Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Recently I made a joke about a boring headline on Tom Nairn's speech on how globalisation now favours countries like Scotland. This time, the killingly dull headline was at the top of the page, in London's Evening Standard.
PCC ruling on Heathrow protest by the Camp for Climate Action
Eh? What's about then?
Here is what it should have said at a minimum:
Standard guilty of serious inaccuracy in breach of press code
Obviously the article's headline was written to ensure as few readers as possible. Compare it to the self-advertisement in the story run the next day to see what I mean,
The Standard is praised as MPs switch to tap water
In this spirit the headline should have been
Standard is condemned for lying attack on Heathrow protestors
The disgracefully alarmist story concocted by the London evening paper originally splashed this headline across its front page:
Militants to hit Heathrow
It was, in effect, a pack of lies to designed to undermine the peaceful Climate Camp protest objecting to the proposed (ie planned) third runaway at Heathrow. This is the Press Complaints Commission adjudication. My point is that even when the papers are exposed for headlining a crock rubbish they drag their feet and then report any finding against them in as uninteresting a way as possible. What does this tell us? It suggests two things: they will change as little as possible and they will continue to try and frighten people away from protesting. In a recent OK post Stuart Weir argued that direct action is a British tradition. So, alas, is it being pilloried in a shameless media.
