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

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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

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

No newspaper has ever lost money by pandering to the base instincts of its readers.

(Well, maybe The Sun got it wrong over Hillsborough.)

I sometimes wonder if people buy ‘The Daily Mail’ and ‘The Mail On Sunday’ because they enjoy being misled. Do they just want to read anything which reinforces their prejudices, regardless of whether or not it’s true?

‘The Mail On Sunday’ claimed that the feminist T-shirts worn by Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman recently were made in a factory in Mauritius by women machinists who are paid 62p an hour and sleep 16 to a room. The shirts are sold by the fashion retailer Whistles for £45 each.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-2817343/Feminist-t-shirts-sweatshop-row.html

The Fawcett Society, which promotes women’s rights, has investigated the claim and found, among other things, that 100% of those workers are paid above the government-mandated minimum wage, all workers are paid according to their skills and years of service, their standard working week is 45 hours, that workers are able to join a union and there is a union presence in the factory.

http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/2014/11/fawcett-society-update-allegations-whistles-fawcett-feminist-t-shirt/

I don’t suppose ‘The Mail On Sunday’ will print a retraction, and so its readers will probably be left in their comfort zone and continue to wallow in their ignorance. Anyway, why spoil a good story when it provides another opportunity to put the boot in on Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman?  

62p an hour Ivan? twice what they should be surely, my and a union also? who on earth allowed them a union?
Is that not what the daily mail printed? would not even touch it with gloves on Phil.

Desperate and pathetic stuff from ‘The Mail on Sunday’; expect much more of it right up to 7 May:-

Two Eds hid truth about global crash: Miliband and Balls knew UK economy was due to 'fall off a cliff' a year before it happened... but kept it a secret

According to that filthy rag, “Ed Miliband and Ed Balls knew about the economic crash of 2008 a year before it happened, but kept it secret.” They are supposed to have urged Gordon Brown to call an election in 2007 before “the economy fell off the cliff”.

If anyone would have known about the impending global crash (which Vince Cable had been predicting for years), wouldn’t it have been Gordon Brown or his chancellor, Alistair Darling? Could anyone really have foreseen that the collapse of Lehman Brothers would have triggered a banking collapse here? (Interesting that  a ‘Mail’ newspaper acknowledges that fact when it suits; on other occasions, the events of 2008-9 are “all Labour’s fault”.)  

Ed Miliband has “made no attempt to deny the claim”. Why should he respond to every piece of crap that this so-called newspaper excretes? The embroidery continues: “In Westminster circles, the absence of a denial will be seen as tantamount to confirmation of the story”, and we’re told that this garbage will be “political dynamite”. Really? I don’t think so, this is ‘The Mail on Sunday’ after all.

The dubious source for this nonsense (and other tripe about Ed Miliband setting fire to a carpet, locking himself in a house and being given a lecture on economics by a 10-year-old) is Martin Winter. He's a former mayor of Doncaster who fell out with Labour in 2009 and has now written a book, presumably because he is strapped for cash. (Incidentally, in 2009 ‘The Mail on Sunday’ was more than happy to attack Winter.)  

Damian McBride, who was special advisor to Gordon Brown at the time, rubbished Winter’s claim that Miliband and Balls knew about the economic crash a year before it happened but kept it secret. He posted on Twitter: “In all the countless conversations about whether to call an election in 2007, not once did the prospects of the economy come up. Not once.”

Perhaps the best way to treat this latest piece of character assassination from the ‘Mail’ stable is to ridicule it, and there’s been no shortage of that on Twitter:-

Only two men knew the world economy was about to collapse in 2007 - the UK education secretary and a SpAd.

Miliband knew about the global crash and kept it to himself. And why the silence over the Black Death? Come clean, Ed!

Things Ed Miliband knew but kept secret: Who shot J.R.Ewing? What are the 39 Steps? What caused the Marie Celeste?

Throughout the 1990s Ed Milband worked out how to play Shane Warne, but kept it secret from the England cricket team.

Ed Miliband's grandfather knew there were icebergs in the Atlantic but didn't tell the Titanic captain.

Sources used:-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2914839/Two-Eds-hid-truth-global-crash-Miliband-Balls-knew-UK-economy-fall-cliff-year-happened-kept-secret.html

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/18/ed-miliband-bombshell-memoir-martin-winter-bumbling-economic-crisis

Poor old Eds dad should have told mr cameron that if he had sex that night he would get his wife pregnant with a son and call him david.

They used to say the same about Tribune before the working class had actually travelled east to see reality .
But I gather that obscenity comic is like the Norwegian Blue -- Dead .
That's the way the DM will go , but , in the short term , it is a splendid vehicle for further advancing the cause of the Right and sweeping away some of the ghastly mistakes engineered by namby- pamby "liberals "

Peter Hitchens is a nasty piece of work and completely off his rocker. I had the misfortune to read a piece of his journalistic talent on Sunday. He certainly doesn't like Stephen Fry, I wonder why? I was gratified to read though that SF calls him the slug, very apropos. I remember once reading a two page article by him proclaiming dyslexia to be a non-existent fantasy illness created by avaricious doctors and benefits fraudsters, it made me physically sick.

Would be the same here Sheldon regarding dyslexia, fantasy illness indeed, wish he suffered from it then he would know what it felt like would he not.

I see that bloody Tory rag Daily Mail today has an enormous printed headline---------
"RED ED THE TAX AVOIDER"

The bastards are digging into his changing of a will which supposedly means a scheme reduces death duties, is being called a "form of tax avoidance"

The problem is the fickle public are likely to swallow this hook line and stinker!!!!!. Wait for the news tonight, I put money on it it's picked up on Newsnight, Sky News and The papers programes.

Too true Mel, at least he does not have off shore accounts to stash his money away in like all the tory supporters does he.

Mel wrote:-
The bastards are digging into his changing of a will

Ed Miliband didn't change his will. Having previously attacked his father, ‘The Daily Mail’ is now in effect smearing his mother over something she did 20 years ago. When Ed’s father died in 1994, she obtained a ‘deed of variation’, after which the house in which she was living then passed into joint ownership between her, Ed and his brother David in a 60:20:20 ratio. As only people who might lose out under such an arrangement would have to agree to it, this was nothing to do with either Ed or David.

In 2004, David bought out his mother and brother and now owns the house with his wife. What ‘The Daily Mail’ mentioned – but of course failed to highlight – is that Ed paid capital gains tax on his 20% share of the property.

The smear is that because Ed’s mother changed her will 20 years ago it somehow makes him a tax avoider. Not quite on a par with stashing taxable millions in secret Swiss bank accounts, is it? And is ‘The Daily Mail’ now implying that it wants children paying more tax when a parent dies, or only when Labour politicians are involved?

I tried to post these comments under the article at ‘Mail Online’, but as usual they were rejected. If a government ever did the decent thing and closed down that filthy paper under the Obscene Publications Act, I’m sure its owners and supporters would squeal about ‘free speech’ etc if they lost the right to be heard. I refuse to post the link to this latest article, because I don’t want to encourage members to click on it and give the paper advertising revenue. However, if you want to let off steam about that foul rag, this is the place to do it!

Many thanks for that info Ivan. That makes the Daily Mail headline more or less a lie.
Utterly disgusting from any angle and unforgivable.

What can we do I ask???

Stop all morons from buying the arsewipe.

All this proves is its ok for Tory donors to tax avoid but nobody else its one law for us and another for them typical Tory Ivan, it also proves they will do anything to put people off voting for the LABOUR party is this because they know there days are number in office or is it that when Ed gets into power he will tell the public the truth about the Tories fiddling the stats on everything .

STU "Stop all morons from buying the arsewipe.."

Come on Stu, HOW!!!!!!

Poison the paper it's printed on Mel.

The mid market national newspaper the Daily Mail was launched by Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere and his elder brother, Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe, in 1896. It was incorporated in 1922 and its shares were first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1932. Harmsworth, who had been elevated to the peerage as Lord Rothermere, was editorially sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists and he wrote an article, "Hurrah for the Blackshirts", in January 1934. Referring to Adolf Hitler's proposed invasion of Czechoslovakia, Rothermere, again writing in the Daily Mail, said in 1938 that "Czechs were of no concern to Englishmen".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail_and_General_Trust

The more that things change, the more they are the same.

When I was a girl, most of the adults I knew that aspired to any form of culture read the Mail or the Express - two thoroughly snobbish, often racist and firmly right-wing papers, which seemed to provide access to a world largely closed to aspirational working class men.

Others, who did not aspire to social advancement, read the Mirror, the Sketch and (god save the mark) the Sunday Post

The reason for the smear on Ed Miliband & the Labour party is because they know if Ed gets into power he will bring in the Leveson inquiry recommendations into being which will put the Daily Fail on its ASS. It will stop them from printing LIES and get away with it because the law will either fine them or jail them.

Scientists identify the last piece of the barrel that 'The Daily Mail' scrapes for every anti Ed Miliband story:-


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CBzzE7IW8AEqFcX.jpg

Did they find that Daily Mail in quarters behind the loo door?

No - it's already too polluted to be used as toilet paper - would cause boils and haemorrhoids

ooooooohhhhh, ouch.

What's next? As desperation sets in, will ‘The Daily Mail’ be reporting the SNP plan to use the first born children of English parents in haggis making?  

People part with good money to read this claptrap.  


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CDdvkF4WoAAZqRy.jpg

Desperate times for the Mail - a non-headline and they have to give away a free chicken to get people to read it!

A chicken, eh? Are we in the realms of subliminal messages regarding Cameron here...?

A chicken must be classier than sausage rolls though if you're thinking of bribing the electorate.

Sorry to be a nuisance, but can somebody tell me the difference between a Labour/ SNP arrangement and that previously cobbled together by the supposedly 'miles apart' duo of the Tories and LibDems ( aside of the fact that the Daily Mail mysteriously approved of the latter, of course)...

More to the point, who would the Tories team up with this time? Far-right bigots from UKIP and the DUP?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/24/snp-dup-democratic-unionist-party-government-tories-anti-scottish-coalition-homophobic

You can be sure that such an arrangement would meet with the approval of 'The Daily Mail'.

If things don't pick up for Cameron quite soon, what are the odds that the Daily Mail and The Sun will be blaming Miliband for the Nepal earthquake...?

Blatant racism from 'The Daily Mail', which forgot to mention that NHS chiefs are still hiring white British doctors, despite the scandal of Harold Shipman.  


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CFbe9yDWMAAfRMU.jpg

Those types of story are probably written well in advance and stored on computer at the Daily Mail until required.

That is only because they wish to save time on the headlines ETC OW,then find out next day that it is wrong, bloody morons.

What 'The Daily Mail' calls "quirky trivia" - the fact that there was an 8% increase in the number of females murdered in England and Wales last year:-


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CI0U5UVWwAANDRz.jpg

Lascivious? Ghoulish?
How could it be? The Daily Wail is owned by a Lord!

That's my conscience clear, then.

Along with the Daily Express, I read the organ as a boy and young man at the family breakfast table.

But I'm ok now - honest...

Shoreham air crash. A new low for 'The Daily Mail'.........  


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CNBJv6KXAAAvNPA.jpg

No British newspaper has ever failed as a result of overestimating the good taste of a typical reader.

‘The Mail on Sunday’ has excelled itself today. It’s tried to smear Tom Watson with this story about his stepfather’s brother, who committed an indecent assault before Tom had even been born:-

Latest Tom Watson Smear Busted

http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/latest-tom-watson-smear-busted.html

I can’t help wondering if Tom’s investigations into VIP paedophiles are getting close to someone important, maybe royalty or someone still active in politics, and that the Tories’ cronies in the media are trying to warn him off?

Disambiguation: "Daily Mail"

see also "Litter"