4 ms·

Daily Mail may have questionable journalism, but when a large public-interest story breaks, it is often the first to have large pictures of the story. As they s

by bb101 11y ago

Daily Mail may have questionable journalism, but when a large public-interest story breaks, it is often the first to have large pictures of the story. As they say, a picture can be worth a thousand words. They also seem to be the first to cover category-B news, i.e. a light plane crash in some distant country. As long as there are photos, the Daily Mail will have it on their front page today, the Telegraph tomorrow, and the BBC perhaps on the third day.

rmc 11y ago
When a large public-interest story breaks, they're also not above outright lying and making it up. http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2011/dec/09/pcc-dailymail http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2011/dec/09/pcc-...
- Loque 11y ago
  anything for that money...
- tim333 11y ago
  They had the wrong Knox court verdict up for 90 seconds before correcting it. Seems more like a cock up than outright lying in that case.
  - rmc 11y ago
    There's no problem with newspapers writing a stock pieces for either eventuality, and yes, sometimes someone will accidentally press the wrong button, and the wrong version might go up for a bit. But the wrong story they put up wasn't a generic piece. It has specific claims about specific actions, which obviously didn't happen. They made claims about how the defendent acted upon hearing the judgement (Knox "sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears"), it had quotes from Italian prison officers, etc. It was clearly an outright fabrication. They wrote, in detail, about Knox' reaction to the verdict, before the vedict was handed down. And we only know they made it up because they cocked up.
tim333 11y ago
I also like that they allow comments and discussion on controversial stuff like islamic terrorism. If you read the stories on the Guardian or NYT all discussion tends to be banned in those areas in case someone says something politically incorrect. I'm not sure trying to prevent people discussing the issues makes them go away. I think stuff like that has led to it being "the most visited English-language newspaper website in the world." As well as Kardashian stories or course.
- alva 11y ago
  My favourite line from the Guardian came when they realised that the vast majority of their left-leaning readers strongly disagreed with them regarding Islamic terrorism and the refugee crisis. Closed comments on certain articles due to “a change in mainstream public opinion and language that we do not wish to see reflected or supported on the site”.[0] At least they didn't even pretend that it wasn't because the majority of their readership disagreed with them. [0]http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/31/readers-editor-on-readers-comments-below-the-line http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/31/readers...
  - seivan 11y ago
    I didn't even know about this. Thank you. Saving it in case some mod removes your comment. It goes to show the insane biases people have. I know Daily Mail is trash. I also know Guardian is as well.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      I'm not a mod but I know they don't remove comments like that.
      - seivan 11y ago
        You sure try though.
  - tim333 11y ago
    They need a downvote button or similar. That's a big part of how the Mail deals with it. Even with the Mail most readers aren't that racist so the upvoted comments are not so bad.
pjc50 11y ago
I don't think that's true any more; all the news outlets will happily raid social media and wire services for photos and have the pictures within hours. After all, in 24h it'll be old news. The Daily Mail can do serious journalism when it wants to. But unfortunately that's a small fraction of the paper, and the website is a far worse collection of celebrity fashion marketing clickbait. (Note the combination of "isn't this outfit SHOCKING" stories with a big embedded ad telling you where to buy it). They also do tremendously bad racist pandering at every opportunity. The only thing to be said for the Mail is that at least it's not the Express.
- gadders 11y ago
  Yes, so racist they were the only paper to accuse the murderers of Stephen Lawrence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence#Subsequent_events_.281994.E2.80.932010.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence#Sub...
  - alex_hitchins 11y ago
    There must be a Godwin's type law for this type of argument? It's a brilliant example being it's the _only_ example you can find of them being half way decent.
  - soundwave106 11y ago
    They were not the only one covering the story TBH. What they were was the only newspaper to directly name them post-inquiry. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/1997/feb/15/lawrence.ukcrime http://www.theguardian.com/uk/1997/feb/15/lawrence.ukcrime This actions honestly fits the Daily Mail's typical populist, outrage-driven, go-with-the-gut-feeling style. The vast majority of the time this does not work out for them. "Even a broken clock is right twice a day" etc. Really, though, if I were a Yahoo user, I would be more concerned personally about the Daily Mail's Buzzfeedisms: the celebrity clickbait, their recent embrace of "native advertising". This sounds like the perfect sort of things that Yahoo would try to insert into some of their products for extra monetization. And a great way to make the Yahoo user experience even worse than it is already.
  - 11y ago
Loque 11y ago
> They also seem to be the first to cover category-B news not for good reason, it has to be something like a crash of somekind (car, plane, boat, people), something that has explosions, or breasts, and always with pictures to cater for their demographic (I'm not even joking) I am eternally flabbergasted by the fact they still have not taken this down, or corrected it: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1296282/I-dosing-How-teenagers-getting-digitally-high-music-download-internet.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1296282/I-dos...
- mryan 11y ago
  That article could have come straight out of an episode of Brass Eye: > This is the world of ‘i-Dosing’, the new craze sweeping the internet in which teenagers used so-called ‘digital drugs’ to change their brains in the same way as real-life narcotics.
Angostura 11y ago
Sometimes the Daily Mail even credits the online source that they ripped off. Not always, though.
coldtea 11y ago
>but when a large public-interest story breaks, it is often the first to have large pictures of the story. As they say, a picture can be worth a thousand words. They do say that, but they are wrong. A picture can be as manipulative as any cheap slogan. It also gives a false sense of understanding an issue, without getting into the details of it (to give a crude example: Picture of poor starving child in country Y. ― oh, how bad are those X people. (despite the fact that country Y attacked X and impoverished 10 times as many people).

by bb101 11y ago

rmc 11y ago

When a large public-interest story breaks, they're also not above outright lying and making it up. http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2011/dec/09/pcc-dailymail http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2011/dec/09/pcc-...

Loque 11y ago
anything for that money...
tim333 11y ago
They had the wrong Knox court verdict up for 90 seconds before correcting it. Seems more like a cock up than outright lying in that case.
- rmc 11y ago
  There's no problem with newspapers writing a stock pieces for either eventuality, and yes, sometimes someone will accidentally press the wrong button, and the wrong version might go up for a bit. But the wrong story they put up wasn't a generic piece. It has specific claims about specific actions, which obviously didn't happen. They made claims about how the defendent acted upon hearing the judgement (Knox "sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears"), it had quotes from Italian prison officers, etc. It was clearly an outright fabrication. They wrote, in detail, about Knox' reaction to the verdict, before the vedict was handed down. And we only know they made it up because they cocked up.

tim333 11y ago

I also like that they allow comments and discussion on controversial stuff like islamic terrorism. If you read the stories on the Guardian or NYT all discussion tends to be banned in those areas in case someone says something politically incorrect. I'm not sure trying to prevent people discussing the issues makes them go away. I think stuff like that has led to it being "the most visited English-language newspaper website in the world." As well as Kardashian stories or course.

alva 11y ago
My favourite line from the Guardian came when they realised that the vast majority of their left-leaning readers strongly disagreed with them regarding Islamic terrorism and the refugee crisis. Closed comments on certain articles due to “a change in mainstream public opinion and language that we do not wish to see reflected or supported on the site”.[0] At least they didn't even pretend that it wasn't because the majority of their readership disagreed with them. [0]http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/31/readers-editor-on-readers-comments-below-the-line http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/31/readers...
- seivan 11y ago
  I didn't even know about this. Thank you. Saving it in case some mod removes your comment. It goes to show the insane biases people have. I know Daily Mail is trash. I also know Guardian is as well.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    I'm not a mod but I know they don't remove comments like that.
    - seivan 11y ago
      You sure try though.
- tim333 11y ago
  They need a downvote button or similar. That's a big part of how the Mail deals with it. Even with the Mail most readers aren't that racist so the upvoted comments are not so bad.

pjc50 11y ago

I don't think that's true any more; all the news outlets will happily raid social media and wire services for photos and have the pictures within hours. After all, in 24h it'll be old news. The Daily Mail can do serious journalism when it wants to. But unfortunately that's a small fraction of the paper, and the website is a far worse collection of celebrity fashion marketing clickbait. (Note the combination of "isn't this outfit SHOCKING" stories with a big embedded ad telling you where to buy it). They also do tremendously bad racist pandering at every opportunity. The only thing to be said for the Mail is that at least it's not the Express.

gadders 11y ago
Yes, so racist they were the only paper to accuse the murderers of Stephen Lawrence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence#Subsequent_events_.281994.E2.80.932010.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence#Sub...
- alex_hitchins 11y ago
  There must be a Godwin's type law for this type of argument? It's a brilliant example being it's the _only_ example you can find of them being half way decent.
- soundwave106 11y ago
  They were not the only one covering the story TBH. What they were was the only newspaper to directly name them post-inquiry. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/1997/feb/15/lawrence.ukcrime http://www.theguardian.com/uk/1997/feb/15/lawrence.ukcrime This actions honestly fits the Daily Mail's typical populist, outrage-driven, go-with-the-gut-feeling style. The vast majority of the time this does not work out for them. "Even a broken clock is right twice a day" etc. Really, though, if I were a Yahoo user, I would be more concerned personally about the Daily Mail's Buzzfeedisms: the celebrity clickbait, their recent embrace of "native advertising". This sounds like the perfect sort of things that Yahoo would try to insert into some of their products for extra monetization. And a great way to make the Yahoo user experience even worse than it is already.
- 11y ago

Loque 11y ago

> They also seem to be the first to cover category-B news not for good reason, it has to be something like a crash of somekind (car, plane, boat, people), something that has explosions, or breasts, and always with pictures to cater for their demographic (I'm not even joking) I am eternally flabbergasted by the fact they still have not taken this down, or corrected it: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1296282/I-dosing-How-teenagers-getting-digitally-high-music-download-internet.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1296282/I-dos...

mryan 11y ago
That article could have come straight out of an episode of Brass Eye: > This is the world of ‘i-Dosing’, the new craze sweeping the internet in which teenagers used so-called ‘digital drugs’ to change their brains in the same way as real-life narcotics.

Angostura 11y ago

Sometimes the Daily Mail even credits the online source that they ripped off. Not always, though.

coldtea 11y ago

>but when a large public-interest story breaks, it is often the first to have large pictures of the story. As they say, a picture can be worth a thousand words. They do say that, but they are wrong. A picture can be as manipulative as any cheap slogan. It also gives a false sense of understanding an issue, without getting into the details of it (to give a crude example: Picture of poor starving child in country Y. ― oh, how bad are those X people. (despite the fact that country Y attacked X and impoverished 10 times as many people).