Daily Mail Readers.

[TdC]

My auntie often quotes the fail - but then she hates n1ggers and is scared of immigrants (taking all our jobs).

My mum called a black guy a "darkie" the other day. I told her to fuck off. Well, words to that effect. Imo it's a generation thing. My mum is 73, and has lived and worked in places like Africa, India and Indonesia all her life, but imo with remarks like that she's simply a product of her generation.

 

[Falcon]

"The Paper that openly supported the Nazi cause"

That's nothing, they openly support Murdoch's cause nowadays!

The Daily Mail is crap because it's often just outright wrong. When Tiger Woods has slept with 12 women or whatever the Daily Mail took the number and doubled it, seemingly with no justification whatsoever other than outright sensationalism.

The Daily Mail is a fine read if you want to not actually take in any worthwhile information, but if you want the actual news, then it's best to stick to other sources.

Zenith made the most salient point in this respect earlier, the only way you'll really get the news is to visit a variety of moderate sources such as the BBC and Al Jazeera (yes, that one with the terrorist sounding name, is actually generally quite fair and balanced). The BBC does indeed make mistakes in terms of prioritisation, but at least it's not adhering entirely to corporate interests because it is public funded which is the case with The Daily Mail, The Times, Fox News, CNN, etc. Of course, if you want to find out the facts about a specific story in question, then go to the news source that's removed from the incident. If there's a spat between the EU and the US then Al Jazeera and Xinhua are a good bet, but if there's a spat between China and the US, or somewhere like Turkey and the US, then Xinhua and Al Jazeera respectively are a bad choice of news source as it's where their bias will show as the bias of the BBC, Al Jazeera, and Xinhua, are generally political, rather than social, hence why their bias only tends to be exposed in stories of political interest to them.

The Daily Mail's biases are both social and political which is why like other papers such as The Sun, The Times, it's not worth considering in any circumstance as a decent news source. In the UK, one of our best papers in terms of lack of bias is probably really The Independent, a good demonstration is that they were the only mainstream paper to not offer their backing to any political party in the most recent election and chose to remain impartial, again whilst not perfect, their coverage is generally the least biased of all UK papers. The Guardian would probably come second, but it's a distant second due to being rather too left leaning on some issues. They were late to offer support to the Lib Dems in the end, but unlike Murdoch's papers (The Daily Mail, The Sun, The Times, etc.) and The Daily Mirror they didn't declare their favoured party pretty much from the outset and then vehemently attack the opposition with ancient stories, and outright falsehoods. Unfortunately The Telegraph despite being somewhat more commercially independent all too often falls into the trap of doing just this sort of thing too, else it could also have positioned itself to be one of the more fair and balanced UK papers quite easily.

 

[Scouse]

My mum called a black guy a "darkie" the other day. I told her to fuck off. Well, words to that effect. Imo it's a generation thing. My mum is 73, and has lived and worked in places like Africa, India and Indonesia all her life, but imo with remarks like that she's simply a product of her generation.

One of my uncles was a bit like that. Bandied around the words darkie, wog and n1gger like they were going out of fashion.

I thought he was a massive racist, until I met one of the aforementioned darkies and found out he fought long and hard (in work, used to train the navy divers and work all over the shop) to make sure they were treated equally. Sometimes at great personal cost.

He used the language, but never felt any malice towards people of different skin colours....

 

[Ch3tan]

Yeah, don't be too harsh on your mum. Using words like that does not make a racist, it's meaning them in a nasty way that does.

My dad can use a fair few racial slurs, but he is never being serious. He grew up in Africa, so it's definitely just a generation thing.

 

[DaGaffer]

I'm stunned by the amount of casual racism I see in Ireland, a people who should know better, frankly.

 

[ford prefect]

Case in point:

PETER HITCHENS: These beggars are not helpless casualties - as my black eye proves | Mail Online

Apparently nobody needs to be homeless in Britain today and all homeless people choose to beg so that they can pay for their drugs. This Journalist stopped by some homeless guys, explained this to them and one of them gave him a black eye, thereby proving his point. Social commentary at its absolute finest. The sad thing is, some people actually seem to buy into this crap.

 

[Raven]

I read my mates sun, though I only ever get to page 3 and skip pages 1 and 2. The times now and again if I visit my mum. Day to day I don't bother, they are all full of opinions rather than facts, mostly twisted to fit a political leaning or to create a drama or they just miss half the facts to create a story out of nothing. I find sites such as the daily

The day of the daily paper is on its way out, if they want to make money then they will just have to keep up with the times and go online subscription based (like the times) The voice of Labour (The BBC) doesn't really cut it. it seems to be written by GSCE students and the presentation of the site is dog shit since they changed it.

 

[ECA]

Peter Hitchens is the douchenozzle brother of the awesome Christopher Hitchens.

 

[Ch3tan]

LOL, read the "just because it's French..." commentary under that one. The Daily Mail accusing something else of being anti semitic. Oh LOLOLOLOLOL.

 

[Mabs]

someone really should sue the Mail for incitement to racial hatred

and as for older generation, while "its how it was" isnt an excuse for anything really, as mentioned, a lot of old people refer to ragheads, or fuzzywuzzies etc, but arent racists per-se

 

[DaGaffer]

Case in point:

PETER HITCHENS: These beggars are not helpless casualties - as my black eye proves | Mail Online

Apparently nobody needs to be homeless in Britain today and all homeless people choose to beg so that they can pay for their drugs. This Journalist stopped by some homeless guys, explained this to them and one of them gave him a black eye, thereby proving his point. Social commentary at its absolute finest. The sad thing is, some people actually seem to buy into this crap.

Be interesting to see if that can actually be backed up with any real stats. I'd say not in London, but funnily enough, every beggar I ever see in Dublin is a drunk or a druggie (80/20 in favour of druggies these days), with the rare exception of professional Eastern European "Roma" (probably really Albanian) women with obligatory baby (pretty thin on the ground but there are a couple who work the tourists in Temple Bar). In Ireland its actually true that no-one needs to be homeless, so Hitchens would have had a point if he said that here.

 

[Falcon]

The day of the daily paper is on its way out, if they want to make money then they will just have to keep up with the times and go online subscription based (like the times) The voice of Labour (The BBC) doesn't really cut it.

I've seen this viewpoint that the BBC is pro-Labour voiced numerous times, but I've also seen it being accused of being anti-Labour. I think fundamentally this is a sign that the BBC doesn't do too bad a job, because the reality is it's neither. In more recent times they were quite good with their coverage of some of Labour's worse policies such as the DEA, and Brown's various election campaign screw ups, going back a year or so they had countless stories about the likes of Hazel Blears, Jacqui Smith and their repeated screw ups- their stories on Jacqui Smith were quite relentless. Going back even further a fine example that demonstrates a lack of empathy towards Labour is this:

BBC NEWS | Politics | BBC chairman quits over Hutton

This is quite an amusing story now, because the BBC were right, yet it was a very public spat between Labour and the BBC.

Certainly you may find a few individual biases from some reporters, the BBC generally doesn't seem to ally to any political party, but merely seems to be a more leftist/liberal thinking organisation, however as all 3 mainstream parties are predominantly centre-right at best in terms of the Lib Dems, or firmly in the realms of right wing with Labour and the Tories then there's no party the BBC particularly aligns closely to.

The biggest problems I find with the BBC are what they don't report. When their journalist, Alan Johnston was kidnapped the BBC had an update on their site every single day for months, yet for the same period a voluntary aid worker had also been kidnapped yet there was not a single article other than brief mention of her release. I understand they have a personal attachment to the story, but when their job is to remain impartial they should not be giving their own journalist that much coverage over anyone else.

It can be difficult sometimes separating out perceived bias from actual bias, all too often people assume when they read a story that if it disagrees with their viewpoint, that it must be in support of whatever political ideology they don't (or at least believe they don't) agree with. But of course, that doesn't mean there isn't political bias in mainstream press. Again, Al Jazeera, the BBC, Xinhua avoid bias much more so unless it's a specific political issue or a specific poor quality reporter, rather than a systemic organisation wide bias, as opposed to for example, all of Murdoch's media outlets where the bias is very much systemic throughout pretty much each organisation News Corp. owns.

 

[Scouse]

Just read the first half of that Hitchens article before I had to stop myself before my face exploded.

I've made a mental note to verbally abuse my sister the next time I see her with that rag. There's no fucking excuse funding that piece of shit.

 

[Wij]

Peter Hitchens is the douchenozzle brother of the awesome Christopher Hitchens.

Indeedy. Peter H really is a twat.

 

[nath]

Indeedy. Peter H really is a twat.

To be fair, Chris H is a massive **** too. Just one that happens to be right a lot of the time.

 

[Wij]

You should follow him on Facebook to get all his latest articles on Slate.

 

[yaruar]

I'm stunned by the amount of casual racism I see in Ireland, a people who should know better, frankly.

There is nothing casual about most of the racism in Ireland, it's about the most racist place I've ever encountered in my life.

 

[Scouse]

Bradford was mine. But then it was from everyone to everyone so you couldn't really point the finger at any one group. They were just different-ist

 

[nath]

You should follow him on Facebook to get all his latest articles on Slate.

I would but I don't use Facebook I don't need *more* AIDS :\.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

WHAT?! You can never have enough sir!