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Sunday 9 January 2011

The Cheaper, Slower Express

Top story across almost all media outlets today (on which I commented earlier) has been the shootings in Tucson, Arizona. The BBC lead on the tragedy, and even Rupe’s TV troops at Sky News (“first for breaking wind”) concur. The quality end of the press agrees: the Guardian website also leads on the shootings, as do both the Independent and Maily Telegraph.

How about the tabloids? The Mail website also has this as top story, and although the Mirror was still obsessing with the Joanna Yeates murder, it still carried a mention. But one stable of newspapers, as at 1240 hours today (January 9) appears to have missed the story altogether.

No prizes for deducing that the culprit is the Desmond press: the Express website leads on their assertionJoanna Yeates: DNA test for all men”, which in any case is not true, as the story admits when it continues “Murder squad detectives were last night under pressure to order a mass DNA screening”.

The Daily Star also misses the shootings, but similarly makes a bogus and misleading assertion in its lead storyAlbert Square walkout”, which is actually “EastEnders bosses last night feared a cast walkout”, the source being “TV insiders”, which is a vague enough term to include “we made it up while watching the box”.

So how does Richard Desmond’s press empire miss such a story, which has been heading TV news for more than half a day now? Ah well. That may just be down to the cutbacks imposed on the Express and Star titles. Except that this time they got caught out.

[UPDATE 1850 hours: The Daily Star now has the shootings as "Breaking Story", but the Express is still missing the story. But both have got the Beckhams' "fourth child" item, so that's all right, then]

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