The @PodDelusion: Why the Daily Mail is Evil

After all the satire, rather more serious is this analysis of the Daily Mail and its stories by the @PodDelusion. The video begins with a disturbing description of the Mail’s paparazzi photos of the young children of celebrities, such as Tom Cruise’s six year old daughter, the paper’s attitude towards these tots as glamour figures, and the highly sexualised language used of older, but still young teenage girls. The video then goes on to discuss the Daily Mail’s hatred of atheists and secularists, Muslims, health and safety officer, criminals, the unemployed on welfare benefits and, indeed, the disabled.

It refutes some of the bogus stories and statistics run by the Mail. The Mail printed a story from the material released by Wikileaks allegedly showing that a third of all Muslims supported killing for Islam. In fact, the American diplomatic material the Mail used referred to a story ran by the Daily Mail. Clearly, this is very much a case of circular reportage. In fact, the survey the Mail used to make this claim actually reported that only 3 per cent of Muslim students supported killing to promote or defend Islam. A much larger proportion of Muslims, 28 per cent, said that they agreed only if Islam is under attack. This could, of course, refer to satirical attacks or real physical assaults by people with pitchforks.

He also attacks the Daily Mail’s regular victimisation of the disabled. Another of the bogus statistics the Mail reproduced was that a quarter of people claiming sickness benefit had criminal records, and that three-quarters of people on disability benefit were fit to work. Well, none of these statistics quite show what the Mail claims. The statistics showing the proportion of sick people with criminal records actually doesn’t show any greater criminality than the rest of the population. The proportion of all people in Britain with a criminal record, which may include quite minor offences such as having a few points taken off your licence, is 25 per cent. As for the statistic that 75 per cent of the disabled were fit to work, this included people, who were so ill they did not complete the form. It also included the fifty per cent, who won their case against Atos on appeal.

It also attacks the misogyny of the Daily Mail in running a story claiming that women, who don’t do the housework are at a higher risk of cancer. The speaker says it reads like an Onion parody, but unfortunately, the Mail really did run it.

Finally the speaker reveals why he personally hates the Daily Mail. Shortly before one of his uncle’s died, the poor fellow became morbidly afraid of foxes through the scare stories about them in the Mail. Warning: the video ends with the speaker leading the audience in a series of shouts of ‘F*ck You, Daily Mail’. This is, of course, obscene, but given the content of the rag, not entirely undeserved.

Here’s the video.
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It’s at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9dqNTTdYKY.

On the subject of religion, although the Daily Mail does attack atheists and secularists, there are a number of atheists and secularists, who also regularly express their contempt for people of faith. Richard Dawkins, who is frequently on TV both as an evolutionary biologist and an atheist polemicist, has described religious people as ‘faith-heads’. Charlie Brooker, on his the edition on lifecycle on his TV Ruined Your Life, described the congregations on Songs of Praise as sycophants trying to curry favour with a notional deity by singing insipid pop songs. And Stewart Lee and Ricky Gervaise also include anti-religious material and attacks in their shows. Now I actually like Brooker, and I’m certainly not arguing for the censorship of any of the above comedians. I’m only pointing out that media sneers and hatred on the subject of religion don’t only go one way.

Apart from this minor criticism, I agree pretty much with everything the speaker has said about the Daily Mail. The analysis of the sexualised language used of the young daughters of actors and celebrities is particular unsettling. It very much makes the case Chris Morris made in the ‘Paedogeddon’ special edition of Brass Eye. This was a sustained attack on the hysteria whipped up the News of the World and other tabloids about paedophiles, which saw a mob attack a paediatrician in Cardiff. Morris’ satire mixed fictional material, such as a sequence in which a map of the British Isles morphed into a mass of grotesque, leering faces, and real documentary footage from American child beauty pageants. The real material was deeply disturbing, and raised the issues of why such contests were legal while at the same time the media over here was frightening everyone with the spectre of a pervert on every street corner. The video’s critique of the Mail’s treatment of teenage and pre-teenage girls also raises questions of the morality of such articles, quite apart from the fact that the children of celebs should also have the right to a childhood away from the public eye. They actually prove Carrie Fisher right in her determination not to have the press anywhere near her daughter until she was old enough to decide for herself.

As for the Mail’s attitude to the disabled, as shown here, it’s truly nothing short of scandalous. A friend of mine, who cares for his disabled wife, told me a little while ago that he and she had experienced growing prejudice and intolerance from the public. He believed that there really was an attitude that his wife was somehow just faking her condition. He put it down to the effect of the disabled character in Little Britain. He believed it had created a climate of opinion that somehow expected those in wheelchairs to be secretly fit, well and leaping about when nobody else was watching. Reading the comment from the Mail’s columnist stating that disabled charities have only themselves to blame for public opinion turning against the disabled left me absolutely certain where some part of the responsibility for it also lay: the Daily Mail. And that really is low.

In short, the video’s an excellent summary and demonstration of just about everything wrong with Daily Mail and its editor, Paul Dacre.

Tags: Atheists, Brass Eye, Chris Morris, Criminals, Daily Mail, Disabled, Foxes, Islam, Misogyny, News of the World, Paul Dacre, Scare Stories, Secularists