AIBU to feel sorry for Daily Mail journalists?

[EdmundCleverClogs]

Can you imagine it? Spend years in education, hoping to break into hard hitting journalism. Finally get a break in a national newspaper, and your big job? Following current events, the news of this unsettled world, being at the core of hard hitting, breaking news? Noooo, every couple of days you get to trawl a parenting site, copying and pasting an 'interesting thread', basically doing one of the most meaningless and unfulfilling jobs in the world. How sad.

Also there are a worrying amount of 'sheeples' on here who couldn't spot a journalist/researcher, if they smacked them round the head with a stack of newspapers.

They start a thread asking some very personal questions and people dutifully trot on and answer them all

Sometimes the same people can bee seen complaining about stories appearing in the media...

I might feel vaguely sorry for them if they could spell / had basic grammar skills, but they don't!

The ruined sofa thread is now on DM.

BTW I'm wrong it seems about the read the thread here link, but nonetheless I still suspect it's blatant advertising of MN.

I don't think they are journalists in the traditional sense of the word. I know journalism is hardly altruistic charity work, but I would have thought if you were a properly trained journalist in the true journalistic tradition, you would see the damage this kind of shit was doing to your profession? When the press goes on about press freedom, how many people think 'yes, we must make sure journalists are free to expose corruption' and how many think ' who cares if some hack can no longer stalk Pippa Middleton?'

What always makes me laugh are the articles made up entirely of a description of a TV programme. It's like iPlayer with words!

They do seem to be rather short in the adjectives department.
Every celeb has an 'enviable' body, and they only have 'adorable' children.

Anybody else think the bra-less 14yo thread was Shona whatsherface?

I agree itsmine

I'd barely heard of the DM before I joined Mumsnet, let alone gave it any head space.

Yet hardly a day goes by where someone on here doesn't mention it or link to it.

I sometimes wonder if this in part, has helped the DM to gain its 23 million monthly readers.

Paul I did

Never. My mum used to be a sweet, lovable, liberal minded old hippy, but prolonged exposure to their bile has turned her into a paranoid, xenophobic scaremonger who thinks every man is a potential paedophile, all immigrants get about £5,000 a week in state benefits and the most important factor in a story about a serial killer is the price of his parents' bloody house. I still love her, but I warned her. I WARNED her...

Paul absolutely - had DM all over it. Feisty teen refuses to wear bra. With accompanying pictures for online version.

I'm no fan of the Mail, but one thing I would say about them is that they are one of the only papers that have been investigating and publishing stories on the historic institutionalised child sex abuse scandal. Most of the other papers have steered clear for reasons best known to themselves.

So clearly there are some decent journalists there somewhere.

itsmine, I don't disagree with you, but my main post was/is about the DM being notorious in picking up (or even creating) threads on here and reporting it as news. From what I've briefly googled, it's about once a week. As said before, it's now feels a bit 'Russian Roulette' on which thread to reply to, without being caught in a DM bait one.

I see the 'bra' one is gone.....

I think it's best to treat every post on the internet as potential bollocks really, and then decide whether you wish to participate in it or not.

Just like if a stranger on the bus starts chatting to me. I'll chat back to pass the time of day but I have no idea if what they're saying is true or not.

And tbh I really don't care because the conversation will have served it's purpose either way - to simply pass the time.

WorraLiberty, I would agree generally, however some people will open up with some pretty personal stories. If true, those stories should not be at risk of being recognised in a national newspaper. Yes, always a risk when posting online, but some really cannot speak about things in real life. It does not give a journo a right to lift it as a 'story' and quote others in doing so. If people wanted these things published, I'm sure they would be in Take a Break, or another magazine that at least pays you, not Mumsnet.

Would you feel sorry for someone who joined the BNP? No you would not. Remember the Daily Mail supported the Blackshirts.

You're right though, there is a risk of posting online and this sort of thing happening.

The difference between a Mumsnet thread appearing in the Mail and the OP taking their story to a magazine, is that Mumsnetters use anonymous nicknames and there won't be any accompanying photos etc.

It doesn't make it right, but if people wanted to cut down on the likelihood of this happening, they would probably opt for a private forum rather than a public one.

I agree that publishing certain threads is a shitty thing to do, but it seems 23 million readers (many of whom are Mumsnetters), aren't bothered by it. Or least not enough to stop reading and funding the paper.

I know many Mail journalists. I can honestly tell you that they take absolutely no notice of the people that slag them off because they're the world's most popular news website. You might not like them, but millions and millions of people around the world log on every day. And most of the people who slag them off spend their lunchtimes on the sidebar of shame.

They know they're not the Guardian or Private Eye, and they don't want to be. But there are some really. really good journalists working for the Mail. It often takes much more skill to hunt down a genuine celebrity scoop, particularly up against such fierce competition, than to get a political exclusive.

The Mail's not up my street but their journalists are paid well, their stories get worldwide recognition and many of them go on to get really good jobs elsewhere.

Oh, and the Mail is the biggest campaigner for press freedom by an absolute mile, on a national stage as well as a local one. I've seen their reporters argue with magistrates who try and impose illegal reporting restrictions, and when the local press runs out of power and money to fight them, they carry on and take it as far as necessary, even when the story is not something that will get them more than a few thousand web hits.

They consistently oppose draconian restrictions on the freedom of the press and put other papers to shame on the subject.

I can honestly tell you that they take absolutely no notice of the people that slag them off because they're the world's most popular news website.

I know they're popular but are they really the world's most popular news website?

Oh, and the Mail is the biggest campaigner for press freedom by an absolute mile

Yes, so that they can continue spewing bile about Z-listers 'flaunting their curves' and 'displaying their bikini bodies'. I'd say Woodward and Bernstein are really proud.

I feel nothing bit contempt for them. They know what the Daily Mail is like, they know what their take on gender/sexuality/politics is. If they signed up to write for the Daily Mail showbiz website thinking they are go in to getting the next John Pilger than they're either kidding themselves or an idiot.

What do you do for a living OP?