Media Muppets: Benteke is off to Manchester United and newspapers pick on 'Little Girls'

Gabriel Agbonlahor

The Metro newspaper messes up headline in a rush to rehash the Daily Mirror story – ‘Manchester United target Christian Benteke as Aston Villa brace themselves for Aston Villa bid’ (sic)

‘…United boss David Moyes sees him as a future leader of the line, especially knowing 30-year-old Robin van Persie cannot go on forever.’

1. Nice headline. Great subbing. What does it mean? That United don’t have a chance with Benteke as Aston Villa are going to bid for their own player first?

2. So, Robin van Persie can’t go on forever…you learn something everyday. So, that’s a bona fide excuse to now link ANY forward to United.

3. The story is directly taken from the Daily Mirror. The lazy journalism guess work story was copied by numerous media outlets – it seems there’s no quality control when you need content for advertising clicks.

4. Don’t RT these stories, as this is part of the why media run them in the first place, to get you to spread them, so they can earn £££.

Media Muppet score: 8/10

Ed Maylon – The Daily Mirror (again) – ‘One Direction fans send Gabby Agbonlahor death threats after injuring Louis Tomlinson in charity game’

Aston Villa striker Gabriel Agbonlahor was the subject of death threats and shocking abuse from One Direction fans after injuring band member Louis Tomlinson… over-excited fans took to Twitter to send Agbonlahor abuse and threats – even though the account in question appears to be a fake.Now, this story went everywhere, as Twitter nonsense seems to officially be ‘news’ nowadays. It’s undeniably a funny situation of two worlds colliding – prepubescent popstar groupies take on football supporters. Yet, maybe national newspapers should take more responsible in how they run such stories?

1. These death threats weren’t actually sent to Gabby, as he doesn’t have a Twitter account. The account they were sent to ‘appears to be fake’, wrote the newspaper. Of course, it’s fake, any fool could spot that in a second, but hey, lets not let that get in the way of a story, so we’ll write ‘appears to be fake’.

2. Instead of taking a more comedic line to the story, they’ve delivered the story with a straight bat. With such a tone, it’s now not really news worthy of a national newspaper. With a knowing wink, it can run anywhere – even on MOMS.

3. Interestingly, the Daily Mirror newspaper and some others, published the Twitter addresses of all the young girls and their quotes. Quoting them is fine, but do they really need to hang these girls out to dry considering their age? They wouldn’t be allowed to publish a minor’s phone number or address. Is there any wonder that these girl’s Twitter accounts soon disappeared – possibility due to the amount of abuse (or worse) the girls would have received from football fans (or worse!).

4. Yes, these girls had tweeted some stupid things, but that’s all it was. Kid’s stuff. If these comments were made in a One Direction forum or chatroom, the media wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. Yet, because it’s on Twitter, suddenly, it’s newsworthy.

5. Newspapers are increasingly desensitising its readers. If silly teenage girl tweets are now viewed as headline news death threats, will readers now take seriously proper death threats?

Media Muppet score: 8/10