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Original poster

Daily Mail...dont shoot me!

157 replies

milknosugarplease · 08/09/2009 12:44

ok, i have seen daily mail mentioned everywhere on messages and in names-never positive!

i am in no wy sticking up for it...just would like an insight on the reason for this strong dislike (hate is a strong word!)

a confused but in no way liking the daily mail, milk

xx

OP posts:
scottishmummy · 09/09/2009 12:59

DM neither spaeks to me or for me. i have free will and volition. i can differentiate shite from fiction.just because something is in print doesnt mean you (or anyone else) has to believe it

just because they print odious stories,doesnt mean everyone beleives it.some will, some wont

it isnt that omnipotent or pernicious. afetr all many of you read it/have knowledge of its content, and maintain you are unaffected

SomeGuy · 09/09/2009 13:06

they HATE women and i suspect that the idea of a website primarily used by women, associating itself with a paper that so dislikes women was anathema to a lot of people. i know it was to me.

The Daily Mail is the ONLY newspaper in Britain that has a majority female readership in its print edition

This is one of the reasons it is so successful (because advertisers would rather sell to women as they tend to buy more stuff). The website is not breaking new ground in this respect.

stillfrazzled · 09/09/2009 13:09

SG I know you're right but it still puzzles me mightily that it's so.

minxofmancunia · 09/09/2009 13:11

Because as others have said it's misogynistic, prejudiced, thinly disguised racist, sexist, poorly reported, right wing claptrap.

SomeGuy · 09/09/2009 13:12

Why shouldn't it be? Men don't have a monopoly on DM-type views, and I guess the DM has cultivated female readers over an extended period of time with content designed to appeal to women.

stillfrazzled · 09/09/2009 13:15

Yes there's a lot of female-themed content - but so much of it is so mysogynistic!

LovelyLulu · 09/09/2009 13:16

I never read the DM, but we stayed in the Holiday Inn recently and were given a free copy.

I thought it was a vile paper, it loves as much lurid speculation and detail as possible about stuff like the abduction of the girl who escaped her abduction after a long time. I suppose like the other tabloids.

Very judgemental also about how women look.

TheMoistWorldOfSeptimusQuench · 09/09/2009 13:18

3 good reasons:

Liz Jones
William Leith
Richard Littlejohn

Vile, vile, vile

SomeGuy · 09/09/2009 13:20

Well evidently not all women perceive it as misogynstic, otherwise they obviously wouldn't buy it....

AllFallDown · 09/09/2009 13:52

Cory absolutely OTM.

The Mail rarely descends to outright hatred - what it does is prey on insecurities. So women celebs are always either too thin or too fat; the respectable middle classes are always under threat from gyspy camps that might lower the value of their houses; the BNP are awful, but is it any wonder they thrive when Muslim terrorists are routinely given seven-bedroom houses to live in etc etc

It does have a majority female readership. But that's because it commissions endless women magazine-type features to run alongside its news pages.

persephonesnape · 09/09/2009 14:11

I'm a single parent, and therefore pretty much responsible for all of societys ills - according to the DM.

My dad was a romany gypsy - ergo if I move into your area expect house prices to fall.

it adversely comments on female celebrities bodies and contributes to a lot of body dysmorphia/eating issues in the general populace.

it runs stories on ordinary people who have done something to offend the middle england sensibilities it wishes to push. I see no harm in gay policemnen leaving their partners and trying to adopt a child, or bank managers having affairs, other than it affcets people who actually know them in real life. that isn't news, it's gossip.

I do read it - daily. online, because it gets my dander up and I can then go and do randomly kind things to readdress the balance

thesecondcoming · 09/09/2009 14:56

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

pooexplosions · 09/09/2009 15:29

Have you noticed that they will always give the value of a h ouse no matter how irrelevant it is to the story? "X was murdered....in her £400k home in X"- presumably so you realise she had money and was therefore a good person who didn't deserve it, whereas "X was killed in her council flat which by the way had dirty windows", the implication being that she was a dole bludger or criminal that probably brought it on herself?

chickbean · 09/09/2009 16:06

The thing that scares me is that a lot of people think that because it isn't a red-top tabloid it can somehow be trusted to tell the truth. All newspapers should be read with a high degree od scepticism, but I have heard so many people quoting the DM and getting wound up by the things it has said, without taking into account any bias.

SomeGuy · 09/09/2009 17:24

Many people will write off anything reported by the Mail, true or not, simply because it's in the DM. If you want to discuss something in there on here, much better to source it to a local newspaper....

FabBakerGirlIsBack · 09/09/2009 17:28

I think some people knock the Daily Mail on here as they want to be in with the in-crowd of MNters who do. It seems like the right thing to do on here.

hambler · 09/09/2009 17:43

I think so too fabBakesGirl.

Are all the female DM readers deluded ?

MorrisZapp · 09/09/2009 17:54

I think the sad fact is that lots of women share the DMs misogynist agenda.

Loads of women think that when their husband cheats, it's because of a slag.

Or that women in general are their 'competition', as evidenced on here in the millions of MIL/SIL etc threads when nobody seems to have any issue with FIL/BIL etc. I don't mean that those posters aren't genuine btw, but in general all MILs and SILs can't all be bitches surely.

When I used to frequent the Big Brother forums, the female posters were the ones howling 'slapper' at any woman who attracted male attention in there. Why do attractive women get voted out of Big Brother first? because young women are voting.

etc, etc.

The DM and some of it's female columnists feeds into this 'other women are horrible, they want to steal your husband and get more attention that you' agenda. And many women will read it and nod sagely.

FabBakerGirlIsBack · 09/09/2009 18:00

I just don't recognise that at all.

TheHeathenOfSuburbia · 09/09/2009 18:28

For me it's the fact that they lie all the time.

A DM article generally contains a nugget of truth buried in a whole shit-heap of half-truths, exaggerations and out-and-out lies. Oh yeah, and the headline is generally the bit that's wildly exaggerated, and the nugget of truth is lurking in the last paragraph.
This is the sort of thing I'm talking about. Or maybe this one?
This would be pretty hard to stomach whatever agenda it was pushing, but the fact that said agenda is xenophobic, misogynist etc etc just makes it worse.

And it's designed to make its target (white, middle-class) audience feel under threat. Agree 100% with cory; "Feeling hard done by when you are in fact immensely privileged is unlikely to make you a better person or one more fit to cope with life."

There are some great websites tracking their shite.
Here's a typical unpicking of a recent Mail immigration scare story.
Thing is, if you don't have a background in statistics/science, it's often hard to see what they've done. Specially if you're just skimming the paper in your tea-break or on the train.

Have a read of 'Bad Science' and 'Flat Earth News' if you want a wider insight into the sort of damage the mail does.

scottishmummy · 09/09/2009 18:29

oh the irony accusation of misogny,generalisations,aspersions,who called whom a slag.

and that is women on MN talking about other women, making gross generalisations and assumptions

y'all protest DM homogenises groups and reduces them to a few unpleasant attributes/stereotypes

yet is permissible to claim female dm readers are misogynist,believe other women to be slags etc and assert "And many women will read it and nod sagely."

eh, which other women?not you lot presumably
would that be the women you regard as intellectually inferior to yourself

yes,to support your case of gross stereotyping you stereotype

priceless

pooexplosions · 09/09/2009 18:49

None of us have an international publication though that influences the thoughts of hundreds of thousands of people?

Just look at the DM, anyday of the week. They are obsessed with the bodies and sex lives of female celebrities, and the idea that "middle england" is under threat from immigrants and dole scroungers.

scottishmummy · 09/09/2009 18:54

don't credit the dm with too much power it isn't that pernicious

is an odious paper you credit with too much influence

scottishmummy · 09/09/2009 18:58

ok if MN and DM are so alien to each other,why did mnhq acquiesce to a dm column and offer a mn contributor

pooexplosions · 09/09/2009 19:03

Newpapers have influence, of course they do. Its not just about acquiring information, its how, and with what slant? All papers have their own slant, but the DM is to my mind particularly nasty and obnoxious, and all the more so because they do it in a quasi respectable way.
I have a read of the Daily Mail when I am feeling apathetic and want to get riled up.

I certainly don't think all DM readers are nasty misogynists, or racist or anything else. My own (late, darling) mother read it regularly, and she was a woolly liberal and open minded. She read it because her parents had and her husband did, as a habit.