=
Posted by Merk
December 7th, 2009
The following is a copy of a post made by Dr. Alienfromzog (an NHS Doctor) debunking Richard Littlejohn’s recent misinformed and frankly pathetic swipe at the NHS. The orignial article can be found at Angry Mob. We republish with kind permission.
There must be something wrong with me. I read Richard Littlejohn’s column from 30th November (Thank heavens my sick mum wasn’t at the mercy of the NHS) and I didn’t get angry.
Was this because I agreed with what RLJ had to say?
No.
Was this because RLJ extensive research had led to a well thought-out argument that I found interesting?
No.
Was it because his column contained some facts for a change?
No.
So why wasn’t I angry?
Simply because it was RLJ being RLJ and I’m told you shouldn’t shoot a duck for quaking.
Normally this kind of thing makes me really very very angry. I have a small confession to make at this point. I am an unrepentant apologist for the NHS. I work in it, I am aware of its limitations and issues and I could write long articles on what’s wrong with it. I don’t for three reasons. Firstly, the NHS is much – and unfairly – maligned. Two, the problems of it are almost always different to the issues raised in the press. And thirdly, and much more importantly, the NHS is an amazing thing and whilst it does have issues they are, in the real world, a price well worth paying for comprehensive healthcare. I am proud of the healthcare the vast majority of patients receive and the work we do in the NHS. It is hugely frustrating to see this constant abuse in the press. And it’s not just about the shear insult of this but every week I have to deal with the anxiety created in patients before they even make it to the hospital door. Of course, it is not surprising that anyone who reads our papers is scared of being admitted to hospital.
So, let’s summarise RLJ argument;
1.His mother was involved in a traffic accident and was well looked after in a hospital in the states.
2. The NHS might have killed her because all British hospitals are dirty and you will pick up a deadly disease in you are unfortunate enough to be admitted one.
3. American Healthcare is great and insurance works while the billions we spend on the NHS are a waste as there’s no good outcomes or accountability.
If I only I knew where to begin with this. I must warn any brave readers that in order to write this I have done some actual research and have provided references at the bottom so that all the facts can be checked. That’s right – this article ought to come with a health warning to anyone who reads RLJ regularly; WARNING, the following contains actual facts and not RLJ delusions.
I think I want to begin by talking about MRSA. To be fair to Littlejohn, almost no one in the press gets this right. My own personal rant is that MRSA is NOT a superbug. (E.coli 0157 now that’s another matter…. sorry, getting of the point). MRSA stands for Methicillin resistant Staphlococcus aureus. Staph. auerus is an extremely common bacteria, it is on the skin of at least a third of the people who read this article. It can be treated with various antibiotics including penicillins. Methicillin is not used in the UK – it is most closely related to Flucloxicillin (a type of penicillin). MRSA is Staph aureus that is resistant to flucloxcillin. This is not a major problem, as the vast majority of strains of MRSA are fairly weedy and are sensitive to multiple antibiotics and are fairly easy to treat. It is quite misleading to say that someone died of MRSA – they died of Staph. aureus infection and the MR bit or otherwise is usually irrelevant. Hospital-acquired infections are common and in general have nothing to do with hospital cleanliness. I know, what a ridiculous thing to say! Well, firstly the majority of infections that patients get come from their own skin. The main reason why people get infections in hospital is not because they’re in hospital but because they’re ill. By definition the people in hospitals are those that will be most vulnerable to picking up infections. This is why hospital cleanliness matters because it is about minimising the risk to vulnerable people. However, and this is the key, even if the hospital walls, floors, ceilings and beds were entirely sterile it would not stop people getting infections.
So what’s all this fuss about MRSA? The answer to that is multifactorial. I think there are two important reasons. Staphlococcus aureus is a very clever bug and can infect multiple sites in the body; it can cause skin infections, urinary infections, pneumonia, septicaemia (blood infection) to name but a few. The other reason is that the methicillin-resistant strains of Staph aureus are only found in hospitals or other institutions. Places where antibiotics have been used. And hence there is an assumption that MRSA has been acquired in hospital. MRSA infection can certainly be reduced by increasing cleanliness but to some extent that’s irrelevant, remember that most infections come from skin (and it’s impossible to ever fully sterilize a patient’s own skin). Do you really care whether you have a MRSA or an MSSA (common-or-garden Staph. auerus) infection, if I can treat it for you either way? There is no evidence that MRSA strains are more deadly that non-resistant strains.
Here’s some facts you’ll never hear in the press:
1. MRSA is a worldwide problem. (Probably the greatest problem is in Japan for various historic reasons).
2. MRSA became endemic in UK hospitals in the early 1990s.
3. MRSA-related deaths are falling.(1)
4. MRSA is a major problem in the USA. This is a quote from a CDC report. (The CDC is the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention – one of the world’s leading authorities on infectious diseases).(2)
“Hospital-acquired infections from all causes are estimated to cause >90,000 deaths per year in the United States and are the sixth leading cause of death nationally. Nosocomial infections increase patient illness and the length of hospital stays. The direct cost has been estimated to be >$6 billion (inflation adjusted) costs of longer inpatient visits are shared by hospitals.”
So, please, can we move on from the myth that NHS hospitals are uniquely dangerous because only we have MRSA and it’s a superbug?
The US Healthcare system and its costs
So let us look at the US healthcare system. The top hospitals in the USA are amazing and provide amazing healthcare, many of them are world centres. However there are a few minor points worth noting. Healthcare in the US is astoundingly expensive.
Here are some interesting statistics;
46.3 million(3) – that’s the number of Americans with NO healthcare coverage. (15% of the population). In the event of an emergency they do indeed get treatment – but it is strictly emergency only. So cancer surgery is not covered, on-going asthma care is not covered. People with bad asthma need on-going treatment to control their disease. Without this hospital admissions are common. Emergency cover will patch them up (usually) and chuck them out to come straight back in again the next time. The frequency and severity (i.e. whether it is life-threatening or not) of attacks can be reduced with good on-going treatment. Not available to 46.3 million Americans unless of course they pay for it themselves.
The leading cause of bankruptcy is the US is healthcare costs(4) – even people with healthcare insurance struggle – limitations on cover, the deductible (i.e. how much you have to pay yourself). Imagine recovering from a serious illness to then lose your home.
£92.5bn – the cost of the entire NHS for the financial year 2008-9(5)
$596.6bn – the combined cost of the US Medicare and Medicaid programs(6). That’s £360bn. Medicare provides healthcare coverage for the elderly and Medicaid for the poorest. The majority of uninsured people are too well off for Medicaid but can’t afford insurance or their employer doesn’t provide it. Both of these programs still involve premiums and co-payments in addition to the government £360bn. Medicare has about 45 million people enrolled and Medicaid 50 million. So, in summary; the inefficient, expensive NHS covers 60 million people entirely for £92.5bn, whilst Medicare/Medicaid provides basic coverage (but not without co-payments) for 95 million people for £360bn. In fact, the US spends more per population on a basic healthcare system that only covers the oldest and poorest than the UK government spends on a healthcare system that looks after everyone. In UK terms that would equate to the government spending around £120bn for basic (so-called safety-net) coverage of less than 20 million of the UK population.
And here’s the real shock; for all the money they spend, the US life-expectancy is less than that of the UK.(7)
I am seriously impressed by anyone who’s still reading at this point. And this is part of the problem, the sort of trash that the Daily Mail puts out is much easier to read than the complex facts that actually reflect the truth of healthcare. There is so much more I can write – about unnecessary and invasive tests, about the benefits of preventative medicine but I think I should stop now.
The NHS is far from perfect but it is very very good. It is also unbelievably cheap for what we get for our money – worryingly to those who work in it, it is the most efficient healthcare system in the world. The problem is that for ideological reasons (i.e. Government=bad) The Daily Mail and those like it want to force us to take on a US-like model of healthcare. They’ll get their 5* hotel room hospital beds and everyone else will suffer. We will see the poor and the elderly left to die quietly or to live with their debilitating disease as the insurance companies make a fortune. And if the American example is anything to go by, ultimately we all end up paying more for sub-standard healthcare coverage for the most vulnerable.
I want to apologise for the length of this article but someone has to stand up to the constant lies of the Daily Mail. The NHS is an amazing thing and whilst it does have issues they are, in the real world, a price well worth paying for comprehensive healthcare. I am proud of the healthcare the vast majority of patients receive.
Dr alienfromzog BSc(Hons) MBChB MRCS(Ed)
References:
1. Department of Health: http://tinyurl.com/6kjbue
2. Centre for Disease Control and Prevention paper: http://tinyurl.com/ybvp2p3
3. US Census: http://tinyurl.com/ln5a2q
4. Baltimore newspaper article: http://tinyurl.com/ylg2fet
5. HM Treasury corrected figures: http://tinyurl.com/yzme4ng
6. Official financial report of Medicare and Medicaid; http://tinyurl.com/yguq2wn
7. World Health Organisation figures: http://tinyurl.com/yguq2wn
Categories: Guest Blog, Healthcare |
26 Comments
Posted by sim-o
December 6th, 2009
Welcome to the new Mailwatch weekly round-up. Every week you’ll get some links to some posts about the antics of the Daily Mail – Some from our editors’ own sites and some from elsewhere.
So, without further ado…
5 Chinese Crackers has a couple of posts, the first, and there’s gonna be a lot of these about this time of year, is about Christmas still not being banned and the second is a quickie in response to a question posed by Sue Reid.
The Daily Quail has a despatch from their international correspondent regarding healthcare and Littlejohn (unfortunately the NHSs’ ‘death panel’ didn’t get to him… this time). The Quail also got all mysogynistic on us with lots of pictures of lovely young ladies as an excuse to write about a woman that died after some surgery.
Enemies of Reason, this week, started off in the ’70s and ends with a post that sniffs out something horrible.
From elsewhere we have Upon Nothing discussing a new Berlin wall in er, Borough of all places and the Guardians’ Bike Blog reports on a so-called ‘zombie cyclists‘.
That’s it for the first round up. Don’t forget, We’re on Twitter and we also have a forum, too.
Categories: Media |
2 Comments
Posted by Tim Ireland
November 27th, 2009
Hello. If you know any readers of the Daily mail, would you be so kind as to pass this on to them by email (or simply link to this post)?
Cheers
Tim
Hello to you, dear reader of the Daily Mail.
I would like to bring to your attention the story of a hospital ward and a map:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1231150/Mapping-strain-NHS-243-sick-babies-treated-London-hospital-ward—just-18-mothers-born-UK.html
A few things about this story need to be pointed out:
1. That some of these ‘foreign’ mothers they speak of may have been here for as long as their entire adult lives is neatly tossed to one side in the following manner (one fact has nothing to do with the other, unless you are to say that ‘foreign is foreign’, and if you agree with that, then you may as well give up on this letter now):
“It is impossible to say how long each of the mothers has been in this country. But the fact is only a fraction of them declared themselves as having a British background.”
2. What is also tossed to one side is the ‘theory’ of rules about visas and NHS care. Absolutely nothing valid or relevant is produced to verify the doubts raised.
3. Then some statistics are casually thrown about that, rather than reinforcing any of the above specifics, merely reinforce an idea (i.e. that we are being flooded with foreigners).
4. The following sentence (part of a wider statement from the hospital) was included *after* this story was first written and published, and shows the extremes to which reality conflicts with the fantasy this newspaper is trying to sell you. This is the only statistic in the article that comes from the hospital. It is also the only statistic that relates directly to the case being made about the map… and it contradicts it entirely!
“In 2009, there have been just two overseas admissions.”
Yes, you read that right; every other mother that year (and there were 548 of them in 2009) were British citizens, yet the headline (below) portrays this group as being vastly outnumbered:
“Mapping out the strain on your NHS: 243 sick babies treated in one London hospital ward…. and just 18 mothers come from Britain”
It is not just the way in which the truth is handled so casually in the entire affair but *what* is so casually done away with that makes it clear the writer and editor either have an innate and irrational fear of foreigners or (worse) are willingly misrepresenting the good work of some our most valued care workers (who, it turns out, are also represented by some of the pins on this map) in order to deliberately make you more fearful of a foreign invasion than you have cause to be.
All the hospital workers wanted to do was a engage in a little nurturing and enable a little community bonding. That’s been completely misrepresented here, maliciously one might suspect, just to make you afraid.
The alternative is that the lines have been blurred in this way because the writer and editor responsible have allowed their own fear to cloud their reason; where everyone else sees a gesture of community, they see an invasion map!
I guess what I am trying to say is that you should probably think twice before trusting people like this as a primary source of something as important as *news*, as there is no telling how, when or why they might misrepresent facts, or even to what extent they may try this with you beyond (maybe) my saying this one’s a new low on me.
Thanks for your time.
Tim Ireland
Daily Mail Watch
http://www.mailwatch.co.uk/
This same issue has also been covered by Uponnothing, and Five Chinese Crackers. Do prepare yourself for a slightly terser tone.
Categories: Immigration |
14 Comments
Posted by Dave Cross
November 3rd, 2009
[Reposted from davblog]
The story so far:
In January 2004, in an astonishing display of common sense the government downgraded cannabis to a class C drug. This didn’t play well in the shires and in January 2009 it was reclassified as Class B. Last week, Professor David Nutt, head of the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, said what every rational person knows – that the reclassification was a political decision which completely ignored the scientific evidence. He was sacked by the Home Secretary. Over the weekend two other members of the council resigned in protest.
This has lead to a lot of discussion of the relationship between scientific evidence and government policy. Today the Daily Mail (who else?) published one of the most ill-informed articles on the subject that it would be possible to write. It’s written by that most highly respected of science writers, A N Wilson. In the future, this article will no doubt be used as the basis of introductory level courses on the philosophy of science where students will compete to find the largest number of logical fallacies in the piece.
Let’s pick off some of the easier targets.
But [Professor Nutt] was not content simply to give advice, of course. What he appeared to want to do was to dictate to the Government, and when it refused to acknowledge his infallibility, Professor Nutt started to break ranks and to denounce the country’s law on drugs.
That’s putting a more than slightly biased slant on events, of course. Professor Nutt was employed for his expertise on drugs. He can’t be expected to change his opinions to fit in with government policy. Science doesn’t work like that.
The trouble with a ’scientific’ argument, of course, is that it is not made in the real world, but in a laboratory by an unimaginative
academic relying solely on empirical facts.
Oh no! Those troublesome scientists with their “unimaginative” empirical facts. If only they had a bit more imagination so that they could make up facts that better fitted the policies that the government want to implement.
Try saying that ecstasy is safe in the sink estates of our big cities, where police, social workers and teachers work to improve the lives of young people at the bottom of the heap.
Ah, yes. But nowhere has Professor Nutt suggested that ecstasy is safe. He is saying that it is less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. That doesn’t mean it’s safe. This is a blatant misrepresentation of his views.
If you add together all the winos and self-destructive alcoholics, then throw in the smokers who’ve died of respiratory or cardiac disease, the total will far outstrip the number of young people who die after taking an ecstasy pill – and you could conclude from this that smoking and drinking are more dangerous than ecstasy.
Well, yes. No-one is likely to disagree with this. But saying this in the middle of the article strongly implies that this is how Professor Nutt and his colleagues reached their conclusions. And that, of course, won’t be the case at all. This shows, at least, a terrible lack of knowledge of the scientific method or, perhaps, a shameful attempt to misrepresent the amount of work that will have gone into Professor Nutt’s research.
Going back in time, some people think that Hitler invented the revolting experiments performed by Dr Mengele on human beings and animals.
But the Nazis did not invent these things. The only difference between Hitler and previous governments was that he believed, with babyish credulity, in science as the only truth. He allowed scientists freedoms which a civilised government would have checked.
Ok, now we’re really on dodgy ground. This is getting dangerously close to saying that all scientists are one experiment away from becoming Dr. Mengele. It’s like Wilson has never heard of Godwin’s Law. Originally, the online version of this article had a picture of Hitler next to these paragraphs. This has been removed in the last hour or so.
It’s also worth pointing out that the Mail is sending out mixed messages here. Surely a comparison to the Nazis is showing some kind of grudging respect to the scientists.
In fact, it is the arrogant scientific establishment which questions free expression. Think of the hoo-ha which occurred when one hospital doctor dared to question the wisdom of using the MMR vaccine.
Isn’t it astonishing that the Mail is still banging on about this? Wakefield was wrong. And his deeply flawed study would had been given no publicity at all if it wasn’t for papers like the Mail jumping on the bandwagon without doing the smallest amount of research on the story.
And to every one who thinks otherwise, I would ask them to carry out a simple experiment. Put a drug, bought casually on the street corner, and a glass of red wine on the table when your teenager comes home from school. Which of them, in all honesty, would you prefer him to try?
See? That’s Wilson’s idea of a scientific experiment. He doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. He needs (in fact most journalists who write about science in the popular press need) a course in the scientific method and basic statistics. It should be law that you can’t write about science until you’ve read and understood Bad Science.
I’m glad to see that Wilson is getting pulled apart in the comments. But people reading the paper won’t see the comments. The Mail needs to publish a retraction. And Wilson needs to be stopped from writing about things he knows nothing about.
Categories: Politics |
30 Comments
Posted by Jamie Sport
November 2nd, 2009
In my last post I looked at the effect controversial comments under articles on MailOnline might have on the brands advertised next to them. A number of advertisers had expressed concerns that unmoderated comments on the newspaper’s website might lead to issues with ads appearing alongside offensive comments. O2’s head of online marketing commented:
There’s always the risk with user content that our brand advertising may appear next to a comment we may not agree with or like. In the Mail Online example, we would want to understand the controls the media owner is giving to users of the forum so inappropriate content can be reported. If we’re satisfied with the processes then it’s likely we would consider advertising.
Currently the majority of comment sections on MailOnline remain at least partially moderated, yet, somehow, inappropriate content still seems to be slipping through. But have things improved since the last time we looked at the issue, when a torrent of xenophobic messages were left underneath a story about Asda stocking Asian inspired clothing? To find out, let’s look at today’s article about a man who died of asphyxiation after being trapped in a cramped and airless HGV compartment (thanks to Five Chinese Crackers for highlighting this).
Bear in mind that all comments appearing under this story have been pre-moderated (i.e., checked in advance by a MailOnline employee to ensure nothing ‘defamatory, malicious, threatening, false, misleading, offensive, abusive, discriminatory, harassing, blasphemous or racist‘ gets through) . The article was published at some point before 6.30 PM, at which time these 13 comments were publicly visible. At the time of writing (11.30 PM), the following comments were the highest rated:
If these are the highest rated, and thus most visible, comments, how does that reflect upon the “controls” and “processes” used by MailOnline to prevent “inappropriate content” appearing? Other comments not shown above include:
GOOD RIDDANCE……
I down, How many millions to go????
and
1 down and quite a few to go yet.
and
One less for us to worry about,
Is there a theme emerging? Yes, I think there is. This one sums it up:
One less to support for life.
while this one is more concerned about the cost of disposing of the fellow human being’s body
No doubt this country will be liable for disposing of his corpse.Dead and still costing us cash!
Even death is not enough to placate this pleasant chap’s distaste for asylum seekers.
Now seems like a good time to remind ourselves again that all of these comments ‘have been moderated in advance‘. Someone at Northcliffe House looked at the above comments and decided, ‘Yes, these are fine. Not just dismissing, or ignoring, or joking about, but celebrating the death of another human being is just fine with us. There is no conceivable way our readers and advertisers would find these comments defamatory, malicious, threatening, false, misleading, offensive, abusive, discriminatory, harassing, blasphemous or racist. They are perfectly suitable for publication.’
This also seems like an appropriate point to remember what the MD of planning and buying agency Diffiniti said before:
Advertisers need to be sure they’re in a suitable environment.
Currently, M&S, Channel 4, uSwitch, Zanussi, Kingsmill, Kaleidoscope, Barclays, Anglian Home Improvements, Axa PPP, American Express, Aviva, Job Centre Plus, Weight Watchers, O2, BMW, DFS, Virgin Media, Radisson Blu, Oral B, Kodak, Sainsburys, and RAC, all have display advertisments served to the page on which the above comments are hosted. Their brands appear alongside not just one comment reacting with glee to the death of an asylum seeker, but thirteen. In over five hours not a single comment has been published pointing out the tragedy of the case. The closest we get to sympathy is ‘Shame but I would be a hypocrit [sic] if I said I was sorry!’.
It seems unlikely, however, that not a single reader has not expressed any shred of humanity in reaction to the story. Not all Mail readers are cold-blooded bigots. Some would surely have left comments expressing horror at the miserable circumstances of the man’s death, sorrow for his passing, and shock at fellow commenters heartless remarks. So where are these comments? If thirteen frankly contemptable responses are waved through unedited, I cannot understand where the rest might have gone and how MailOnline can operate such lax controls on its own website. It almost seems as if, not only is “inappropriate content” appearing quite freely, but appropriate content is being suppressed. Whether this is because of technical or editorial reasons is unclear.
I am left wondering how many of the companies listed above, if they were aware of the lack of control MailOnline appears to have over its own readers, would be comfortable with their brand appearing alongside commenters celebrating the death of a man from asphyxiation? Would anyone regard that as a “suitable environment”?
Categories: Immigration, Media |
34 Comments
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 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
Posted by Jamie Sport
September 14th, 2009
Last month, the Mail created a minor stir in the media industry by announcing that it would soon be introducing unmoderated comments under articles published on MailOnline. Most newspaper websites employ comment moderation in some form or another, checking comments before or after publication to weed out defamatory or libellous scribblings from armchair sages to protect both their own and their advertisers’ brand identities. Discriminatory, offensive, and inaccurate comments reflect badly on the content provider, regardless of whether or not the provider actually wrote them themself.
The announcement caused a bit of a fuss. Mark Trustum, director of e-commerce for Specsavers which advertises on MailOnline, said the firm would not continue to pay for advertising next to unmoderated, contraversial or offensive comments:
Unmoderated user content falls into this category and is a grey area for advertisers. It’s vitally important for us to protect our brand reputation and, therefore, as soon as we were made aware of any such content being present alongside our advertising we would immediately ask for our ad to be withdrawn.
Ben Wood, Managing Director of digital planning and buying agency (the guys who actually spend the money and buy advertising space for companies) Diffiniti agreed, saying he wouldn’t buy space for clients alongisde unmoderated comments. He explained succinctly:
Advertisers need to be sure they’re in a suitable environment.
A chorus of other media and advertising types (the people the Mail really cares about) echoed this sentiment; ad placement is a major issue in protecting brand identity. In May, Tesco and Vodafone pulled advertising from Facebook after ads were served on Holocaust denial and BNP group pages. More recently, advertisers deserted Glenn Beck’s rabid paranoid Fox News screamshow after he claimed Obama was ‘racist’. Why would any brand pay to associate itself with racism, xenophobia, and intolerance?
Why would, say, Marks & Spencer wish to advertise its Autograph Cotton Blend Trench Coat on a page that contains comments like ‘The islamic colonization of our country shows no sign of slowing down, infact [sic] it’s gathering pace as the tipping point approaches‘? Would uSwitch or Cotton Traders be happy to promote their services alongside bigoted rants such as this:
So, no patriotism allowed, no free-speech allowed, don’t mention the BNP, don’t complain about green-belt building to accommodate the influx, don’t dare say you’re a Christian, don’t complain that your local church is now a mosque, don’t be alarmed if your local town now looks like Islamabad. For Gawd’s sake, is there no end to the destruction of Englishness? When I shop in an English shop, I want to see English things ?
Unless their target market consists solely of angry xenopbobic white people, I doubt they’d be too pleased to see their brand on the same page as such bizarre outpourings of racially motivated bile.
Aside from advertising, another distinct part of the marketing mix is public relations. PR companies often send press releases to newspapers and magazines announcing new products or services in the hope of some free publicity. For example, Asda have just launched a new Asian inspired clothes range in selected stores, and you can see the resulting PR trail here. It’s not a hugely interesting story, so most newspapers have limited their articles to a few lines, rewritten from the original press release. Here’s the Guardian’s piece and here is the BBC’s version. You can tell when an article is based on a press release because all of the quotes are the same, from the same people, and it mentions specific products like the ’sequinned embellished Salwaar Kameez (or traditional suit) along with pricing. Press releases are what’s known in industry circles as dull.
Things are a little different when it comes to the Mail, however. The article itself is nearly identical to all of the others, but the major difference is found in the comments. While most other versions of this press release found on other news sites either haven’t received any user comments or don’t even have a comment section available (because it’s a boring press release, what’s to say?), the Mail has notched up 120 comments at the time of writing – two of which I’ve already mentioned above.
120 comments on an article about some new trousers and a couple of dresses.
Now, bearing in mind that Asda’s own PR company have issued this press release to newspapers to generate a bit of interest and publicity around their new clothing range, and also remembering that comments on this particular article’s are premoderated, do you think Asda would be happy to promote their brand alongside comments such as:
Roll up roll up. !! Get your Prayer mats and korans here. Britainistan 2009.
why? there are enough asian clothes shops in the asian no go ghettos
Would a supermarket chain in Pakistan start stocking levi’s and wonderbras if it was the other way around? I wonder whether in a few years’ time we’ll be seeing people putting burkas in their shopping trolleys?
Why? When our local Asda often cannot supply organic milk and free-range chicken for their regular customers!
Notice especially ‘Britainistan’, apparently a witty reinterpretation of Mail columnist Melanie Phillips’ own creation ‘Londonistan’, the association of ‘asians’ and ‘ghettos’, that symbol of tyrannical Islamic oppression the burkha, and the lament for ‘regular customers’, which presumably excludes anyone from Asia and the Indian sub-continent. More, you say? Ok:
I have no objection to ethnic fashion, except on those streets of some of our major cities that have gone completely to the other extreme, stocking little with any appeal to the indigenous population. Wiltshire Resident [another, pro-Asda commenter]should try Bradford if she loves Asian Fashion. She may even feel completely at home there, apart from the fact that large parts look and feel like a foreign country.
Excellent use of the ‘If you love it so much, why don’t you go live there’ argument, alongside a swipe at multiculturalism, and (bingo!) inclusion of BNP buzzword ‘indigenous’. Ok, ok, one more:
Sorry, but isn’t ASDA aware of the existing social problem of Asians failing to integrate ? I believe that this is an ill conceived idea, as our Asian residents should be adopting western clothing as the norm whilst living in the UK.
Ah, the imaginary bugbear of any self-respecting racist, social integration. Because Asians are clearly a problem group when it comes to integrating into British culture as, say, Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara), Konnie Huq, Dev Patel, Amir Khan, Melanie Sykes, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Meera Syal, Hardeep Singh Kohli, Cliff Richard (really!), James Caan (previously Khan), Sanjeev Bhaskar, Monty Panesar, Parminder Nagra, Nasser Hussein, Shobna Gulati, and several million more could testify (apologies to those I may have missed). Bonus points given for calling for ultra authoritarian legislation on foreign residents’ clothing – Asian residents should be forced to wear ‘Western clothing’, whatever that might be precisely. Jeans, probably. Very British.
To their (perhaps dubious) credit, the Mail did simply rehash Asda’s press release just like all the other newspapers, without adding any of their own editorial bias. But to vet, approve and publish comments such as the above is irresponsible at best, and must surely worry companies such as Asda, M&S, and uSwitch, whose brands appear next to poorly informed readers’ bile. Asda, especially, must be worried that a perfectly innocuous press release could be so utterly twisted by commenters, not only to be used as an excuse to express vile, reactionary comments about indigenous this and integration that, but also a reason for a number of commenters to announce an immediate boycott of the store altogether.
Bloggers are all too aware of the onorous responsibility they bear not just for their own posts, but for the comments that appear beneath them. Anyone who writes on the web must accept that, thanks to British libel laws, what’s written by others but hosted by you is your responsibility. If some anonymous commenter libels somebody else, and the target is of a litigious nature, they won’t go after the commenter, they’ll probably sue you.
Most newspapers are aware of this too, and take care to add clauses such as ‘The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.‘ The Mail also have two whole pages of House Rules and Terms & Conditions, forbidding ‘defamatory, malicious, threatening, false, misleading, offensive, abusive, discriminatory, harassing, blasphemous or racist‘ comments. Presumably, then, the comments quoted previously are none of the above, and are perfectly acceptable. But, while they may not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline, I can’t help but wonder whether or not advertisers feel that they create a ’suitable environment’ for brand building.
Categories: Immigration, Media |
50 Comments
Posted by Tim Ireland
September 10th, 2009
Hi, folks! I’m quietly readying myself for a return to the blogosphere, but I just got this wind of this via an anonymous tip, and it seemed to be an ideal warm-up exercise:
Do you remember Julie Moult? You should; it was her idiocy that finally got me fired up enough to get our little group of Daily Mail watchers together here at Daily Mail Watch.
Here’s Our Julie’s latest scoop, and it’s whopper.
Demi snubs Sarah the Twitter fan and ignores her message
By Julie Moult
Her contacts book may be bursting at the seams, but it appears not everybody wants to get to know Sarah Brown. The Prime Minister’s wife has successfully wooed U.S. socialite Paris Hilton, supermodel Naomi Campbell and America’s First Lady Michelle Obama. However, Demi Moore seems rather less interested. In fact, the Hollywood actress has just delivered the internet equivalent of the cold shoulder…
Miss Moore and her husband Anton Kutcher were among the first celebrities to help make Twittering an international craze. So who better to help Mrs Brown publicise a book documenting the plight of women in the developing world? On Tuesday afternoon a series of Tweets popped up on Miss Moore’s page from Mrs Brown’s Twitter account telling the actress to ‘Spread the word (in the U.S.A)!’ that ‘Half The Sky by Nicholas Kristoff & Sheryl WuDunn comes out 2day’. The response from Miss Moore? Very little, apart from a nonplussed silence. In terms of Twitter etiquette, it’s rather like being ignored at a social function.
(read full article)
This absurd and pointless pop at the PM’s wife would have earned a place on Daily Mail Watch regardless of what I’m about to reveal, as Demi Moore (mrskutcher) has just under TWO MILLION followers on Twitter, and it absurd to suggest that any failure to respond to any tweet sent her way is a ’snub’, as anyone with over a few hundred followers (*cough*) will readily tell you.
But it gets better… hold onto your sides:
Sarah Brown (SarahBrown10) did not tweet an RT (re-tweet) appeal at Demi Moore; quite the opposite, in fact.
It all started when Demi Moore posted the original message:
Half The Sky by Nicholas Kristoff & Sheryl WuDunn comes out 2day- http://bit.ly/AaNkX Amazing & inspiring book !
(mrskutcher: 11:25 AM Sep 8th from TweetDeck )
About half an hour later, Demi Moore then RTed this response after being alerted to the idea that she should include some sort of RT appeal in her message:
Spread the word! RT @GTproductions: Just bot it! RT Half The Sky by Nicholas Kristoff & Sheryl WuDunn comes out 2day- http://bit.ly/AaNkX
(mrskutcher: 11:40 AM Sep 8th from TweetDeck )
Then Sarah Brown kindly responded to that appeal, with this, which is clearly an RT of Demi Moore’s second tweet on the subject:
RT @mrskutcher Spread the word (in the USA)! RT @GTproductions: RT Half The Sky by Nicholas Kristoff & Sheryl WuDunn comes out 2day-
(SarahBrown10: 1:51 PM Sep 8th from web)
She has added “in the USA!”, but this is in brackets (standard etiquette for comments in RTs) and either way the message begins with a dirty great ‘RT’ followed Demi Moore’s account name. Even if Julie Moult had only seen this single tweet by Sarah Brown, if she knew anything about Twitter she should have immediately recognised it as an RT by Sarah Brown in response to an appeal from Demi Moore.
But no.
Further, while she actually managed/bothered to conduct enough research to scan Demi Moore’s Twitter page for any ‘response’ to Sarah Brown’s ‘appeal’, she failed to recognise that what she was looking at was the original tweet and appeal:
On Tuesday afternoon a series of Tweets popped up on Miss Moore’s page from Mrs Brown’s Twitter account telling the actress to ‘Spread the word (in the U.S.A)!’ that ‘Half The Sky by Nicholas Kristoff & Sheryl WuDunn comes out 2day’.
You could tweet a million messages at Demi Moore, but nothing would not turn up on her Twitter page unless she tweeted it herself. There’s also the minor matter of Sarah Brown’s tweet being published some three hours after Demi Moore’s, but a certain someone had difficulty wrapping her brain around that, too. And yet here she is writing as if she’s some sort of authority on Twitter, while portraying Sarah Brown as an outcast and wannabe.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is what you call an Epic Iain Dale.
To paraphrase Our Julie, in terms of Twitter etiquette, it’s rather like grabbing the wrong end of the foot and sticking it in your mouth. Or something like that.
Julie Moult is an idiot. Fact.
If the Daily Mail are going to continue to employ her, they should probably go back to checking her work.
-
Postscript: The only ‘Julie Moult’ on Twitter is jem1973, who currently has 6 followers and only follows this feed from a rival newspaper. (Not that I’m judging anyone… over anything but their idiocy.)
Categories: Media |
9 Comments
