Mail on Sunday backs Remain [***Title edited by MNHQ on receipt of reports. Warning: Art Attack contained herein. If you're familiar with the work of Lucian Freud you'll know it's uninhibitedly fleshy]

[claig]

Never thought much of its editor. Love Dacre on the Daily Mail.

Claig: honestly don't sub-contract your critical thinking to the DM of even a few chosen journalists writing within it. Always do it for yourself.

LastGirlOnTheLeft, I think you will find that Katie Hopkins certainly is

It's just the Google search engine for academic work claig. Nothing more.

StepAwayFromTheThesaurus, you are a critical thinker who is prepared to look at different viewpoints. Don't you think that diversity of opinion is important in order to challenge a media consensus such as a BBC/Guardian one. Not everything the BBC/Guardian say is wrong but not all of it is right and the same is true of the opposite pole of thought i.e. the Daily Mail.

'It's just the Google search engine for academic work claig'

I like it, it is very good, it goes straight to indepth study rather than having to wade through irrelevant links.

I would never tell anyone to sub-contract their critical thinking to the guardian or the bbc either. People should be reading a wide range of sources and thinking carefully about them.

I'd suggest you start your own critical thinking by carefully analysing the contention that Paul dacre is a man of the people.

Then you can follow up by thinking about whether a newspaper being powerful is the same as them actually caring about 'the people'.

Best piece I've read on Dacre/DM.

www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/12/man-who-hates-liberal-britain

I read much more than the Daily Mail and in fact I don't read much of the Daily Mail because it is becoming increasingingly sensationalist with pictures on injuries etc and I don't want to see or read that.

But, unlike you, I do think that Paul Dacre has the common touch i.e. knows what issues the majority of ordinary voters care about and therefore it is true that

"the contention that Paul dacre is a man of the people"

applies to him in the sense that he voices those concerns which is why the Daily Mail has become Britain's second largest selling newspaper.

Ever since I heard that Geordie Greig wrote a biography of Lucien Freud, I feared for the future of the Mail, because there was some talk that Rothermere might be thinking of replacing Dacre with Etonian and Oxford Greig, friend of the royals. If that happens, I fear for the Mail and its populist stance and connection with millions of ordinary people and their concerns. I fear it will turn into a Cameron type thing which will mean that its sales will plummet.

I tend to trsust the people and think they choose what to read based on what they believes rather than the other way round where the Guardian can convince them to believe what they don't believe, which is why the Mail is more popular than the Guardian, in my opinion.

I'm pretty sure that the public derision aimed at media studies as a disciplinary area is directly related to an agenda that really doesn't want a population of people generally equipped to think critically about the media and what they encounter in it. It seems to me that these are actually basic skills everyone in society actually needs not some frivolous nonsense to be sneered at.

This.

I don't know much about media studies, but my guess is that the opposition to it from conservative circles is often based on the fact that they think it is left wing biased i.e. that there is probably not a lot of critical analysis or criticism of how and what the Guardian and BBC report.

Translation: I know nothing, but I am so obsessed with my agenda this is my ignorant opinion.

If you do a good media course, then it will look at this, because the entire point of media is to look at agendas and political influence of all persuasions.

Not all media courses are good in fairness. But it would do much for people if they were taught to think about where a story or information came from rather than accepting it at the face value it is. I can't see where the harm is in this. Particularly in an age of social media where, sources have become rather less obvious.

Or perhaps you would like to enlighten me with your world changing knowledge of media studies as to why doing this would be a bad thing.

FWIW, I have many, many criticisms of The Guardian and the BBC. They are by no means perfect and have their own special flaws in terms of how and what they report and bias. Studying media didn't blind me to this. It did open my eyes to it. The trouble is that The Guardian in particular sits in an overall position in media in this country where in some ways he has to lean more heavily a particular way in order to counter some of the political leanings of its rivals. This is purely a reflection of where it can attract an audience from.

The BBC, is a more unique case. A subject that you could easily write a phD on. So I'm not going to go there here.

Media studies encourages you to read things which don't just support your own opinions and develop a filter for quality. In order to make your own arguments and beliefs carry more weight and substance.

Some media courses, also include huge elements of psychology, economics, sociology and history. They are looked down on by many, but no one criticises these subjects in quite the same way as media. I've always found this curious. They share many elements of this same critical thinking.

Indeed, given your criticism of Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford I find your attitude to media studies, which you freely admit you know fuck all about, frankly bonkers.

Claig you've outdone yourself with this thread. Really you have.

'Translation: I know nothing, but I am so obsessed with my agenda this is my ignorant opinion. '

I think that shows your bias. I am giving you the opinion (which I admit may be wrong as I said I didn't know much about it) that many conservatives would immediately think about it, and the reason they would think that is because of teh lecturers in those curses mainly be left wing and more favourable to the Guardian than the Daily Mail.

If I had the time and researched it, I bet that I would find that there is hardly any media criticism of the Guardian's coverage of environmental issues (unlike the Daily Mail) and that would be due to the inherent beliefs of the lecturers.

The reason we have a political class that is so out of touch from a huge amount of public opinion is because they do not think diversely enough and are not prepared to listen and understand diverse points of view and in particular the view of Dacre's Mail, which is Britain's 2nd largest newspaper.

'I find your attitude to media studies, which you freely admit you know fuck all about, frankly bonkers.'

I would expect that from you.

RedTootBrush, I read the Guardian, I watch the BBC, so I know all about the line they promote. However, unlike you, I also read the Daily Mail and watch Fox News and therefore understand they line they promote.

I am sure that you would never lower yourself to watch Fox News or read the Daily Mail, but that is why I think you do not have truly diverse thinking and cannot fully understand why the Daily Mail is Britain's second largest selling newspaper and why Fox News is America's number one news channel.

You probably think all the Fox viewers and Mail readers are frankly bonkers.

It is very simple why sociology had a bad reputation among many conservatives. It is political, it is because conservatives felt that sociology was mainly run by left wing academics and was therfore not truly unbiased or objective. Of course, in reality nothing apart from science can be truly objective, but conservatives felt that the bias was towards the left.

Persoanlly, I think sociology is a fascinating subject and have dipped into Durkheim etc, but its reputation suffered for political reasons and to some extent that is true of the conservative criticism of media studies.

The same of course is true for newspapers.

On the whole right wingers are not keen on the Guardian because they think it has a left wing political bias.

Left wingers and Cameron type conservatives are not keen on the Daily Mail because it has a right wing bias.

Cameron type conservatives and Blairites like the Times and Guardian because they are centre and align with their belief systems.

It all eventually comes back to politics, and politics is formed from the inherent beliefs of people who think diversely.

I would expect that from you.

Good claig, good.

You probably think all the Fox viewers and Mail readers are frankly bonkers.

I have spent hours watching Fox.
I don't think their viewers are bonkers. That would be a very unfair assessment. Nor do I think Mail readers are bonkers.

Claig, you are clearly very intelligent and clearly very passionate and clearly very engaged.

What you lack is a filter and quality control.

If you got that, you'd actually be able to make a much better argument which might not just sound like little more than a David Ike conspiracy theory like you do at times.

Which I'm quite glad you don't have, given your lack of sensitivity and love for Paul Dacre.

'What you lack is a filter and quality control. '

What you mean is that I don't think like you do. I have a filter and quality control which is why I don't like much of the Guardian. It is just a different quality and filter conrol from yours. Bu the way, I don't agree with the Daily Mail on everthing either, not even Hitchens, whom I like in general, but whom I think gets things wrong based on his own belief system which differs to mine.

We all have different belief systems based on our characters, expereience and understanding and we all form our quality control filters based on our belief systems which cause us to reject different things as being bullshit and accept different things as common sense truth.

I happen to think that Dacre has that common touch and Etonian Geordie Greig, friend of the royals, doesn't. I expect it is probably to do with their different upbringings. I fear for teh Mail if Geordie Greig ever becomes its editors because I think he is not in touch with millions of Mail readers.

“So once you start doing 'I’m looking at your family' it gets embarrassing and I think… the Rothermere family, if you want to go further back, we get to the great grandfather who ‘let’s join in together’ ran the headline ‘hoorah for the blackshirts'.”
This is often brought up about the Daily Mail, but how often is the fact that
"The Guardian supported Stalin, and sacked the brave Malcolm Muggeridge for telling the West about the genocidal Ukrainian Famine (when perhaps 7 million people were deliberately starved to death by Stalin)."?

My guess is that the political establishment and Cameron etc would love Geordie Greig to become the editor of the Daily Mail because then they would no longer fear it as Jonathan Powell, Blair's Chief of Staff, said they did.

I like democracy and diversity of views which is why I want the Guardian to remain as opposition to the Mail and I want Dacre to remain in charge of the Mail for as long as he can.

Any paper edited by the hypocrite Dacre is only fit for wiping arses on imo.

Weeping here at mitzy's posts. Theat's the only laugh this whole shambles of a referendum has given me.

Indeed LastGirl
Video in link confirms what many posters on this thread said about DM and Dacre.

mailwatch.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=6373

I've just noticed the change to the thread title. I'm sorry if my Freud bombing offended any of you but I really just couldn't resist!

I loved your posts Mitzy. And I also loved Claig classing Freud as an esoteric, elitist metropolitan concern. I mean isn't Freud fairly mainstream - we studied him at my rural secondary 25 years ago. He painted Kate Moss FFS. It's not like Greig was writing a bio of Basquiat or Chris Offili or Gilbert and George.

(Misses point of thread)

Mitzy. The art was the best bit! Especially George.