Compare this new article from The Daily Telegraph's website, with an article on the same story printed in today's Daily Telegraph .

The first has an entirely factual headline, contains two equal size headshots of the accuser and defendant and reports the news of the case in fairly bland, non-sensationalist tone. The second...well, judge for yourself.

Where do I start in critiquing the gross sexism in the way this story - a tale of a passenger being jailed for abusive behaviour aboard a British Airways flight, not that you'd know that from the headline or pictures - has been handled in print? Do I go for the bizarre, creepy headline that implies 1) That the stewardess somehow belongs to the 'drunk 'in question and that 2) had he behaved a little more pleasantly, she wouldn't have been 'frightened off' and would have responded to his advances, and which also goes for shameless attention grabbing by slinging the word 'sexy' in there? Or should I start with the pictures, which for NO REASON at all include a full body bikini shot of the Charlotte Howell, another massive picture of her in uniform, and a teeny shot of the defendant less than half the size of Ms Howell's pictures?

Then there's the sleazy tone in which the reporters - interestingly the same two men who wrote the vastly different website article - detail how Timothy Bradley "was enjoying the attention of Charlotte Howell", describe his harrassing behaviour as "flirtatious" and facetiously remark that "the change in personnel did not appear to be to Bradley's liking". Why the print version and the paper version of the article are so different I'm not sure - is it because such a blatantly sexist article printed online would have the Twittersphere alight with outrage within minutes of its publication, whereas print articles are much slower to cause consternation, often escaping comment altogether? Is it because the paper has the job of persuading a reader to physically pick it up and buy it, unlike with a website, and therefore has to resort to frankly tabloid-level tactics of putting an entirely irrelevant picture of scantily clad young blonde woman on its 3rd page, and ensuring the word 'sexy' is visible in bold type?

Perhaps I shouldn't expect much more from the Telegraph, but the blatant anti-woman bias of this article was just so naked (no pun intended) that I wanted to make people aware of it. How in any way, is a second picture of Charlotte Howell in her bikini, relevant to the story, unless it is to somehow undermine her credibility, or imply that, because she is slim, young and blonde, she somehow 'asked for', 'deserved' or 'attracted' the unwanted attentions of a drunk business man? Why is her face the one splashed all over the story when it is Timothy Bradley who was sentenced to 3 months in jail, and Ms Howell who was merely the unfortunate person who happened to be in the firing line of his sleazing? Where is the picture of the crew manager John Manson who Bradley spat at, and asked 'Do you think I'm going to stab the pilot'? It seems to me that John Manson's story of equal relevance, seeing as he was as much a victim as Charlotte Howell, yet the reporters choose to largely focus only on the stewardess in order to wring as much 'sexiness' out of the story as they can.

If reporters can end up threatened with jail for 'borrowing' words from other publications and passing them off as their own, perhaps we can also establish a precedent for legal action against newspapers who 'borrow' the dismally sexist tactics of tabloids they consider themselves superior to, and pass them off as proper journalism.