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Posted by Tim Ireland
March 5th, 2009
Hey, boys and girls! Reading the Daily Mail every day can lead to needless headaches and back pain, so what we’d like to do is get some young, fit lads and ladettes to go out there and do some of the hard work for us… in return for nothing but a namecheck! How great is that?!
OK, so we may give one of you a prize based on who brings in the most/bestest tips via our forums. In fact, here’s what we’ve got for you this month:
SPOTTER OF THE MONTH CLUB – SEND US YOUR TIPS!
Spot obvious lies in the Daily Mail and win fab prizes.
All the kids are doing it!
MARCH 2009 PRIZE:
The Knife Crime Awareness Gift Pack
Contains:
- Genuine ‘rat boy’ hat (accidentally purchased at a jumble sale, hidden in a pile of ladies knickers.)
– The Sheffield Knife Book: A History and Collector’s Guide [Hardcover] by Geoffrey Tweedale (a used copy of this book is currently on sale at Amazon for £187.76 (+ £2.75 shipping)… this one can be yours for free).
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To enter, simply register for the forums, join us in the ‘tips’ section and try to be the first/best at spotting obvious cases of deception in the Daily Mail for our editors to get their teeth into. The winner could be chosen on the basis of speed, frequency, quality*, reliability, or just plain old chance if we get a really, really great lie in the first month and you were the lucky pup to spot it first.
(*Example of a high-quality tip: a significant lie that is easy to prove/understand as a lie and the evidence to back it up. Funny FTW.)
[Psst! Picture the 'tips' forum as a filter for alerts, so our editors who are being so generous with their time don't have to read dozens of emails to get the single alert they need. If the item does not make it to the front page - important bit coming up - there will still be a record of it in the forums, should anyone have cause to look into it at a later date. If you don't have a blog and/or don't care to start one, it's as good a place as any to keep time-coded notes and observations on your favourite topics or writers.]
So, in summary, read the Daily Mail (in manageable doses), post examples of outright lies that you spot to the forum, and this month you could win a really neat prize seemingly worth nearly £200! If that were real money, you could eat like a king for a week on that! Even longer if you shop in ALDI.
Next month, we may have a really ordinary prize (or nothing at all), so get going while the going’s good.
Click here to register for the Mailwatch “So-called” Forum
Click here to mill around aimlessly RIGHT NOW in ‘Tips’
Good luck, gang! Oh, and remember; they’d probably get away with it if it weren’t for us meddling kids.
Categories: Housekeeping |
Tags: tips | 4 Comments
Posted by Esqui
March 5th, 2009
Who are you?
I’m Chris Hancock, aka Esqui. I’m 21, from Bournemouth, and I work as a general dogsbody for a retailer of fine electricals. I’ve been admin on the Mailwatch forum for a couple of years now, and also ran a blog some time ago, Daily Mail Letters, http://dmletters.blog.co.uk focusing on the people that write into the Mail. Sadly, living with a Mail reader gives me unfettered access to its pages. Which is useful for doing this!
What will you be writing about?.
I shall be picking up from where my blog left off. Only with more maturity and actually backing up my arguments a bit more! Obviously, there is no point in me just replying “No, you’re an idiot”, so expect to see a bit of detailed analysis
Why are you doing this?
Because no-one else will! I want to help make the site even better than it already is, and hopefully get people to learn a bit more about the mindset of Mail readers.
Why have you chosen your specific beat and/or what skills and expertise can you bring to it?
Obviously, I’ve got the experience in picking apart readers’ letters, and I do miss my blog at times. I hope to be able to bring a balanced view here, pointing out when they’re right as well as when they’re wrong. I think it will also link in nicely with the other contributors’ articles, especially when there are big issues which get a lot of letters.
OK, that’s me!
Categories: Housekeeping |
Tags: editors | 7 Comments
Posted by antonvowl
March 5th, 2009
Who are you?
I’m originally from London but I live in Bristol now. I have an oppressive mortgage which means I have to do an exceedingly dull job. I’ve been blogging since November 2007 at my site, which is called The Enemies of Reason. I started writing it through sheer exasperation with what I was reading in the press – not just the tabloids, but the ‘quality’ titles and broadcasters too, who often seem to be more interested with scaring their readers with a good ghost story than actually looking at the evidence and seeing it if stacks up.
What are you writing about?
I’ll be looking at political stuff in the Mail, as well as agenda-driven stories, often where the Mail tries to concoct outrage where there’s no reason for it. I’ll be asking why the Mail decides to follow its various agendas and what it’s hoping to achieve.
Why are you doing this?
Why pick on the Mail? They’re the newspaper equivalent of a professional foul. They know exactly what they’re doing; I’m pretty sure their writers and production staff often know they’re being deliberately misleading but choose to leave out balancing information in order to provide readers with what they think they want to hear.
Are they any better or worse than other newspapers? Increasingly not, as the Telegraph slides downmarket, but that’s beside the point: they’re one of the biggest-selling papers in the country and their readers deserve better. I don’t have a problem with the Daily Mail itself, just with a Daily Mail that frequently exhibits miserably bad journalism and could do better. It’s an office packed with what I imagine to be very talented people, whose skills are often being used to concoct a pack of old nonsense. I think that’s a pretty tragic waste, and it drags down the reputation of all media if one of the biggest players in the industry behaves like this.
Why have you chosen your specialism?
I do a lot of stuff like this on my own blog but this will be a bit of a departure and I’m looking forward to it. I want to really examine why these decisions are being made and for whose benefit they are being made. It’s not as simple as ‘X is a good story’; it’s more like ‘X would be a good story but let’s make it sound like X is actually Y’.
Categories: Housekeeping |
Tags: editors | 3 Comments
Posted by Merk
March 5th, 2009
I’m Merk, I’m the site owner & co-creator of Mailwatch.
Years ago myself and a fellow drunk Jon were sat in a pub having a beer, and someone had left a copy of the Daily Mail on the table. We leafed through it and managed to get ourselves annoyed at the content; so annoyed in fact we had to drink more to forget what we’d read.
At some point between lager and wine we decided we should start a website to analyse the Mail and it’s exploits, discuss its mistruths and misdirection. We’d laugh at the absurdity of its headlines. That was it, we’d start tomorrow – we never really did get going as planned.
We launched the site with good intentions but time and effort mainly meant I just posted the front pages and allowed people to comment. Jon moved to Paris and we never really wrote any of the biting stuff. Still, the site has been going for over 4 years – we have published nearly 2000 posts and 35,000 comments, as well as a lively discussion area by way of the Mailwatch forum, we have been featured in the Guardian and Independent as well a turning down an invitation to talk to Newsnight (it was a bad week).
Now things are going to change. With much help from Tim, we are to change Mailwatch for the better, we will of course still be posting front pages for you to laugh, cry and pour scorn over but we will also be looking more in-depth at the stories, lies and misdirection that may come our way – I of course say we, but what I really mean is Tim and a band of trusty editors, backed up by Dave who will be helping with any of the Technical gubbins that goes on behind the scenes.
Why am I doing this?
I set this place up because I hated how the Mail passed off opinion as fact. I think it was an article about single parent families being the sum of all evil. I read this on my way to a new well paid job after gaining a place at one of the best state schools in the land, going to College and University – non of which would have been possible without my hard working single Mother who bought us up on a council estate. I’ve not once set fire to a car or robbed an old lady of her pension.
Why change the site?
I have accepted Tim’s offer of help because it’s what this site needs, it’s what it’s always needed.
Will I still be around?
I will be still posting the front pages and hopefully the occasional blog post if time will allow but I’ll always be watching, especially you at the back….yes you.
p.s we hope to show the latest front page on the side bar with a link to it’s discussion page very soon, until then you can find the front pages via the link on the sidebar.
Categories: Housekeeping |
Tags: editors | 17 Comments
Posted by 5cc
March 4th, 2009
I’m 5cc. Well, that’s not my real name, but I blog over at Five Chinese Crackers, and that’s the name I blog under.
I started Five Chinese Crackers to examine some of the really poor thinking that seemed to be behind a lot of media comment. I waded in expecting to be dealing with stuff that was badly argued or badly thought out, but what I ended up knee deep in wasn’t so much ridiculously spun as, well, made up.
I expected to encounter bad hatchet jobs where newspapers trashed reports they didn’t like, but found that they just pretended the reports said something else instead. I expected to find bad analysis of statistics, but found ones that had been dishonestly added together and played about with. I expected to find events reported in a biased way, but found them being made up. I expected to find spin, but I actually found lies.
So the blog morphed into a place to look at tabloid excesses. The Mail gets pretty heavily featured, which is why I’ve pitched up here.
Hello.
What will I be writing about?
I’ll be writing about immigration and race issues. The Mail is well known for its anti-immigration stance, but quite a lot of its coverage is completely misleading. Bad news gets exaggerated, good news gets buried, regularly published stats get reported as if they’re new and shocking, positive reports about immigration get dishonestly reported so it looks as though they say something bad – it’s a carousel of fun that never stops.
Here’s an example – when Romania and Bulgaria entered the EU, the Mail trailed the release of official figures for how many would be coming to the UK with stories that told us that either 60,000 or 150,000 had arrived in the first couple of months. When the real stats were published, a headline shouted that 120 people per day had come from the two countries to be circus stars in three months. That’s over 10,000 circus stars.
The real figures? 120 a day was a slight exaggeration of the total number of people from both countries that had applied to come to the UK, from all professions combined. Even people who had their applications turned down. The total number of people who had actually been given a work permit was around 8,000. That’s a bit less than the 150,000 the paper mentioned earlier.
The total number of people who had applied to come as circus artises? 55. Not 55 per day, 55 in total. The paper exaggerated the number by nearly two thousand times.
Immigration and race are pretty closely intertwined, especially in the Mail. Sometimes the paper can let things slip, like recently stating that ’second and third generation immigrants’ shouldn’t be counted as British nationals in immigration figures. This is a little uncomfortable.
Away from immmigration stories, the paper’s other coverage of race issues can be just as lacking in comfort. Recently, the BBC broadcast one of the many episodes of Eastenders that featured only a small group of the cast, like they often used to with those episodes that featured Dot and Ethel, or the Fowlers. This time, the family was black, which meant that the first episode of Eastenders featuring an all black cast was screened. The Mail didn’t approve.
The paper often trumpets its coverage of the Stephen Lawrence case as evidence of its anti-racism, but most of its reporting of race issues falls far short of the standard it set more than a decade ago. This coverage deserves looking at.
Why am I doing this?
For a democracy to work properly, people need to have an accurate picture of what is happening in the world around them. If everybody thinks that an invasion of horrible green men from Mars with veiny heads is imminent, people will vote for parties that have the best policy for fighting horrible green veiny-headed men from Mars. But what if they’re wrong, and there is no invasion coming?
The Mail routinely exaggerates and misrepresents the news in a way that can lead people to have an incredibly inaccurate and distorted view of the world, which effects the way people vote, not to mention the way people treat each other.
Why have I chosen my specific beat and/or what skills and expertise can I bring to it?
Immigration and race can be incredibly divisive issues, and pushing people too far in one direction can have incredibly nasty results, whether that means a rise in racial tension and violence or a rise in the number of people voting for extremist parties. The BNP has seen a steady rise in support in recent years as each of the main parties try to paint themselves as having the hardest line on immigration to try to capture the votes of people who see it as the most important issue there is. The Daily Mail plays a part in this, with its distortions and half truths. It’s important to show exactly how the paper misrepresents the world.
Plus, of course, these were the areas that seemed to crop up most while I was trawling for material for Five Chinese Crackers. You can set your watch by some of them.
Categories: Housekeeping |
Tags: editors | 5 Comments
Posted by lecanardnoir
March 4th, 2009
Who am I?
Hi! I’m Andy Lewis, inventor of the Quackometer, and writer of the associated blog. The quackometer allows people to type a URL into a box and then be told whether the web page is full of quackery or not. The Quackometer goes away and examines the language used on the suspect web site and looks for the tell tale language of idiocy. It’s fun – and it gets me into lots of scrapes. As you might imagine, people test out pages onthe Daily Mail quite a lot.
I write about the stuff I come across too. Firstly, it was just for laughs – but it has become a little more angry as I see the stupidity and arrogance of alternative medicine leading to harm and deceit. I get angry when quacks try to sue me for pointing out their nonsense. And this nonsense goes to the highest levels of our society too, with our future head of state, Prince Charles, currently selling bottles of magic detox juice to the gullible for ten pounds a pop. (See Duchy Originals). Yes, our future monarch is a cheap mountebank. And I think it is interesting to write about a society that is uncritical of this and allows it to happen.
Why am I doing this?
The Daily Mail is an interesting conduit for quackery. I may not be fully convinced that this is always deliberate. Indeed, often the Mail writes some pretty sensible things about alternative medicine. Much more plausible, is that it just does not care about truth and accuracy. And maybe it likes to create that sense of fear and uncertainty that fosters its political agenda by undermining the single authority in the world that consistently produces reliable knowledge – science. Churnalism is largely at work at the Mail – the hasty reproduction of a bit of PR from some vested interest that ensures a whole load of free publicity is generated for some dodgy outfit or quack health company.
What will I be writing about?
Well, I want to take apart those really daft quack stories that occasionally appear. I won’t be getting into all the health nonsense on the site – I have a life too. Take it that when you read ‘X causes cancer’, or ‘X does not cause cancer’ the Mail has got it wrong. No need for any deep analysis. But when things look interesting, I will post something up.
Toodlepip.
Categories: Housekeeping |
Tags: editors | 2 Comments
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 | 4 Comments
Posted by Dave Cross
March 4th, 2009
Who am I?
I’m Dave Cross. I’m a geek who lives in Balham and I’ve been blogging on various topics at davblog since 2002.
I’ve always been interested in politics and the media and I run a few web sites that cover those subjects. You might have seen the Battersea MP Blog, Planet Westminster, Political Web (which is, unfortunately, currently a bit broken) and my list of newpaper web feeds.
The Daily Mail has always interested me. My parents read it when I was growing up so it was the first newspaper that I read regularly. It wasn’t long before I began to question some of the things it was printing and as I got older I became equally fascinated and appalled by what the paper was telling its readership.
What will I be writing about?
“Write what you know”. Isn’t that what they tell aspiring writers? I make my money using computers and I spend far too much of it on consumer technology. So those are the two areas that I’ll be concentrating on
There’s plenty to choose from here. Most Mail writers seem to have an innate distrust of technology. That distrust leads to fear and if there’s one thing that the Mail excels at, it’s telling their readers what to be scared of. Whether it’s Petronella Wyatt overstating the problems of Wikipedia, the dangers of letting children talk to each other over the internet or (from just last month) how Facebook gives you cancer, the Mail’s technology pages are full of misunderstandings, misinformation and (not to beat around the bush) lies.
In addition to that I’ll be involved in a lot of the practical geekery that keeps the site up and running. I’ll also be helping out with admin stuff and general strategy (along with Tim and BigDaddyMerk).
Why am I doing this?
Probably for very similar reasons to the other people involved. The Mail reinforces the fears and prejudices of its readers. Many of these fears and prejudices have no rational basis, so the Mail needs to lie to its readers. I want people to realise how little of the Mail’s output can be trusted.
In particular, I believe that technology can be a powerful force for good and if the Mail stopped treating it as something to be feared and encouraged its readers to embrace it, then many people’s lives could be improved.
Why have you chosen your specific beat and/or what skills and expertise can you bring to it?
I’ve chosen to cover technology because it’s what I know. It’s therefore a subject where I can probably detect more of the Mail’s lies than I could in any other area. It’s also a subject where they talk an awful lot of nonsense. So it’ll be easy to find things to write about.
Categories: Housekeeping |
Tags: editors | 4 Comments
Posted by Tim Ireland
March 4th, 2009
What’s about to happen?
Huzzah! I get to go first, because it’s my job to tell you that a brand new Daily Mail Watch is open for business from today.
(Well, we plan to go in and out of ‘beta’ soon after announcing our launch, falling over quite badly, and then recklessly struggling to our feet and throwing random kidney punches in pursuit of attention and some quick gains on the Wikio chart, but other than that, we’re solid.)
The purpose of the site is simple; editors will be quietly documenting outright lies peddled by the Daily Mail, and seeking to bring this culture of fear and falsehood to the attention of those Mail readers curious enough to use a search engine or browse the evil underground world of weblogs.
(Note – Our search engine kung fu is strong. Soon it will be mighty.)
I think you’re going to be genuinely impressed by the line-up about to follow, so I’ll let it speak for itself, only saying that I’m proud to be out here with these chaps today… damn proud.
(wells up)
(stiffens lip)
Right, the basic mission briefing is as follows:
Each of our editors is going to join us with an ‘intro’ post that’s designed to act as an all-purpose reference point for new readers; this will be the main link in each editor’s profile and the first stop for all new readers wondering if they should trust the person telling them that they are being lied to.
It’s going to look busy for a bit, but it should explain itself along the way, and I’ll be back to announce our exciting tipsters competition once the majority of our editors have checked in and the upper and lower flanges have been inspected for ice.
Chocks ready!
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Who am I?
Short version: My name is Tim Ireland. I live in Guildford and I have been blogging since late 2001 at bloggerheads.com
Long version: I’m the guy who brought the ‘lies only’ strategy to the party (a similar policy is in place at The Sun: Tabloid Lies), so while you’ll see me in a few comment threads, you probably won’t see much of me in the discussions prompted by front pages (to your right). That’s where I expect most of the venting about the politics, policies and positions behind these lies will take place, but someone in my position needs to stay away from that kind of thing, lest my judgement suffer… or be falsely called into question.
(I was once half-accused of bullying by The Daily Mail, and I look forward to being called worse in the future, regardless of any efforts to remain polite and reasonable to an almost comical degree.)
Recognising that this is BigDaddymerk’s patch, I will be maintaining and promoting a position that the most constructive thing we can do is each run at a slow and steady pace and simply document clear and verifiable cases of deliberate deception. And avoid anything else that is not that.
Typically this will involve the Daily Mail newspaper making their readers angry or afraid of something that either isn’t real, or isn’t anywhere near as bad as they make out. I imagine the line will be somewhere around the ridiculous claim that this opera contained “more than 8,000 obscenities”, when they are in fact taking the number of obscenities that are sung and multiplying that by the number of members in the chorus.
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What will I be writing about?
Like Dave and BigDaddyMerk, I will also be providing general input on the subject of politics and tactics, but my main assignment as editor is Sex & Sexuality.
Judging by the Mail’s past form, I expect to be dealing not only with lies invented by the Daily Mail, but lies invented by Christian pressure groups and the like, then faithfully or carelessly repeated by The Daily Mail.
I expect to encounter such things as fabricated outrage, homophobic agendas and paedophilia-related fear-mongering, but I would just as soon be proved wrong.
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Why am I doing this?
People should be able to put their trust in a newspaper without the threat of being lied to or otherwise betrayed.
Many readers of The Daily Mail hold firm to certain fears (or opinions, or opinions driven by fear) because they have been lied to, and I see no need for it in a modern democracy.
I don’t expect the people from the Mail to start behaving or to suddenly withdraw from the game, but I do hope to reach those readers who might be prepared to open their mind and realise when someone is exploiting them.
It is for this reason that I will be remaining firm on the following position:
Yes, The Daily Mail’s style and standards will attract and prompt some of the uglier aspects of humanity, but we are not here to hate the readers, we are here to reach out to potentially receptive readers. The very people we need to reach will turn away if we are hostile toward them.
But if we’re calm, friendly and credible, we stand more of a chance of winning them over.
Every Daily Mail reader who turns away from the publication because the Mail staff have not met certain standards of honesty increases the pressure on them to be more honest. Simple, really.
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Why have you chosen your specific beat and/or what skills and expertise can you bring to it?
Experience, mostly.
Not at sex, you silly person, but with analysing the structure of your typical sex-related scare story.
For instance; a story about age-appropriate sex education becomes very different when you ignore the “age-appropriate” bit and give the impression out that 5-year-olds will be watching the same film shown to sniggering 15-year-olds.
There are also many stories and ’studies’ that are fed to The Daily Mail by special interest groups, and the structure of these arrangements/relationships is equally important, especially when a shadowy pressure group puts about false claims that credible data is the work of shadowy pressure groups (like the gay mafia, and the ‘abortion industry’, who share the same meeting hall, and meet every second Tuesday and Wednesday respectively).
For the record, because I guarantee you that some people are going to (typically, anonymously) suggest otherwise, I am a happily-married heterosexual male with children, and I have no political or commercial ties to the sex trade, the abortion ‘industry’, or monsters under the bed.
But do watch out for my agnostic side, which can lead to some shortness with fundamentalists of any creed.
Cheers all.
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UPDATE – I swear to Dog, I only just noticed the date. Onward!
Categories: Housekeeping |
Tags: editors | 11 Comments
