How easy is it these days for any old fruitloop to grab headlines around the world? Well, as this link to a Telegraph story from a regular tipster whose chosen nickname we’ve unfortunately forgotten shows, it can be far, far too easy.

Now, we’ve heard about this Mark Dice character before (here’s a link to his website but be warned, it’s Not Safe For Brain). He might be for real or he might very well be a Cake-pusher infected with good AIDS. Until that’s settled, he can’t be considered a reliable news source.

But that hasn’t stopped his silly ‘Slutbucks’ campaign reaching a (current) score of 12 stories on Google News. That number will surely rise, and rise again. And all on the back of a press release issued by a suspect outfit that claims - that’s claims, incidentally; no evidence provided - 3,000 members Stateside, or roughly 0.001% of the US headcount, or just 0.00005% of the global population. That’s a boycott call worthy of worldwide headlines, right?

Upate: GirlWithAOnTrackMind’s comment (see, er, Comments) was funnier than our original headline for this post. So now it’s our new headline for this post. Thanks Girl. You should write for us, you know. We have spare pseudonyms. But no money to pay you, obviously. Don’t forget, sponsorship offers welcome: donate cash and we promise to slight your company’s churned press releases at least as regularly as anyone else’s.

The lead story in the BBC’s tech section today tells how Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines, men accused of spamming members of MySpace, face a fine of £120m. MySpace is suitably chuffed.

“Anybody who’s been thinking about engaging in spam are [sic] going to say ‘Wow, I better not go there,’” said Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace chief security officer to AP. “Spammers don’t want to be prosecuted. They are there to make money. It’s our job to send a message to stop them,” he added.

Note the ‘said…to AP‘ bit? That’s because the story is a reprint of this release from Associated Press:

“Anybody who’s been thinking about engaging in spam are [sic] going to say, `Wow, I better not go there,’” MySpace’s chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “Spammers don’t want to be prosecuted. They are there to make money. It’s our job to send a message to stop them.”

Now there’s nothing wrong with the BBC’s churn job per se. The facts are there; the story is told; the reader is informed.

The question we have to ask is simply this: what’s the point of the BBC story, and by extension BBC News Online? It adds nothing to a generic news feed that’s already in the public domain. There’s no analysis here, no opinion, no smart linking to similar stories, no value-add whatsoever. The AP release could, in the right hands, be the catalyst for an interesting investigation into spam and how it affects us all.

Here, it’s just a reprint. On the web. Pointless. Next time, just link.

So may we point you instead to Wikipedia’s coverage of Wallace and Rines, which is far more useful.

Steermint Wino (provisional pseudonym) Andrew Steer apologised for taking the best part of a week to send us this link to a BBC News story about drinking in the workplace. He was probably too pissed to type.

Anyway, this story is a stats-bonanza - 36% of pissheads found it hard to concentrate; 42% found it hard to concentrate; 95% found it hard to con, er, just wanted another drink; oh, whatever. So what’s the point of all this?

Well, insurer Norwich Union, not content with turning itself into a bus company, is one of the UK’s leading providers of occupational health and wellness solutions, with a newly launched Employer Solutions provision offering seven dedicated clinics around the UK. As well as health and wellness advice, it also aids companies with targeted education days that highlight the effects of alcohol consumption and practical programmes to tackle the problems. How do we know this? The press release told us. It told BBC News, too; though at least Churntie(TM) left that bit out. Not enough pisscentages in it, we reckon.

(So this has given us a great idea. We’re going to stage a Churner Prize piss-up, at the French, obviously. Who’s coming? RSVPees on a beermat to the usual address)

This email just in from TechHack:

This isn’t an instance of churnalism per se but it’s a ripe example of how/why it happens. Here’s a paste of an IM chat I just had with one of my commissioning editors, who works for a well-known publishing outfit responsible for some high-profile print and web titles. To protect the guilty, I’ve changed the names and edited out a tiny bit that might identify the magazine (hey, I’ll probably need the work soon), but this is otherwise how the conversation progressed:

CommishEd: fancy a bit of news freelancing?
TechHack: can do
CommishEd: goodo
CommishEd: £75 a day for three stories, at least 200 words (give or take) each
CommishEd: they can be filed any time
TechHack: goodo
TechHack: so
TechHack: 600 words
TechHack: for £75
CommishEd: er, i guess so
TechHack: not so great
CommishEd: well, no
CommishEd: but then it’s hardly cutting edge journalism
CommishEd: the pay is commensurate with the effort required to write the pieces, i think

Translation: we’re all fucked.

So, did anyone expect deep analytical reporting from ITV on the subject of the massive fines today imposed on the company for mucho vote-rigging? Nah. But is this ITV News report on the matter really a news report, or simply the company line? We imagine you’ll hear a similar detail-drought churn on News At Ten tonight, probably right after the ad break when you’ll be in the kitchen making popcorn or something.

And why no video report on ITV.com? Non-stories, like ‘Mariah’s whirlwind wedding‘, are granted fluffy footage, but not so the very serious cheating of millions of viewers over a number of years. ITV must have endless reels of tape showing its viewers being ripped off. Look, here’s an example:

If you wonder why people voted to have a non-entity ex-soapstar sing shit like this, well - they didn’t. People voted to have a non-entity ex-soapstar sing different shit to this.

Anyway, just in case any ITV hacks need some help with the real story, click here for Ofcom’s announcement.

Does anyone really expect local government reporting to involve assiduous research? We can’t say but a Well-Known Media Personality contacted the Churner Prize thusly:

I just saw this [Guardian story] and suspect it is a copy and paste job. I live in the borough concerned, and I can tell you that this “efficiency programme” is double-speak for “shutting all the mental health day centres in the borough and turfing people with mental illnesses out onto the streets” (known to anyone that lives here, not to mention people that work in the field, as friends of mine do). To not challenge what is meant by that phrase, stinks of a PR job, and to my mind the Guardian has just reprinted material from the council without any qualification, critique or attribution of their source.

Well. You’ve read the Guardian report. Now compare and contrast with Camden Council’s press release on the same. Finally, if you can be arsed, take 10 minutes to scan through the Audit Commission’s corporate assessment of Camden, which was the basis for the Camden Council press release, which was in turn the basis for the Guardian’s report.

Spot the differences? Okay, so the corporate assessment is a long and dull read and, at the end of it all, Camden Council does actually come out rather well. But it’s not difficult to find some intriguing discrepancies between it and Camden Council’s repackaging of the content into a press release (and subsequently into the Guardian’s report).

To cite just one example, a bullet point on Camden Council’s press release states:

Specific achievements include […] securing thousands of jobs and homes and negotiating for sustainable regeneration with developers in the King’s Cross re-development

The Guardian duly reports this as follows:

Achievements noted by the watchdog include […] securing thousands of jobs and homes as part of the King’s Cross redevelopment.

And the report? Well, it does indeed say that 25,000 new jobs have been secured. But it also says this of Camden’s employment situation:

The borough has twice as many jobs as there are residents of working age, including large numbers in the financial and business services sectors as well as the creative industries and tourism. Even so, despite recent improvements, the unemployment rate remains higher than the London average as does the level of incapacity benefit claimants. Unemployment is concentrated in social housing where 43 per cent of council property households are headed by someone not in work. A study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that 39 per cent of children in Camden were in families dependent on workless benefits. A very high proportion of residents are educated to degree level at 47 per cent but 15 per cent of residents have no formal qualifications and many lack the basic skills to compete for opportunities to work.

That didn’t make it into Camden Council’s press release. So it didn’t make it into the Guardian either.

As we said, we doubt anyone really expects modern local government reporting to be assiduous. But would it be beyond the reporter to spend 10 minutes reading the actual report, rather than the rose-scented press release? We did, and we’re not even paid to do this job.

All of which leads us to one very important question: why does this particular Well-Known Media Personality choose to live in a shit-hole like Camden?

Today is the easiest day of the year to bag some national coverage for your company, based on a rubbish survey. How do with know this? Oh, it’s just a guess.

Incidentally, here are a few other definitely newsworthy days of the year, as reported by The Sun…

• Unluckiest day of the year

• Sickest day of the year

• Divorciest day of the year

• Miserablest day of the year (2006)

• Miserablest day of the year (2007)

(What happened to the most miserable day of 2008? Answers in a press release to the usual address, ta.)

According to a survey by Zurich Insurance, 64% of drivers feel frustrated when caught in congestion (no shit!), 17% get ‘angry’, 6% admit to taking risky evasive action to beat the jams, and 1.2% have lost the rag completely and shot another driver. No, really. It’s all in Manchester Evening News (see pic), or here in the Daily Mail if you prefer that poison. And elsewhere too.

Thanks to our tipster for the clipping. He or she had this to say:

As an honest (honest!) PR person, I can almost guarantee that this research wasn’t ever done by Zurich Insurance but made up by their PR team / agency. This isn’t my story but I’ve had loads of other stories like this appear in the press in the past. I’ve seen surveys made up in seconds and the results based on a show of hands in the office – this has subsequently gone on to be covered in media and presented as fact. This is almost certain to have emanated from PA (or another wire). It’s a bit of a joke in our office that if PA carry one of your stories that you’re guaranteeing about 80 cuttings from around the UK – it’s astonishing.

Keep up the good work – it’s important.

Now we can’t confirm whether the ’story’ is PR fluff or serious research. Why? Because the papers that covered it have buried their source.

Think about it for a moment. You’re an intelligent reader, right? When you get served a story like this, you might find it interesting. You might, just might, want some further background information. Where was the survey taken? How many drivers were questionned? Was Zurich selling them insurance at the time? That kind of thing. You don’t necessarily expect your paper to give Zurich the third degree - all you need is a link to the source so you can form your own opinion.

But no, your news outlet still sees itself as the Great Moderator between you and the ‘facts’. Your role is to slurp up this shit without question. You’re just a consumer, just another eyeball - and for the papers, it’s just another space to fill.

Contempt for the customer. That’s the story of journalism today.

The papers and web are full of Lee Spievack and his miraculous finger, which allegedly regrew after an accident. Here’s the BBC’s take on the story, which is representative of the coverage:

In every town in every part of this sprawling country you can find a faceless sprawling strip mall in which to do the shopping [eh?]. Rarely though would you expect to find a medical miracle working behind the counter of the mall’s hobby shop. That however is what Lee Spievak considers himself to be.

“I put my finger in,” Mr Spievak says, pointing towards the propeller of a model airplane, “and that’s when I sliced my finger off. It took the end right off, down to the bone, about half an inch. We don’t know where the piece went.”

The photos of his severed finger tip are pretty graphic. You can understand why doctors said he’d lost it for good. Today though, you wouldn’t know it. Mr Spievak, who is 69 years old, shows off his finger, and it’s all there, tissue, nerves, nail, skin, even his finger print.

How? Well that’s the truly remarkable part. It wasn’t a transplant. Mr Spievak re-grew his finger tip. He used a powder - or pixie dust as he sometimes refers to it while telling his story.

The Sun, of course, went mental:

A MAN’S severed finger has GROWN BACK — thanks to a miracle powder dubbed “pixie dust”.

The incredible medical breakthrough — revealed yesterday — offers a genuine new hope for burns victims and people who lose limbs.

Now please, if there’s an ounce of journalistic credibility left in the land, wtf did this ’story’ get published? Consider the facts:

• The photos may be graphic but it’s perfectly bloody obvious that Lee Spievack lost very little of his finger. Half an inch is pushing it.

• Where did he get the magic pixie dust? Why, from his brother Alan, who happens to run a business that produces ‘extra cellular matrix’, er, stuff, that supposedly helps the body regenerate tissue. Proof that it works would be, say, the regrowth of a finger. Luck that Alan’s brother was to hand, so to speak.

Regardless, the BBC continues the puff:

If they can perfect the technique, it might mean one day they could repair not just a severed finger, but severely burnt skin, or even damaged organs… Like any developing technology there are many unknowns. There are worries about encouraging cancerous growths by using the matrix. Doctors though believe that within the so called pixie dust lies an amazing medical discovery.

Oh, shut up.

We had a friendly pop at the Guardian a couple of days ago but a churn full of kudos today for calling it just right (almost uniquely):

Professor Simon Kay, professor of hand surgery at the University of Leeds, said the claims by the US company that developed the powder were “junk science”…. “It’s a ridiculous story – absurd and over-egged in the extreme,” Kay said. “It looked to have been an ordinary fingertip injury with quite unremarkable healing. All wounds go through a repair process”… “If you could regenerate body parts like this, your first port of call would be a serious science journal like Nature because it would be a Nobel prize winning revolution.”

Aye, but why bother when the British press will splash your story without a moment’s hesitation?