Hate Mail! (The Mail)

Name: Ian Proudfoot

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Product:	The Mail
Date:	31/07/01 (347 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Poor journalism, Sensationalism, Bigoted

Three words to cause fear in the heart of anyone who has a brain in their heads ‘The Daily Mail’. As the mass media sinks further and further into a quagmire of tabloidism, trivial hysteria, misinformation and reductionism one paper can be seen as leading this charge into the abyss. That paper is the Daily Mail, bastion of Middle England, small-minded small isle xenophobia and bigotry.

The thing that makes me shudder more than anything about the existence of the Daily Mail is that it believes it self to more than the tabloid piece of trash it is. Unlike ‘The Sun’, ‘The Mirror’ or ‘The Star’, the Daily Mail actually believes it is equal or not better than the broad sheets. It also has an agenda, which it believes to be gospel and like the most determined religious zealot it will not accept any criticism of it’s position.

The Daily Mail is guilty of many things, but I want to concentrate on two particular issues that it has been campaigned over the last year. The first is the paper’s campaign against mobile Phones and the other is their recent furore they have created around the recent Brass Eye special.

Let’s start with the mobile phone issue. A lot has been written by the Mail about the supposed dangers that Mobile phones present to the public and in particular children. This would have been fine if the paper had had a balanced approach to the issue, looking at the various reports than scientific bodies had produced, assimilated and assessing that information and publishing a balanced reporting.
No instead we get massively bias against mobile phone usage and the installation of radio masts throughout the UK. Mobile phone masts have been made out of the work of pure evil, beaming radio waves into the heads of our children and damaging their under developed minds. Sounds more like the rantings of a paranoid conspiracist rather than the supposed researched arguments of
skilled journalists.

Even when reports were released that showed their no links between mobile phone usage and health risks, the Mail like a mammoth trapped in a tar pit stayed entrenched in it’s position. Instead of discussing the topic in an educated and informed way, The Mail just hit back with more rhetoric. The Mail seems to believe that it is right and the experts are fools are worse misleading the public. The Mail always plays the emotional blackmail card of using child as the potential victims of mobile phone usage. By using this trump card they know they can weld more power on an issue where their blatant misinformation and hysterical reporting would clearly be dismissed. The Mail knows that people will not be so willing to attack an issue if the future and health of ‘our children’ is at stake.

So instead of dealing with the real issues of the matter, The Mail uses the defence of “What about the children?” as a cover for its woolly thinking and lowest common denomination journalism.

Which brings me on to the issue that has been burning in the pages of the Daily Mail over the last few days. The Brass Eye special on Paedophilia and the media. The Brass Eye special was a highly satirical look at the way the mass media and tabloid newspapers have dealt with a highly controversial issue. The Mail seems to believe that Brass Eye was in fact making light of the issue and even promoting paedophilia. Hysterical reports have filled the pages of The Mail asking for the ‘Sick filth’ to be banned and Channel 4 closed down. Whilst never dealing with the issues that Brass Eye raised and instead centring on the fact that Chris Morris and co dared mention paedophilia on television.

The Mail has claimed that they have wide range support for their stance with a record number of complaints being directed against the programme. In reality the number of people who have contacted Channel 4 to give su
pport has outweighed the number of complaints. The Mail has of course ignored this and it doesn’t fit with its right wing bigoted position on the issue of paedophiles. The Mail along with other tabloids has spearheaded a campaign that has lead to paedophiles being forced into hiding (making the monitoring of them increasingly difficult) in fear of vigilante lynch mobs whipped up by the over exaggerated fear of paedophiles.

The name and shame campaign including publishing out of date pictures of registered sex offenders (which includes people who are not paedophiles) has also lead to innocent people being attacked just because they looked similar to the published pictures. At worst the offices of paediatricians were attacked by mobs unable to distinguish between let only spell the two words.

The Mail has used Brass Eye as an excuse to continue its misinformation and reductionism of this issue. Instead of looking for an educated solution it has handed the issue over to mob rule. Brass Eye has been made into the scapegoat of all the evils associated with paedophilia. While The Mail stands high on the moral highland, brandishing its spear of burning indignation.

The Mail has also attacked the liberals and libertarians who have defended Brass Eye in the media. Labelling them as the defenders of filth and as part of the so-called ‘Hampstead Intellectual Elite’. The Mail seems to have big problems with people who criticise their stance, particularly these intellectuals who they constantly blame for many of society’s problems. Didn’t a certain German Fascist leader share the same position on intellectuals?

The thing is The Mail is content to publish it’s poison tip journalism, knowing it is safe it the confines of the protected realms of the corporate mass media. Safe in the fact that it has an audience that agrees with it’s misinformed ill-educated views. A recent survey stated that the UK has
the most under educated workforce in the EU, with papers like The Mail attempting to publish trashy tabloid tales as balanced broadsheet bulletins, this situation is not going to change.

Do yourself a favour boycott The Mail and challenge its readers as to why they are willing to suck on a black and white printed nipple to happy to scandalise, sensationalise and simplify complex issues into sound bites to fit their small minded and agenda laden propaganda.

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