Daily Mail...dont shoot me!

[milknosugarplease]

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

Yup. I am definitely more clever than somebody who believes that Christmas has been banned.

Are we supposed to apologise for this cleverness or something?

I'm proud to be able to suss out bullshit in the media. And yes, I think that people who believe the crap in the DM are less intelligent than I am. Sorry but there it is.

Nowt to do with 'hoi polloi' or whatever. Just ability to work out fact from sheee-ite.

Oh darn - got sidetracked by the phone ringing!

"if someone has looked through a copy ..." they'll get to know what the paper's general 'slant' on matters is, and can agree or disagree.

It does seem odd to suggest (SM) that people are likely to consider a newspaper to be "poor" / "bad" / "evil" or whatever, but to buy it regularly.

Seeing plenty of articles on the net, one can get the gist of the DM without ever buying a copy.

I've not bought any paper in over 25 years on a regular basis, not even a Sunday paper.

There may be a few (under 10) times a year when I've bought a newspaper, perhaps to 'consume' on a train or on a day trip, or because there's something known to be of interest. Don't remember buying a single paper this year, so far, but then again, no day trips, or train journeys longer than 10 minutes!

I nearly bought the Telegraph (?) for that special MPs expense supplement, but in the end it wasn't really important enough to go off to the shop...

Maybe that's why one newsagent a week is closing, as well as the growth of the supermarket sales...

Morris, I would still like to see this evidence that people really think Christmas has been banned. Or evidence of entirely false DM stories along these lines. Because this sounds every bit as much of a Guardianista urban myth as the stereotypes you're perpetuating. But I beg to be proved wrong

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/dec/08/religion.communities

Yes, it's from the Guardian but give it a chance! It's a light hearted read.

I used to hang out on another forum and there were loads of people in there who would not accept that pigs/ christmas/ English flags etc have not actually been banned.

Never a day went by without a 'pc gone mad' story being linked to, and loads of discussion about how daft all this PC was.

I can't produce a bunch of curtain-twitching Middle Englanders on here as proof that people do believe this crap, but I know that many do as I have spoken to them.

Even the BBC runs stories about silly 'bans' that turn out to be totally unrelated to PC.

all you self appointed intelligentsia can look down your noses atblingtastic xmas houses

That Guardian piece is so badly written.

It was The Sun and not the Mail that wrote the original story about Luton banning Christmas. The stories about Birmingham council and 'winterval' were absolutely true and led to some furious back peddling by the council.

I can't bear any of the papers for one reason or another - none of them seem appealing to me. I used to very occasionally buy the mail, but now hate it for all the reasons above. I found myself becoming increasingly disgruntled and depressed as I flicked through the pages without really knowing why! Now I don't buy any papers and just scroll through the latest headlines tab on my firefox browser - saves me money too!

juju asked me to prove that people do believe the myth of banning christmas. The DM isn't the only offender, the Sun and the Express are worse.

My point is that lots of people do believe it. They write letters, sign petitions and set up anti-pc campaign groups.

I've got nowt against a bit of house bling - as long as it isn't on my street

I have met lots of people who believe things they read in the papers or see on the news. It is generally because they have respect for the instituion producing the story. Some people believe what they read in the guardian, some what they read in the Daily Mail. They often do this without thinking and are not always stupid people, they just trust the institution and don't really think about it. If you question them they sometimes realise it is strange to believe things in this way and sometimes argue it is true.

My 18 year old bro used the similar argument 'my teacher said it so it must be true' all the time during his A-level year. He is far from stupid, he is very clever, he just trusted his teachers. I think it is more about trust than intelligence.

best thing is read any media,with healthy dose of scepticism.no media is neutral content

Very true sm, though I don't think the quality press publishes nearly as many lies and half truths as the Sun, DM and the DE.

"is that it's astonishingly patronising of mnetters to assume THEY can see through the perniciousness of the DM but the great unwashed can't and are therefore brainwashed by it."

I agree, I don't think it works like that either. I think the people who read and believe the garbage the DM prints about women and Immigrants etc just actually (and wrongly IMO) believe they are right to hold the views they do. It's not because they are brainwashed, or thick, it's because they are wrong. That's all really. They are just wrong.

morris - papers are not allowed to publish lies. I believe they all embellish, spin and exaggerate stories to suit their own agendas. I full admit I don't know as I rarely read the papers but I suspect they all just have a different way of doing the same thing.

But the Birmingham City Council story was true - so it's not all 'myth.'

yes beanie - it's an interesting argument that.

Do people choose a particular paper because it reflects their own beliefs and attitudes or are they influenced by a paper's beliefs?

I believe a bit of both. People choose a paper that reflects their existing views but then they glean some views from the paper and are validated in others that they might not have been if they had not been reading that paper.

to maintain intact ego integrity we naturally believe our particular
attitudinal/cultural/societal belief's are balanced and justifiable. nick griffin holds odious views but hell you will never get him to admit that

curiosity - 'not allowed to publish lies'? No, they're not allowed - but they're not prevented, either, or effectively disciplined once they have. The Press Complaints Commission is entirely toothless and very rarely picks up cases anyway.

Newspapers do publish lies. Sometimes they get caught out, sometimes not. But they do do it.

Yes but they can be sued for hundreds of thousands of pounds - which does tend to act as a deterrent.

Well, if they're libelling Elton john, yes.

If they're telling outright lies about government policy or ruining the life of Joe Normal, probably not.

Joe Normal can go to the PCC - if his complaint is upheld then there are firms of lawyers waiting to pounce, ambulance chaser style, and suggest they sue for libel and go for damages.

Now, Morris

You know a link to a guardian story is not going to cut the mustard

And to say the Sun and the Express are worse is somewhat going off the point on a thread about the DM.

What on earth were you doing hanging out on a forum full of the anti-PC brigade? You must have been as popular as - dare I say it - Christmas winterval with a bunch of turkeys.

Political correctness can be a force for bad as well as good. It needs to be monitored - even if that monitor occasionally exaggerates and distorts that truth (ideally obviously it wouldn't). We wouldn't have much of a democracy without both right and left wing press.

Nancy - want to give us an example of Joe Normal successfully sueing a tabloid for libel?

Even if he finally gets the PCC to say 'ooh, that was a bit naughty', he's not going to have the cash to retain libel lawyers. As I'm sure you know.

'ooh that was a bit naughty?'....last time I checked the PCC wasn't run my John Inman.

They make an official adjudication on whether the press code of conduct was broken.

If they rule that it was and a complaint is upheld then a libel lawyer may approach ordinary members of the public and offer representation on a 'no win no fee' basis.

Cases are usually settled out of court. I can think of two such recent cases - one involving the Sun and one the Mail but as they were settled privately for undisclosed sums I'm not sure of the legalities of naming them.

But non celebrities DO win damages from newspapers.

The notion that newspapers just sit there making things up in the belief they will get away with it is ludicrous.

If you look at the PCC website you'll see that the Mail does not receive any more complaints against it than the majority of the broadsheets.