.
Plus all the contacts (magazine editors, newspaper journalists etc) I've made is probably going to be useful too.
But thanks!
got a link to your website, Carly?
just click on her name
YOU MAKE A LIVING FROM A KATE MIDDLETON WEB SITE???
Holy shit. I'm quitting my day job.
Surely spelling "embarrassing" wrongly scores higher on the embarrassment scale, considering the correct spelling was given to you in the message to which you responded.
Totes embar.
Jon:
Don't be a jerk, captain grammar.
-Honest Abe
I think the word "pathetic" is more appropriate for someone who cares even a smidgen about the royals (unless they're one of them).
@Bud Bundy: I think the words "dullard" and "clone" are more appropriate for someone who is an anti-royalist.
I'm not an anti royalist. I'm an American who doesn't care. I've got to say all this royal stuff is pretty weird. Is this the equivalent of our "Brangelina"?
lol! +1 etc
I think it's the Royalists are embarrassing, dull and stupid.The Monarchy own the entire coastline, the goods of people who don't write wills, the equivalent of an entire county and cost us £30 million a year, not counting security costs. They stole the crown from the Stuarts, being only remotely related to the Stuarts.They sit at the very pinnacle of a system of snobbery and class which cripples this country.
They're richer than God, so much new money for them shows up every day that they're running out of storage space for it, they own all the beaches, and your take on them is that they are dull and stupid?
The lady's name is NOT Middleton any more - she is Catherine WALES the Duchess of Cambridge - why can't anyone get that right?????
@c.parkinson
Actually it's Windsor. George V changed the name and it is still used by the Royal family.
No, she's Her Royal Highness, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. She might like to write Catherine Cambridge on her various forms, but neither she nor her husband should call themselves Wales any more.
No, she isn't 'Her Royal Highness' as that hasn't been granted to her yet, and though she married a man who is 'His Royal Highness' it has been made clear that that title is in the gift of the Queen and it hasn't been granted.
"why can't anyone get that right?????"....He wailed.
Or is that Waled?
A lot of journo's on twitter jumped the gun as well - when the judge announced her guilty in the slander part of the trial. #FAIL
Can't help but laugh. Just goes to show what an absolute moronic farse of a "newspaper" the DM really is. Writing in advance is one thing. Fabricating quotes is another. I wonder how much of the correct article (and all of their articles in general) are just made up out of thin air... Guessing a lot!!
I'm laughing too...
I wonder if any of the people "quoted" in the story have a good claim against the paper. It's 100% clear that they didn't say/do any of those actions.
Heads should roll...
You people in the media industry really think that we, the listening/reading public care who breaks the story first? If you were to start polling the public as to who breaks any given story first I think you'd be sadly let down. It is YOU that seem to think its important. It is NOT. Get it right the first time or just don't do it at all.
Sickening. The Mail isn't even a newspaper. You make up juvenile, emotive garbage and dare to call it News. This is just another in a long line of unmitigated ethical disgraces, for which I wish nothing but the greatest possible level of embarrassment, shame and ignominy on you all. I absolutely loathe and condemn every single person who has ever contributed to the befouling moral cesspool of your work. Don't just feel 'embarrassed', feel morally culpable for concertedly spreading lie upon lie, day in and day out, in order to make money. I am sick to my soul.
Good lord. Take a pill, and lock yourself in a darkened room for a year.
None of this stops you reading the papers, though, does it - says it all....
Heartfelt agreement from me. Will it make the news though? I doubt it. We are fed this garbage all day every day and it is only by going looking do we actually get to find out what is really going on out there....
Greig
Why don't you say what you really feel? Stop being so nice.
Ooops!!! To be honest it serves the Mail right for being too quick on the trigger, it's a silly tabloid anyway. Let's hope they got rapped over the knuckles for it. Good to see that common sense prevailed although the case was looking sillier and sillier. I remember the Lindy Chamberlain dingo case in Australia when I lived there years ago. Trial by media, ten years in jail and then ooops, we umm found the jumpsuit your honour and she gets out of jail. Perhaps we should send the Italian investigators some handy reference books, like, oh, the Agatha Christie novels, and some training DVDs like, CSI Miami? Perhaps once they've studied crime scene investigation they might actually get it right.
I got the Sun clanger:
http://www.anorak.co.uk/295473/news/daily-mail-and-sun-say-amanda-knox-is-guilty-race-to-be-first-with-news-shames-tabloids.html/
Can't get it to load. Is your database suffering as much as mine?!
Daily Mail clearly not on the scene. Mail Online currently saying "Outside the court there were screams of 'shame on you' which appeared to be directed at Mr Bongiorno".
Last time I looked Guilia Bongionrno was a woman.
daily mail... you're a fucking disgrace to journalism.
Ah but did you spot the
photo caption on the original story to accompany the picture of the media melee in the courtroom?
'Media scum: Journalists, photographers and camera crews flooded the court room during the appeal'
You couldn't make it up, now, could you?
Almost as amusing is this blog. Spot the blooper.
Now that *is* ironic.
http://lisaansell.posterous.com/meredith-kercher-freed-i-think-someone-should-1413
This is probably the best blog post I've ever read
Well if the media reported it it must be true! Just ask Amanda "She Devil" Knox!
Its. Not it's.
Embarrassing.
I used to believe half of what one reads in the tabloids was fabricated, have to revise that down to 30% of the the truth now. But then again, like the sun and mirror, most comics are fiction anyway so should we really be surprised?
Thanks, you reminded me that I didn't have my adblocker switched on for some reason.
Well at least Jessica Rabbit can hold her head up again !!
A key question is whether anyone will be fired for this debacle. If not, the Mail will have no right to demand that some hapless minister or other public person who screws up in the future should resign or be sacked.
This is what they do though isn't it - express moral outrage, pass judgement and condemn when all the while going about business as they please believing themselves to be above it all. That's what sticks in my throat the most - the hypocrisy!
If the DM fired people for such lazy reporting, they would not have any employees.
It would be interesting to see if they replaced it with a "Knox Freed" article, and if that was similarly full of invented detail.
The 'guilty' version of their story is still in the SERPs. It doesn't even redirect - it loads an 'error' page that actually returns a 200!
Idiots...
Nice catch.
But may I gently suggest that this is not embarrassing in the slightest for the Daily Mail.
It's an operational mistake, in the sense that a limited number of people who never trusted the DM in the first place (you, and a few thousand others) now trust it even less. BMW knocks out the odd dodgy car, but well with six-sigma limits, and the majority continue to buy BMWs.
The Mail merely produced another narrative for the millions of other visitors. A narrative that makes perfect sense. If it had broken the rules of logic or physics - for example by stating that Knox had turned into a daffodil - that would have been damaging. But it followed a logic that accords with emotion and the structure of stories. The fact that they corrected the story simply means that readers get two stories for the price of one. Wot a bargain!
In conclusion: For most people, the truth doesn't matter.
The Mail Online website appears not to have a responsible adult in charge. It is littered with errors of every kind. Many of them are introduced into captions and headlines when things are correct in the text. The mixture of UK and US news creates the impression that some very odd crimes are going on in Britain, until you see that it is an American story. Perhaps the site is run by teenage techies, rather than journalists. The quality control that makes the Daily Mail newspaper a polished product seems to be missing from the online version.
THat above lisaansell.posterous is my blog. And I cannot tell you how mortified I am. I could spin you a tale of trying to sort washing and packed lunches, while quickly posting the link(my part of the post only one line)- but no excuse. Mortifying. I apologise for offence caused and deserve to be roundly humiliated. I have changed it but posterous is taking its time. PLease mock and humiliate me, it is truly deserved.
Shame on them. And there's me thinking the purpose of newspapers was to report on the facts AFTER events have happened! I'm glad I never read either of these sites anyway. The journalists should switch careers to be fiction writers, they're clearly talented at it.
Great little article with a genuine response from journalist, Nick Pisa can be read here: http://bit.ly/oBH6OO
Well done Daily Mail on not listening properly.
Still waiting for them to apologise. Looks unlikely though. They've noteed it was a mistake and have said it was only up for 90 seconds (lie) but no reference to the fact they were making up quotes, invented an eyewitness and things which didn't happen. Dragging the name of journalism further into the gutter.
Not sure it's necessarily a lie. They may have unpublished that quickly - there were certainly aware very soon after I published. I could access the page later than that - but that may just be cacheing etc issues ...
True. I'm no IT expert.
The rest of it was lies though. Nothing wrong with drafting both case scenario articles - but the making up of quotes and reactions is pretty off.
Hi Carly,
Decent looking site and glad it is paying the bills. Quick question, what sort of traffic are you generating for it? Just wondered what the minimum is you need to really go full steam on something like that (to cover costs, bills etc.).
Cheers.
I couldnt believe this, was on my mobile checking in and read this, was devastated, but just shows how they make it up. Should be once again brought to shame over this...
All part and parcel of the press that helped to keep two innocent people in jail in the first place. Shame. And of course the corrupt prosecutions hands are in it too. False quotes and everything- what award winning journalists.
The screws:
http://www.anorak.co.uk/295648/tv/who-wants-to-have-dirty-sex-with-amanda-knox-its-a-tv-debate.html/
Fake Story Was Written By Illegal Immigrant, Claims Paul Dacre
http://www.the-taxman.co.uk/news/2011-10-05.php
I haven't read the thing on the guardian, but as I understand it, they were life-blogging and so mistakenly announced that she had been found guilty, but without adding any invented details and later making it clear, that this mistake had happened. That would be a honest mistake. What the daily mail did, was, that they didn't only understand something wrong, but that they did invent details, which I assume is a regular practice, only that normally it isn't that obvious because without their mistake the details would look realistic.
So, what the daily mail did was really bad, while the guardian made a honest mistake. We can maybe critize that they reacted to fast and didn't double check, but it still miles apart from just inventing stuff.
Foxy does look like she has been hit by a mallet in the picture that accompanies the Daily Fail story which just happens to starts off with the words, 'Amanda Knox looked stunned...' The implication is that that is the very moment that she is receiving the news that she has been found guilty.
Worth remembering that there are file photos on everybody who has ever had their 15 minutes of fame and they can be whipped out to suit whatever the media want to represent. Scary that they get away with it.
And people wonder why so many of us no longer trust the mainstream media. This is why.