Political correctness story not correct, or political
Posted by Daily Quail
August 19th, 2009
Political correctness.
Whether you believe it’s a tool used by the state to suppress freedom of speech and kow-tow to minorities, or think it’s just another example of different people forcing acceptance upon us, one thing is certain: political correctness is everywhere.
Well, it is if you’re a Daily Mail journalist and can’t think of anything to write about, anyway. All you have to do is take an utterly mundane, entirely innocuous event, twist it around a bit, add an agenda, misrepresent the details and – bam! a ready made tale of political correctness gone absolutely raving bonkers.
Such were the circumstances (probably) behind Master Daniel Bates’ storming piece of journalistic ineptitude ‘Blacklisting banned: Citizens Advice axes ‘offensive’ word and tells staff to use ‘blocklisting’ instead‘, which managed to slither itself limply onto page 3 of Monday’s Mail.
‘Blacklisting banned?’, you can almost hear Mail readers splutter with disbelief, ‘well that’s just politicalcorrectnessgonemad! For fear of upsetting the blacks, no doubt!’, they honk.
Bates has the scoop:
The Citizens Advice service has banned staff from using the term ” blacklisting” over fears that it is offensive and “fosters stereotypes”. The taxpayer- funded quango, which advises members of the public on consumer, legal and money issues, has instead replaced it with “blocklisting” to avoid appearing “prejudicial”.
‘Banned’ it, they have. ‘Replaced’, it has been. Pretty firm words. You can be sure that the word ‘blacklisting’ really has been done away with when such strong terms are used. Note the use of quotation marks around things that The Mail deems silly: ’stereotypes’ are silly, and ‘prejudicial’ is absurd newspeak. These are the crazy things that result in political correctness going mad and stop us talking freely. Also note the word ‘quango’. We all hate quangos, whatever they are, because they waste money and David Cameron said they were bad.
Bates adds wearily:
Critics branded it “daft” and “political correctness going over the top”, but the Citizens Advice has refused to back down, even though critics say it renders everyday communications unintelligible.
Notice how the traditional ‘political correctness gone mad’ has been replaced with ‘political correctness going over the top’. Presumably the politically correct brigade did away with ‘gone mad’ because it offended the mentally ill or something, and decreed that ‘going over the top’ would be an acceptable replacement. It’s political correctness gone mad.
But I digress. I wonder who the critics are?
John Midgley, co-founder of the campaign against political correctness, said: “This is just daft and another example of political correctness going over the top.”
A man who spends his time seeking out and decrying examples of political correctness is the source. Objective, I think you’ll agree, and I’m sure he was in full possession of all pertinent facts when Dan Bates called him for a quote.
In fairness to Mr Midgley, he couldn’t have been aware of the intricacies of the case because, in fact, our intrepid hack Daniel Bates wasn’t either. When we spoke to Citizen’s Advice, they told us that, actually, the word ‘blacklisting’ and variations thereof have not been banned at all, and that the whole story has a somewhat prosaic IT related explanation.
Far from being some meaningless new PC term, ‘blocklisting’ is actually a word commonly used in the IT industry referring to a list of blocked IP addresses or users. Apparently, the IT department at Citizen’s Advice issued a memo in July regarding spam emails, explaining that a number of them had been blacklisted. In reply, an employee pointed out that ‘blocklisted’ was probably a more appropriate word, and everybody forgot about the whole thing because it was really quite boring.
The ‘offending’ word was not ‘banned’, and there was no communication or policy asking people to use ‘blocklist’ instead of ‘blacklist’. Our contact was also keen to point out that, contrary to The Mail’s description, Citizen’s Advice is not a ‘quango’, but a network of independent charities.
None of which matters of course, to the Mail commenters who will add the hackneyed saga to their catalogue of examples of things banned in the name of not offending those different to them, who splutter such outraged responses as ‘Good grief!! And we’re paying these idiots’ salaries!’ and ‘Makes me wonder why anyone would go to these idiots for advice.’ Nor will it matter to The Star or The Telegraph, who picked up on the Mail’s enthralling tale of IT memos gone mad without bothering to contact Citizen’s Advice for comment, thereby ensuring the story’s continued presence as just another example of bureaucratic lunacy.
It’s journalism gone rubbish.
Categories: Political correctness |
That’s a spectacular bit of fact checking from Master Bates there. I wonder if he has an e-mail address so we can ask him about a retraction?
Reading some of the comments on the Daily Mail website connected to this “story” (love using quotation marks) is truly frightening.
It seems anything vaguely associated with the government (even the Met Office recently) has been another lazy target.
Excellent stuff.
Plus, the quotation marks do more than just signal what the Mail thinks is ridiculous – they also make it look as though they’re actual quotes from someone to trowel extra lies on the story. Hurrah!
For those of you who haven’t seen the brilliance and professionalism of the Campaign Against Political Correctness, you really must have a look.
http://www.capc.co.uk/
Go on. You’ll love it.
I clicked the link, and the frontpage loaded ok, i think. Was it supposed to look like that?
Then it gave my computer the equivalent of a dead arm.
I think if more than two people visit the website at one time, it crashes. But it’s well worth persisting, to see just the quality of loons that the Mail regards as being trustworthy and reputable
‘Far from being some meaningless new PC term, ‘blocklisting’ is actually a word commonly used in the IT industry referring to a list of blocked IP addresses or users.’
So it’s actually a meaningful old PC term. Ba-dum tsh.
“Note the use of quotation marks around things that The Mail deems silly:”
i noticed in the daily star article that it says…
more “news” here…
.. does that mean the star find news silly?
Ouch! They’re web-site is terrible. Maybe they could use a few techie staff of their own.
Most terrifying part of their web-site:
Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP, “I just love it, love it, love it!”
The very idea of Ann Widdecombe getting that excited should terrify most people, but for the CAPC it’s a boast.
Most misleading part?
“DID YOU KNOW…..that a recent study calculated that 73 per cent of Britons are members of officially recognised “victim groups”, including the disabled, women, ethnic minorities and homosexuals?”
Does this mean they’ve all joined victim organisations, or just that they’ve just been categorised into those groups by some twat?
I suspect the latter – it’s just an underhand way of stating that non-minority fully-abled straight males make up 27% of the population – though where those figures come from is anyone’s guess.
Not only is the whole topic unworthy of being a news item the comment that Citizens Advice is a “quango funded by the tax payer” and not a national and highly regarded charity again demonstrates the ignorance and misleading drivel published by The Mail.
Oh how hilarious. A visit to the capc ‘website’ lead me to discover that ‘CAPC called in to advise new mayor of Doncaster’. I was just thinking how many ways you could inset the word ‘halfwit’ into that caption and still have it scan correctly.
Anyone who has not heard Toby Foster’s radio interview with said mayor really, really should do so.
““DID YOU KNOW…..that a recent study calculated that 73 per cent of Britons are members of officially recognised “victim groups”, including the disabled, women, ethnic minorities and homosexuals?”
Does this mean they’ve all joined victim organisations, or just that they’ve just been categorised into those groups by some twat?”
Yes, and it’s certainly not misleading to add women to that list, who make up more than 50% of the country on their own. And who knows what “disabled” covers.
In true Mail fashion, I hadn’t bothered to check the CAPC website while writing this. Wish I had, it’s beautiful.
@ Chris: Joyously, Bates does have an email address you can contact him on! It was listed on the print version of the article, which means it’s perfectly acceptable for me to reproduce it here.
It’s d.bates@dailymail.co.uk
I can’t stand the way The Mail, one of the nation’s biggest newspapers, sees fit to mislead its readers. Thanks for an illuminating piece, Mr Sport.
[...] Political correctness story not correct, or political | Daily Mail Watch Far from being some meaningless new PC term, ‘blocklisting’ is actually a word commonly used in the IT industry referring to a list of blocked IP addresses or users. Apparently, the IT department at Citizen’s Advice issued a memo in July regarding spam emails, explaining that a number of them had been blacklisted. In reply, an employee pointed out that ‘blocklisted’ was probably a more appropriate word, and everybody forgot about the whole thing because it was really quite boring. [...]
Garbage writing from a garbage rag.
‘Political correctness’ is simply a way of trying to ensure that in our public lives we are *all* not discriminated against by either business or the state.
The alternative of legally acceptable prejudice (for certain groups only) was a dreadful murderous failure tried out just over 75yrs ago.
No thanks.
Far better a few nutters add PC to their hate list than prejudice be thought acceptable in public life and able to work its insidious harm.
Why thankyou Jamie.
I shall pop him a missive in the e-post.
I honestly could not take more than five seconds of that website without having to quit or be violently sick. It’s a PC gone mad. Great article, though.
I did a day’s temping at the Mail and I can promise you that the email address they publish for each journo does not get read by that journo. Instead it goes into a kind of sink pot through which a lowly admin wades once a day deleting the ravings of those driven mad by this paranoiac dross. Anything that looks like a lead is passed on and still probably not actually read by the hack in question.
To actually get through to a Mail scribbler you need to try firstname.surname@dailymail.co.uk.
[...] Jamie Sport, wrote this blog here concerning an article in the Daily Mail. This is really the impetus behind today’s post. (I [...]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208051/Council-puts-Christmas-lights–months-early.html
Wouldn’t saying that something has “gone over the top” be offensive to people whose relatives died in the trenches in WWI?
As a practitioner of black magick I am offended that, by the definition of colour descriptions, white magick is somehow deemed better than black, not good enough eh? Stiff letters will be written I can assure thee.
I know i’m preaching to the converted; but reading some of the tedious and petty anecdotes on the http://www.capc.co.uk/ site makes me think that even if they are true when you put them next to anecdotes of racial/sexual abuse, violence and murder they don’t amount to much. Perhaps such people are willing to sacrifice the dignity of “other” people so they can still watch punch and judy shows…
The daft thing is there is no such thing as “blacklisting”. Credit agencies don’t have some big list of who they do and don’t lend to!
Perhaps someone from the mail need to visit http://www.moneyroadshow.co.uk/forum/ and learn a bit about personal finance hey?…
Funnily enough, when I was working for Lambeth libraries as long ago as the late 1970s the word ‘blacklist’ for people who had failed to return books was changed to ‘defaulters’ list’ so as not to offend black borrowers. And this is true.
“Objective, I think you’ll agree, and I’m sure he was in full possession of all pertinent facts when Dan Bates called him for a quote.”
Are you sure that this is so?
” ‘blocklisting’ is actually a word commonly used in the IT industry referring to a list of blocked IP addresses or users.”
No it isn’t, the IT industry uses “blacklisting” to mean lists of banned users/ips. We also use “blackholes” to get rid of stuff we don’t want and “black magic” to make your broken PC suddenly work when we turn up to fix it.
sc