AIBU to seriously wonder who reads The Daily Mail and The Sun?

[Blandings]

Both papers today have done themselves proud with their anti-Labour rhetoric and lies/misinformation.

So it does beg the question, who reads this rubbish and believes it? Anybody with half a brain cell and google can find facts out for themselves.

Am I being naive and people just don't want the truth, they want a version of facts that they believe is true?

Apart from anything else, it's just absolutely rubbish journalism.

I wish that there was a left-wing tabloid similarly easy to read and of equal appeal.

Not really a news paper, but the independant has gone down hill recently and has copied the DM with its click bait churn with little fact checking, plus there is the Canary.

yes the canary

the journalists who write those articles only get paid if a certain amount of people click and share them

so they are literally click bait

noone is bothered about the canary though as it is left wing biased

As Katherina said the reading age of 5 is neither here nor there- it's about plain English. The NHS also publish all their literature to a similar age.

IE to doesn't mean you can only read to a 5 year olds level

Interesting to see the Sun's reading age gradually decrease as the thread progresses, from seven years to five.

It varies from day to day but typically the reading age of the Sun is 9y9m. Sometimes it's higher, sometimes lower, but that is the mean. I don't have the citation to hand but I used the study in my dissertation.

The ability to read the Sun is generally accepted as an informal measure of functional literacy.

I'm amused/disgusted the snobbery of slightly middle class or posh people who read the Graun and see themselves as as left wing working class heroes, whilst simultaneously despising icky lower orders who should know their place and only think anything because the DM tells them to.

I think that snobbery the vestigial tail of the old British class system that filled the world from one end to the other with slavery and death, I love it that the proles get votes and can read what newspapers they like, and I LOVE it that you guys didn't like Brexit up you when the icky lower orders made up their own minds without your say-so, and gave you your just deserts.

Hope that clears up any ambiguity.

on whether my initial comment was sarcastic

mets English/Welsh voted for Brexit- there are 2 countries that didn't, where the 'proles' saw through the lies.

metspengler

I agree, I understood what you meant!

There is no left wing equivalent of the Daily Mail. The Mirror is broadly equivalent to the Sun and the Guardian broadly equivalent to the Times.

My parents are left wing and read the Daily Mail. They just ignore or laugh at the political nonsense. I read it when I visit them, and enjoy the human interest stories and the quizzes. The human interest angle make it half way between a paper and a woman's weekly magazine, hence the many female readers.

The Guardian has collapsed into some kind of pit of millennial misogyny, and it spent months undermining Corbyn. I read the news in the Guardian, but go to the New Statesman now for political opinion.

Ok, I'll bite! A few years ago I worked for a syndication agency and our clients were associated press - so Daily Mail and Evening Standard. I couldn't escape these papers and had a few of our colleagues try to say how good DM was for bringing Stephen Lawrence killers to justice and coverage of Princess Diana's funeral etc.

I'm ashamed to say I bought the paper for a few years after I left there as it was a routine to read it. It did/does have good women's pages, health pages, money pages etc. however they're so biased towards migrants etc that it's silly. Their women's pages at one point really depressed me, with tales of young women being left on the shelf, left on the shelf to find a man, have a baby etc. and it was quite callous sometimes how they'd vilify celebs like Peaches Geldof (obviously a troubled soul) and Kylie Minogue etc - all about how they couldn't keep a man or have a baby etc! Really vile reporting!

One topic they did cover (but it was more a "how evil these countries are" was executions in China (firing squad in football stadium) or crane in Iraq/Iran for murder etc by hanging. In a sense for human rights reasons these stories were/are shocking and brought them to wider attention.

However, after a few years I stopped reading DM and am ashamed to say I ever bought it!

Yes, Faithless, I mentioned The Mirror, above - but I don't think it has such a wide circulation as The Sun...? Not sure why.

I think we all get most of our opinions from the media (and social media), don't we? I don't think anyone is immune from that, even if we've done media studies or politics at college. So discussing regulation of the press, or bias in newspapers seems very uncontroversial to me.

Angelica, that's interesting about the reading age now being 9y9m. I also studied it at college but that was 25 a few years ago.

where the 'proles' saw through the lies.

"People only voted the way they did because they were easily led by lies" is a perfect and precise example of what I was talking about by the way.

If only they could have given the vote to nice people with the capacity to make their own minds up properly instead of all those pliant idiots, eh?

I love the way that the Guardian, after consistently slagging off Corbyn, had some kind of conversion experience last week, and - hey presto - the whole paper was about how he was a Good Thing, after all.

@lucydogz - it is hilariously obvious when the Guardian's editorial line changes on something, I think they might easily be as crude as the DM on this

I read both The Daily Mail and Guardian online. Both have their share of articles and comments I roll my eyes at but also some interesting content. Plus The Mail has good celeb goss and photos

Yes, lucy - it was pitiful.

Grubby lower class people who probably don't even live near a waitrose or a good school. Yuck - probably best to ignore them if you can, but if you are stuck with them try to explain what sort of newspapers they should read.

What a vile excuse for a human you sound.

ClarkWGriswold She was being sarcastic!! RTFT

I love the way that the Guardian, after consistently slagging off Corbyn, had some kind of conversion experience last week, and - hey presto - the whole paper was about how he was a Good Thing, after all

I've been enjoying that too

The Guardian has collapsed into some kind of pit of millennial misogyny,

In Guardianland, a photo of Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon with their legs in view and a (very poor) pun on legs and Brexit is sexist and offensive,

www.theguardian.com/media/2017/mar/28/daily-mail-legs-it-front-page-sexist

but a cartoon depicting Theresa May being sodomised by Donald Trump is witty satire.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2017/jan/26/steve-bell-uk-us-theresa-may-donald-trump-cartoon

Sickening, truly sickening.

Sickening, truly sickening
So a satirical cartoon is just as offensive as a photo? The photo was used to comment on two MPs' bodies whereas the cartoon was used to make a political statement. You might think it's crude or distasteful which is fine but to equate the two is ridiculous.

DM readers are literate lower middle class

Snobby, much?

Left-leaning people hate the lower middle classes. Probably because they know secretly they are exactly this otherwise they wouldn't sneer so much. They live in fear of being caught out saying "toilet" or "lounge" and I'm sure a search of their internet history would show a visceral need to read the Daily Mail celebrity side bar every morning.

crossword totally agree about truly disgusting cartoons that the Guardian prints. Ugly in every sense of the word.