Daily Mail fail

[Gooseberrybushes]

Have just done the usual check around the papers and wanted mners to respond to a query if you can.

Re Daily Mail: the most important story of the day is not the lead, unsurprisingly, nor anywhere near it. It seems an average day for the Mail. There is the usual celebrity bilge down the right column.

So I was wondering, in terms of news choices and news coverage, what kind of thing is being objected to and on what grounds.

For eg: there's a story about school heads being paid over 100,000 a year. If you really hate the Mail, can you explain why in terms of specific stories.

Thanks. I'm neutral, I read all the papers (well not cover to cover but I get across them all online to get a rounded view.

In case this counts: my chosen paper would be the Telegraph, favoured media the BBC and out of the Guardian and the Indie, I'd take the Indie.

I wonder if anyone will respond!

What I don't understand is that even though I don't often look at the Mail Online, every time I do it has at least one story about Kelly Brook. Is she the editor's sister or something?

Yes, Our Kelly is there a hell of a lot. I suspect it has more to do with the stupendous tits and her fondness for bikinis than anything else.

my hate for the dm started years ago when there was an article written by a female journalist on the subject of rape. a few women aroudn chelsea had been attacked in day light, dragged off the street and raped. the so called journalist wrote how terrible this crime was (yes horrendous) and then went on to say that these women would probably find it more difficult to get over than women who didn't have the trapping of a safe, middle class environment. the implication that these things do not happen in such nice areas and that is why it was so much harder for these women. i shook with anger at reading this rubbish, i wrote to the paper (before internet days) and it still makes me rage now. of course i got no reply

the dm never ever fails to make my blood boil with its right wing, misogynist crap they print every single day what is sad is that it is probably the most influential paper as those buying it think its an intelligent paper and take themselves more seriously on an intellectual level than those who may read the sun or mirror

i shall not even start on what i think of their female writers i have a nice day planned

I gave up on it completely when they were advocating 'tough' love for DCs. i.e. you loved your DC if they conformed to your idea of how they should be, what they should do, how they should think and how they should act-if they didn't conform you withheld the love. They were talking about a young, murdered prostitute and the parents and DM were baffled as to why she had gone off the rails with 'a loving family'. It was pretty obvious to me that she wasn't the DC they wanted and never could be. Love for DCs in unconditional as far as I am concerned and you love and bring up the one you get-not the one you imagined.

I also hate the way they take one incident and apply it to everything. e.g. there is a tough class in an inner city comprehensive and all comprehensives are ill disciplined.

'I am always surprised that the Daily Express escapes this vitriol as very similar to the Mail. Why is that?'

exoticfruits is right. The Express is not very influential. The Daily Mail is read by millions and therefore right-on comedians and some New Labour types feel it is important to try to criticise it, in an attempt to turn the millions away from the truth.

'The Sun is the 'people's paper'.'

The Sun was an ardent supporter of New labour and Tony Bliar. I'm not sure that makes it the "people's paper". The Daily Mail has always stood shoulder to shoulder with the people against bin police and all other bureaucrats.

the editors of the sun may have publicly supported labour why i am not sure but their politics (well rantings) have always been right wing didn't change while they were pretending to support blair.

i was very pleased when they announced they were going to support david cameron not that i think anyone was really fooled that had become a left or even middle of the road paper.

I dislike it for a different reason, I think the integrity is really low, especially around the "wonder cancer fighting foods" and "this food causes cancer." I can't believe that any journalist is stupid enough not to understand the phrase "not statistically significant" but it never stops them, and gets past editors etc. I think this paper is responsible for the fact that a lot of people distrust scientists (always changing their minds, studying the bleeding obvious) and that has quite dangerous repercussions.

They obviously don't read any evidence at all, just jump to the most scandalous element, like when they simultaneously ran a story in England and Scotland about how the government were making our daughter promiscuous by offering the HPV jab, whilst in NI running a story about how the government there were letting their daughters die of cervical cancer by not offering it. I just feel such press freedom should come with slightly more responsibility than the Daily Mail displays.

FreudianSlipper, I don't think the Sun is really right-wing. It is Murdoch-wing. It doesn't have the principles of the Daily Mail. The Mail would never have backed Tony Blair; it was always the single thorn in New Labour's side. That is why it attracts such vitriol.

OOh look!! I'm so excited! I'm the first one to get in with

"Its groundless stories"

groundless? can you expand? do you think they are not true?

bunnywnny - what's wrong in your view with the headteachers story?

"It doesn't have the principles of the Daily Mail"... That's a laugh. The idea of any newspaper having principles. Bottom line is that the DM produces stories they think their readers will pay to read. If that means finding the 'anti' angle in a story, so what? And their typical reader, judging by the output, is a gullible, paranoid creature that believes England (deliberately not 'Britain') was a considerably better place in the 1950s and should be run along the same lines as the writers for Midsomer Murders fashion their scripts.

So far as I can see the Daily Mail has some good old fashioned journalists. Take the Andrew Marr story - that's a great story, an important story. I think is largely staffed by women. It has quite a two fingers attitude to the official line which is always good.

I hate the Mail, and I am much more openly critical about the Mail than I am about the Express or the Mirror etc. Mostly due to the Mail's huge leadership - it is amore of a valid target IMHO, and - also due to it's reach - I am more likely to see a copy of the Mail. (note - not buy!!)

Further to the points mentioned above:

• the Mail's obsession with house prices. Not in the manner of the Express who carp on about the Housing market all the time - that or Diana. But in a more insidious way - working the house price into a news story - where the house price has no bearing at all. As an example, not a direct quote: "the parents of the murdered girl said, form the doorstep of their £450k house in leafy St Albans". Meaning - they are middle class and so we should care quite a lot about them, they are 'our sort of people".

Another is the sly chipping away of equality. Almost every makeover in the mail ends up with the after shot in a skirt or a dress. Never trousers! Always stories about how bad nursery care is, etc etc etc.

Exhales. Rant over. For now...

Eh claig do you work for the DM by any chance????

"Groundless" might be an exaggeration. But they are not above exaggeration for effect.

This story is a horrendous example of their racism. Extractor Fan Removed Because It Offends Muslims Totally biased in favour of the 'hardworking cafe owner', the islamic angle being the headline, and the real reasons for the objection to the extractor fan being completely obscured. And the real reason, incidentally, was that the fan outlet was 12" from the next-door neighbours' front door..... spewing fumes of fried food straight into their hallway. In the list of reasons objecting to the siting of the fan, the idea that the neighbours' muslim friends might be offended by the smell of bacon was a minor addition to a very long & compelling list. And yet the DM reporter deliberatly picked up this one - purely because there was a mention of 'muslim' - and splashed it all over the story as being the principle objection.

That's how the DM plays every story and therefore they cannot be trusted.

Chil - that's the sort of detail I am interested in. Any more? eg take today's paper

I read it because I don't buy papers, only read them online and the Daily Mail has the best online layout imo .

I like reading the celeb stuff, the "weird news" articles and the Femail columns but as with any sort of reporting, I consider myself intelligent enough to see it's biases for what they are and ignore them. Mainly I read the articles and then rant at dh about how much bollocks it all is, we do like having something to rant about with each other, it's very bonding!

Exactly right Gooseberrybushes, the Daily Mail sticks two fingers up to the establishment and shows the people what is being done in our name.

Chil1234, for a Tory, you are very dismissive of the millions of Tories and non-Tories who read the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail does have principles, which is why it released the secret memos on the risk of Guillen Barre syndrome in the swine flu vaccine which no other national newspaper told us about, and why it was probably the first paper in the UK to inform us of Climategate, even when other sources already knew about it, but sat on the truth.

The Mail writes stories that ordinary people care about, not propaganda stories for the literati and chatterati in Islington circles. Your criticisms of Mail readers as out of touch Little Englanders, gullible and paranoid, sounds like something out of New Labour HQ. It is the sort of thing that would give them all a good guffaw at a New Labour Conference, as they sit Canute-like and dismiss the concerns of millions of ordinary voters. You probably agree with Gordon Brown, that Mrs. Duffy, a life-long Labour voter, was a bigoted old woman. The Mail didn't think that. They respect that Labour voter's right to question the Great Labour Leader and stand up for freedom of speech and liberty from officialdom. That's why millions read it. They don't swallow the spin they are subjected to everywhere else.

May I be the first to link to the Daily Mail headline generator?

BTW claig, The Sun's support of new Labour and Blair co-incided with him being repeatedly elected. I don't think this was a coincidence.

Actually yes - good point - the DM is very good on big corporate/political shenanigans in the continuing vaccine story. It published the secret vested pharmaceutical interests of the MP members of the vaccine approval committee.

claig, what's your take on the story Chil linked to? Genuinely interested- I cannot fathom how that is an example of standing shoulder to shoulder with the people...

The Daily Mail may have scooped some good, genuine stories but, as I said earlier, who's going to believe them when they usually fill their pages with such scaremongering crap? I'm dismissive of readers that are prepared to tolerate being patronised with yards and yards of 'you lot will love this one' rubbish and swallow every line without questioning a word of it.

They don't write stories that ordinary people care about. They write the stories that push certain buttons, confirming prejudices and consolidating fears. Stories that sell newspapers, in fact.

In the extractor fan example above, they know full well that their reader wants to believe that muslims are taking over & threatening the UK way of life. So what better than to take a minor local story about the very poor siting of an extractor fan and turn it into a crusade between 'hard working cafe owner' and an alleged islamic objection? So DM readers up and down the country can pore over the story at breakfast and tut 'it's shocking when a cafe owner can't even fry a bit of bacon any more'.

Gooseberrybushes - why the need for specific examples from today's paper? What exactly do you need these for?

I will read it and come back.