Sunday 16 December 2007

Hall of shame 2: media

And it's the Murdoch press again!! Buried on Page 2 of the Sunday Times for December 16 is a remarkable little apology. It seems that at the time of the MRSA scandal at the Maidstone hospitals trust in October, the paper illustrated one of its stories with a picture of a nurse in a filthy uniform. Well, actually, it was a fake photo, though this was of course not revealed at the time. The paper thought it was a picture of a model, and the uniform was in fact quite clean in the original photo, but through the magic of photoshop, or pehaps by rubbing it with their messy little hands, they made it look filthy.

That would be quite enough deception for me, but it gets worse. It turns out the impeccably-attired lady was in fact a real, live nurse -- but had never worked for the hospital in question! So the poor old Sunday Times has had to apologise "unreservedly".

The Sunday Times is part of the Murdoch group that has gleefully piled in on the BBC over its various misdemeanours. Let's see: BBC -- tinkering with the results of a poll to name the Blue Peter moggie; Sunday Times -- falsifying a picture on an important news story and damaging the reputation of an innocent woman in the process. Just for once, it would be nice to see the Beeb adopt Murdochian standards and run with this story at the top of every news bulletin until Christmas.

No comments: