Should ‘The Daily Mail’ be banned under the Obscene Publications Act?

The political columnist Owen Jones has described ‘The Daily Mail’ as an “almost farcically detestable rag”, while the American freelance writer Keith Kloor called it “a bastion of melodramatic and scurrilous journalism”. Some might see those as understatements. It’s been around since 1896, and it only took four years for it to begin to earn its reputation for showing scant regard for the truth or the consequences of what it prints. On that occasion, it was the false report of a massacre of Europeans during the Boxer Rebellion in China.
 
In 1919, 'The Daily Mail' said that as so many men had died, lots of single women should be deported lest they "spread lesbianism and adultery". In 1924 it swung a general election to the Tories by posting, four days before polling, the outrageous ‘Zinoviev letter’ which was later proved to be a forgery. In 1938, ‘The Daily Mail’ was printing horror stories about German Jewish refugees “pouring into this country”, pumping out the same vitriol that it reserves for asylum seekers nowadays. Only last spring, a column by Richard Littlejohn mocking transgender schoolteacher Lucy Meadows helped pile on bullying that sent her fleeing from her job, and it may have contributed to her suicide a few weeks later. Not surprisingly, over the years this so-called newspaper has been successfully sued by many people, including Alan Sugar, Diana Rigg and Elton John.
 
It’s been widely reported how ‘The Daily Mail’ printed an article accusing the late Ralph Miliband (a Jewish refugee who served in the British navy during World War Two) of “hating Britain”. Wasn’t that an obscenity? Stefan Stern writes: “The paper that protests loudest of all about the freedom of the press is relaxed about smearing the dead and attributing views to someone that he clearly did not hold. In one sense this is all a compliment to Ed Miliband. If he weren’t seen as a threat by the right, it is unlikely such excessive treatment would be handed out. But you suspect that even a lot of ‘Daily Mail’ readers will find this sort of spiteful behaviour hard to accept.” Of course ‘The Daily Mail’ “loves Britain” so much that its owner, who has a fortune of over a billion pounds, pays no tax here; the parent company, Rothermere Continuation Ltd, is registered in Bermuda.
 
Owen Jones develops Stern’s argument: “This stomach-churning attack on Ed Miliband’s father - and him by association - is a warning. The British right are preparing one of the most poisonous, vicious all-out wars against the left in post-war Britain. If this is how far into the gutter this wretched ‘newspaper’ is already willing to plunge, what’s it going to be like six months before the election? The logic of the campaign is three-fold. Firstly, the right believe that Ed Miliband has veered off script, abandoning the free market fundamentalist consensus established by Thatcherism in favour of what - by historical standards - is pretty mild social democracy. Secondly, the right-wing media barons who set the terms of what is deemed politically palatable in Britain have never forgiven Ed Miliband for his endorsement of Leveson, which they believe is an unacceptable threat to their power. Thirdly, they think Labour under Ed Miliband could actually win the 2015 election.”
 
Ed Miliband's father fought fascism, but ‘The Daily Mail’ supported it, both in this country (the paper’s owner wrote an article in January 1934 entitled 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts' and praising Oswald Mosley), and also in Germany and Italy. Lord Rothermere was a friend of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, and directed the paper’s editorial stance towards them in the early 1930s. He predicted that "the minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany". In October 1938, he sent this telegram to Hitler: “My dear Fuhrer, everyone in England is profoundly moved by the bloodless solution to the Czechoslovakian problem. People not so much concerned with territorial readjustment as with dread of another war with its accompanying bloodbath. Frederick the Great was a great popular figure. I salute your Excellency’s star, which rises higher and higher.” Nothing much changes; in April 2012, ‘The Daily Mail’ was supporting the fascist Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election.
 
Don’t let’s pretend that we have a free press in this country. We have a bought press, owned by a handful of moguls who dictate the political slant of their papers, which is most cases is right-wing. ‘Freedom’ is not the same thing as ‘licence’, which is a more apt description of the irresponsible way in which ‘The Daily Mail’ operates. Jonathan Freedland commented in ‘The Guardian’: “There are plenty on the left who have long believed the Mail to be a dark, brooding presence in British public life, churning out its daily diet of going-to-the-dogs pessimism. Now many others will see why. For attacking Ed Miliband via his late father, that newspaper has revealed its ugliest face.” As Owen Jones says: “Anybody who wants to build a different sort of country - not a Britain treated as a plaything by wealthy barons who can’t even be bothered to pay tax - needs to stand against this poison.”  
 
Stefan Stern gives us reason to hope that the excessive influence of such gutter tabloids may be waning: “In a world of rapidly falling circulations, newspapers cannot afford to display contempt for accuracy and by extension contempt for their readers as well. The mainstream media, and especially the papers, are nothing like the force they were even five years ago. People get their news from a variety of sources, and then share and reinforce their views on uncontrollable social media.”
 
In the 1930s, ‘The Spectator’ condemned Lord Rothermere’s article supporting Mosley: “The Blackshirts, like ‘The Daily Mail’, appeal to people unaccustomed to thinking. The average ‘Daily Mail’ reader is a potential Blackshirt ready made. When Lord Rothermere tells his clientele to go and join the fascists some of them pretty certainly will.” Isn’t that an obscenity?
 
Wikipedia defines an obscenity as “any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time”. Hasn’t ‘The Daily Mail’ been posting such statements throughout its history? The Obscene Publications Act of 1959 says “an article shall be deemed to be obscene if its effect or (where the article comprises two or more distinct items) the effect of any one of its items is, if taken as a whole, such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it.” Does ‘The Daily Mail’ corrupt the minds of those weak-willed souls who swallow the bile that it publishes, some of whom even go as far as regurgitating it on forums such as this one? Is it time that ‘The Daily Mail’ was banned?
 
Sources used:-
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail
 
http://labourlist.org/2013/10/the-daily-mail-is-a-scorpion-to-sting-is-its-nature/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LabourListLatestPosts+%28LabourList%29
 
http://owenjonesramblings.tumblr.com/post/62811986074/be-prepared-the-right-are-preparing-all-out-war
 
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/01/daily-mail-ed-miliband-father
 
http://www.legalweek.com/legal-week/blog-post/2136919/obscene-publications-acts
 
Further reference:-
 
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/09/milibands-defence-his-father-against-daily-mail-defining-moment
 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2132611/French-elections-2012-Marine-Le-Pen-responsible-vote-France.html

No newspaper has ever made a profit from its cover-price alone. Leaving aside Vanity Publishing, which requires a proprietor with enormous personal resources, advertisers pay for everything.

If you disagree with the contents of a particular rag you should not only refrain from buying it, but also avoid buying the products it advertises. Advertisers are very quick to withdraw their custom from an unproductive medium.

Our interpretation of the copyright laws is that no more than 14-15 lines of any article should be quoted in a message, and that the source should be acknowledged. There are two exceptions:-
1. If the quote is from Wikipedia, which allows longer quotes, as long as they are acknowledged.
2. If you have written permission from the author to reproduce an article in its entirety.
 
https://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/t137-copyright-concerns
 
This is to confirm that I have written permission, via Twitter, to post the whole of the following blog by Tom Pride (@ThomasPride) on this forum:-
 
Dear Mr Dacre,

My name is Thomas Pride and I’m senior political editor at Pride's Purge. Well actually I'm the only editor at Pride's Purge - or person even - but my good friend Mehdi Hasan suggested I drop you a line as I’m very keen to write for the Daily Mail.

Although I am on the left of the political spectrum, and disagree with the Mail’s editorial line on a range of issues such as, well, just about everything you could think of really, I have always admired the paper’s passion, rigour, boldness and, of course, top rates of pay.

While you may think I differ substantially from the Mail's usual columnists - I can assure you I believe very strongly that the Mail has a vitally important role to play on important contemporary matters which I am very keen to highlight - particularly substantive issues such as for example the dire state of my bank account.

Admittedly, there could be some minor social issues on which you may think we do not see eye to eye. For example I tend to regard disadvantaged children as the nation's most wasted valuable resource - a massive and damaging failure of collective consensus and public investment in the very people who hold the future of our society and our planet in their tiny hands - as opposed to the disposable factory fodder for multinational corporations that you obviously see them as.

And I have to admit I quite admire single mothers - the vast majority of them single-handedly bringing up their children with love and providing them with solace and security while often trying to hold down a badly-paid job with little or no support from anyone else - while you tend to see them as legions of demonic harpies intent on bringing about the destruction of middle England and every value we hold dear - ready to plunge us all into a dark age of immorality, malfeasance and delinquency in their relentless quest to suck the nation's hard-working millionaires dry of their hard-won luxury lifestyles, private yachts and tax breaks. But I'm sure we could just agree to disagree on that, couldn't we?

I believe – as does Mehdi – that if you decided to employ me as one of your columnists, I could be a fresh, passionate, polemical and contrarian, not to mention a much richer, voice on the comment and feature pages of your award-winning newspaper. My contributions would provide an alternative view of the world for your readers - with a column noticeably unlike the rest of your newspaper's content because it would include facts, reason and things which were true.

For the record, I am not a Labour tribalist and am often ultra-critical of the left – especially on social and moral issues, such as the morality of selling yourself out to a right-wing, tiny-minded red-top rag owned by a Nazi-sympathising family of tax exiles who give so much scarcity of shit about our country that they don't even live here.

I however - unlike my fellow leftists and liberals - have no such qualms. I could therefore write pieces for the Mail critical of Labour and the left, from “inside” Labour and the left - with the level of disparagement and opprobrium directly correlated to the amount of money you pay me. A couple of grand ( I believe that's known as a 'Geoffrey Archer' in Fleet Street slang) would get you say a few insinuations of incompetence levelled at my fellow leftists - with at least ten grand for fully-made up stories of infidelity or corruption.

A bit of background: I am a retired 350-year old ex-officer of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army. I don't think it would be immodest of me to point out that I was responsible for arguably the only coup-d'etat in British history - namely the purging of the Parliament of undesirable MPs and peers way back in December 1648, during the Second English Civil War. So clearly, I don't suffer fools gladly, although I assure you I would be more than happy to make an exception in the case of the Daily Mail. Given a suitable fee of course.

I believe that as an ex-military man and Puritan, I'm sure I will be popular with the more conservative minded members of your readership - although the fact I was heavily involved in the events which led to the execution of the reigning monarch of the time may have to be kept quiet from the more royalist of them. (Don't worry about the Puritan bit by the way - I'm well and truly lapsed now, and like most of Fleet Street am quite liable to down half a bottle of whisky given half of an excuse to do it, although I'd struggle to keep a mistress at my age, as you could well imagine.)

I do hope you’ll consider me for future columns and features in the Daily Mail on political, social, moral or religious issues. I'm sure that if we were allowed to co-operate, we would be able to forge a successful and fruitful working relationship to our mutual benefit - despite the fact you may regard many of my views and opinions as a form of socialism.

In fact, considering your newspaper owner's fondness for national socialism - I believe we are already half-way there.

Thank you very much for your time.

Sincerely,

Thomas Pride
Senior Editor (Politics)
Pride's Purge

http://tompride.co.uk/i-ve-applied-for-a-job-at-the-daily-mail.-here-s-my-application-letter

I believe it's not the most popular website in the world although I think that's probably down to the 'celebrity' garbage which seems to fill the online edition as opposed to the bile which still seems to dominate the printed edition. If you ever go to an article on their site the links down the right-hand side will make you lose the will to live.

Unless your bag is semi-clad girls displayed with a slightly disapproving caption.

oftenwrong wrote:-
No newspaper has ever made a profit from its cover-price alone……advertisers pay for everything.

If you disagree with the contents of a particular rag you should not only refrain from buying it, but also avoid buying the products it advertises. Advertisers are very quick to withdraw their custom from an unproductive medium.

Very true. When ‘The Daily Herald’ ceased publication in 1964, it was more because of insufficient advertising sales than declining readership.
 
Not only should you decline from buying gutter tabloids if you disapprove of them, but you shouldn’t click on to their websites, since that encourages advertisers to think they’re worth patronising.
 
Getting back to the subject, should I write to Ed Miliband and suggest that owners of UK newspapers be required to live in the UK, be British citizens and pay full UK taxes, or would that be classified as ‘restraint of trade’?

John Donne's personal habits may have left something to be desired, but he left us with one of the great truths about the human condition, No man is an island....

Because Britain increased Visa charges for inhabitants of the Indian sub-continent wishing to come here, the cost to a Brit of visiting there has now doubled - to almost £90. Germany is contemplating a £50 flat-rate charge for any car entering German roads. (Natives have that refunded when they pay for their tax-disc.)

Similar tit-for-tat measures are likely to follow attempts to impose special conditions on foreigners working or trading here.

'Should' is one of those nice words that everyone thinks 'should' mean something. The current system is not about to ban the Mail because it tells their lies. To get shot of that filth we'd need a strike there backed by everyone, and the current 'Labour' Party is not going to start representing labour, truth or any of that wild socialist stuff but will always fight for the 'freedom' of the bankers' press to tell lies. If I were going there I shouldn't start from here, frankly.

Don’t click on ‘The Daily Mail’
 
Extracts from an article by Steven Baxter:-
 
"There's a difficulty about writing about ‘Daily Mail’ columnists without falling into a couple of traps.

It's become something of a cliché, the wringing-wet liberal getting all antsy about something provocative that a Mail columnist has churned out, raising yourself into a sense of righteous anger over someone else's terribly un-PC and controversial views that they churn out, every week, to a deadline and to a word count.

The second trap people can fall into is promoting the very thing you're unhappy about. If you get angry about a Mail columnist in the privacy of your own living room, that's one thing. If you do it on Twitter, the power of the hyperlink means that you may well be inviting lots of other people in the echo chamber to get similarly angry about the same thing, who will tell their friends with similar views about how awful it is, and they'll click on the link to look at how vile the views are, and so on, and so on.

The Mail's website gets millions of visitors a day. It's not recorded in web traffic statistics whether you approve of the content that you've just seen or not; your presence is just added to the total. Advertisers and potential advertisers don't get told that a lot of people who visit Mail Online are swearing under their breath as they read the awful toxic words; they just get shown the numbers.

If you want a happier day, don't click on the link."
 
For the whole article:-
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/steven-baxter/2011/02/daily-mail-website-angry-views

".... don't click on the link."

That's good advice in much of your internet activity. Perhaps "Think before you click" should be pasted above your screen.

There are criminals out there in cyberspace who send you e-mails designed to plant a software spy on your system that will tell them your bank details. You probably know about that, but what you may not know is that these scams are now sophisticated enough to work even if you don't act upon the message contents. Anything from an unknown sender should be deleted without opening it.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, e-bay et al make lots of money by providing advertisers with a profile of your search activities, and automatically "tailoring" their delivery to reflect your tastes as demonstrated by the things you have previously clicked onto.

The Daily Mail is not the only newspaper to have an online edition, but it is arguably more successful at it than some others. Their struggle for popular readership has resulted in a claimed 150 million regular viewers of Mail Online. The Owner, Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) does not confine itself to news publishing, but also maintains websites covering recruitment, property sales, and corporate entertaining. Its network of regional newspapers has been sold off, and more than half of DMGT's profit (£282million last year) now comes from overseas.

Click! There's another 0.001p for Lord Rothermere.

Perhaps you shouldn't click on the link at the end of this message.....   

Owen Jones has said several times that the 2015 election campaign will be the dirtiest in modern history. Why? Because there’s so much at stake, including the survival of both the NHS and the welfare state. It’s the last chance to stop this country from becoming a corporate fascist state. Well, it seems the campaign has started already.

Just when you think that ‘The Daily Mail’ can’t sink any further into the sewer, it does (and I know someone who would have loved to have rushed in here at 6am today and promoted this filth). Its latest offering is to attempt to smear both Harriet Harman and her husband Jack Dromey because they worked for the National Council for Civil Liberties in the 1970s. While they were there, some scumbags calling themselves the Paedophile Information Exchange managed, as ‘The Daily Mail’ concedes, to ally their sick cause to the gay rights movement, which was being supported by the NCCL.

What a smear! So by this logic, if you’re a teacher in a school and one of the staff turns out to be a paedophile, everyone is guilty by association. Or if a paedophile is found to have been a Tory supporter - and plenty of then have been - does that make all Tories guilty of paedophilia? Of course, the clue as to why this outrageous article has been dredged up now comes in the last sentence - “with fresh light about to be shed on this dark passage in history”.

Lord McAlpine has just died. You can’t libel a dead person, and a dead person can’t threaten to take anyone down with them. We’ve all noticed how the truth about Savile and Cyril Smith only came out after they died. So what is about to be revealed next? Was McAlpine not quite as innocent as he protested when he was claiming compensation from the BBC and ITV? Or are we about to get “fresh light” about the still living former Tory home secretary, allegations about whom are plastered all over the internet? What could be the motive for this latest piece of excrement from ‘The Daily Mail’?

You must have noticed how, whenever a scandal involving Tories emerges, the stock response from their apologists is “they’re all as bad as each other”, as if that somehow negates the sleaze. Is the fact that Harriet Harman and her husband worked for the NCCL in the 1970s in any way comparable to the paedophile ring which revolved around Thatcher's government? Only in 'The Daily Mail' mindset.

Thatcher entertained Savile at Chequers on New Year’s Eve for all eleven years that she was PM. Don’t let anyone try to tell you that she didn’t know what he was like. Four times her request for him to be given a knighthood was turned down – do you really think she wouldn’t have demanded to know why?

‘The Daily Mail’ describes the PIE as left-wing, but then it would, wouldn’t it? This story may be a bit too far out from the election to have the effect of a 'Zinoviev letter', but it’s no doubt a sign of things to come. And it’s not very healthy for our so-called democracy.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2523526/How-Labour-Deputy-Harriet-Harman-shadow-minister-husband-Health-Secretary-Patricia-Hewitt-linked-group-lobbying-right-sex-children.html

Newspapers exist for the sole purpose of making money, like most other Registered Companies in the UK. The shareholders expect a dividend from their investment, so an Editor is required to deliver a readership that Advertisers wish to address.

Accordingly, a newspaper will contain what the Reader can agree with, and continue to buy that paper.

I picked one up from the table while waiting in the Chinese Takeaway this week , but I kept my gloves on , so should be safe...

I used to enjoy the crossword in the Daily Mail - it's at about the standard I can manage in a working day. The other content of the publication is just too nasty, though.
The Guardian crossword is often a bit too hard for me.

It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this board that I may be seriously challenged by a crossword in the Beano...      

I'm sure your fellow members of the Pease Pottage Conservative Club would have no problem with that. Or with a jigsaw puzzle which said on the box: "20 pieces - 3 to 5 years". Some of them might even finish it in 2.

A statement from Harriet Harman
(not subject to copyright)
 
"In recent days I have been the subject of a politically-motivated smear campaign by 'The Daily Mail'.

They have accused me of being an apologist for child sex abuse, of supporting a vile paedophile organisation, of having a relaxed attitude to paedophilia and of watering down child pornography laws. These are horrific allegations and I strongly deny them all of them.

This is not the first time 'The Daily Mail' has made this horrible and untrue allegation. And, this is not the first time 'The Daily Mail' has attacked me. The editor and proprietor of 'The Daily Mail' are entitled to their political views and they are of course entitled to oppose what I stand for but they are not entitled to use their newspaper to smear me with innuendo because they disagree with me politically and hate my values.

I sincerely hope people won't believe these smears - I suspect even 'The Daily Mail' doesn't believe them to be true.  But given the seriousness and the aggression with which 'The Daily Mail' are pursuing me, I feel that I need to put the facts in the public domain.

1. Allegation that I supported the lowering of the age of consent to 10

This is not true.  I supported the equalisation of the age of consent (as set out in NCCL document “priorities and strategy for the executive committee June 1981") by making the age of consent the same for homosexual as well as for heterosexual sex.

2. Allegation that I opposed the law on incest

This is not true.  The document they refer to was written by NCCL in 1976 before I started to work there.

3. Allegation that I was seeking to water down a proposed ban on child pornography.

This is not true.  I supported the Protection of Children Bill 1978.  At the start of the document it makes clear that “The NCCL deplores the exploitation of children whether in the form of use in commercial pornography or as victims of sexual assaults".

The submission argued for some amendments to guard against unintended consequences including:

- Parents being criminalised for taking pictures of their children on the beach or in the bath

-  The use of pictures in sex education being criminalised

-  We also proposed that the definition of indecent was too wide and instead proposed "obscene" as indecent was very broadly defined and could include Page 3 of 'The Sun'.

'The Daily Mail' have tried to make me guilty by way guilt by association.

NCCL was an organisation which anyone could apply to join and indeed any organisation could apply to be "an affiliate" on payment of a fee. When I was at NCCL there were around 6,000 members and nearly 1,000 affiliated organisations of which PIE was one.

Members and affiliates decided the organisation's policy at the AGM from year to year.

I was aware that because NCCL opposed censorship and supported gay rights, paedophiles had sought to exploit that and use NCCL as a vehicle to make their arguments.  But by the time I came to work for NCCL this vile organisation had already been vigorously challenged within the organisation. Jack Dromey was instrumental in that challenge when he took over the chair of NCCL in 1976.

The reason I decided to go to work for NCCL was because I actively supported the work they had done and in particular the work of their women's rights committee on the Equal Pay Act, on the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act and for greater protection of victims of domestic violence and against race discrimination.

Since being elected to the House of Commons in 1982 and during my times in Ministerial Office I have always championed the rights of those subjected to sexual abuse - especially women and children.

I hope 'The Daily Mail' will stop this campaign of smear and innuendo against me.  I have done nothing wrong and am guilty of none of their grotesque allegations."
 
http://www.harrietharman.org/nccl-statement---24022014

Ms Harman is not in a great place right now, and I doubt if any explanations from her will help to prevent the pursuit of her her by the Daily Mail.

It would come as no surprise to me if this rag simply made up an endless stream of 'stories' about Labour figures right up to May 2015 ( and beyond). Such is the nature of the publication and its desire to influence the political landscape.

Nevertheless, it has not yet committed the ultimate despicable act by suggesting that Harman was ever a Tory apologist - there could be no allegation which would be more likely to turn the stomach of anyone with a shred of common decency...

Does anyone else feel that the interviewer on last nights Newsnight was particularly aggressive and unfair towards Harman?

Indeed I did, astradt1.

I wonder if Peter Bone, Tory MP, will get a similar grilling - before he is found totally innocent of any wrongdoing over his alleged 'creative accounting', of course...!

Harmon's explanation seems perfectly plausible to me but I doubt she'll get a fair hearing.

Fight fire with fire. The spotless Tory Party machine may live to regret beginning their attack so far in advance of a General Election.

I wonder if this was the sort of thing Lord Rothermere used to talk about to his genial chum?
 

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BhUtEoaIAAEVXTM.jpg

Victoria Beckham's baby girl looked every inch the budding fashionista as she jetted to New York with her mum for Fashion Week.
 
Photos on the Daily Mail website show 19-month-old Harper kitted out in a fur-trimmed coat, a checked skirt and tights as she and her mum flew to the US where Victoria will be showcasing her new collection.
 
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2080741/David-Beckham-totes-baby-Harper-Victoria-shines-tartan-sequins.html#ixzz2uNVrhLeD
 
 
....and for balance:
 
Banks told ministers Royal Mail could have been worth up to £8.67BILLION, more than double its final sale price
21 banks pitching to work on floatation put value at £2.8billion-£8.6billion
 
But the postal service was eventually sold and privatised at just £3.3 billion
Share price has soared by 80% and firm is now valued at almost £6billion
 
Labour's Chuka Umunna says decision 'could have cost taxpayers dearly'
 
 
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2567393/Banks-told-ministers-Royal-Mail-worth-8-67BILLION-double-final-sale-price.html#ixzz2uNeVsx6P

Paul Dacre of ‘The Daily Mail’: The man who hates liberal Britain
 
Some extracts from an article by Peter Wilby which show the appalling lies which ‘The Daily Mail’ frequently spews out:-
 
"In the past ten years, the Mail has reported that the dean of RAF College Cranwell showed undue favouritism to Muslim students (false); Steve Bing hired a private investigator to destroy the reputation of Liz Hurley (false); Sharon Stone left her four-year-old child alone in a car while she dined at a restaurant (false); Rowan Atkinson needed five weeks’ treatment at a clinic for depression (false); a Tamil refugee, on hunger strike in Parliament Square, was secretly eating McDonald’s burgers (false); Kate Winslet lied over her exercise regime (false); Elton John ordered guests at his Aids charity ball to speak to him only if spoken to (false); Amama Mbabazi, the PM of Uganda, benefited personally from the theft of £10m in foreign aid (false). In all these cases, the Mail paid damages.

In 2013, the Mail reported that disabled people are exempt from the bedroom tax; that asylum-seekers had 'targeted' Scotland; that disabled babies were being euthanised under the Liverpool Care Pathway; that a Kenyan asylum-seeker had committed murders in his home country; that 878,000 recipients of Employment Support Allowance had stopped claiming 'rather than face a fresh medical'; that a Portsmouth primary school had denied pupils water on the hottest day of the year because it was Ramadan; that wolves would soon return to Britain; that nearly half the electricity produced by windfarms was discarded. All these reports were false."
 
For the whole article:-
http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/12/man-who-hates-liberal-britain

All those years back my Mum and Dad used to have the Daily Mail delivered to our house, and I read it at breakfast before going to school.

Should I seek psychiatric help ...?

I think it's possible you may have had a spontaneous recovery Phil - wouldn't worry too much if I were you

PIE, the NCCL and Harriet Harman: why she was right not to apologise
 
Extracts from an article by Zoe Williams:-

The Daily Mail's attempt to destroy the Deputy Labour leader's reputation is McCarthyite. She was right not to apologise: to do so would have been to give credence to this story, which is no more than a tenuous smear campaign. It's not news; it's not even new. The fact of the National Council for Civil Liberties having taken subscriptions from the Paedophile Information Exchange first surfaced in 2009.

To apologise would have been to accept the preposterous demands of a newspaper ("Just say sorry!" the front page insisted on Tuesday) that is being utterly disingenuous – it doesn't believe Harman gave succour to paedophiles any more than it thinks Ed Miliband hates his country. All this outrage is confected to destroy reputations – it doesn't matter how long ago, or how distant the association was. The PIE was "affiliated" to your group? They were your official partners. Your father bore all the signs of having read Marx? He was a communist and so are you.

The only way you could escape censure would be to have never had any political views about anything, and to have sprung, fully formed, into your opinionless existence without the hindrance of parents or other antecedents. This campaign against Harman is nasty, ominous, calculating, anti-intellectual and could happen to anyone. The Daily Mail is like a blackmailer – if you give in to it, it just wants more.
 
For the whole article:-
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/25/harriet-harman-daily-mail

We should acknowledge the professionalism of The Daily Mail in getting people (who would never buy the wretched thing) to propogate its message. Free.

It's definitely the case that they just want her to say sorry in order to validate their smear campaign. Harmon's absolutely correct not to do so.

Harman is right to go to war with ‘The Daily Mail’
 
Extracts from an article by George Eaton:-
 
The Mail's success in forcing its story on the ‘links’ between Labour figures and a paedophile rights group onto the national news is a reminder of how Fleet Street can still set the agenda. Labour's initial response to the splash, which branded Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey and Patricia Hewitt "apologists for paedophilia" over their alleged support for the now-defunct Paedophile Information Exchange in the 1970s, was to ignore it. But after the Mail led twice more on the story, and columnists in other papers argued there were questions to answer, the party broke its silence.

After the Mail's disastrous attempt to smear Ralph Miliband (which Labour believes explains the paper's current vitriol), the party's figures are more confident than ever in questioning its moral legitimacy and Harman (invariably referred to as ‘Harperson’ in its pages) has more reason than most to challenge its authority. Her reluctance to issue anything resembling an apology was understandable. It risked being seen as an admission of guilt and as a validation of the Mail's smears. After banking her apology, the Mail would next demand her resignation.

But while now expressing appropriate regret for the NCCL's past laxity, Harman is not retreating from the battlefield. She stands by her accusation that the Mail “publishes indecent photos” and "will not take lectures from them". She is entirely right. Rather than merely challenging the message, it is essential to challenge the messenger too. The Mail's deeds, both past and present, mean it is standing on the thinnest moral ground.
 
For the whole article:-
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/02/harman-right-go-war-daily-mail

Next year the British electorate will get the government it deserves.  The DMGT will no doubt be satisfied if their investment should prove to have yielded a dividend.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-206154

If ‘The Daily Mail’ had been genuinely concerned about real links to paedophile activity, instead of just trying to smear Labour politicians, it might have pursued this story. A man who claims he was raped by a senior Tory politician “more than a dozen times” when he was 13 years old accused William Hague of stifling an inquiry in 1996, when he was Welsh secretary, into paedophile activity by limiting its scope. Why did Hague do that? Why isn’t ‘The Daily Mail’ demanding an apology and maybe his resignation? The stench of hypocrisy from that so-called newspaper is nauseating.
 
The name of the politician, a former Tory home secretary, has been widely circulated on the internet. However, it mustn’t be posted here unless or until there is an arrest and his name is publicised.
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9663457/William-Hague-stifled-1996-paedophile-report-says-victim.html

Charlie Chaplin was among the first, but not only, to realise that comedy satire and ridicule are a good way to deal with fascist ideas.

Coogan Compares Mail Online's Popularity To Paedophilia

From an article by Paul Vale:-

Actor Steve Coogan is no friend of ‘The Daily Mail’. The comedian has set about Associated Newspapers, publishers of ‘Mail Online’, suggesting that the web arm of the paper is popular because it is akin to paedophilia.

When asked about the site’s huge traffic, Coogan said: "Well, you know, paedophilia is pretty popular too. ‘Mailbait’... the website that has all the photographs about 12 and 14 year old girls and talks about their bras and how fast they are growing up and all the rest of it, is on ‘Mail Online’ and clearly has an appeal that goes beyond just the curious. It's at best creepy and at worst sinister."

When asked why the print edition, Britain’s biggest selling daily, had such a wide readership, Coogan said that popularity was not a defence for its publishing practices: "It is popular, but things that play on people's prejudices are very popular. During Weimar Germany people pointed the finger at the Jewish community – that was very popular, it was a convenient scapegoat. Interestingly of course ‘The Daily Mail’ played on people's insecurity in the 1930s. There was an influx of Jewish refugees from Germany and the old Lord Rothermere was an arch supporter of Adolf Hitler. As a newspaper it panders to people's worst prejudices and people like to have their prejudices reinforced and that's what ‘The Daily Mail’ does. The notion that purely by definition of its popularity it’s beyond reproach is a nonsense."

For the whole article:-
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/03/26/steve-coogan-compares-the-mail-online-to-paedophilia_n_5038280.html

The Daily Mail is to journalism what venereal disease is to sex...