The Daily Mail, one of the most widely-read tabloids in Europe (but only, many people suspect, because people buy it because they can’t quite believe how bad it is, and need the evidence in their hands, to substantiate the awfulness of the publication), is very, very angry.
Headlines frequently include the words ‘Rage’, ‘Anger’, ‘Terror’ and ‘Turmoil’. The word ‘Muslim’ frequently crops up too, but hardly ever in a positive way.
As you can see below, today’s Daily Mail contains the word ‘Fiasco” in two of the first three headlines (ringed in red).
Headlines. Not news reports.
The first ‘fiasco’ headline says:
Well yes.
One doesn’t have to be a graduate of The School Of The Blindingly Obvious to work out that Nurses would be cheaper than Doctors to employ.
And let’s face it, if nurses earned the same amount as GPs the Daily Mail would be one of the first to protest at the lack of spending control.
However, when one reads the story one finds that nurses are not being employed to deliver out-of-hours cover *instead* of GPs (even though this is the intended tenor of the headline).
No, Nurses are being employed as an additional resource, to deal with different strands of emergency medical service.
As one reads the article it becomes apparent the Daily Mail seems to be incredulous that more nurses are employed, to provide out-of-hours medical services, than Doctors.
More blindingly obvious logic, anyone?
I can’t help wondering what the Daily Mail would have to say about the ratio of Doctors to Nurses in, say, a large general hospital.
But can you imagine the utter outrage that the Daily Mail would pour forth (probably using the words ‘Fiasco’, ‘Outrage’ and ‘Anger’ in just one headline) if the ratio of Doctors were increased to match, on a one-to-one basis, the number of Nurses providing emergency hours cover?
Judging by the tone of this piece, the editorial staff of The Daily Mail would go apoplectic. Or in to orbit.
I know which of the two I would prefer.
So this is clearly not a news story at all. And yet the Daily Mail leads with it.
As I said, they are very angry.
Sigh.
The second of today’s ‘fiasco’ news headlines is:
‘Tens of thousands set to be denied their vote in historic General Election… thanks to postal fiasco‘
This headline has been clearly intended to lead the casual reader to believe that there has been some kind of fuck-up with the Royal Mail, which has led to a failure in the distribution of postal vote material.
But no!
When one reads the story, one finds that there will be a delay receiving postal vote material, in some parts of the world, but this delay has been caused by… the Icelandic volcano. You know, the one that paralysed European air travel for a week, and caused all passenger traffic to get locked in. And air freight traffic. And, obviously, air mail traffic.
But is that the flavour of the story that you get from the headline?
No, of course it is not.
This is yet another example of how the Daily Mail publishes headlines that have been designed to deliberately mislead the reader.
The tactic has to be deliberate, because there is no attempt to match the ‘fiasco’ in either of these headlines with the truth in the two stories.
I have used the word ‘stories’ because I do not want to glorify the Daily Mail editorial staff by describing the content as ‘news items’.
So, being logical about this for a moment, the Daily Mail clearly believes that it is acceptable to publish misleading headlines, that bear no relation to the body of the story.
Also, the Daily Mail clearly believes that it is perfectly acceptable, to make no attempt to correct the misleading headlines, through correcting references in the stories.
I find this very interesting.
And indeed, instructional.
Obviously, the Daily Mail, by virtue of its massive circulation, has a thing or two to teach us – in the areas of headline-to-story content and the relationship of both/either to accuracy.
I consider myself instructed.
From now on – periodically – I shall follow the Daily Mail’s example; I shall publish a headline-and-story combination that the editor of the Daily Mail would be proud of.
After all, who am I not to be led by example?
One of the overwhelming benefits of emigrating is that no-one here has heard of The Daily Mail and since there are apparently only three brits amongst a local population of 1.5 million there is, one could say; “not enough demand for it” and therefore it is nowhere to be seen.
Thankfully the same is true of The Mirror, News of the World and, my personal nemesis: The Sun – any ‘newspaper’ that feels it’s not only ok to put naked women in it but furthermore necessary to increase their readership no longer prints news and surely positions itself as targeting “blokes” and/or women who believe that the same “blokes” should be able to stare at tits on the morning train or in McDonalds or indeed anywhere Sun readers gather. Not to mention the need for the likes of The Sun to simplify the grammar and number of syllables in their text (people read the text?) and highlight important bits with bold text so those endowed with even more proto-linguistic powers can more easily pick out the Brad Jolie Bullock lies without going to the bother of having to mutter the intervening prose under their breath.
Yes I know there are those who ‘read’ the Sun/Mirror etc “for a bit of a laugh” (Brennig, I’m looking at you through slanting and suspicious eyes) but that doesn’t rescue it from being anything more than a refuge for misogynistic bigotry. What’s truly truly truly sad is that there are a lot of people (my Dad included) who read what’s printed in “the press” and believe it unequivocally. Bad guys have to be 100 percent bad, good guys have to be supernaturally and flawlessly good. Worse still, a good story is one where surprise, preferably coupled with anger or outrage is the leading theme along with a need to differentiate the newspaper from others by taking an opposite position which leads to the cycle of ‘build them up, knock them down’.
At least over here the National Enquirer and others have the decency to make it one hundred percent clear that their stories are so implausible as to be nothing more than fantastical entertainment…unless you do genuinely believe there is a double-decker London bus on the moon?
Ok, going to lie down now… gibber.
I think it’s a bit bad that you’ve singled out the Daily Mail for doing misleading headlines, as majority of all tabloids/newspapers/magazines do this. It’s how they get their readers after all, hey, they got your attention didn’t they?
I make it very simple. I don’t buy any sort of publications (apart from my field of business to see what the opposition is doing, but that isn’t tabloid stuff). If something get’s my attention I hear on the news via radio or TV, I then go to the BBC website to find out more.
I know a Mail journo. Overall, he’s fairly chilled out about things in general, and confides to me they have endless meetings there trying to work out how to spin any and all stories with a hearty side of outrage.
I’m surprised they haven’t done any research to see how many of these out of hours nurses are either a)Muslim or b) immigrants. If you could get together a decent percentage, the Mail could actually manage to lever two helpings of outrage into one story. Outstanding!
It’s a vile rag, but there’s something addictive about its awfulness. I wish they’d start charging for the on-line edition so that I could stop reading it. It can’t be a good way to start the day, all that indignation and doom.
Emigrating may escape The Mail, but there are unlimited opportunities for the same dreck in the U.S.