There is an obvious consequence of the Daily Mail reporting with such a racist bias: its readers become increasingly angry towards other ethnic groups. You could argue that media consumers are active - i.e. they are racist or hostile towards other ethnic groups and read the Daily Mail because it reinforces their beliefs - or you could argue that the consumer is passive - i.e. they buy the Daily Mail without any hostility towards other ethnic groups but develop the hostility through the constant drip, drip, drip of negative articles regarding other ethnic groups.
Either way, what yesterday's post (
Ladies and Gentleman: I give you the Daily Mail) demonstrates is that both the active and passive consumer is being fed articles that bear little relation to the truth. The comments on the Daily Mail website reflect this false worldview and help to reinforce it to those people who read or post in the comments. This is why it is so important that the Daily Mail moderates its comments - it has to ensure that the comments are towing the editorial line. The responses to yesterday's
disgracefully skewed article on immigration and social housing are therefore - generally - predictable:
Almost as important as the comments confirming that Mail readers have swallowed the misinformation whole is that vast green ratings that each comment receives. Contrast this with how any comments that show even a hint of dissent are voted well into the red:
What is clear is that newspapers are perfectly free to continually distort the truth. As
The enemies of reason and
Tabloid Watch have pointed out, the Press Complaints Commission are utterly powerless and utterly useless - even without having Paul Dacre as a senior figure within the organisation.
However, what yesterday proved is that websites such as this can have a limited role to play in exposing the skewed agenda of the tabloid press. Yesterday's article attracted over 5000 readers in one day (thanks to Bloggerheads, Anton Vowel and others retweeting) and this website is hardly alone or the most read when it comes to taking apart the distortions printed in tabloid newspapers.
There exists a section of people who rather than just moan about the lies printed in the press - and accepting that we are too powerless to change the tabloid agenda - are actually blogging, tweeting and generally spreading the truth that the tabloid press try so hard to conceal from its readers. I think that blogging and other forms of new technology has created a great opportunity to expose tabloid journalism for the fetid cesspit that it has become. Twitter for example was able to get the
Daily Mail to remove a loaded poll about gypsies, and even managed to crash the poll with the huge numbers of people that Twitter can quickly mobilise.
Many of my friends / family fail to really understand why I would want to spend my time writing about a tabloid newspaper and I've almost given up trying to explain that what the tabloid newspapers do - constant lies, hate and general scaremongering - has grave consequences for the society that we live in. I might not be changing anything at all with what I am doing, but at least I'm trying to affect positive change in the only way I can - no matter how small it may be.
I'm also thankful that I am not alone and that the following blogs (often to a greater extent) are doing the same:
The Daily Quail Daily Mail Watch The Enemies of Reason Tabloid Watch The Sun: Tabloid Lies Five Chinese Crackers Alone in the Dark Stirring Up Apathy No Sleep 'Til Brooklands Feminazery jdc325 If I have missed any out then please add them in the comments. If we are to be heard at all then we need to stick together as much as possible, exchange links, retweet articles and generally make sure that just occasionally a tabloid reader will see the light and stop reading.
