There’s hardly a day goes by without a sneer or a derogatory remark about the Daily Mail from a BBC presenter.
Now that Murdoch has been somewhat neutered the Mail is the next in the firing line for the relentless barrage of criticism that is intended to close it down….either literally or by making life so difficult for the owners that they backdown and give in to what amounts to control by the Left as to what is ‘acceptable’ content.
Scary huh? A Free Press anyone?
The assault has begun already in the New Statesman:
Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain
He’s the most successful and most feared newspaperman of his generation. But after a bad year in which he was forced to defend his methods, how much longer can Dacre survive as editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail?
Politicians no longer fear Murdoch as they once did. They still fear Dacre.
But Murdoch’s decline leaves the Mail under more scrutiny than ever. Is Dacre at last running out of road?
Rumours circulate in the national newspaper industry that members of the Rothermere family, owners of the Daily Mail, are increasingly nervous of the controversy that Dacre stirs up.
Dacre attracts visceral loathing. His enemies see the Mail, to quote the Huffington Post writer and NS columnist Mehdi Hasan (who was duly monstered in the Mail’s pages), as “immigrant-bashing, woman-hating, Muslim-smearing, NHS-undermining, gay-baiting”.
Curiously the New Statesman doesn’t give us the full facts here:
Nor that Hasan has admitted that…As a Muslim, I struggle with the idea of homosexuality… because of his religion…which by the way is also misogynistic, never mind the calls to kill the unbeliever or gay people…..or apostates as illustrated by the atheist Afghan given asylum here in fear of his life.
The NS continues:
In Dacre’s mind, the country is run, in effect, by affluent metropolitan liberals who dominate Whitehall, the leadership of the main political parties, the universities, the BBC and most public-sector professions. As he once said, “. . . no day is too busy or too short not to find time to tweak the noses of the liberalocracy”.
The Mail, in his view, speaks for ordinary people, working hard and struggling with their bills, conventional in their views, ambitious for their children, loyal to their country, proud of owning their home, determined to stand on their own feet. These people, Dacre believes, are not given a fair hearing in the national media and the Mail alone fights for them. It is incomprehensible to him – a gross category error – that critics should be obsessed by the Mail’s power and influence when the BBC, funded by a compulsory poll tax, dominates the news market. It uses this position, he argues, to push a dogmatically liberal agenda, hidden behind supposed neutrality.
[The Mail’s ] trick is to make the world seem more threatening than it is: crime is rising, migrants flooding the country, benefit scroungers swindling the taxpayer, standards of education falling, wind turbines taking over the countryside.
While his views are mostly right-wing, he is not a reliable ally for the Conservative Party, or for anyone else. This aspect of his way of working is little understood. More than most editors, it can be said of him that he is in nobody’s pocket, not even his proprietor’s.
Today, it is resolutely – some would say hysterically – Eurosceptic and a far higher proportion of its readership is from Scotland and the English north and midlands. [No wonder the cosmopolitan media luvvies hate it]
The New Statesman’s main complaint, or should I say charge, against the Daily Mail is:
To its critics, however, the Mail is as biased as it’s possible to be, and none too fussy about the facts.
[Next week the New Statesman looks at the BBC…and then itself]
The NS gives numerous examples of the Mail being ‘none too fussy about the facts‘, the Mehdi Hasan one above for instance…but like that just how many of the NS’s claims are really true?
This for example…In the past ten years, the Mail has reported that the dean of RAF College Cranwell [Joel Hayward…a Muslim] showed undue favouritism to Muslim students (false)
Indeed the Mail published this story for which they had to pay damages:
‘Ayatollah of the RAF’
The main source for the Mail‘s witch-hunt is a letter headed “The Air Force Ayatollah”, which was sent to the paper by anonymous RAF officers. Apparently students at Cranwell “are in fear” of expressing anti-Muslim sentiments in front of Hayward. Worst of all: “Anyone who fails to follow the line that Islam is a peace-loving religion is hauled into his office for re-education”….The sole “Islamist” connection that the Mail can come up with is the fact that Hayward wrote a paper for the Cordoba Foundation, “described by David Cameron as a front for the Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood”.
“Hayward’s thesis is that the Nazis did not attempt the systematic extermination of Jews during the Second World War. In particular, he finds the evidence that gas chambers were built and used for this purpose unconvincing.”
An Islamic website says this about his thoughts on Libya:
To the dismay of defence chiefs, he has cast doubt on the widely held belief that the Nato actions averted the mass killing of civilians in Benghazi. He also warned against the RAF becoming ‘the air corps of a rebel army’….I worry that the rush to intervene again in a Muslim land without a well-reasoned strategy, even ostensibly to stop a bad man from misbehaving, may yet convince observers that there is more going on behind the scenes than at first there appears.
Dr Hayward has previously expressed remorse after appearing to claim that far fewer Jews were killed by the Nazis than generally thought and that the gas chambers of the Holocaust were British propaganda.
Hayward describes himself as “a moderate and politically liberal revert who chose to embrace the faith of Islam because of its powerful spiritual truths, its emphasis on peace and justice, its racial and ethnic inclusiveness and its charitable spirit towards the poor and needy.”
The usual people that use the term ‘revert’ are fundamentalist Muslims…the term is essentially an insult to all non-Muslims…people who use it mean that all people are born Muslims and if they take up the faith they don’t convert, they revert back to their original state as a Muslim.
Hayward compares Muhammed to Churchill:
On 4 June 1940 Churchill gave a magnificent speech to inspire the British people to continue their struggle against the undoubted evils of Nazism, even though the German armed forces then seemed stronger and better in battle. His speech includes the fabulous warlike lines:
We shall fight on the seas and oceans
We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be
We shall fight on the beaches
We shall fight on the landing grounds
We shall fight in the fields and in the streets
We shall fight in the hills
We shall never surrender.
No-one would dream of calling Churchill warmongering, much less murderous.
The Conservative leader, Winston Churchill, has wound up his election campaign with a hard-hitting speech in which he vigorously denied accusations of warmongering.
Labour has concentrated its attack on Mr Churchill and the Conseratives saying their return to government would make a third world war more likely.
“Whose finger on the trigger?” has become the slogan for this campaign after the Daily Mirror coined the phrase for a front-page headline.
Trouble is of course Churchill didn’t produce a book that goes onto to call for the death of all Germans or non-Britons etc etc
Jihad Watch has published the Mail’s story...it seems pretty harmless…Hayward has been given the right of reply in it….’Last night Dr Hayward said he did not ‘recognise’ the allegations’……and the Mail is only reporting what it has been told by other RAF officers.
The Mail was forced to withdraw the article and pay damages to Hayward:
Libel damages for RAF professor branded Ayatollah by Associated Newspapers
Remember when the New Statesman had to apologise for its anti-Semitic front cover?:
Dacre and the Daily Mail are now enemy Number One…no doubt we can expect far more of this from the usual suspects.
Free Press anyone?
And to finish…some fine words from Joel Hayward……
Eminent scholar Robert Pape demonstrates that most terrorist attacks by Muslims (and almost all suicide attacks, by whoever) are motivated by perceived grievances that relate to foreign occupation or exploitation. These include Palestinian attacks and most of those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even many bombings in Pakistan relate to the government’s actions in support of the West’s counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan.
It is also clear that western and other nations can increase their own security by leaving Muslim lands to carve out their own futures. Bin Laden may be gone, but some of the claimed grievances that he railed against—albeit through evil action—still fuel tremendous resentment.
Oh…and Murdoch may be part of a pro-Israel conspiracy:
The scandals linked to NoTW raise questions pertaining to truth, objectivity and bias.
[Robert] Fisk believes that at least one international media organisation with excessive influence throughout the western world is steering opinion towards Israel.
I do not know if Fisk is correct but let’s say, for the sake of argument, that he is.
I am not a conspiracy theorist and rather than attributing this observation to the influence of any malevolent individuals or groups, I tend to attribute the apparent bias and absence of balance mainly to the legacy of Orientalism and a widespread lack of knowledge about Islam.
So Fisk may not be right but……
it goes back to this myth about this label called the right wing press,there is no such thing,what there is out there is a vicious left wing press and media aka the bbc and channel 4 who like to smear the likes of the daily mail with being right wing or even far right because there intention is to shut down debate on any topics they see as not part of there left wing agenda,just listen to any phone in on radio 5 live and the left wing guests always when there losing the argument use the word right wing press or far right to demonise people who just happen to have different opinions to them,you never hear a bbc presenter use the word left wing press but the word right wing press is always banded around on radio 4 and radio 5 live as a term to demonise folk,how would i describe the daily mail.well thats simple, i would call them the libertarian press because they believe in liberty and free speech.
The Mail seems to have a go at the BBC on a very regular basis. This is the main reason for the attack. The BBC is about the only sacred thing the liberals worship. Pod Central I suppose.
I wonder what they keep in the basement. New pods perhaps.
If Dacre hates liberal Britain he must be half OK.
Nasty vindictive lot the liberals.
But don’t forget- they have the truth.
Without the BBC, the Labour party would have to actually PAY for it’s (free) advertising. And the BBC trustees know that the best was to preserve the money feed is via compulsory License fee (not subscription). Dacre is right to attack the BBC but it pings off the BBC newsworthies who cannot understand why we hate them (the Liberals) and phoney Conservatives (like Patten). Labour are up front with plainly barmy Marxists who can only get elected on a ‘your turn’ basis.
Isn’t funny how the Left pontificate to the rest of us about tolerance and understanding and yet if you happen disagree with them, they make Hitler seem like a pacifist!
That’s because the ‘left’ try to fool you into thinking that they are different. Really, right wing/left wing are obsolete meaningless phrases, here are the only words that you need:
Facism = state control of the individual
Socialism = state control of business and commerce
Communism = state control of both
They always start the same way: the country is in trouble, we have the solutions, they have to be applied, there is no alternative. All very reasonable at first, and possibly friendly. But the solution is so obvious and so urgent that the people who disagree and don’t want it and stand in the way become problematic. First they get ridiculed, then they have their rights restricted, then they get locked up, then they get killed. The main differences are in how power is taken, how quickly the stages are progressed through, and how ruthlessly the more unpleasant ones are applied.
Bible in one hand, Daily Mail in the other.
The only way to discern what`s going on, and how best to do it.
No wonder the BBC and the Guardian hate them both.
And therefore time to create a chain of faith schools with the Daily Mail Curriculum central to the aims.
Can`t lose-won`t lose!
No, thanks. We need secularism. The sooner all religions are consigned to history (politically speaking) and used only as points of historical and philosophical study, the better for everyone. That means also ignoring or shouting down the self-loathing liberals who want Islam to rule the country simply because they don’t like Christianity.
I`m afraid you`ll need your Bible over timings, and how to deal with twin evils of Islamism and Scientific Atheism(or whatever permutations exist between these two toxic twins).
Absolutely no religious imperative at all, it`s simply having a road map…and a blueprint to deal with “what`s occurring”, to build what`s needed.
Consigning the manual to the bin`s been tried…and shouting down or ignoring those who did it only makes the Islamic rule inevitable. Stephen Fry or Giles Fraser won`t be able to help much by then.
I`ll not be clever(what do we Christians know after all, being feeble God-botherers!)…but any of the “minor prophets”(if only they WERE minor) tells us what happens when God gets consigned to the bin of history…and these books (as well as Pauls letters to, say Rome) ARE the Daily Mail on most days, albeit with less pictures and s`lebs we don`t know of.
Once upon a time you read your paper agreed/disagreed with and story/opinion in your own way maybe had a chat with a colleague or family member then wrapped the spud peelings into it and threw it in the bin. With the online versions of the press especially the Daily Mail and Telegraph every story can be discussed (with exception to ongoing legal cases) with a worldwide audience. The comments section are where our lords and masters really s**t themselves. An instant pole on the feelings of people to stories with a simple Green/Red arrow. Like anywhere (yes even this site has its trolls and nutters) comments are mixed but you do get a feel of desperation and anger on so many subjects that the general mood can be gauged.
It keeps you sane when you know that when you had a gut feeling something wasn’t quite right with a story that seemed to be reported elsewhere (yes you BBC) you can bet its been spotted and commented on with loads of green arrows drawn to the same conclusion. A powerful weapon of public opinion that all the spin in the world can’t change….that will be the first casualty of any axe that our lords and masters are sharpening as we speak.
The DM is a cancer on our society.
Barabas you must try to think for yourself.
It’s usually the case that the leftist critics of the ‘Daily Mail’ do not engage with the ‘Mail’s actual analysis and argument on politics issues.
Where the ‘Mail’ might politically explore, Beeboids are inclined to censor.
Barabbas, does your mummy know you’ve been playing with her computer again?
Barabbas – write something intelligent, of just f*** o** you little twerp. Owning a keyboard doesn’t mean you have anything to say worth reading.
Ad hominem speaks volumes – where those, unable to articulate a single reasoned argument, tread.
The only issue I have with the DM commentators is that so many opinions come from Jersey, Gibraltar, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Thailand.
You have forfeit your right to an opinion about life in Britain. – You have run away. Bloody cowards.
I actually have access to a copy of “The Mirror” on a regular basis and the criticisms made by the DM are frequently repeated in TM. I expect that the leftwing central powers of “The Independent”, “The Guardian” and “The Observer” are least likely to attack the BBC. But the most popular tabloids and other broadsheets are not so easily brow-beaten and tamed.
Barabbas you must try to think for yourself.
I buy the Daily Mail and went on to a website called Daily Mail Watch , linked to an Express watch. I thought the blog would be a good idea , one like this . After all , the Mail might be inverting the truth ( and all other papers ) and might be bullying some vulnerable individual . It’s nice to get alternative viewpoints .
Except the blog was just a foul mouthed sneering waste of what could be for the public good . Shame .
The big probelm is that the BBC takes readers away from the free press. You may not like them but we have a huge choice of Newspapers compared to the US that has no similare spread of national dailies). As all ‘ads’ have shifted online it means the Ad frevenue for papers is a tough one. The BBC does not have to worry about Ad revenue or care about its ‘readers’ it does what it does best ‘propaganda’ from a protected, unelected, state propaganda perspective. It has by shoddy ‘default’ become the largest News outlet in the Country in the same way as ‘Ofxam’ has become the largest ‘bookstore’ in the country. If the BBC had commericial merit, it would abandon the License fee overnight.
The liberal left have become ‘The Establishment’ and the Mail is doing the job of a free press in attacking them. But the liberal left can’t grasp that they are now the establishment , hence these very boring BBC leftist ‘satirists’, who keep attacking the right when they should be attacking the pomposity of the left. But of course the BBC would not allow such attacks on its programmes.
The Mail is a brave upholder of the tradition of a free press in this country. I wish more newspapers and more TV channels would follow its path and try to balance out the complete takeover the over powerful BBC by the left.
A few years back I tuned in to listen to Fighting Talk on Radio 5 Live. I found that the series had finished and had been replaced by an amateurish show where everyone talked over each other. This show started with a half hour rant on Daily Mail readers describing them as “curtain twitchers”.
This surprised me because the Daily Mail is a popular newspaper and their reader no doubt pay the TV Licence. So why should they be forced to pay under threat of imprisonment to have some little shit insult them as “curtain twitchers”. The little shit forgot who pays his wages.
That was the last time I listened to Radio 5 Live on a Saturday morning.
Are you sure that wasn’t Fighting Talk ?
I am not obliged by ‘force’ of law to purchase or read the output of the DM.
If I choose to buy the Telegraph, or The Star, I am not obliged to purchase the DM, even if I then choose not to read its output.
The DM, like other dead tree media outlets, are privately owned business, which have to live in the commercial world. A world which the DM seems to be doing quite well, as apposed to say the BBC’s favorite, the Guardian.
To me, it comes down to freedom of choice. A freedom that I am not allowed to have with broadcast media. Is that fair ? I happen to think it is not fair, particularly given current (not new) technology.
If I think that a particular broadcaster was having me on, on a regular basis, (eg Sky) then I can cancel my subscription. I cannot do the same with the BBC, and it knows it. It can therefore behave in a manner that treats me with contempt knowing I have little choice but to pay the Danegeld.
Did Beeboids campaign against secret courts in U.K?
Beeboids seem more committed to campaigning for Al Qaeda suspects in Guantanamo.
“At last! Victory on secret courts: Rulings in family cases to be made public after Mail campaign”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2540919/At-Victory-secret-courts-Rulings-family-cases-public-Mail-campaign.html#ixzz2qe2xHjCi