DOH!

This will be my final potshot at the Sun over its absurd shark stories but I just can't resist posting something about the Sun's story turning out to be a hoax.

The video that sparked this whole thing was of a Great White shark, the only problem was that it was not in Newquay but Johannesburg. The film was taken by a night club bouncer while on holiday in South Africa, he sent it into the Sun as a joke, not expecting it to be taken seriously.

According to the Guardians report into the incident: "Newquay townsfolk seem to have thought the story was nonsense from the start. For one thing, the water looks mirror-like and it is usually choppy off north Cornwall. Nor did the angle look right if the shark had really been 100ft (30 metres) away.

A Newquay lifeguard, Paul Benney, said he had smiled because he had known Mr Keeble had just returned from South Africa. "He also has really bad eyesight so I laughed when I read he saw it from 100ft away. We have had a few kids a bit scared about sharks here but we told them not to worry. You are in far greater danger of being hurt by a weaver fish than a shark, he said."

I doubt that the Sun will mind being duped given how well its shark editions have sold but should the rest of us?

Some people have expressed concerns about the fear of shark attacks will drive away tourists. The Google searches that have led people to this site would support that. Nervous individuals are googling questions like: "how often do sharks attacks happen in the UK." However, I suspect that provided surfers don't start losing limbs that the fear this story has caused will pass.

What is has given us is a response next time the Sun runs a story about 'Gypsy beggar camps in Romania' or something similar, the voices of reason will have a perfect response: 'Oh and I suppose there is a Great White shark in Cornwall.'

More Shark nonsense

JK Galbraith once joked that the 'economists exist to make astrologers look good.' I sometimes think that something similar goes on with Britain's trashier tabloids because there can be no reason for the Daily Star other than to make the Sun look good. Not to be outdone by the Sun's screw up over supposed sightings of a Great White Shark in Cornwall, the Star produces its own not terribly scary scare story.

Now you might think that in order to make the front page of a national newspaper it would have to have been spotted somewhere pretty unusual, like say the North Pole, the Falkland Islands or the River Thames. In fact, this sighting is in the Mediterranean, which is part of the Great Whites natural habitat.

The supposed danger posed to British tourists is also overplayed (I will overlook the Star's indifference to non-Brits being attacked). As the article admits the last shark attack in Spain occurred close to fifteen years ago and (they don't admit this) last year their were only sixty shark attacks across the entire world, of which a mere four were fatal. It is far more likely that a tourist will be killed by drowning than by a shark.

But you will be reassured to know that the Star still manages to blame Eastern Europeans for this.

Great White Farce

Apoligises in advance. For most of this post I am going to sound like a ten year old who has been told they're not going to Disneyland after all. This is because I had been led to believe that someone had seen a great white shark here in the UK. Now as you may have gathered from the first post on here, I am fascinated by sharks. So my reaction to the news that the surfers and swimmers of Cornwall might be eaten was not 'oh dear' but 'oh cool!'

I should have paid more attention to where the story came from. The Sun splashed the sighting all over its front page and breathlessly reported how 'shocked tourists told of their terror last night over the Great White shark sighting off Cornwall.' Now, supposed great white shark sightings in UK waters are nothing new. I remember seeing a report of one on Newsround and since I haven't watched newsround for the better part of a decade this sighting must have happened I while ago. Nor are these claims totally implausible. Great Whites are regularly spotted off the coast of Northern Spain and it would be quite possible for one to swim from there to the UK.

What made this story different is that there was video of the 'shark.' This makes it easy to tell whether this really was a Great White. Which is exactly what today's Guardian does. They showed the video to David Sims, who leads the only scientific study of large sharks in the UK. His conclusion was that the 'Great White' was in fact a dolphin and a harmless Basking shark. Dr Sims cuttingly remarks "The Sun seems to run this story every summer. Just because parliament has gone into recess does not make this a great white shark."

There is a serious issue which this story raises. It is yet another illustration of just, how bad the Sun's journalism is. There was nothing preventing someone at the Sun showing the video to Dr Sim or another shark expert. They apparently did not do so and as a result printed a story that was inaccurate. But this is not the first howler from the Sun and they are often far from harmless.

Thanks to the Sun, thousands of people now wrongly believe that there are Great White sharks off Britain's shores. Which makes me wonder, what else do they believe just because the Sun told them?