3 ms·

For readers outside the UK, it is worth knowing a little context about the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail is a newspaper in the loosest sense of the word. It is ess

For readers outside the UK, it is worth knowing a little context about the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail is a newspaper in the loosest sense of the word. It is essentially a propaganda rag, flattering its readership by provoking their emotions on topics such as women in the workplace (which is a bad thing and gives them cancer), women not in the workplace (which is a bad thing and gives them cancer), the causes of cancer [1], immigrants, taxes and house prices. Bizarrely, for a publication with such a high female readership, it's remarkably misogynistic. Typical readers are middle-aged to the elderly, who do not like having their assumptions challenged and find catharsis in the simplicity of the world as presented by the Daily Mail. The phrase "Daily Mail reader" has become shorthand for someone demonstrating characteristics such as ignorance, extremely simple viewpoints on complex situations, and bigotry poorly veiled under spurious numerical data or contextless "factoids". [1] http://kill-or-cure.heroku.com/ http://kill-or-cure.heroku.com/

hackerboos 14y ago
Let's not forget the paper's fascist past - "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" - http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/dictionary/dict_h1.php#hurrah http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/dictionary/dict_h1.php#hurra...
- gadders 14y ago
  So was the Daily Mirror. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/dec/06/dailymail-oswald-mosley http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/dec/06/daily... And I'm sure you can find articles in the Guardian supporting Soviet Russia.
  - hackerboos 14y ago
    I don't read the Mirror either. Though I find it hard to believe that the Guardian supported the Soviet Union.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - gadders 14y ago
      No, it just employed spies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Journalist_allegedly_working_for_Russian_intelligence_services http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Journalist_alleged... :-)
gadders 14y ago
And context for the comment above: It is very common to sneer at Daily Mail readers as a way of demonstrating your own right-on, progressive credentials. Daily Mail readers are largely right-wing, but that doesn't by definition make them wrong.
- EliRivers 14y ago
  The Daily Mail, however, is often wrong and frequently guilty of the sins I list above. Demonstrably so. Sometimes, we sneer at something not because it makes us look good (or, as you put it, to demonstrate "progressive credentials", and your assumption that I want to do that is insulting and ignorant, thank you very much), but because it genuinely is dross. If you like, I can balance the equation by criticising the Guardian for its ridiculous adherence to leftist views despite the most ferocious evidence in its own pages, or we can do the Economist which suggests less regulation as the solution to almost any problem that exists. Edit to respond to comment below: Of course it's doing something right. It's selling newspapers. It does it by, as I said, flattering its readership and presenting them emotional sensations that confirm their beliefs. That doesn't make it worthy or correct. It makes it admirable only in a "magnificent bastards" kind of way. They know what they're doing and they do it very well.
  - gadders 14y ago
    Lots of papers print stories that are demonstrably wrong, though. And the Mail does cater to the lowest common denominator sometimes, but then that is the business of being a tabloid. And it is one of the most popular tabloids in Britain, and one of the most popular websites in the world, so I would suggest that it is doing something right.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      Depends what "right" is. They can certainly sell a lot of papers, no doubt. But do they help make create an informed electorate? Which is the most important function of a free press. The biggest problem I have with the Mail is not whether it is biased or even that it makes mistakes. My problem is more that they will often print a headline and first paragraph or a story that makes some claim that is often refuted in the article itself. I feel that this is intended to deliberately mislead those with lower critical thinking abilities. It's amazing the number of times I've had to correct people on stuff like the legal status of Sharia courts. Of course I can't blame the mail for all of this stuff, there are plenty of other papers and blogs doing the same thing but the mail seems to be the flagship for this sort of journalism.
ljf 14y ago
I don't have the figures to hand, but it's interesting to also note that while their print readership is as you described, their online readers are even more heavily female, and also much younger (average 25 to 35). I had their media pack not long ago, I'll see if I can dig it out.
- EliRivers 14y ago
  This I did not know, but it doesn't surprise me. If you can tell me which sections these young females gravitate towards, that would be very helpful; do they go for the bitchy celebrity gossip (which is frequently noticeably harsher towards female celebrities)?
  - dagw 14y ago
    The Daily Mail is one of the few newspapers that treat their online and paper offerings as essentially two different products. The paper edition is aimed at an older market, as described, while the online edition is aimed at a younger market with a much heavier focus on lifestyle, celebrity and gossip stories and, I get the feeling, doesn't take itself as seriously.
  - ljf 14y ago
    As I remember it, it was to the 'Femail' section of the site primarily, but that also the who site had a female skew across all sections and age ranges - I wonder if the 'traditional' male reader is more likely to be a technophobe that his female counterpart? I don't remember what the younger section did for the average earnings of the readership - but I remember that as a whole the household earnings of their readers is above the UK average. Media Packs here: http://www.mailconnected.com/audience http://www.mailconnected.com/audience and http://www.mailconnected.co.uk/stats/media-packs http://www.mailconnected.co.uk/stats/media-packs
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  I wonder how much of that audience actually aligns with the Mail's political values. My partner goes there every day for laughs, but is so far to the left the stereotypical Mail reader would probably want her arrested for treason and deported ;-)
mibbitier 14y ago
You could make similar claims about say The Guardian, or people who get their news from Reddit. Personally, I find the echo-chamber on the left to be far more worrying (Not to mention their constant condescending sneering, looking down on the "idiot" masses). Look at Reddit at the moment.. endless discussion about how the only reason anyone could vote for Romney is "uneducated voters". In this case, both graphs look completely stagnant. Perhaps The Daily Mail did choose their start date to tie the numbers up nicely. Maybe they even rounded the start and end figures so that they could claim the numbers are exactly the same. But whichever way you look at it, the graphs are stagnant.
- CaptainZapp 14y ago
  You may not like the left leaning stance of the Guardian, which is fine. To compare it, however, with The Daily Mail is a bit ridiculous.
  - mibbitier 14y ago
    I don't think so, The Daily Mail generally likes to make you feel scared. The Guardian generally likes to make you feel outraged. They're just playing on different emotions to sell papers. As regards quality, fact checking, bias, they're all very similar.
    - kokey 14y ago
      I couldn't agree with you more. I believe the ability to spot the error and bias in the one while being blind to that of the other is a good indicator of a person's own bias.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  I don't think that's quite fair. I see as much criticism of the Mail by right wing folk as left wing. The Times reader doesn't like the Mail much either in my experience. The right comparison to the Mail on the left would be the Mirror I think - not the Guardian.
- glenra 14y ago
mdemare 14y ago
Here's some context for British papers from 25 years ago (Yes Minister. "Hacker" is the minister, not an actual hacker.) Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; The Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; And The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
vixen99 14y ago
Heck! That’s around forty million ignorant bigots including myself! The Daily Mail has the second largest English language readership worldwide, a figure which must contribute to a pessimistic view of humanity for bien pesant like yourself. You must read this rag pretty regularly to have such a commanding view of its misogynistic bigoted views though I am quite sure you avert your eyes from the soft porn pictures of women on beaches. I am not up to managing that, yet. By the way, your powers of generalization are impressive. Any chance of a few links to the painstakingly gathered statistics that,no doubt overwhelmingly support your searing analysis.
- EliRivers 14y ago
  Thanks for your view. It's more or less what I hear from everyone who doesn't like that I consider their favoured newspaper to be imperfect. I do check it frequently, yes. I do note that it continues to be dross. The soft porn is exactly as expected; just enough to satisfy its target audience without having to cross the line into actual porn like The Sun or similar, enabling Mail readers to feel good about themselves. I don't avert my eyes from it. I like looking at attractive women, although when I want porn, I just go to the internet. Why the hell would I avert my eyes? The obscenities in the Mail are in the written text; not the pictures. "Any chance of a few links to the painstakingly gathered statistics that,no doubt overwhelmingly support your searing analysis." I think you're being facetious, so no, do your own research. There is lots and lots out there. Start with (the sadly no longer maintained) DailyMailWatch and go from there. What I've said isn't new. Please either say what you mean (which is at least something the Mail manages to do) or take your passive-aggressive nonsense somewhere else. You read the Mail? Then you know what I've said is true, unless actually you only read the mail and you just don't realise, in which case you've got a sample-size of one and anything you say about the subject is hopelessly ill-informed.

hackerboos 14y ago

Let's not forget the paper's fascist past - "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" - http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/dictionary/dict_h1.php#hurrah http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/dictionary/dict_h1.php#hurra...

gadders 14y ago
So was the Daily Mirror. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/dec/06/dailymail-oswald-mosley http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/dec/06/daily... And I'm sure you can find articles in the Guardian supporting Soviet Russia.
- hackerboos 14y ago
  I don't read the Mirror either. Though I find it hard to believe that the Guardian supported the Soviet Union.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - gadders 14y ago
    No, it just employed spies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Journalist_allegedly_working_for_Russian_intelligence_services http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Journalist_alleged... :-)

gadders 14y ago

And context for the comment above: It is very common to sneer at Daily Mail readers as a way of demonstrating your own right-on, progressive credentials. Daily Mail readers are largely right-wing, but that doesn't by definition make them wrong.

EliRivers 14y ago
The Daily Mail, however, is often wrong and frequently guilty of the sins I list above. Demonstrably so. Sometimes, we sneer at something not because it makes us look good (or, as you put it, to demonstrate "progressive credentials", and your assumption that I want to do that is insulting and ignorant, thank you very much), but because it genuinely is dross. If you like, I can balance the equation by criticising the Guardian for its ridiculous adherence to leftist views despite the most ferocious evidence in its own pages, or we can do the Economist which suggests less regulation as the solution to almost any problem that exists. Edit to respond to comment below: Of course it's doing something right. It's selling newspapers. It does it by, as I said, flattering its readership and presenting them emotional sensations that confirm their beliefs. That doesn't make it worthy or correct. It makes it admirable only in a "magnificent bastards" kind of way. They know what they're doing and they do it very well.
- gadders 14y ago
  Lots of papers print stories that are demonstrably wrong, though. And the Mail does cater to the lowest common denominator sometimes, but then that is the business of being a tabloid. And it is one of the most popular tabloids in Britain, and one of the most popular websites in the world, so I would suggest that it is doing something right.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Depends what "right" is. They can certainly sell a lot of papers, no doubt. But do they help make create an informed electorate? Which is the most important function of a free press. The biggest problem I have with the Mail is not whether it is biased or even that it makes mistakes. My problem is more that they will often print a headline and first paragraph or a story that makes some claim that is often refuted in the article itself. I feel that this is intended to deliberately mislead those with lower critical thinking abilities. It's amazing the number of times I've had to correct people on stuff like the legal status of Sharia courts. Of course I can't blame the mail for all of this stuff, there are plenty of other papers and blogs doing the same thing but the mail seems to be the flagship for this sort of journalism.

ljf 14y ago

I don't have the figures to hand, but it's interesting to also note that while their print readership is as you described, their online readers are even more heavily female, and also much younger (average 25 to 35). I had their media pack not long ago, I'll see if I can dig it out.

EliRivers 14y ago
This I did not know, but it doesn't surprise me. If you can tell me which sections these young females gravitate towards, that would be very helpful; do they go for the bitchy celebrity gossip (which is frequently noticeably harsher towards female celebrities)?
- dagw 14y ago
  The Daily Mail is one of the few newspapers that treat their online and paper offerings as essentially two different products. The paper edition is aimed at an older market, as described, while the online edition is aimed at a younger market with a much heavier focus on lifestyle, celebrity and gossip stories and, I get the feeling, doesn't take itself as seriously.
- ljf 14y ago
  As I remember it, it was to the 'Femail' section of the site primarily, but that also the who site had a female skew across all sections and age ranges - I wonder if the 'traditional' male reader is more likely to be a technophobe that his female counterpart? I don't remember what the younger section did for the average earnings of the readership - but I remember that as a whole the household earnings of their readers is above the UK average. Media Packs here: http://www.mailconnected.com/audience http://www.mailconnected.com/audience and http://www.mailconnected.co.uk/stats/media-packs http://www.mailconnected.co.uk/stats/media-packs
adrianhoward 14y ago
I wonder how much of that audience actually aligns with the Mail's political values. My partner goes there every day for laughs, but is so far to the left the stereotypical Mail reader would probably want her arrested for treason and deported ;-)

mibbitier 14y ago

You could make similar claims about say The Guardian, or people who get their news from Reddit. Personally, I find the echo-chamber on the left to be far more worrying (Not to mention their constant condescending sneering, looking down on the "idiot" masses). Look at Reddit at the moment.. endless discussion about how the only reason anyone could vote for Romney is "uneducated voters". In this case, both graphs look completely stagnant. Perhaps The Daily Mail did choose their start date to tie the numbers up nicely. Maybe they even rounded the start and end figures so that they could claim the numbers are exactly the same. But whichever way you look at it, the graphs are stagnant.

CaptainZapp 14y ago
You may not like the left leaning stance of the Guardian, which is fine. To compare it, however, with The Daily Mail is a bit ridiculous.
- mibbitier 14y ago
  I don't think so, The Daily Mail generally likes to make you feel scared. The Guardian generally likes to make you feel outraged. They're just playing on different emotions to sell papers. As regards quality, fact checking, bias, they're all very similar.
  - kokey 14y ago
    I couldn't agree with you more. I believe the ability to spot the error and bias in the one while being blind to that of the other is a good indicator of a person's own bias.
adrianhoward 14y ago
I don't think that's quite fair. I see as much criticism of the Mail by right wing folk as left wing. The Times reader doesn't like the Mail much either in my experience. The right comparison to the Mail on the left would be the Mirror I think - not the Guardian.
glenra 14y ago

mdemare 14y ago

Here's some context for British papers from 25 years ago (Yes Minister. "Hacker" is the minister, not an actual hacker.) Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; The Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; And The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

vixen99 14y ago

Heck! That’s around forty million ignorant bigots including myself! The Daily Mail has the second largest English language readership worldwide, a figure which must contribute to a pessimistic view of humanity for bien pesant like yourself. You must read this rag pretty regularly to have such a commanding view of its misogynistic bigoted views though I am quite sure you avert your eyes from the soft porn pictures of women on beaches. I am not up to managing that, yet. By the way, your powers of generalization are impressive. Any chance of a few links to the painstakingly gathered statistics that,no doubt overwhelmingly support your searing analysis.

EliRivers 14y ago
Thanks for your view. It's more or less what I hear from everyone who doesn't like that I consider their favoured newspaper to be imperfect. I do check it frequently, yes. I do note that it continues to be dross. The soft porn is exactly as expected; just enough to satisfy its target audience without having to cross the line into actual porn like The Sun or similar, enabling Mail readers to feel good about themselves. I don't avert my eyes from it. I like looking at attractive women, although when I want porn, I just go to the internet. Why the hell would I avert my eyes? The obscenities in the Mail are in the written text; not the pictures. "Any chance of a few links to the painstakingly gathered statistics that,no doubt overwhelmingly support your searing analysis." I think you're being facetious, so no, do your own research. There is lots and lots out there. Start with (the sadly no longer maintained) DailyMailWatch and go from there. What I've said isn't new. Please either say what you mean (which is at least something the Mail manages to do) or take your passive-aggressive nonsense somewhere else. You read the Mail? Then you know what I've said is true, unless actually you only read the mail and you just don't realise, in which case you've got a sample-size of one and anything you say about the subject is hopelessly ill-informed.