Accuracy
i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text.
Both Daily Mail and Mail Online are signed up to this code. They are supposedly separate entities and they do not routinely share articles. I am not prepared to buy or steal a copy to make sure of this and the online one has already been cleansed.
Mail Online hacks are paid on results, basically they have to write clickbait in order to make a living. And they have to write it quickly to “scoop” other online news sites. And that means they cannot perform basic checks. And they repeatedly post stories which are fabrication.
We now know that this virus can hitch a ride on pollutants and travel kilometers, and hang in the air for a long period. Should we change the recommended distance to a couple of km?
Realistically, the point of isolation is to bring the infection rate down to a manageable level, say .7 (what we have here in Norway) or .4 (as they apparently have in New Zealand). Permitting some low-probability events, like infection outdoors across 10 feet of garden, is not going to have an effect on that. If you have to be absolutist and forbid the garden thing in order to keep down closer contacts, then that says more about a nation’s psychology than it does about scientific necessity.
For sure! The old PCC had rules like this as well. The thing is, they were enforced entirely by the press themselves and still are in IPSO! The Leveson Inquiry recommended (IIRC) that there be an independent monitor. That is the thing that never happened.
No it didn’t because they got all huffy about the freedom of the press and promised never to pap a royal from a mile away or a celeb’s brats while they crossed the road, and of course the government caved and let them set up a nice little lunch club with no power, no inclination to censure, but they do have a nice wine list. And the papers went back to royals and kids.
If you want to get to Australian and New Zealand levels (I am in Australia) then you have to be absolutely manic about distancing. I have not visited my parents since the emergency started. We talk on the phone some times. To do so would be to put them at risk.
My sister called me from the UK and announced her intention to travel here and stay with our mother. I told her to stay the f*** away so she hates me for that.
I have to wonder if the relaxed approach being displayed in the photo is contributing to the number of covid deaths in the UK.
Well, I’m in Norway and while people are being reasonably diligent about distancing, the restrictions are nowhere near as draconian as they are in the UK. The visit from this story (outdoors, 3 meters distance) would absolutely be permitted.
Norway’s 0.7 is higher than New Zealand’s 0.4, but how much of that is due to the difference in distancing rules and how much due to Norway (a) not being an island, and (b) not having locked down before the annual March ski holidays in the Alps, is certainly not known.
Just going from the garden photo: he is touching their furniture and the mug the drink is in. He may have touched other items of garden furniture like a gate. He definitely touched the items he delivered to them. All of these are opportunities for infection. There is no real distancing here.
And he is visiting older people, who are most at risk.
It is hard to sit in a chair without touching it, and I assume the mug came from a dishwasher. There is some slight chance that if his parents are infectious and if they handled the mug before he touched it then some small amount of the virus could have passed from their hand to the mug and then to his hand, which if he touches his face might get transported there. This is a small chain of probabilities. If a national social distancing policy has managed to reduce infection vectors to this level, and has shrunk social circles to practically nil, then it has really done its job.
I think describing this as “no real distancing here” is an exaggeration.
Sounds like much the same situation, then: a [fabricated\staged] photograph justified on the grounds that it is obvious, all things considered, that the [athlete approached his father/troops abused prisoners]
Any items that are delivered would have been touched at some point by any number of people.
Since the Mail (never renowned for high standards of unbiased accuracy), does not mention it, so Cracknell does not address it, we cannot know what precautions were taken (or not).
Shopping for a vulnerable neighbour or relative is permitted (and is encouraged) under UK guidelines. And it is possible to remain socially distant and still check on their welfare.
Except that there’s no suggestion that Morgan/the Mirror were complicit in the fabrication of the photos, and that the Mail photos exaggerated the nature of the incident being depicted.
I imagine the DM could claim it was punked by photoshopped submissions in some of these cases, too, but I’d bet a dollar they’d rather pay settlements than let discovery show exactly how negligently the sausage is made.
The tabloids solved the libel issue decades ago. If you sue them they will use the court proceedings to publish every bit of salacious gossip they have on you and invent plenty more. The other tabloids and even the supposedly serious papers then report on the case and include all of this garbage until your reputation is utterly ruined. That’s assuming you can afford the six-figure legal fees to begin with.
