The Daily mail (The Mail)

Name:

Hello doyoo user, You have to be logged in to use these functions... Login or register Close window

Product:	The Mail
Date:	04/03/01 (33 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very reassuring for closet Tories, xenophobes and racists.

Disadvantages: If you're not a white middle-class Tory male, you're not coming in.

If I had to put the Mail into a comfortable bracket, it'd be the one reserved for ninety year-old Tory peers and retired schoolteachers from Kent. The three sit quite nicely together, spouting their utter drivel at anyone who should care to listen.

The frankly disgusting aspects of the Mail are numerous. I try, in my opinions, to be as objective as possible while still recounting my own experience, but I am afraid in this instance I could only live with myself if I am completely honest and criticise the paper for the tripe it is.

Primarily, it's fixation with the past is ridiculous. It seems to be living in a world where wives stay at home to bring up the children, husbands (for there are no illegitemate offspring) go out to work from 6am to 11pm every day to earn an honest living, and the Conservatives rule over this idyllic land with only the hush-hush deviancy of Lord Cranbottom smearing the picture. And even that is a source of much good humour around the dining table.

The Mail is very much a Tory paper and this perspective comes across in the overwhelming majority of it's reporting. Although substantial in terms of news coverage - comparing well to it's most similar rival, the Express - I can never read the paper in comfort, always feeling it necessary to take a critical, even cynical view of everything printed. I firmly believe that news coverage should be free of all political association, as the job the Mail does, as an example, is to influence those who are perhaps unsure of their affiliations. True, all newspapers do this to some extent, but the Mail is deliberate and open in it's attempts and I find this disgusting.

The strong political bias runs through all elements of the paper, which on a weekday will weigh in at a quite substantial number of pages. You know what they say though, about quality over quantity... Aside from fairly in-depth news coverage, there are a regular number of features whi
ch will look closely at some item relevant to the time (see: the 1950s). Perhaps the most peculiar and laughable aspect is the obsession with C-grade celebrities, many of which I admit to having never heard of prior to their appearances. In particular, the columnist Dempsey believes he is entertaining us with his insight into upper-class goings-on, when in reality his work is irrelevant, uninteresting and petty.

The Mail clearly targets readers with aspirations to move up in the world, the middle classes who believe "taking the Mail" to be a sign of social superiority. Personally, I find this attitude ignorant at best, and idiotic at worst. The Mail merely serves to reassure those who understand the beliefs and ideals of the paper, and look down upon it's upwardly-mobile readership.

I can seriously find very little of merit to the Mail. It is not especially strong in terms of news coverage, features or sport, and has a worrying political undercurrent running through it. At times it is xenophobic and displays a horrific lack of empathy for the most vulnerable in our society - single mothers, the homeless, immigrants and so on. This attitude escapes censorship only because it is disguised under the hood of investigative journalism.

Look at that thirty-five pence in your hand as you walk into the newsagents, and ask yourself whether it would serve a better purpose in the hands of a charity or in the pockets of the Mail. For me, the choice is clear. A newspaper which I would avoid at all costs.

Summary: