Yup, I don’t think it is that weird. It’s not like I asserted it to you then asked you to support it.
BTW the “denying evidence” part was added to provide balance, but it’s a false balance – the Daily Mail is undoubtedly attached to a number of reactionary positions (anti-immigration, anti-gay-marriage, anti-social-safety-nets, pro-family values*) – I was merely hoping for the best/most egregious/juicy examples of their excesses.
Thanks to all who contributed (even you).
*That doesn’t stop them decorating their online version with a number of scantily clad women (and somewhat disgustingly they are often only minors), nor does it impede them from indulging in body-shaming of whichever public-figure or celebrity they’ve managed to capture by telephoto lens that day.
A few years ago, the Daily Mail became one of the most visited page on the net. I remember Americans (but also others) citing thinking it reputable because it was British.
Last couple of years, from what I have seen the fact the Mail is mostly bullshit seems to be more appreciated in the West Atlantic.
I didn’t say because I’m genuinely interested in whether people see any problems with it without being primed by my comments beforehand. What did you think?
But as the Great Unwashed says, the Mail seem to have seen the story that a Polish driver killed a family while on the phone and decided that the problem wasn’t just the use of the phone, it was also the being Polish. The front page as presented invites us to believe that the use of phones by lorry drivers is widespread among foreigners and (by implication) practically unknown among British drivers. Now, that may be true or it may not, but it will take a lot more than cherry-picked* set of photos to prove it. By presenting mobile phone use while driving as a problem of foreign drivers specifically, the Mail not only taps into, but also encourages and profits from distrust and fear of foreigners. And does so on the flimsiest of evidence. I would argue that this is not good form.
*Imagine the conversation in the editor’s conference:
“This story about the Polish driver who killed that family while using his phone is powerful. Any ideas?”
“Yes! How about we get a photographer to the docks and see how many drivers using their phone he can snap?”
“Good idea. But do you know what would make it even better?”
“Go on…”
“How about if we told him only to photograph foreign drivers? And just ignore any British drivers he saw using their phone?”
"But… why would we ignore them? It’s still dangerous, isn’t it?
“Oh yes, it’s still dangerous. But it’s not foreign, is it?”
(NB For the avoidance of doubt, as this front page does spring from a genuine tragedy: I think mobile phone use while driving is awesome and I cheer every time it kills a child.)
It’s unfair to characterise this as “right-wing” rather than just “appalling”, but the headline in one Mail story in response to today’s ruling that responsibility for triggering Article 50 rests with Parliament and not the Crown was:
Capitals in original.
Both the headline and the article have beenradically changed following a fairly immediate backlash, but it’s quite something that the Mail’s first instinct when running a hatchet job on a judge it didn’t like was to attack his sexuality.
Thing is, our TV news services are, on the whole, fairly impartial (with the usual caveats about story selection etc), but our newspapers are really, really not. We’re not well served by our press, sadly.
This is nonsense. The British press is a rottweiler that keeps the political class vaguely honest; Cash for Questions, anti-Iraq invasion, MP expenses, and countless other stories about fees for access, donations, gifts, and other forms of sought influence - Parliament has never been as clean as it currently is.
Ditto the peripheral Royals as well, for whatever that’s worth.
Leverson cleaned up most of the rest - in effect though not in law.
You make a good point (although they were mostly pro-Iraq invasion), but consider much of the press coverage of, say, the EU or benefits claimants or immigration over the last few decades. Impartial? Honest? Nah.
OK, I’ll grant you that it isn’t all bad - keeping politicians relatively honest is valuable, although I’m not quite sure why Rupert Murdoch seems to have had easy access to various Prime Ministers But the toxic drip-drip-drip of misinformation on various topics, over decades, has damaged our democracy too.
I was actually comparing national TV networks on purpose, because there really aren’t “national” newspapers like there are in the UK; there are a handful of local papers with readership beyond their core areas - Washington Post, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, for example, but very few (one that I can think of- USA Today) national newspapers.
And most of the local ones make an effort to be reasonably objective, unlike the TV networks which sometimes have a clear bias one way or the other.
Hell, the only real bias I find with the Dallas Morning News is in their sports coverage, where their college coverage is very clearly biased toward a couple of schools that wear orange/white and red/white.
But the toxic drip-drip-drip of misinformation on various topics, over decades, has damaged our democracy too.