The Skimmer

Calling for a sense of "perspective" and "proportionality" in coverage of British youth, the BBC's Director-General, Mark Thompson, complained on Radio 4's Today on Tuesday that you could get the impression from much media coverage that Britain was a "nightmare landscape of roving bands of drunken teenagers".   The blunt truth is that, in certain parts of the country, the nightmare is all too real and the BBC has consistently under-reported it. Within 24 hours of Thompson's interview the London Evening Standard was reporting that, in London alone, five children are injured in gun or knife attacks every day.

Almost a year ago, BBC News reported (January 04),  that "the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007." In fact, temperatures in 2007 were no different from 2006, or indeed 2001.   Overall, temperatures (as measured by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Britain's Met Office, the UN's IPCC -- and even Al Gore) last year were broadly the same as they had been in 1998 -- yet CO2 emissions have continued to increase at an even faster rate in the last decade than they did 1980-98, when global temperatures did indeed rise.   It would be good journalism if BBC News looked again at why its report of a year ago turned out to be so wrong.

Fleet Street seems staggered to hear that half a million under-35s are on incapacity benefit – as publicised by the FT yesterday. Even Xinhua, the Chinese government newswire service, follows up the report (socialism, but certainly not as they know it). The Daily Mail’s leader refers to “shocking new” figures - shocking yes, but hardly new as I pointed out yesterday. These figures have been printed quarterly, for at least a decade. No journalists took note. And today's count is the lowest since the current data series started in 1999. So our press is not startled because the figure is new. It’s just that no one seems to have noticed before.

Rupert Murdoch is such a hard-right supporter of Israel -- Ariel Sharon was his great hero (he even visited him on his farm) -- that many regard him as a Zionist. So the staunchly pro-Israel Wall Street Journal has nothing to fear on that front as the Murdoch tentacles get to grips with it. The same might not be true for Murdoch's London titles -- The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and News of the World -- all strongly pro-Israel under the guidance of Murdoch's heavy hand. But that might be about to change for these newspapers are all now under the control of Murdoch's son, James, who has pronounced pro-Palestinian views which he holds strongly. Consider the following, from Alastair Campbell's Diaries, which most commentators seem to have missed.

This morning's Times has an interview with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan -- not a bad journalistic commodity at a time when separatist Kurdish rebels killed at least 12 Turkish soldiers in an ambush near the Iraqi border and the drums of war are beating ever louder in Ankara.   Curiously, The Times could only find room on its front page for a 50-word write-off of its international scoop, demoting the main story to page 5. Instead, it chose to splash with yet another dubious story on childhood obesity.   Editor Robert Thomson is a serious, thoughtful man who has striven to keep his paper's content serious even as it went tabloid in size.