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AIBU?

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Original poster

AIBU in thinking that all readers (and writers) of the Daily Mail should be put to death?

321 replies

TiggyD · 22/03/2010 17:38

Well?

Right-wing, over-reacting, paparazzi funding, health scare loving, minority hating sub-literature for busy bodies, racists and little Englanders who live in the past?

You can assume that the people in the BNP who can read both buy the Daily Mail.

Be nice; you just know that somebody at the Mail will read this

OP posts:
HanBanan · 23/03/2010 10:39

The crossword is good in the mail. Not too easy, not too hard. Will I just get a finger removed if you allow me to do that?

I agree if you are aware that there is a certain slant you can sift through that and get to grips with the news.

They are obviously very specific about their target audience/readers....middle classes parents/grandparents in the suburbs who have a little spare cash but not enough to extinguish fears of joblosses/getting too fat/riffraff living down their street/food that might give them cancer etc etc.

However I'm not like that and I read it as a news source.

Actually find it odd that someone who wants liberty and freedom of speech would assume that everyone who reads the dm is of a right wing viewpoint. One of the marks of extreme rightwingers is to lump people who live or look in similar ways together and, ahem, condemn them to death.

5DollarShake · 23/03/2010 10:41

"If you have half a brain you know it is possible to weed out the mysoginy, anti immigrant and anti benefits slants and pick the actual NEWS out."

Read back what you've just written!

Not only are you admitting all its faults, but you're saying that you have to go to all that extra work to put all the sh!t to one side in order to get to the news! Why not just read a newspaper, then? [hmm}

And the trouble is that so many people who read the DM don't seem to have that half-brain required, and simply sit there nodding along, and getting worked up into a fervour of righteous indignation, fueling their bigoted views...

HanBanan · 23/03/2010 10:46

Actually feel very strongly as a liberal-minded person that nobody has the right to tell anyone what they should read.

I hate the way even in this day and age you have to be ashamed of reading something that you might actually enjoy. I think the scaremongering stuff is funny, it's obviously a ploy to get people who seriously worry about that stuff to buy the paper again tomorrow.

You don't seriously believe that everyone who reads this paper believes everything that's in it?!!

I think the license fee is wrong but I still watch the BBC, which is meant to be 'unbiased' but obviously has it's own target audiences nicely worked out.

probonbon · 23/03/2010 10:51

The trouble is people are so stupid aren't they 5dollar?
Perhaps we should kill everyone who isn't as fabulously acute as you are?

ooojimaflip · 23/03/2010 10:52

Claig - it seems to be the personal site of someone who works for an Ad Agency who work with Social Media stuff. It's all automated so I expect it's costs are as near zero as makes no difference.

I imagine the effort is worth it as a way for him to show off his cleverness.

It doesn't seek to refute them btw - it's just pointing out the inconsistencies in the coverage.

What the Daily Mail isn't doing is actually looking at each piece of research and coming to a conclusion in terms of advice to it's readers. It's just hysterically responding to each new story.

claig · 23/03/2010 10:53

5DollarShake they're all trying to spin you. Do you think that Alastair Campbell and the Guardian aren't trying to spin you? Do you believe everything you read in the Guardian as being fact? Don't you question it? You've got to sift through everything you read and look at all angles in order to get to the truth. "A closed mind is like a closed book".

ooojimaflip · 23/03/2010 10:56

The Guillain?Barré story doesn't atually seem like much of a story without the alarmist spin. It looks like health authorities taking appropriate measures to mitigate a small known risk.

'Organisation does job properly' isn't much of a story.

claig · 23/03/2010 10:56

ooojimaflip I'm not saying that all the articles in the Mail are great, there's lots in there that I disagree with, but there is some very valuable information that time and time again is broken by the Mail and no other paper.

probonbon · 23/03/2010 10:57

Ooji -- it just reports what they say. Reportage doesn't contain opinion, which in any case I think people don't want from the DM? It just reports the studies and what they claim. Probably off PA. All the papers do it. I doubt any of them go back to the original research paper.

You think the DM, above all other papers, should be reaching a conclusion and giving advice to its readers on every single piece of health reporting? Or do you think it ought to just report them, and let people make up their own minds?

Sorry but that is really, really, really really odd.

HanBanan · 23/03/2010 10:59

Always makes me chuckle when people who read the Guardian think they are not being targeted as a certain type of person with certain political persuasions, just like the DM does and the sun etc etc.

Like emos and alternative people etc who want to be 'different' but actually there are loads of people thinking and feeling the same way.

claig · 23/03/2010 11:02

the point about the Guillem-Barre story is that the public wasn't informed. I bet it was no secret to any Guardian journalist worthy of the name. It could easily be found all over the internet thanks to individuals rather than the media barons. The media barons were not prepared to inform those of us who were unaware of it.

probonbon · 23/03/2010 11:03

readers are more than 50 pc women

twas originally targetted at women

i guess women must be more interested in health and children's health hence the heavy health coverage

probonbon · 23/03/2010 11:04

Absolutely Claig. That was a good story, good sources, rightly published.

probonbon · 23/03/2010 11:06

It also has an interest in mysterious goings on in the hermetically sealed intelligence communities which I think is useful. For example, the nuclear scientist who "threw himself down a stairwell" a couple of months ago.

It has a two fingered attitude on these things which I like. Remember the Guardian handing over those documents that put its source in prison? Yuk.

fanjoforthemammaries7850 · 23/03/2010 11:08

my parents read it.
YABU and like someone trying to be cool at school.

thumbwitch · 23/03/2010 11:09

tethersend - that link is classic!

OP -

I won't have the toxic rag in the house but some of my friends read it (their prerogative) and I wouldn't like to lose them over it - it's giving the rag more status than it really has.

claig · 23/03/2010 11:12

probonbon you are spot on. The paper is aimed at women, and that's what cheeses the spin meisters off even more. Women are wising up, on health and politics. The male spin meisters and the entire coterie of hangers on are losing the power to influence and fool women.

probonbon · 23/03/2010 11:18

Am a bit of an "anti-" person though .. I think all media ought to be if not hostile then actively challenging to our dear leaders and the received wisdom. I think two fingers is good, wherever it comes from. So if there's a change of government I might be out there with a flamethrower

Actually I wouldn't. But I do like a paper, left or right, that won't bend its neck.

claig · 23/03/2010 11:22

exactly probonbon and I think that that is the reason that derision of the Mail is encouraged, precisely because it doesn't kow-tow, scrape and bow and bend the neck. They just don't like it up 'em.

ooojimaflip · 23/03/2010 11:24

Probonbon - I'm sorry I think it is the other way round - Do you think that the Daily Mail should report health stories uncritically, with no analysis and giving equal weight to all sources? Because if so then you might as well just read PA instead. What are journalists FOR if not to provide analysis and look past PR bollocks?

The fact that other papers also do a bad job of this particularly in the health sphere is no defence - the Daily Mail is particularly prone to it just because it prints more of this nonsense than the others.

Glitterknickaz · 23/03/2010 11:24

5dollar because I've yet to find a broadsheet that isn't overly wordy and too big to slouch on the sofa with!

The other tabloids are literally just comics with a plethora of images and I'm sorry but I just cannot bring myself to read the express!

It's just down to personal preference and my own style of reading. I actually like to debate with myself what I am reading and the mail is very good for presenting the other view from my own.

Glitterknickaz · 23/03/2010 11:25

oh.... and I'm a carer and as such my entire income is from benefits.... bet they love the fact I'm in their readership!

1Jules1 · 23/03/2010 11:26

YABU

Mail on Sunday seems to be trying to raise the bar. Check out the news story in last week's Mail on Sunday written by Suzanne Moore after she attended a talk by Brian Cox.

bit.ly/bq8Mqc

(sorry I don't know how to post links properly )

ooojimaflip · 23/03/2010 11:31

Claig - do you think the Daily Mail has any interest in anything beyond maintaining it's circulation?

They have worked out that there are a lot of people out there who are frightened, who feel entitled to something they perceive others to be getting or who believe that everyone is out to get them - in the main their fear are baseless, but by playing to them you can sell papers.

Similarly the Guardian, plays to people who share it's views.

probonbon · 23/03/2010 11:34

Crumbs no, I don't think that at all.

Which do you want:

"Studies have found this: but we've assembled our own team of research scientists who've found that?"

or

"Studies have found this: but we have an unqualified journo who thinks that?"