To read the Daily Mail if it's free?

[LaMarschallin]

There are no DM readers here.

I realise that.

However, I regularly sully my poor, defenseless eyeballs by getting stuck into a free DM. Usually in a Waitrose cafe*.

I like the gossip. I like criticising the right-wing bias. I like, very occasionally, the writing (Craig Brown mostly).

I wouldn't dream of buying it.
I buy the Times and the Guardian and add in the Sunday Telegraph. Totally based on good cryptic crosswords and quizzes.

I think the DM is a rag and I wouldn't pay for it on principle (and the crossword is rubbish).

But - like the occasional Gregg's chicken bake, trashy television, blue waterline eyeliner - it is strangely addictive.

And, for all that nobody here reads it, it's often quoted.

I suppose my AIBU is:

Am I wrong to read the DM without buying it, even though I realise it's an awful right-wing rag that is, occasionally, funny and to believe it's read by more Mumsnetters than would own up to it?

I think it’s a bit like giving a child lots of attention when they are whinging or showing off - it just encourages them.. Far better to ignore it!

On the other hand if you do read it at least you know what nonsense your average small minded, easily led, racist, xenophobic, right wing, shallow, Neanderthal cockwomble (i.w your standard DM demographic) is taking in to form their sad ill informed opinion on the world - which has to give you an advantage when you have to deal with them IRL!?

After all, you're balancing that with the Times, the Torygraph and the Guardian. Or their crosswords anyway. hmm

No, really.

No need to pull a yellow funny face.

I am a great crossword lover and like quizzes: the Telegraph does a good "pub-quiz" style quiz on Sunday.

Right.

Really going shopping now.

This starting a thread thing is addictive.

I do occassionally read a free Mail. I think it's OK as long as you wash your hands afterwards.

I think it's simultaneously naive and arrogant to imagine you can read it but not get sucked into internalising, to some extent, its toxic right-wing narrative, not to mention its banality. But hey, you crack on. After all, you're balancing that with the Times, the Torygraph and the Guardian. Or their crosswords anyway

Think the only arrogance on display here is by this poster. Many of us manage to read across a variety of media without catching extreme views - to either side. But then I don't believe in living in an intellectual bubble.

It's good to get a broad view - even from those you find distasteful.

Yes. The UK is incredibly divided. It is good to at least know where others might be coming from.

I don't understand the whole apologising for quoting a Mail article thing on here. I don't buy a DM (prefer the Times and even then generally only on a Saturday) but if I'm at my parents' I'll flick through it. It's a bit angry/snarky for me but I do like the health pages.

Sometimes shock horror I'll even read the Sun if I'm waiting for a takeaway.

@LaMarschallin Saturday Times Jumbo Cryptic ? Or, , gasp of admiration, Telegraph Toughie ??

I read it because I got into liz Jones column back in the days before I realised how evils the daily heil is but I still can’t stop reading la Jones car crash writing so sadly mine eye doth sometimes drift to other stories...
I can’t really justify it and always feel a bit sleazy while I’m doing it.
I’m as left wing as they come so this really is my dirty little secret.

The S*n is a different matter tho🤢

I can understand it. I can't stand what the press do to celebrities but very occasionally used to buy Heat or Closer, or read it in the hairdressers, knowing it was gutter press trash and my pennies funded it but at 1-2 copies a year it was my guilty pleasure. It was a phase that I'm over now but I do get it.

I used to read the Fail and Fail Lite (express) at my grandmother's house when I visited. I do think I was suckered in to anti EU propaganda more than I would otherwise have been (and I was very highly pro-EU having studied quite a lot about it at university at the time!), so I guess I'd advise caution but you seem to be reading newspapers with both biases and the more intelligent ones too (I generally assume that broadsheets publish at least more factual based reporting even if the subject choices are still biased) so yeah I won't judge you too badly

My only question is HOW dl you do it without your blood pressure causing you to either shout out loud at the rag (uncouth in Waitrose) or steam to come out of your ears as your head boils into gammon??

What I meant to say is, I think it’s invaluable to take in the broad spectra of opinion, even that which differs wildly from my own.
Ahem.
How do I get posts deleted?

Wouldn't read it if you paid me. Seriously why would you? It's shit. And what's more it's other people's shit.

@Tombliwho it’s amazing language isn’t it? I’m often agog when they post a clearly bad photo of someone like Katie price for example and say she’s flaunting her youthful looks

I love the Daily Mail, it never fails to inform and educate me.

It’s fine. People forget they every newspaper, bar one, is incredibly biased and full of rubbish

YANBU but I'd throw Private Eye in there for good measure.

I'd be too embarrassed to read the DM in public. Props to you for your confidence.

YANBU to read it if you pay for it 🤷🏻‍♀️

I never understand why people on MN act so superior and snobby about reading the Daily Mail. All newspapers have their biases, yes even The Guardian isn't the arbiter of absolute truth and if you think it is, then you are as deluded as someone who believes everything they read in the Daily Mail.

Best to read a variety of media from different perspectives. The Guardian will have a completely different take on a story to The Times or Daily Mail.

People who only ever read the newspapers that agree wuith their point of view/politics have a closed mind and never know what others are thinking, Mail, Guardian and Telegraph give a cross section. Amazingly th |times and the Independant are not as independant as I used to think. The Mail always makes me cross but I will read it when I come across a copy

You make a valid point about the Gregg's Chicken Bake. The rest? I work on the premise that if the DM is supporting something then I am not, Stephen Lawrence prosecutions excepted, the only good deed in its murky world but insufficient to compensate for its existence.

I read one in the last couple of weeks. Mainly just so I could be incredulous at the pages of frothing about Harry.
My dnan read it everyday and believed every word.

I’ll read just about any free newspaper or magazine if I’m hanging around somewhere like a cafe.
I’d have loved to see the Daily Mail - or any other newspaper - when I took my DS’s to get their hair cut at the barbers the other week, the only things to read there were old car magazines 🥱🥱😴😴

I tend to scan the front pages of the newspapers in the shops, and I have bought the Daily Mail before if the front page is particularly interesting. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with looking at news etc from a wide variety of newspapers and other media sources.

Ooh I love a good pub quiz! Must buy the telegraph on Sunday

I wouldn't I don't think. Unless my phone battery had run out and I was desperate for something to read. They try to give The S*n away in the local shops for free here "errrm no thanks mate"...

The DM showbiz section is my guilty pleasure. I don’t read the DM for actual news but I find the showbiz section on the website absolutely hilarious. The way the ‘journalists’ describe every last inch of a person’s outfit down to the shade of their eyeshadow is hilarious to me. I also admit to loving reading the obscene comments. Sue me.