Daily Mail in "homophobic" shock
Oct 20 2009 15:53
In case anyone has been living under a rock for the past few days (or possibly not in the UK), there has been outrage over a disgusting article by Jan Moir in the Daily Mail about Stephen Gately's death. The original article is here, and well worth reading:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1220756/A-strange-lonely-troubling-death--.html
Note that they have changed the headline - it was originally "why there was nothing "natural" about Stephen Gately's death"
One of the best critical articles about it is Charlie Brooker's in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/16/stephen-gately-jan-moir
So far there have been 25,000 complaints to the press complaints commission - more in three days than the organisation has received in total in the previous five years, and the most ever about a single newspaper article.
It's hard to tell what is worse about the original mail article, whether it is the bigotry, her belief that somehow she is a better judge of cause of death than a trained coroner, or just the completely ridiculous and nonsensical way the article is structured, riddled with non sequiturs and bizarre assertions. Interesting stuff nonetheless!
Oct 20 2009 16:44
#2
Aye, her defence was as disgusting as the original article. She's a nutjob.
Oct 20 2009 16:47
#3
What this episode tells us is that it's ok to pick on asylum seekers, women, travellers, muslims, working class people, even gays - all with disgusting and insulting insinuations, but... mess with Boyzone fans and you're fucked.
Oct 20 2009 17:00
#4
That's the thing. All the hype over this after what has gone before sends the message that it's fine to vilify ordinary working class people for being gay/immigrants/travellers or whatever, but that if you pick on bourgeois celebrities then you've crossed the line.
ITS POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD!!!!!!!!
~J.
Oct 20 2009 17:03
#5
Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny too. Although, tbf, I think the Mail grossly underestimated their readership and how much offence even people who'd never heard of him before his death would take at it being published before his funeral.
Oct 20 2009 17:14
#6
Yeah, they have misjudged their own readers.
The comments below the article have now been blocked, so you can't respond anymore. However, all the most approved comments (with nearly 5000 net approvals) comments very critical of the article, whereas all of the most disapproved comments (around 6000 net disapprovals) are those agreeing with the article.
Oct 20 2009 17:41
#7
I'd never even heard of Jan Moir before now - is she filling in for Mary Kenny?
Oct 20 2009 18:25
#8
The DM is just a stirrer, now they've even stirred their own readership against themselves!
Oct 26 2009 15:28
#9
Wellclose Square wrote:
I'd never even heard of Jan Moir before now - is she filling in for Mary Kenny?
She used to cover golf for the Torygraph.
Actually, there seems to be a few journos jumping ship from the Torygraph to the Daily Hatemail...
Oct 26 2009 20:52
#10
Caiman del Barrio said:
Quote:
She used to cover golf for the Torygraph.
Seems a bit of a big leap from sports correspondent to... well, maybe not. She didn't keep goal for Leicester City as well?
Yeah Stephen Fry and Derren Brown have also written about it
Brown's focused on Moir's defence claim which complained that there had a been a 'conspiracy' to challenge her article, and that Twitter/Facebook etc had been part of it. The reality is that with the likes of Twitter information is much more open and can spread far more quickly than at any time in the past - hence the rocketing complaints in a short amount of time.
The original article itself is just fucking ghastly.
Moir is a horrible piece of work.