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Dacre speaks!

211 replies

claig · 12/10/2013 02:29

Great article full of great points. Too many to list, but this is just a sample.

"our crime is more heinous than that.

It is that the Mail constantly dares to stand up to the liberal-Left consensus that dominates so many areas of British life, and instead represents the views of the ordinary people who are our readers and who don’t have a voice in today’s political landscape — and are too often ignored by today’s ruling elite.

The metropolitan classes, of course, despise our readers with their dreams (mostly unfulfilled) of a decent education and health service they can trust, their belief in the family, patriotism, self-reliance, and their over-riding suspicion of the State and the People Who Know Best."


...


"No other newspaper campaigns as vigorously as the Mail and I am proud of the ability of the paper’s 400 journalists (the BBC has 8,000) to continually set the national agenda on a whole host of issues.

I am proud that for years, while most of Fleet Street were in thrall to it, the Mail was the only paper to stand up to the malign propaganda machine of Tony Blair and his appalling henchman, Campbell."

.....


"The BBC is controlled, through the licence fee, by the politicians. ITV has to answer to Ofcom, a Government quango.

Newspapers are the only mass media left in Britain free from the control of the State."

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2455256/PAUL-DACRE-Editor-Mail-answers-papers-critics.html

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claig · 12/10/2013 03:01

Will Dacre lie down like a lamb in front of the wolves who seek to stifle our centuries old right to a free press?

Will he heck! Because he edits the people's paper, the Daily Mail, "the paper that is their most vocal critic".

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Wannabestepfordwife · 12/10/2013 08:18

It was a very interesting and persuasive article.

I have to say I'm in agreement with him that when major media outlets like the bbc are so politically biased we do need papers like the mail with no real political affiliation to any party.

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Wannabestepfordwife · 12/10/2013 08:19

And no I don't think Dacre will lie down I genuinely believe he does want to stand up for the free press

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AuntieStella · 12/10/2013 08:26

Even Ian Hislop spoke up for the Mail on HIGNFY last night - pointing out that no matter how much you loathe much of its output, remember they did things like out the Lawrence 'suspects' on the font page, labelling them killers and encouraging them to sue (so it would all reach Court).

That's the crux, isn't it?

When they get it right, they do good things. Bu that does not mean it is all good, nor should be unregulated. Regulation and control are not synonyms. There should be checks and balances on all those who have power. Especially those who get it badly wrong - and Leveson showed that they do.

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PetiteRaleuse · 12/10/2013 09:15

In case you don't want to click on a DM link the same article is in the Guardian (nice that they gave him a right of reply - I wonder if in the print version they have surrounded it by anti Mail articles)

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/12/left-daily-mail-paul-dacre

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PetiteRaleuse · 12/10/2013 09:17

Stephen Lawrence was one good example, and I am sure there are more, but they do seem relatively rare.

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sinpan · 12/10/2013 09:34

Hmm this is not a version of the paper I recognise. There was I thinking the strategy was to sow fear by writing hysterically about public services while all along they've just been holding power to account.

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Chubfuddler · 12/10/2013 09:37

I don't think it's an excuse that the DM alleges it represents the views of "ordinary people", if those views are racist, disablist and misogynistic.

Fortunately I have a higher opinion of the British public than that. I don't think the DM is representative at all.

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Nancy66 · 12/10/2013 11:16

For me, the point is that you can loathe and despise the Daily Mail and all that is stands for. You can shout your vitriol from the rooftops BUT if you care anything about freedom of speech, freedom of the press and democracy then you absolutely must accept its right to exist.

People who buy newspapers have free will. Would you buy a publication if its views were utterly repellent to you? Once in a blue moon maybe. Therefore, it must be assumed that Daily Mail readers are in agreement with its content.

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PetiteRaleuse · 12/10/2013 11:34

Of course it has a right to exist. But it shouldn't have the right to lie and create so much hatred.

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Nancy66 · 12/10/2013 11:34

but it's only hated by people who claim to never read it.

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PetiteRaleuse · 12/10/2013 11:43

No it isn't. I hate it but read it from time to time, especially if someone has mentioned an article I might be interested in. I hate the Times but would read bits of it if there wasn't a paywall. I won't feed the trolls like Sibary or Littlejohn, or click on the sidebar of shame. But the only newspaper I will absolutely not touch, ever, is the Express.

And I think most people who claim never to read it aren't being completely honest with themselves. Doesn't stop me hating it and most of what it stands for. And yes, I know each click gives them advertising revenue, and that might be hypocritical but...

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Nancy66 · 12/10/2013 11:45

I agree that the people who say they never read it are probably lying.

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timidviper · 12/10/2013 12:00

I am very much in favour of a free press, although I'm not sure we truly have one, and admire good investigative journalism wherever it comes from but there has to be some kind of regulation to prevent some of the recent excesses.

I don't think this is the great article some seem to claim, it comes across to me as a self-serving piece by a man too arrogant to concede that he got this wrong. Attack politicians by revealing flaws in their policies or their personal behaviours by all means but to attack a dead parent and attempt to smear their reputation without allowing a proper defence is reprehensible. The Man Who Hated Britain did not focus on the formation of Ed Milliband's political beliefs, it was a vile, personal attack on a man who is unable to answer. It also took no account of the changing times, lots of people in the past held views which now seem questionable, such as the Nazi sympathies of the Daily Mail proprietor's father. We should not hold their children responsible for this.

I don't care how valid Dacre's views on press regulation might be, the man is a coward who, having unleashed his vitriol, hid away and hoped it would die down and has only been flushed into this reply by public disapproval. The piece is disjointed as he tries everything to deflect attention from his paper's bile onto others; The Guardian, The BBC, the Labour Party, Alistair Campbell, the metropolitan classes (whoever they are) and appeals emotively to "decent, ordinary, hard-working, etc" people. I would respect him, and his paper, a lot more if he/they apologised and acknowledged that they had overstepped the bounds of common decency on this occasion. Without that I don't think we can have any respect at all for his understanding of what a free press looks like.

As for his assertion that the Mail is a crusader representing ordinary people. The only people I know who read it regularly are pensioners who are scared witless of the world as painted in it.

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Wannabestepfordwife · 12/10/2013 12:09

timidviper don't underestimate pensioners my DGPs read the mail. My nan likes it because she can do the crossword and my dgd reads it for the sport and he got sick of anonymous articles in the times.

They take the mail with a big pinch of salt and are 2 of the most liberal minded people you could ever meet

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nennypops · 12/10/2013 12:12

The very headline to that article (at least as it appeared this morning, it may have changed by now) is an illustration of the Mail's dishonesty. It tries to make out that the fuss about Miliband was solely because they said his father was a Marxist. Exactly how stupid does Dacre think his readership is? He's artfully trying to disguise the fact that the problem was actually that the paper lied about Miliband's father for the sole purpose of trying to smear Ed Miliband. And that is absolutely symptomatic of Dacre's entire approach.

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nennypops · 12/10/2013 12:56

Excellent response to Dacre's article here - edinburgheye.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/paul-dacre-fisked/

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Nancy66 · 12/10/2013 13:02

You think so? It's just a load of waffle. It doesn't make any sense.

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ttosca · 12/10/2013 13:11

For me, the point is that you can loathe and despise the Daily Mail and all that is stands for. You can shout your vitriol from the rooftops BUT if you care anything about freedom of speech, freedom of the press and democracy then you absolutely must accept its right to exist.

There is nothing in the Royal Charter which allows the government to prevent the press from publishing anything.

The idea that this is a debate about 'Censorship' is a strawman.

Ignore the press barons: a royal charter is not 'state regulation'

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/07/hugh-grant-leveson-press-barons-fairness

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ttosca · 12/10/2013 13:12

The Royal Charter states (verbatim):

"The board should not have the power to prevent publication of any material by anyone, at any time."

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claig · 12/10/2013 14:41

ttosca has quoted from an article by Hugh Grant, who is not a journalist.

Here is what Andrew Gilligan, a former BBC employee and a journalist wrote in March

"In future, if a “relevant publisher” who does not agree to place himself under the new regulator is ever sued, by anyone, he will have to pay the costs of both sides – even if the other side loses. And if the other side wins, even more crippling “exemplary damages” will often also be payable."

....

"Under most forms of press regulation across Europe, including the old PCC system here, only those personally affected by an alleged inaccuracy can complain, with few exceptions. But under Mr Cameron’s royal charter, the new regulator must have the power to take “third-party complaints” from lobby groups, or indeed anyone, about anything, even “where there is no single identifiable individual who has been affected.

It will, in short, be a green light for all who wish to impose their idea of the truth, or their standards of taste, on the press"

.....

"This is, of course, the not-so-hidden agenda of the Left-wingers who have driven the regulation bandwagon. They want a forced liberalisation of the Right-wing red tops and therefore, they hope, of the country. But they fail to realise that their end of journalism will be as badly affected, probably worse.

Nearly all history’s most celebrated investigative stories, including Watergate and the Guardian’s exposé of phone hacking itself, included small – or in the Guardian’s case not so small – mistakes. If prominent corrections and apologies had been required then, those broadly valid stories would have been discredited on narrow points and vital public services would never have been performed."


www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9949855/Royal-charter-The-men-who-want-to-kill-our-free-press.html



If what Gilligan says is true, then this sounds a bit like "political correctness gorn mad" and may hinder the press from exposing what is in the public interest. The "liberal-Left consensus" and the "metropolitan classes" that Dacre writes about, may be able to partially stifle dissent and investigative journalism from papers that represent the views of millions of ordinary people.

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hackmum · 12/10/2013 14:43

Dacre's article was published in The Guardian as well as the Mail. I'm sure Dacre is generous and tolerant enough to return the compliment by allowing Rusbridger to write a response in the Mail.

Incidentally, whenever people want to defend the Mail, they always mention the Lawrence case. And that's all they ever mention. One good piece of campaigning journalism in about 25 years. (I'm not saying there aren't others, but...)

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claig · 12/10/2013 14:47

hackmum, one of teh most recent was the Liverpool Care Pathway.

Long may the Mail continue to expose what it feels is wrong and unjust. Let there be open debate, let the voice of millions of people be heard and let the country be a better place.

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lalalonglegs · 12/10/2013 14:47

I'm with Hislop - we should support a completely free press in principle and use our buying power to decide which papers to support in practice. Sadly, the fact that the Sun and the Mail have the two biggest circulations doesn't say much about the British public.

I do get fed up of the Stephen Lawrence front page being trotted out time and again (1) it was 15 years ago and to be still using it as an example of how marvellous the paper is seems a bit thin (b) they knew bloody well that none of the people accused could or would sue for libel (3) there are persistent rumours that Dacre only took an interest in the case because Neville, Stephen's father, had done some work for him in his home. Until that was revealed, he - and the paper - hadn't shown much passion for the case at all.

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claig · 12/10/2013 14:54

'I'm with Hislop - we should support a completely free press in principle and use our buying power to decide which papers to support in practice.'

that, as I understand it, has been the position for the past 300 or so years, but now there are calls for change from some lobbyists and political quarters.

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