"I think the Daily Mail represents a right wing view.
I think there are papers that represent a left wing view.
I think the 'truth' lies somewhere in the middle."
MrsBW, I'm really not singling you out. I've reprinted this piece of your post because it articulates very clearly the slightly odd, "spatialized" view people have, or seem to have, of politics (and the publications that seem [to them] to represent similarly spatialized political opinions).
The problem is this: if you view the political spectrum as as a line, going from right to left, with DM representing the "right" and something or other on the "left", and "the truth" in the middle, can you see the problem?
What happens to "the truth" if "the right" moves off, errmm, to the right a bit more? Presumably "the truth" moves a little way off "to the right" in pursuit of the errant and wandering end-point.
This phenomenon has actually been discussed but various political theoreticians, and rhetorical and political strategies have been developed to take account/make use of it. The main idea is that you move the end-points in extreme directions on various issues, and thereby determine the content of the supposedly neutral centre-ground - where "the truth" is.
Personally, I think that continuum idea actually inhibits our thinking of politics. And in a case such as this one, frankly I think it is better to think of acceptable and unacceptable discourse/discursive actions. If the "left" had done this - seeking to demonise and dehumanise a section of people- I really hope I'd have the gumption to say it wasn't on.
The real problem I have with what the DM have done is precisely the fact that they have attacked the boundaries of that centre-ground, of that little patch of public grass where "the truth" supposedly can be found. That is, the sort of village-green agora of our political and civic life really has been defiled by the DM - like a bunch of thugs putting a car into the duck pond and setting fire to the bus shelter.
And yes, I know that the DM are nowhere near the supposed "middle", the duck pond, or whatever, but that's the thing: they don't have to be. the whole way that spatialised continuum way of thinking about politics works is that the people at one end - the Daily Mail in this case - can move and - provided that it isn't vociferously contested by us (the village inhabitants) - they can thereby change the content of the (imaginary) centre ground.
Our village green, our political/community agora, our "centre-ground", becomes defiled, and vileness is accepted as a routine part of the political argot, unless we are not negligent, and we go out and clear up the mess, and stop them from doing it again.