Dacre speaks!

[claig]

Great article full of great points. Too many to list, but this is just a sample.

"our crime is more heinous than that.

It is that the Mail constantly dares to stand up to the liberal-Left consensus that dominates so many areas of British life, and instead represents the views of the ordinary people who are our readers and who don’t have a voice in today’s political landscape — and are too often ignored by today’s ruling elite.

The metropolitan classes, of course, despise our readers with their dreams (mostly unfulfilled) of a decent education and health service they can trust, their belief in the family, patriotism, self-reliance, and their over-riding suspicion of the State and the People Who Know Best."


...


"No other newspaper campaigns as vigorously as the Mail and I am proud of the ability of the paper’s 400 journalists (the BBC has 8,000) to continually set the national agenda on a whole host of issues.

I am proud that for years, while most of Fleet Street were in thrall to it, the Mail was the only paper to stand up to the malign propaganda machine of Tony Blair and his appalling henchman, Campbell."

.....


"The BBC is controlled, through the licence fee, by the politicians. ITV has to answer to Ofcom, a Government quango.

Newspapers are the only mass media left in Britain free from the control of the State."

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2455256/PAUL-DACRE-Editor-Mail-answers-papers-critics.html

[timidviper]

wannabe Please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all pensioners believe what is in the mail but I do think a significant portion do. Thinking within my own family and neighbours that seems to be the case anyway!

Claig I am interested to know how exposing what is wrong and unjust includes printing twisted information about a public figure's dead father? Surely The Mail weakens its own position by such vitriol

[claig]

The Mail doesn't get everything right. I think they went too far in that headline. But Dacre believes otherwise. That is what free speech is all about. We don't all agree on everything.

[Wannabestepfordwife]

Sorry timid I sounded quite agressive I just forget my grandparents aren't typical pensioner mail readers their the type that went back-packing round Sri Lanka for their 80th

[claig]

The Daily Mail is all about speaking "truth to power" but it is responsible in what it does.

I think the Daily Mail do give a monkey's about the public's privacy. They often publish articles by Big Brother Watch etc and I have googled and found a Daily Mail comment piece at the bottom of this article

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2159566/Police-demand-right-snoop-everyones-emails-Scotland-Yard-chief-accused-playing-politics.html

I don't know what they thought about the Guardian's hard drives, but I think that they feel that the Guardian has gone too far in releasing material that may help terrorists escape detection by our security services.

[timidviper]

It is still appalling, in my view, that a paper which so frequently demands accountability and the resignation of others who cross lines can so willfully ignore their own culpability. That is not responsible journalism. It brings to mind the biblical quotation about seeing a spliter in your neighbour's eye but ignoring the plank in your own.

I am getting to a point where I think I will have to retreat to a cave and ignore all news. I just want to know the facts to form my own opinions, not what Murdoch or Dacre or anybody else wants me to believe.

Wannabe Your grandparents sound amazing! My family are solidly working class and most have never set foot outside this country. We live in a very sheltered provincial area yet my mother, uncle and elderly neighbour regularly tell me they are worried about immigrants, wrongly released mental patients, benefits scroungers and all sorts of other things that they are not likely to ever encounter but have read about in The Mail. It's sad really

[ttosca]

"In future, if a “relevant publisher” who does not agree to place himself under the new regulator is ever sued, by anyone, he will have to pay the costs of both sides – even if the other side loses. And if the other side wins, even more crippling “exemplary damages” will often also be payable."

This sounds to me like they want to make sure the press has a motive to sign up and abide by the charter. Of course the press would like to be able to print whatever they want, whenever they want without any responsibility. If this don't abide by the rules, then there should be a penalty.

"Under most forms of press regulation across Europe, including the old PCC system here, only those personally affected by an alleged inaccuracy can complain, with few exceptions. But under Mr Cameron’s royal charter, the new regulator must have the power to take “third-party complaints” from lobby groups, or indeed anyone, about anything, even “where there is no single identifiable individual who has been affected.

Do you have any more information on this? And then what? Just because you complain it doesn't mean that you win. It will still have to go to court. And it is right that there should be penalties for the press abusing its power.

[ttosca]

To be honest, I'm trying to find a relatively unbiased FAQ or summary of the key points of the Charter and how it would work, but I can't find one.

If anyone can find on the net, please do post a link here.

[ttosca]

The Daily Mail is all about speaking "truth to power" but it is responsible in what it does.

No it isn't. The Daily Mail is part of the apparatus of the ruling class. It is the power.

Which is why is spends to much time seeding division amongst the public: foreigners, women, minorities, gay and lesbian people, disabled people, poor people, the unemployed; a divided public is a weakened public.

[nennypops]

I can't believe that Claig cites the campaign about the Liverpool Care Pathway as one of the Mail's achievements. It was a campaign based on fearmongering and disinformation and was the direct cause of hundreds of people dying in agony, wholly unnecessarily.

[edam]

The Daily Mail was one of the biggest customers of the private detectives who were at the heart of the phone hacking scandal. According to data from the Information Commissioner - a report that the IC published before the phone hacking scandal had blown up into huge proportions.

[claig]

nennypops that is your opinion, but thousands of Daily Mail readers would disagree with you.

The Mail and the Telegraph campaigned on it and an inquiry into it was launched. Our system works, our press reported on it and our system changed it.

"Nurses shouted at relatives who tried to give their dying loves ones a sip of water, an inquiry into the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway revealed today.

Ministers moved to scrap the end of life plan after a damning inquiry found it was being used as an excuse for poor care.

Dying patients were placed on the LCP without their families knowing, left for weeks and in some cases months, and denied water despite the pleading of loved ones to let them have a drink.

The shocking catalogue of abuse found that some relatives were forced to give their loved ones water secretly when the nurse was out of the room – because medical staff had forbidden it.

Baroness Neuberger, who carried out the review, said that hydration problems were the ‘biggest issue’ raised by people who gave evidence to the review.

She added: ‘The same stories keep emerging of poor care, appalling communications and oft a lack of attention or compassion.

'Among the worst stories were of people on the Liverpool Care Pathway for days going into weeks without communication or review or discussion.

‘And also desperate stories of desperate people who are longing for a drink of water who were, through misunderstanding of the Liverpool Care Pathway and poor care, denied a drink.

‘Stories of nurses shouting at families who give a patient a drink were frequent as were stories of people who were just left to get on with it with no regular observations or review.’



www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2364029/How-Liverpool-Care-Pathway-used-excuse-appalling-care.html

[claig]

The Mail's tiny number of journalists can set the agenda for our system. The power of the Mail resides in their millions of readers and it is Dacre and the Mail journalists that deserve praise for working for the benefit of their readers and for what is right.

"No other newspaper campaigns as vigorously as the Mail and I am proud of the ability of the paper’s 400 journalists (the BBC has 8,000) to continually set the national agenda on a whole host of issues."

[claig]

The sidebar of fame is a side issue and not what the Mail is really all about.

The answer to the Guardian's question "Why is the left obsessed by the Daily Mail?" is simple. It is because the Mail is the most effective opponent to their worldview and is an inconvenient thorn of truth in their side. The left would like nothing better than to, as Dacre says, "neutralise Associated, the Mail’s publishers and one of Britain’s most robustly independent and successful newspaper groups" because the Mail is "the paper that is their most vocal critic".

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2455256/PAUL-DACRE-Editor-Mail-answers-papers-critics.html

[claig]

There are some elements in One Nation Labour that would love to "change the culture" of the Mail. But that would be like wishing to change the course of planetary motion. It ain't gonna happen because it just ain't right.

[ttosca]

Unwell.

[PetiteRaleuse]

Dacre comes across as a stubborn paranoid angry hater in the article. The left is obsessed by the Mail because it shows all that is wrong about the right. I am naturally right wing, although I would vote for Labour in the UK, the democrats in the US. But the Mail takes right wing, runs with it until it is a parody of all that is right wing.

As for regulation. You know how the BBC takes complaints seriously and the number of complaints to the beeb are assiduously reported by the Mail? I have complained to the PCC twice about Mail articles, citing the clauses of their 'rules' which I considered broken. Because I was not related to the victims of their gross intrusion they actually wrote to me and said that my complaint was not valid.

THAT IS WRONG.

And that is why I think the written press should be held to the same scrutiny as the broadcast journalists are.

[Nancy66]

the BBC is a state governed body though and funded by the tax payer, therefore it's only right that the tax payer has more of a say in its running.

Newspapers are privately owned.The BBC is not.

It would be totally unworkable for people who had no direct link to a story to complain about it because all the UK press haters would just complain about every story and make the system unworkable. Not that it's relevant as none of the newspapers are going to sign up to it anyhow.

Paul Dacre is chairman of the Editor's Code of Practice Committee - voted for by other editors. Lord Hunt is the Chairman of the PCC

[edam]

The difference in regulation is because when the Beeb was set up airwaves were scarce. You could only have so many radio stations - you had to have a licence from the government to use that frequency. Same applied to TV, remember when there were only three channels?

In contrast, anyone (with enough money) could set up a newspaper. Eddie Shah, for instance. The journalists who created the Indie.

I don't like the Mail's shrill, paranoid, misogynist, dishonest* values (the sidebar of shame is NOT an irrelevance - compare and contrast the values of the website v. the printed paper if you want a definition of hypocrisy) but I defend its right to exist without state regulation.

However, I do think Dacre went bizarrely over the line with the attack on the late Ralph Milliband, as do most of the Mail hacks, I gather. It's backfired.

*Dishonest because a. the content of website b. it never mentions that at the heart of the hatred of the Beeb is commercial rivalry esp. wrt the website.

[nennypops]

Claig, no-one says the Liverpool Care Pathway is or was perfect, but what was shocking was the amount of scaremongering misinformation about it spread by the Mail and Telegraph, and their outright suppression of any facts which didn't support their agenda.. Have a look at the views of Dr Kate Granger as just one sample of a rather more balanced and knowledgeable opinion: she is a practising doctor in palliative care who is also terminally ill with cancer, and she is no doubt that the LCP, properly used, is a very valuable tool and one she would want to be used with her when the time comes.

[nennypops]

So far as the morality of the Mail is concerned, it is frighteningly easy to find numerous examples of their outright cruelty and dishonesty. Just look at their behaviour in relation to Stephen Gateley and Lucy Meadows, for starters. Dacre was 100% in the wrong in claiming that Ralph Miliband hated the UK, and I would have infinitely more respect for him if he would simply admit as much and apologise. His feeble attempts at justification simply compound and exacerbate the original failure.

[MiniTheMinx]

The Daily Mail do not speak truth to power, they are the mouthpiece of an elite class. Our perceptions are limited to believing their deceptions. Do the voices and views of ordinary people shape public discourse? if you think so you are much deluded.