To find this article about Stephen Gately's death utterly vile and callous?

[BiteOfFun]

Quelle surprise- it's in the Daily Hate, and surely represents a new low? What a nasty piece of writing- shame on you, Jan Moir!

Well said Notanumber.

I agree with you that Jan Moir's views are vile and also agree with your arguments about why she has to be allowed to spout them.

I managed to tell the difference.

Hope you had a good day at work explaining more things to people.

You're good at it

Anyone know if the Nolan sisters piece that was under the Gately article was printed in Ireland? A bit off the point, I know...

Apparently the PCC have received over 20,000 complaints and even though the family themselves haven't complained they will be investigating the mail

They will indeed be investigating.

The PCC received 20,000 complaints within 48 hours of the article - at 1,000 it was already unprecedented. And a PR company has said that they will be advising their clients to choose other media

PR Week blog

Yo Yo homi blood. I find this article very shocking and to find that antidicinstablishedmontarealism in the article has made me want to throw up all of my caviar With my cheremoux red wine. What has happened to this once established govermental institute. thanks blood Im reppin east side cornwall fa init

nice to hear from you Jan...

omg that wasn't me posting that I have no idea who did.

Apologies if anyone was offended by that.

Woah. This thread has suddenly gone all 'Twilight Zone'....

Actually it's not quite accurate to say that the PCC will be investigating.

They stopped rather short of announcing an immediate investigation to see if its code of practice has been violated but said it would "consider" the 21,000 complaints.

In their statement they announced that:

"Any complaint from the affected parties will naturally be given precedence by the commission, in line with its normal procedures.

"If, for whatever reason, those individuals do not wish to make a complaint, the PCC will in any case write to the Daily Mail for its response to the more general complaints from the public before considering whether there are any issues under the code to pursue."

So in actual fact they are going to write to the Mail to ask them what their views are about the article as a whole.

And then they might - might - investigate the code of conduct investigation.

think it could have been my son - he has been told.

Watch this

Apologies for that rogue last line.

"And then they might - might - investigate the code of conduct investigation concerns"

"The PCC received 20,000 complaints within 48 hours of the article - at 1,000 it was already unprecedented. And a PR company has said that they will be advising their clients to choose other media."

Is it ok that a PR company in effect gets to decide what gets published, though? Who died and elected them king? Or is this just the person who pays the piper calling the tune? Are we happy with this because this is the tune we like? Or s this some sort of consumer-democracy in action?

If Gatleys partner had been female and they had gone to a club and picked up a stranger for sex and he had stayed on the sofa while the other two got to it in the bedroom it would still be nothing to do with anyone but them.

Ok everyone is allowed an opinion (mine is that it is a nasty seedy thing to do what ever sexual your preference, and not something I would do) however that said, it is up to them as adults what the do, they were not doing it in my living room, they were not doing it in front of my children and they were all over the age of consent.

Gatleys partner has to live with the what if's for the rest of his life, Gatleys family will never recover from losing him, and to read things like this day after day must be like dipping their hearts in acid.

I believe in freedom of speech, I believe in freedom of the press, but I think sometimes people should think of the impact of what they have to say before they say it.

Because when all is said and done, the man is dead, it can not hurt him what is said, but it can destroy those how loved him

mathanxiety , an interesting question.

I am all for the content of the press being driven by consumer demand (though of course we must accept that this argument also applies to pornography, for example).

If consumers are demanding that they do not want articles containing sentiments such as the ones in Moir's article, then it would be a very poor business decision for the Mail to ignore this.

However, my instinct is that they will be very very careful about insigating any drastic changes. Remember this whole furore has only taken place over a matter of days.

For instance, what portion of the Mail's regular readership was upset by he article? Not the people who were directed there by Brooker or a website, but the people who buy and read the Daily Mail?

I suspect that a number of these people are actually in sympathy with Moir's argument. After all - as we have already touched upon - her remit is to appeal to the target audience of the paper's circulation.

The Mail won't really have that much interest in appeasing liberal Guardian readers who only ever look at the Mail to sneer at it. Their interest lies in giving their readers what they think they want. This is perhaps true of the Mail more than any other paper, who have always based their output on a reflection of public feeling rather than attempting to shape it.

Additionally, PR companies follow the money. They're not in the game of denying their clients profits in order to follow a worthy moral crusade.

Maybe they do think that the Moir affair is The End for the Mail and no-one at all will ever read it again, but I doubt it.

If the Mail continues to have a large circulation then it will continue to be an attractive space for companies to advertise.

I'd be very supprised if - on the basis of the Moir article alone - any permanant or significant changes are implimented within the Mail.

at the cornucopia of spelling and gramatical errors.

A small toddler is demanding my attention!

Yes, a PR company is advising their clients not to advertise in the Mail. Do I have a problem with that? Not at all. It's hardly gagging. It's saying that it may damange a brand's credibility if it puts its ad spend their way. Honestly some of the hysteria about free speech on this thread is getting slightly wearing.

As I posted some pages back, I am a staunch defender of free speech. If Ms Moir wishes to saunter across the road from her flat and stand on a cardboard box and denounce all gays as disgusting filth monkeys who are destroying the fabric of society, that is her right. And I will stop anyone preventing her from doing so.

But I do not want to have a press which is allowed to write things which aren't true or make allegations about anyone based purely on their race, sexuality, gender or ability. In the same way as I don't want television that does that. Or advertising to make blatantly false claims. At some point, the desire for free speech has to be balanced by the truth and rights of groups who are more likely to be subject to discrimination.

It wasn't just opinion. She said there was nothing natural about his death and that healthy fit men do not just get into their pyjamas and die. That is not true. Then she made really bizarre links between his death and that of Kevin McGee where the only link was the fact that they were both gay. That is discrimination based on their sexuality. Of course there are other parts of the code that she breached (privacy and intrusion into shock or grief) but they are for his relatives and friends to deal with. But that isn't the point.

If Moir had written an article suggesting that black people were inherently more likely to be unfaithful and that any of them that die young actually don't die of natural causes but because they lead licentious lifestyles, there is no way it would have been published. I don't see why this kind of homophobic bile is any more acceptable than it would be if it were racist. The PCC is supposed to protect all of us from allegations that are untrue or based purely on people's race, gender, sexuality or disability.

Yes, we have a free press. And that is very precious indeed. But there is a very fine line between a free press and writing offensive garbage that is hugely offensive to a particular section of the population and potentially interferes with their rights to lead a life safe from harassment. In my opinion, Ms Moir has crossed that line and it seems a lot of people agree with me.

I also said earlier on this thread but it bears repeating that a number of people who have posted on the wall of the facebook group have said that they were regular Mail readers. Some of them have even said they had subscriptions. I think the article touched a nerve with so many not just because of the homophobia but because a lot of people felt the article crossed a line of taste and decency (and we all know how keen the DM are on that ).

kerching!yep hit the DM finances and that's were they will feel it.they might well yield to financial pressure rather than capitulating on moral and/or intellectual grounds

I think consumer demand is the last thing that should be driving the content of the press. A lot of horrible stuff (porn being one example) and misplaced (imo) priorities can hide behind the claim that the public gets what the public wants. You still end up with some advertisers flocking to the likes of 'talk radio' stars in the US, and plenty doing business with page 3 type dailies even though there are many who consider them offensive. (And you end up with a fractured body politic and politicians preaching only to their own particular choirs in the case of the US). But how do you decide what gets investigated or printed, and how do you decide where the line of taste and decency may lie? Maybe this is where an editorial board comes in, and maybe the public can vote with its wallet. Paper never refused ink, and the 'other side' has resources at its disposal too.

advertisers declining to advertise is corporate driven not individual action. and given revenue from advertising is lucrative source of income, perhaps they will heed that pressure too

individual action is the complaints and PCC petitioning

mathsanxiety - yes, you put it much more clearly than I did, thank you.

By consumer demand, what I meant was if it's not selling they won't publish it. In other words, doing as hobbity suggested and just not read or link to those publications we deem to be offensive.

I am wary of consumer demand being one group (the group who shots the loudest? Who the are most educated and articulate enough to not be intimidated by 'taking on' the national press? Who are most able to instigate and orchestrate a 'mob'?) simply outlining their version of taste and decency and demanding that it is stuck to.

If Mary Whitehouse had had her way, hundreds of superlative televison progammes (from Shameless to The Devil's Whore) would never have seen the light of day. I don't believe she was a creativity-crushing monster (well, not much) - that would make it easy to dismiss her as a loon.

Whitehouse passionately believed she was right and that she was protecting the nation from scandelous breaches of taste and decency.

It's a terribly subjective thing, this taste and decency lark, and its very difficult to be definitive about where the line lies over which it is unacceptable to cross.

Voting with one's feet seems to be the most straightforward way of spearheading a genuine, proportionaly representative opinion on what we do - or don't - want to read. As hobbity pointed out, that's what Merseyside have been doing with The Sun for two decades.

Do you really think it's okay for the press to print lies?? I find that frankly a bit odd.

Sorry but I have to add - there is a huge difference between Mary Whitehouse and trying to stop someone publishing homophobic rants. I can only conclude you're being rather obtuse notanumber or you're stupid (and I'm fairly sure it's not the latter).

I repeat - would you be happy if she were making the same allegations about black people? Or muslims? Or saying that all working mothers are slags who are shit mothers and likely to be unfaithful?

"..a PR company is advising their clients not to advertise in the Mail. Do I have a problem with that? Not at all. It's hardly gagging. It's saying that it may damange a brand's credibility if it puts its ad spend their way. Honestly some of the hysteria about free speech on this thread is getting slightly wearing."

I don't believe that anyone has argued otherwise, SCARYspicemonster. As I understand it, all who have posted have been in favour of this turn of events.

I did go on to say that I suspect that this is a soundbite rather than anything which will prove to be lasting or widespread, but I don't think that it is a bad thing at all, just that we might as well be realistic about what it will actually mean.

I think "hysteria about free speech" is a little strong. I think its an interesting debate with most posters making thoughtful and relevant conributions. In fact, the only "hysteria" to my mind came very early on in the thread with all the personal abuse about Moir and demands for her sacking and so forth.

SCARYspicemonster - "...there is a huge difference between Mary Whitehouse and trying to stop someone publishing homophobic rants."

Actually no, I don't think there is, not if the issue is one of free speech.

Just because you think that homopobia is wrong does not mean that everyone does. And I think that they should have just as much right to voice that opinion as you.