Daily Mail Watch

EDITOR: Jamie Sport

Posted by Jamie Sport

March 4th, 2009

Hello everyone.

I’m Jamie. By day, I am just another disillusioned low-level pleb working in the media industry, trying to scrape enough money to keep a roof over my head in the most expensive city in the world, London. But at night, I don a feathery cloak and beaked mask to swoop through the dirty, neon-lit streets of the tabloid wasteland, seeking out the most misguided, inaccurate, fear-mongering and downright deceitful journalism in Britain today.

I have been blogging since September 2008 at The Daily Quail, where I parody the worst articles from The Mail. I believe that satire can be a powerful tool to highlight just how absurd much of what is passed off as ‘serious journalism’ really is. All too many people think that what they read in the papers is true and/or objective, but, sadly, this just isn’t the case – especially in the case of The Mail, a paper which purports to uphold the traditions and values of Britain but in reality does little more than encourage intolerance and erode any chances this country has of making real progress in the 21st Century. If I can get the odd person to laugh (by proxy) at The Mail, I’m happy.

I know full well that there will always be news sources as malign as The Mail and there’s not much we can do about it. But if we can change the mind of even a few of readers, and open their eyes to the possibility that perhaps immigrants won’t give you cancer, that science isn’t something to be feared and the BBC doesn’t want to steal your children, the world will be a better place.

I will be writing about The Mail’s coverage of the Beeb and that great Satan, Commercial Media (the kind that competes with Northcliffe and DMGT anyway). As with so many other issues, it pursues an incessant and utterly biased agenda against particular facets of media – the internet especially – that it knows will a) alarm the highest possible number of readers and b) keep its readers yearning for an imagined golden age of the wireless, before people were given the opportunity to express themselves as part of a global platform of free speech. Why does it do this? Because modern media is disgracefully socialist and liberal. And also because The Daily Mail would sell more copies if those horrid internetz weren’t here.

Hopefully I can bring the odd insight and a few relevant skills to this area from my day job, wherein I work with the bewildering multitude of channels, platforms and mouthpieces that are collectively known as ‘media’. It’s an area of constant innovation, progress and evolution, all of which present an exciting world of nearly limitless possibilities for the freedom of speech and expression, and all of which The Mail wishes would just go away.

Lastly, I’d like to say I’m honoured to stand (or sit as the case may be) alongside such a splendid band of sages in the quest to bring that leeetle bit more balance and honesty to the coverage of news in Britain, whether it be on- or offline. Tally ho!

Categories: Housekeeping | Tags: editors