Posted by Merk
October 19th, 2009
The following post was orignially posted at Deeplyflawedbuttrying’s Blog and reproduced here with kind permission.
Jan Moir? Is this article really that bad?
So I read the article by Jan Moir, about the death of Stephen Gately. The thing I dont understand, is the absolute shock it appears to have caused.
Daily Mail publishes hateful, homophobic shit, callously exploiting the death of one person, to strengthen its hate towards a section of the public it despises? Its a bit like the Kate Moss ‘Supermodel does cocaine shocker’. Do the people who are shocked not read the Daily Mail?
When Rachel Ward died, Amanda Platell published one her hateful pieces. She outright stated that complete responsibility for the girls death, was with Ms.Wards friends. Before Miss Ward was buried, she outright accused Haydn Johnson, a friend of Miss Wards, of causing her death by ignoring an answering machine message(that apparently only existed in Ms.Platell’s head), pleaing for help. The only mitigation for Mr.Johnson, in her article, was the insinuation that Ms’Ward had caused her own death by engaging in immoral behaviour(well she had been drinking!). She attempted to be sympathetic to the girls grieving parents, by telling them not only was she empathetic to the plight of losing their daughter, but to their plight of losing their daughter after she dissapointed their middle class, moral upbringing, by abandoning any moral framework they had instilled, by becoming everything that was wrong with modern women. Which she helpfully illustrated with pictures of Ms.Ward, having fun, while she was alive. The story was removed from the site, after the father of her grieving friend, made a complaint to the PCC. Which did not result in apology from the Mail, but did result in removal of said article.
A Daily Mail columnist is salivating over someones death, willing to lie about them, to illustrate the breakdown of society -done before. Must be something else causing the shock? The homophobia in the article?
I instruct you to go to the Daily Mail website, read as they fight the corner of everyone who has ever been chastised for trying to mainating a status quo, where gay means ‘unnatural’. Go read Melanie Phillips tell you that gay rights, undermines marriage as an institution. Or Amanda Platell dismiss anyone who objects to not being able to pursue their life, without their sexuality used as a reason to exclude them from society, as a ‘gay zealot’. Read as they champion the people who refuse to bow down to hard won legislation, to prevent sexuality automatically meaning a presumption of immorality.
Maybe people rarely notice venom that isnt spouted at them? Are there any other groups who the Daily Mail hates? Lets look outside Jan Moirs current article- we have this recent wet dream of a Daily Mail headline. Narcissistic I may be, and therefore sensitive to the Daily Mails take on single parents. But seriously, there is no shortage of material.
Although, I was one of the Mails target ‘most wanted’ before my marriage ended, as a working mother. Helpfully told by ‘Femail’ that me choosing to work, was going to damage my child, and was ultimately responsible for the fracturing of our society into immoral little pieces. Oh wait, even before motherhood- the Mail didnt much like me. Type Rape, into the search engine of the Daily Mail, and read how they have interpreted the painfully inadequate framework of rape legislation, which has produced a 5% successful prosecution rate for rape. Lists of vitriolic stories, of girls who ‘cry rape’, and the heartbreaking consequences of women reporting such a piffling little thing.
Thank fuck am not black. The biggest bane of the Daily Mails existence is the fact that the BNP are so despised that they cant come outright and say they support them. Instead they have to treat ‘foul’ as a contested term, by placing it in inverted commas, while juxtaposing it against the revelation that the BNP have opened their membership to ‘non white members’.
With editorial about how the indigenous british people(read white, for indigenous) are constantly under threat, not just from the constant threat of immigration, but by being persecuted and not represented by british institutions. The very presence of people in the world who may have a different religion is alarming. The only time the Daily Mail champions the right of any woman, is to show how terrible those muslim types are- look at how they treat women who have children? Further evidence of this threat is shown, when we see how unfairly people who only want the right to be racist, are being treated.
So who is safe from the Daily Fail? Children? Well, children are safe if they are nice middle class children. But even then the Daily Mail isnt above causing them pain, and humiliation, in the course of a good story, as long as they can attack one of their other despised groups of people, in the process. Here is the transcript of an article the paper had to take down, where they stood a page size picture of a named eleven year old girl, alongside a feature about how her mother didnt love her. The feature was designed to illicit public reaction against her ‘unnatural mother’- the fact that an 11 year old girl was deeply humiliated, surely ok, because the end justifies the means? Feral children anyone, or maybe you just want to starve and hiss at the mothers? The Fail doesnt mind condemning children, if they are outside the nice white, heterosexual, christian, middle class dystopia they would like us to believe once existed, and will again.
Cries of ‘complain to the PCC’ have abounded, since the publication of Moirs article. Again, while admirable, am not entirely sure what people believe this will do. Have been complaining to the PCC for years about the homophobic, racist, hate mongering shit, this vile rag publishes- and it achieves nothing.
This may be the cry of a jaded left wing ranter, with an over developed sense of justice, and handwringing tendencies. But it is true, complaining to the PCC achieves nothing. The media is powerful, we know that the the editorial content of your average newspaper, affects more than the people involved in the article.-But unless its exceptional circumstances, your complaint about an article, not directly about you, will be binned. THe Chair of the PCC is Paul Dacre, for gods sake. Paul Dacre being the editor of er…The Daily Mail.
I would like to end this post, with a sense of ‘we must do something about this’- I certainly would prefer my journalists held accountable for constistently spreading vile homophobic, racist, mysogynistic shit- but there are few avenues to go down. We could do as this facebook group suggests and go straight to the advertising revenue that allows this shitrag to be published. Indeed, Marks and Spencer have withdrawn advertising on the grounds of the Moir article. But seriously, take action yourself. Stop buying this shit. Dont accept the flawed, bigoted premises, that underpin their editorial.
And for fucks sake, stop kidding yourself that this Jan Moir article is some kind of abhorration, in an otherwise lovely newspaper. Yes, the Jan Moir article really was that bad. In the context of the normal editorial line of the Daily Mail, it really wasnt that unusual.
Categories: Guest Blog, Media, Sex & Sexuality |
28 Comments
Posted by sim-o
October 19th, 2009
Categories: Front Pages |
12 Comments
Posted by sim-o
October 16th, 2009
Categories: Front Pages |
21 Comments
Posted by sim-o
October 15th, 2009
Categories: Front Pages |
14 Comments
Posted by Esqui
October 14th, 2009
By now, we are all used to the Mail’s celebrity obsessions. From Angelina Jolie to Natalie Cassidy, the paper never seems short of bitchy non-stories to print about them, simply in order to comment on the large, or short, size of their bodies, type of clothing and who they’re with. But there’s one person who is constantly featured in stories that is quite worrying: Suri Cruise.
Now it’s quite likely, if you don’t read the Mail, that you’ll have no idea who that is – though you may recognise the surname. Suri Cruise is the three-year-old daughter of actors Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. She’s famous for….being the three-year-old daughter of actors Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. And yet the Daily Mail sees fit to print pictures of her going about her everyday life on a regular basis.
A quick check on the Mail’s website would reveal 8 stories in the last 3 weeks alone (2 on the 12th October !), featuring such newsworthy stories as Suri playing hide and seek and a downright disturbing article inviting the reader to scrutinise the child’s ‘kitten heels’. In fact, using the Mail’s own “Explore Suri Cruise” (the irony of the page name is not lost on me) reveals that in her three years, Suri has been referred to in no fewer than 81 stories.
But surely it’s all innocent fun, right? After all, she’s only a kid – isn’t the Mail simply reporting on the frivolities of the daughter of two famous actors as she tries to go about a life within the shadow of her parents’ fame? Sometimes, this is true. A number of the stories are along the lines of “Doesn’t she look like her mother?”, such as here in what is, by the Mail’s standards, a rather reserved story about the girl. But those stories are generally outnumbered by the ones that focus on what Suri is wearing, complete with an unnecessary amount of pictures, some of which are in dubious taste. For example, you can almost hear the photographer calling out to a young woman just out of her teens: “Show us a bit of inside leg!” “Now let’s see you with something all over your face”. But Suri Cruise is not that. She’s not even of schooling age yet.
This highlights another area of Mail hypocrisy. Whilst the paper, in one breath, makes a story about this particular three-year-old wearing high heels and designer dresses – note the suggestive comment: “How soon will it be before she gets her first boyfriend?” – in the other breath, they are berating Heelarious high heels for young children for turning infants into sex objects. The fact is, they are in danger of turning Suri Cruise into exactly that. One can only assume that the intensity of the articles will increase as she gets older and closer to adulthood, when the stories will lose a little more reserve. Take a look at this story about Emma Watson published when she was just 17, or this article about Mick Jagger’s daughter, Gerorgia – again, 17.
And then there are sometimes stories which are inexcusable. Take a look at this. Is it really necessary to publish a story about a three year old girl bursting in to tears because she’s bored? To me, making ‘news’ out of pictures of a child in distress is far beyond what the Mail should be publishing.
But how much blame lies with the Mail itself? After all, do parents not have to give permission to have pictures of their children published? The Mail itself decries such a rule, presumably for this very reason. So, surely it would seem that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes would have to agree to the publication? Maybe so, but let’s not forget that the Mail is not taking these pictures, but merely buying them from an agency. In most cases, this is BigPicturesPhoto, a company that specialises in paparazzi photos. So while Cruise and Holmes may agree to allow them to use a certain set of photos about Suri, they’ve got no way of knowing what stories will pop up surrounding them. But it would seem that they don’t mind at all. Tom Cruise was quoted as saying, to the Australian Grazia magazine:
“’I have to say some of those paparazzi shots of my daughter are incredible. As a parent you protect your children but Suri is a very open and warm child and she will just wave to people on the street. She is such happy, fun girl. It is certainly different these days with the media, but people have been very good to us and do give us space so I am not going to be difficult”
Maybe it’s because I’m not used to a level of fame like Tom Cruise, but the level of material published about his child doesn’t strike me as the media being good to them and giving them space.
I suppose we should pay heed to the PCC code of conduct, which has guidelines on involving children in published material. Clause 6 (excluding paragraphs which refer exclusively to school pupils) states:
ii) A child under 16 must not be interviewed or photographed on issues involving their own or another child’s welfare unless a custodial parent or similarly responsible adult consents.
iv) Minors must not be paid for material involving children’s welfare, nor parents or guardians for material about their children or wards, unless it is clearly in the child’s interest.
v) Editors must not use the fame, notoriety or position of a parent or guardian as sole justification for publishing details of a child’s private life.
And under the section on privacy:
i) Everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private and family life, home, health and correspondence, including digital communications. Editors will be expected to justify intrusions into any individual’s private life without consent.
ii) It is unacceptable to photograph individuals in a private place without their consent.
Taking these as they’re written (and the commission, being mostly made up of those involved in the printed media would do exactly that), the Mail is technically doing nothing wrong. Clearly, they’ve managed to wedge themselves in a place where what they are doing is morally on rocky ground, but legally and under the PCC code of conduct, absolutely fine.
It seems even the readers are getting wise to it. Looking at the comments on the story about Suri bursting into tears, we have:
“maybe shes sick & tired of having her photograph taken for newspapers everyday !!!!!
- zoe, uk, 3/10/2009 14:43”
“This is getting weird, why is this family in the news virtually every day? Leave this little girl alone to have a childhood!
- Jenny, Dorset, 3/10/2009 13:00”
And even:
“PLEASE TAKE YOUR CAMERAS OUT OF HER FACE AND LEAVE THIS CHILD BE.
WHY ARE YOU STALKING HER?
- mark, Manchester, 3/10/2009 13:50”
But while the Mail publishes stories like this, they will get comments like this:
“If you don’t like Suri or don’t want to read about her, just don’t open this page and don’t comment on it, it’s just simple! no one force you to read. I want to see her picture because she’s the cute one delight me, nothing to do with her parents, and my friends like her too…that’s why i read about her all the time.
- wantMOREofSuri, Melbourne, 14/10/2009 15:17”
A spoof? Maybe. But is that likely to stop the Mail’s continuing search for ever-more-creepy stories about Suri Cruise? She may be the offspring of famous people, but she is still a three-year-old child having pictures of herself being printed almost daily, many of which invite readers to scrutinise her clothing and appearance. If this is the case, you have to fear for the kid’s future.
Categories: Media, News |
13 Comments
