Daily Mail lies about Facebook (updated x7) David Steven
March 10, 2010 | More on Influence and networks, Key Posts | 28 comments
[Important updates below - Facebook says the Daily Mail knew its story was untrue, but printed it anyway. Legal action is promised. The BBC has now picked up on Global Dashboard's story. Journalism.co.uk has a piece as well. Guardian has followed our lead too. Mashable. Belle de Jour chips in.]
In the early hours of this morning, the Daily Mail published an astonishing attack on Facebook under the title “I posed as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook. What followed will sicken you.”
Here’s the opener:
Even after 15 years in child protection, I was shocked by what I encountered when I spent just five minutes on Facebook posing as a 14-year-old girl. Within 90 seconds, a middle-aged man wanted to perform a sex act in front of me.
I was deluged by strangers asking stomach-churning questions about my sexual experience. I was pressured to meet men with whom I’d never before communicated.
So I wasn’t surprised that a vulnerable teenager, Ashleigh Hall, was groomed on Facebook before being brutally raped and killed.
The article is written by Mark Williams-Thomas. Here’s his biog:
Mark is a former police detective who has far-reaching experience of working at the centre of high profile investigations. During Mark’s police service, he specialised in child protection and major crime and he is renowned throughout the UK’s police forces as well as the national media for his expertise in these areas.
It’s an odd story. Facebook isn’t really a chat site – and it’s certainly not Chatroulette, where there are plenty of men ready and waiting to jack off in front of you (sfw). Presumably Williams-Thomas set his privacy settings to zero and befriended loads of strangers. But how did those strangers find him (her) so quickly?
Fast forward twelve hours and the online version of Williams-Thomas’s article has undergone some editing. New title: I posed as a girl of 14 online. What followed will sicken you. And new text, with Facebook replaced with an unnamed ‘social networking site’.
Even after 15 years in child protection, I was shocked by what I encountered when I spent just five minutes on a social networking site posing as a 14-year-old girl. Within 90 seconds, a middle-aged man wanted to perform a sex act in front of me.
The url, though, has not been changed: I-posed-girl-14-Facebook-What-followed-sicken-you.html [This url was subsequently set to redirect to a new one - 12/03/2010]
So what gives? If it was Facebook that Williams-Thomas was using, then why turn so coy? And if it wasn’t, how on earth could the Mail have pretended it was?
Update: Via Twitter, I asked Williams-Thomas for clarification. Here’s his reply:
So why was Facebook named in the first place?
Update 2: Apparently the story – with Facebook named – was a front page splash in the print edition, and then a double page spread inside.
Update 3: Just had a call from Facebook – they’re incandescent and say that:
- Williams-Thomas claims that he was 100% clear that his social network experiment had not involved Facebook.
- When the Mail sent him a first draft of the story with Facebook named, he asked for them to make a correction.
- Even so, they went ahead and published a story their own expert had warned them was untrue.
When Facebook protested, the Mail corrected the online story, but not the printed version, which had already hit the news stands. Their online retraction failed to include any apology or explanation of their mistake.
Facebook says that legal action against the Mail is pending. What an extraordinary piece of negligence and/or malice from the paper!
Update 4: The Mail appended a fairly mealy mouthed correction last night:
In an earlier version of this article, we wrongly stated that the criminologist had conducted an experiment into social networking sites by posing as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook with the result that he quickly attracted sexually motivated messages. In fact he had used a different social networking site for this exercise. We are happy to set the record straight.
Will they be happy to pay damages to Facebook too? Another version here, which begins: “In an article by a criminologist yesterday, we wrongly stated…” – half-maintaining the fiction that Williams-Thomas actually wrote the piece…
Update 5: From last year, another great Daily Mail headline: “How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer.”
Update 6: Instead of retreating to lick her wounds, Mail journo, Laura Topham has doubled down with another article on Internet safety – again using the Facebook killer as a hook and with the same oddly prurient image from yesterday’s story.
Before her Facebook howler, Topham’s main claim to fame was dating 100 men and writing about it, outing Belle de Jour [or not - see Belle's comment], and running up huge amounts of debt because the government inveigled her into taking out a student loan.
Her big break in journalism came in 2005 when she shafted David Blunkett.
Update 7: PC Pro quotes Facebook’s spokeswoman as challenging the Daily Mail to name the social networking platform that is really to blame. I was given exactly the same message. Facebook think it knows which service Williams-Thomas used and is desperate for one of its competitors to get shafted.
A representative of Williams-Thomas justifies anonymity thus: “The reason he does not want to [name the service] is because he does not want there to be another opening for paedophiles to head straight for.” Hmm. Maybe.
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You’ll also notice that there’s a screen grab from Facebook in the article so the implication is clear that the social networking site of evil and doom is indeed FB when, in fact, as we know, it isn’t, at all.
Sometimes the big name makes the title more attractive and drives clicks, page views and revenue.
I’ve sent Mark an email. This is it:
you are a despicable cunt:
so worthless or obnoxious as to rouse moral indignation
just in case you don’t know the meaning of the word as you don’t know the meaning of ‘journalism’.
maybe this is an achievement for you, who knows?
@Mike. Well that make those of us who are properly offended by this look sensible and mature. Won’t it
How would your email read? Or are you just going to accept that he writes such nonsense? At least my venom is accurately directed, unlike Mark’s.
@mike …Except that if it was his editors who changed the story, as Mark claims, then your reaction is exactly the type of knee-jerk reaction which makes the Daily Mail so abhorrent.
Nicholas – you are a moron. Mark didn’t name Facebook, and made clear it wasn’t Facebook. The Mail changed it to FB and ran it anyway – even though they knew it was lie.
Learn to read before sending abusive emails, you cretin.
@Mike- exactly.
So why are you sending insulting emails to Mark and not the Mail?
My mistake. Apology sent. Less vino fuelled letter being written to Mail.
We shouldn’t be surprised by what the Daily Mail publishes – its editorial agenda is to bate an instill anger in Middle England, which is does by twisting and distorting and creating its own moral high ground.What worries me is whether it does this purely to increase sales and make money, or whether it truly believes in the tosh it prints.
@Paul. We shouldn’t be surprised when they lie. But equally, we shouldn’t let them lie with impunity, even as they pose as the last bastion of moral rectitude in the UK.
Thanks for this reporting David. I happened to pick up a copy of the Mail that was left on the Tube yesterday and also felt that something was amiss with this story.
I’m on the UK Council for Child Internet Safety so have been hearing many points of view about how to keep safe online. I felt the Mail were coming down particularly hard on Facebook while neglecting to discuss one of the most important issues around online child safety which is that parents and guardians need to be educated and take responsibility for their children’s online behaviour as well. The slant of the Daily Mail was particularly surprising given that the Daily Express had run a frontpage story the day before with the mother of Ashleigh Hall pleading with parents to pay attention to what their children are doing online.
There are of course many factors contributing to online safety, operators like Facebook have a role to play but there are many other links in the chain, including parents and schools, not to mention the central role of young people themselves. The Daily Mail story risks parents underestimating the importance of their own role in their children’s online child safety.
Not only does the URL still refer to Facebook, the page title still reads “I posed as a girl of 14 on Facebook”.
@Vicky – agreed. the Jan Moir story about Stephen Gately – and in particular the response of readers – shows that people aren’t willing to let this go uncommented on. The problem is that when something more formal happens, such as the Press Complaints Councils ruling on Moir’s story, it doesn’t have any impact.
I don’t advocate press censorship, but we do need something that can come down hard on papers who purport their twisted views to be news.
Ironically, with the Mail being online, rubbish like this story probably gets more attention than it deserves.
@Paul. It probably does, but at the same time, it also makes it much more likely that they get caught out and have to print a correction, however half-hearted. The PCC may be toothless, but the pressure is growing on journalists to report accurately, even if they can’t always manage to be objective. I love the interwebs for exactly that reason.
A so-called journalist once phoned me, didn’t identify herself as a journalist, but posed as a music promoter and asked me questions about a certain musician. My answer to almost all the questions was “I don’t know enough to answer your question.” To the question about how many people came to see him at a recent gig I replied that it was a charity gig and that he’d said he’d come if he could make it. He wasn’t advertised as performing so the question is irrelevant. The article, which basically took the piss out of the poor guy for no longer being in a famous band and therefore being rich, twisted the questions around and more or less made them into my quotes. I didn’t bother complaining to the PCC because the editor of the Daily Mail chairs the PCC. What’s the point?
Paul and Vicky, this argument is on the right lines.
I think the problem is that the DM gets all the publicity and rabble-rousing it requires with the initial story (q.v also Moir/Gately).
They don’t care if they subsequently have to issue an apology, retract a statment here or there or even kill the story. Their job here, you could say, is done.
But here is the point – in both this and Moir/Gately Dacre and his paymasters will be gleefully reclining in their comfy chairs watching all the ansgt spill out on the blogs, comment pages and facebook groups knowing that this is driving up web-traffic (and eventually whether we like it or not) ad sales.
Agreed censorship is not the way forward but accountability certainly should be. Which gets us to the PCC and the plain and simple fact that self-regulation does not work.
This is what we should be focusing on.
Here’s hoping facebook sue the crap out of the DM for lost revenue with an RIAA approach to damages (ie: we took all the people under 18 who’s traffic decreased after the story, we worked out how much ad revenue we’d have had if their traffic had in fact increased in line with the average and THAT is how much money the DM cost FB.)
My guess is that the site in question – if one was used at all, and it was a social networking site, and not just ‘chatroulette’ or the like – was something like ‘Tagged’. Look it up, it’s a horrible pit of teenage depravity that goes largely unmoderated. It would appear that remaining clothed whilst posing for a profile picture on ‘Tagged’ is optional.
Belle de Jour turned out to be a specialist in childhood cancer.
The Daily Mail tried to out Belle de Jour, causing her personal grief and surely getting in the way of her work.
Therefore, THE DAILY MAIL INCREASES THE RISK OF CANCER.
Although they’ve removed Facebook’s name from the header and opening para, the fifth line is still the same – “So I wasn’t surprised that a vulnerable teenager, Ashleigh Hall, was groomed on Facebook …” – still spinning the line that a teenager’s experience of Facebook is going to be along the same lines of Williams-Thomas’s.
I often read the daily mail online- got to know what the enemy are thinking,and noticed recently loads of stories fearmongering about how facebook makes you lonely,crazy,sucicidal,fat,get you raped,killed,all along the lines of whipping up hysteria to somehow get facebook ‘banned’ like their campaign to get Russell Brand off the air.The Daily Mail are like Salem witchhunters; crazies.
Actually, she didn’t out me. She broke into my office twice when I wasn’t there and outed my ex-boyfriend. Investigative FAIL from Topham, this comes as no surprise.
I think the Daily Mail feeds a need in a lot of people to be outraged. Unfortunately putting it online and encouraging people to comment (and vote on comments)just stokes the bile even more.
If it were like the national enquirer – so obviously made up – you could put it in a box and forget about it. But it has shed loads of readers and is influential – I heard a pundit on Today the other day saying that the Tories had to be careful not to upset the Daily Mail readers and ruin their chances to get into power.
Perhaps we need a campaign of feeding their hacks so much crap that they can’t help printing and eventually fall foul of the law, public opinion or – even worse – Tesco pulling their ads.
What we need is a Press Complaints Commission that is independent from the newspapers. Until then, ordinary people will continue to be shit on by these arseholes. It’s okay for Facebook. They can afford to sue. But there are so many people whose lives are ruined by these so-called journalists who don’t have the money to take them and their employers to court. Money talks. The Daily Mail walks. It’s time they were stopped.
@Tribal Wars Bot – what the hell is this, someone delete this, please.
@Murray / @SJ – Facebook don’t have the same finances as other businesses – they’re VC funded still: http://is.gd/aiNFZ
but may be profitable this year… They can sue, but until they really are making money, the Mail have deeper pockets (risk/reward assessments may come into play). You’re right about the independence of the PCC – without independence, these oiks will never be brought to book. I personally only read the Daily Mail through the window of sites such as this – I have written elsewhere that I wouldn’t wipe my a**e on the Mail, it turns your sh*t blue.
@VickyCollis / @Paul The only problem with corrections, half-hearted apologies and where the Mail re-writes articles, they still keep the original URL implicating Facebook (or whoever). This still means the article URL contains the original meaning and intention (or at least I’d like to see that asserted in court and force the Mail’s lawyers to refute and rebut). The assertion should be backed up by noting that browsers display the link URL in the status bar (and you all do check that first – see response to @Tribal Wars Bot) as well as the article text. This sets the expectation in the reader’s mind that Facebook (in this case) will be directly implicated in the article in the way originally intended. It colours the reader’s interpretation of the article.
The Mail (and all newspapers that encode summary versions of articles in the URLs to those articles) should be forced to write a URL redirector to handle errors, corrections, retractions and re-writes – the original URL goes to the apology page, with a link there to click on for the revised article.
Hopefully they will follow News Corp’s lead and move to hiding behind a paywall: http://is.gd/aiSVu – no one with a brain will follow and the Mail will go back to being a newspaper and website read by people who want to be outraged – they are just “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells”, http://is.gd/aiTvQ aren’t they?
I’m just glad someone stood up to the mail for once,everyone tiptoes round them terrified of upsetting them and triggering a ‘Daily Mail Campaign’,the bbc announced their cuts in an attempt to placate the mail who kept turning on heat on them,stupid of the bbc to have blinked now because when the tories get into power they have to make more cuts,where it will really hurt.
The Mail is scared of facebook and social networking in general. Newsapers are losing thier power to free online sites which may condradict what they print as truth. That must terrify them.