Pubdate: Fri, 03 Feb 2012
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2012 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Craig Silverman
Note: Craig Silverman is author of Regret The Error: How Media 
Mistakes Pollute The Press and Imperil Free Speech

NEWSMANGLED: DAILY MAIL WINS ORWELLIAN PRIZE FOR 'CANNABIS' STORY

Journalism is lousy with prizes. In Canada, you can win a National 
Newspaper Award, a National Magazine Award, a Canadian Online 
Publishing Award, a Michener Award, a Judith Jasmine prize, an 
Atlantic Journalism Award, the list goes on.

Yes, we love to celebrate ourselves.

But of all the awards up for grabs, there's one piece of hardware 
that no self-respecting journalist would covet. Established in 2010 
by University of Oxford professor Dorothy Bishop, the Orwellian Prize 
is awarded to "an article in an English-language national newspaper 
that has the most inaccurate report of a piece of academic work." Its 
full title is the Orwellian Prize for Journalistic Misrepresentation.

This award is not to be confused with the Orwell Prize, another U.K. 
offering that bills itself as "Britain's most prestigious prize for 
political writing." Though in fairness to that prize, one recent 
winner was Johann Hari, who admitted to plagiarizing some of his 
columns for The Independent. He subsequently returned his prize.

But back to the anti-Pulitzer. This week Bishop announced the 2011 
winner. Hearty congratulations to British tabloid the Daily Mail. Its 
winning work completely ignored the actual findings of a research 
paper in order to concoct a false, sensationalized story about 
marijuana and schizophrenia.

For example, the story's headline was, "Just ONE cannabis joint 'can 
bring on schizophrenia' as well as damaging memory."

"Suffice it to say, the academic paper is not about cannabis, smoking 
or schizophrenia," Bishop wrote in announcing the award. (The 
headline was later amended slightly after a complaint to the U.K.'s 
Press Complaints Commission. But the equally objectionable story text 
remained untouched.)

Bishop determines the winner using a point system that awards three 
points for errors in a headline, two points for an error in a 
subhead, and one point each for errors in the story text. The Mail 
racked up an impressive 23 points. The headline alone accounted for 12 points.

Along with the impressive point total, Bishop said this year's winner 
is especially deserving because "this is about using a scientific 
paper as a prop in the Daily Mail's anti-cannabis campaign . . . When 
reporting research, no respect is given to the truth: scientists are 
simply used to bolster a preconceived opinion, and if they don't do 
that, their findings are distorted."

For an effort that went above and beyond the facts, the Orwellian 
Prize was given to Daily Mail editor-in-chief Paul Dacre. While no 
money is involved, Bishop created a mock-up of a certificate and a 
medal that bears the words "Let me drop some science on you!"
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom