To analyse exactly what the Mail wants, why it wants it, to inform many threads which are about how it goes about it.

The estimable Zelo Street blog has an excellent piece from Sunday on Amanda Platell's latest intolerant and ignorant nonsense,

http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2011/12 ... -rank.html

But it includes these telling and, I think, perceptive remarks:


That looks highly germane to me, starting with the point that very little gets published in the newspaper or online unless it fits with Paul Dacre's world view, in fact suits his agenda. That was a point made at the Leveson Inquiry by Alastair Campbell and is attested by many other soy=urces, as well as being evidenced by even a cursory view of the Mail's output.
Secondly, we have another take on the 'PLU issue'. The Mail is all about People Like Us - no differences, even involuntary ones, are to be allowed. This is, of course, the central spine of all bullying, the persecution for difference, and as ZS says, the non-PLUs and people who speak for them are demonised. That is a long list, and we could all add to it almost ad infinitum.

The blog - which you must read- ends:

This has a number of points to unpack.
Amanda will look like an intolerant and ignorant hack to everyone - except Mail readers who buy into the PLU insecurity. For them it is a case of confirmation bias in action. The ineffective and powerless who largely constitute the Mail readership will have their prejudice confirmed, not proven.
Again ZS stresses that this comes from Dacre, but also adds the element of resentment that comes across so clearly both in Mail articles and comments, the fear that someone, somewhere is getting something that you aren't. Old fashioned envy, again by the elements of society that perceive themselves, possibly correctly, as being pretty low down the food chain. Not that there's anything wrong with that for the confident and fulfilled members of society, but that isn't what Dacre wants. He wants to exploit the resentments and anger of those who realise that they have but little power and cannot come to terms with the fact that, for most people, that is normal. He can use their anger in the furthering of his other agenda headings.

The only things that ZS misses, it seems to me, are the other parts of the agenda; Dacre's desperate ambitions to set a political agenda without ever having to undergo the inconvenience of standing for office, and that of making quite obscene amounts of money.

To quote Stanley Baldwin

Quite.

Quite.

Oh. I now realise my life has been based on a false premise.
Thank you, Moonie, for pointing that out to me.
How about a sensible comment. or is that asking a bit much?

People who are not like us ARE GETTING THINGS. But it goes back to before Dacre:

"There were all kinds of Jews, all manner of Jews. They had breakfasted on board, but they rushed as though starving at the food. They helped themselves at will, they spilled coffee on the ground in wanton waste... when the relief committee passed by they hid their gold, and fawned and whined, and in broken English asked for money for their train fare."

1900 Daily Mail

Plus ca change.

Yes, Dacre is simply repeating the same preoccupation, with even more power to contaminate. Of course, in this case time does not lend enchantment.

Nick Davies makes some excellent points among many in Flat Earth News:


Furthemore....



Or as John Lloyd puts it:


No editor stamps their authority over a newspaper like Dacre does, he can unchallenged in espousing these views critically and often unchallenged. He has a hugely distorted world view, a bully to his staff and social groups he dislikes. Of course, many Mail writers and columnists share the same views, but for some you get the impression the fear of God (Dacre) is installed in them (vagina monologues) to write copy in certain ways, to spin facts to suit Dacre's headlines, every agenda pushed is Dacre's and nobody else.

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My blog: https://stevenplrose.wordpress.com/

How does Dacre's close personal friendship with Gordon Brown fit with this idea that the Mail is there merely as a vessel for his own personal agenda?

Because, incredibly, some people to have friends who don't share their political beliefs?

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Soppy anti-British, pro-crime, anti-education, pro-immigration, anti-family nonentity

The Mail frequently attacked Brown on a personal level as well as on a political level, which would be rather an irrational thing for someone to do to a friend. Either that, or the paper isn't the personal mouthpiece of Dacre after all and simply prints the kinds of things its readers will agree with, as all newspapers do.

Or are we now saying the Mail doesn't actually pander to racists, or homophobes, or to 'the right' or indeed to anyone at all in order to sell newspapers and be a profitible business, but is simply the multi-million pound propaganda pamphlet of one single man? That's quite an extraordinary claim, if I'm permitted to say so. Not least of all because he's only an employee, he doesn't own it.

Could you show any evidence of consistent, personal attacks on Gordon Brown?

It isn't me that's saying this, Moonie.
Nick Davies makes the point very forcefully in 'Flat Earth News' and Alastair Campbell also made the point in his testimony to Leveson. Murdoch senior also seems to think this is the case. Those are people with first-hand knowledge.

I'd say there certainly was an anti-Brown (in more way than one) slant to a lot of stuff in the Mail.

The "pregnant woman kicked off BA flight on Gordon Brown's orders" stands out. I don't know if the rest of it was 'fair game' on the Mail's anti-new labour stance.

Edit: 22 pages of "The Mail vs Gordon Brown"

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The upper hand is on the other foot now.

Pretty much everyone in the newspaper world says the Mail is basically Dacre's opinion writ large and he exerts and extraordinary level of control. Dacre exploits the preexisting prejudices of his core audience by feeding them stories tailored to their mindset - casual racism, casual homophobia, distrust of anything new, or different. Or are you suggesting everyone in the industry is bullshitting? He may not own it, but the Rothmeres have more or less set him up in a job for life. He's hardly as disposable and irrelevant to the Mail's output as the window cleaner.

There's no suggestion the Mail isn't a multimillion pound operation either. However, that doesn't make it OK for it to print bile, lies, and bullshit. It may well pander to an audience. But if it wasn't there to do so, perhaps that audience might go elsewhere for their news and actually get some different opinions - better ones, if we're lucky. The world would be a better place without the Mail in it.

As for Dacre/Brown being friends - quite frankly, no surprise. I've seen people diametrically opposed politically yell at each other for hours in meetings and then go for a pint and chat as if nothing happened. Some people consider it like sport - all's fair in the game. Which to be honest is shit - it isn't sport, it's people's lives. I don't want Labour MPs chumming up to Tory MPs in the HoC bar because the latter group are systematically destroying the country. And if Gordon Brown is chums with Dacre then Brown is an idiot. Dacre is a loathsome man who pushes an agenda of misery, paranoia and entirely misplaced moral smugness through his awful, awful paper.

Regardless, this is very tiresome, Moonshien. You bugger off for ages and then come back with exactly the same tactic - take up an entirely arbitrary stance with flimsy/zero evidence and/or tedious nitpicks for seemingly no purpose other than the fact it's arbitrary.

Because Gordon Brown and Dacre are both self serving tosspots?

As is nearly every politician I have encountered, at least the ambitious ones....

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You may say I'm a dreamer.... but I'm not the only one....

People who compared the tabloids to the Mafia have got it spot on in several respects, apart from the structures, the use of patronage, the favours, none of it's personal. "Tell Gordy it's just business. Then sic 'im."