To think the Daily Mail are taking the piss?

[DailyFailAreABunchOfCunts]

As you may infer from my NN I am not a fan. However I saw this on today's Mail online:

DM Link

For those who don't want to click it, the DM have mined the recent thread from a poster who lost her DS at a young age, and was asking if she WBU to still buy clothes for him and join clubs. I remember the thread as it was really moving and so clear that the poster was struggling with her grief.

The Mail has lifted the story - and the child's name - lock, stock and barrel. I'd be interested in MNHQ's view on this. I realise that posts are in the public domain but this feels so horribly invasive.

Can we please stop referring to the gutter sweepings that work at the Daily Mail as journalists? Surely this is deeply insulting to actual journalists.

Most of us don't read the fucking DM so would not have known this!

Felicity I think a lot of people are DM readers given the majority of their readership is female...

"Wannabe - the poster was among a group of parents posting about bereavement. She received support and kindness and of course she shared her beautiful little son's details." but she still did so on a public forum. Even without the involvement of the Daily Mail anyone would have been able to access those pictures and details. The lack of privacy on this site hasn't suddenly changed, it's just been highlighted.

Over the years on MN there have been posters whose partners have tracked them down via their threads and attempted to use them against them in court, there has been a suspected paedophile who lifted pictures of children from here and also befriended posters to attempt to sell pictures of their children through her partner to paedophile websites.

Conversely there have been trolls who have lifted pictures of children from other parts of the Internet and posted them here pretending they were their children. It is that easy to lift a picture from the Internet and use it for your own means.

The bereavement board should be considered a safe place to post but the reality is that it isn't, because you just can't legislate for who might visit it.

Lifting bits of threads from a posters history and re-posting that as a story in a "news" paper is lazy journalism that is not in dispute. But nothing's actually changed here. The privacy or lack thereof when posting on MN has always been the same.

Would Hacked Off be interested in this? As another example of awful press behaviour, regardless of legality?

What is it HQ post when they want people to be nicer, something about the role of mumsnet being to make life easier for other parents?
Well that's working.

If you didn't know or expect that journalists use this place then you have been seriously naive
I don't think posters don't expect this, actually, I think they just imagine there is a line in the sand that won't be crossed, and a story about a toddler who has died is far far across that line.

Would Hacked Off be interested in this? As another example of awful press behaviour, regardless of legality?

I wouldn't think so as the information was in the public domain and they have given the source of the information.

We have been here before ... in August 2009.

As Limited says, there is pretty much nothing HQ can do about this, except perhaps make all their warnings about over-sharing much clearer.

I think they just imagine there is a line in the sand that won't be crossed, and a story about a toddler who has died is far far across that line.

But all newspapers print stories every day about children who have passed away and about parents who are left behind to grieve.

Coolfor I take your point, but people don't think clearly when they're grieving and vulnerable. I don't think the fact that some arsehole journalist might screenshot her words and use them for financial gain was at the forefront of the OPs mind when she started the thread. There is a mention of how to deal with people who are grieving in the Editor's Code for a reason.

I think from now on with any thread like this, I'll comment as I usually would, but suggest that the OP asks for the thread to be deleted and that they seek support elsewhere.

As a journalist who is as lazy as the next person, can I ask what would constitute industrious journalism? Do any of the rest of you apply the same high standards to your working lives? I promise not to mine any revelations about cancer-curing or peace brokerage between warring nations for the gutter press. Of course, you only have my word for that.

It's disgraceful. I came on here to look for a thread after I saw it. They could pick about 99% of threads quite happily on here. There's just a few that are so sensitive.

I think they can do what they want with it under Creative Commons license, can't they? I'm hazy on this, but I do a fair bit of writing which I sell at a low level. Most organisations I sell through are VERY careful about what they use and actually spend ages checking my work- particularly for copyright infringements. One, more major, organisation will let me publish pretty much anything- even if it includes other people's work.

I attached this on the other thread. I think it's relevant. It's being shared by a lot of (Non) Daily Mail journalists at the moment.

Yes Peggy but in the guise of "news", not focusing on the bereaved parents months later.
This is reminding me though of the lovely couple I used to know who lost a child in an accident, and were doorstepped the next day by journos from the local paper trying to get a photo and a comment. The fact that papers behave as if they haven't a shred of humanity at other times isn't really changing my perspective.

Limited I apply very high standards to my working life, the bottom line of which is simply "don't be an arse". Not sure if you're joking or not.

limited I said this earlier on the thread but: this article is the height of lazy journalism as far as I'm concerned. There are no other sources- for example, a bereavement councillor could've talked about the nature of this type of grief. No sources of support are included for readers who might be going through the same thing. There is no indication that NHS services are available for this. So what point does the article serve apart from rubbernecking at the misery o another? If I was recently bereaved, there is nothing in that article that would help or comfort me in any way.

Also, the article is just an "info dump". It is lazy, disgustingly so. All the reporter has done is copy and paste the words of others.

And yes, I do apply the same high standards to my working life. For a start, I research subjects properly. I have respect for others and I have a moral compass- I left my previous job because I wasn't happy with the ethics of the company.

Most importantly (and I know this is silly) I make sure that I would happily tell the people I love about what I've done at work that day. I would happily show them my emails, and my finished reports. They could listen to my phone calls and sit in my meetings. My general rule of thumb is- if I would be ashamed to show them something, I shouldn't be doing it. I would suggest that the report let in question might not have this same filter.

That should be "reporter" not "report let". Time for bed I think!

Limited, high standards? Depends what you mean - do I work hard? I try to, I constantly think about how to improve my work. It's clearly very challenging to work in a profession where there is a race to the bottom in a shrinking market and the editor is only interested in this stuff, but I guess I would think of industrious journalism as making connections that others haven't - preferably with some news value - not republishing things off a website. Disclaimer: Not going to read the link so apologies if it's much more sophisticated than that.

Spot on DiscoGlitter, spot on