Thursday 14 January 2010

The Mail just doesn't care about Haiti

Today, the Daily Mail was the only national newspaper not to have a mention of the Haiti earthquake on its front page. It chose to plug its Poirot DVD giveaway instead:


It's an astonishing editorial decision to relegate the biggest news story of the year so far to the inside. How did Editor Paul Dacre and his henchmen come to that conclusion, when even the Daily Star thought it important enough to put on the front page?

So where, exactly, did the Mail place its coverage in the print edition?

Flicking through, there are stories about:

  • Conservative Party plans on alcohol and teachers' pay.
  • Swine flu.
  • Nick Clegg, faith schools and homosexuality.
  • The BBC and U2.
  • A 106-year-old woman 'forced to leave the home she loved'.
  • Gary McKinnon.
  • Britain being out of recession (buried on page 6).
  • Madeleine McCann.
  • The Chilcot Inquiry.
  • Weather warnings.
  • Lawyers trying to gag an MP.

And there are also articles about:

  • A policeman who is 5ft tall.
  • How women's handbags are 57% lighter than two years ago.
  • Dannii Minogue being pregnant.
  • A review of the Legally Blonde stage show.

And it is only after all that, on pages 12 and 13, that the Mail finds room for the Haiti earthquake.

Even then, page 12 is half taken up with a Tesco advert for Bold washing powder. 'Lighten the load' it says, next to pictures of a child with bandages around its head and a dazed woman crawling over rubble.

Page 13 contains the longest article of the spread - and that is a short history of Haiti titled 'Rape, murder and voodoo on the island of the damned' which hardly mentions the quake among all the stereotypes.

Meanwhile, the main article is 25 unrevealing sentences long.

So why is the Mail so uninterested?

The headline on their website earlier today gives some indication (as spotted and snapped by Megan Lucas):


Ah. So there it is. The Mail only regards this as a 'top story' when they think some 'Brits' may have died. The deaths of thousands of Haitians and the wrecking of their country is not important enough on its own, apparently.

Certainly not as important as a free Poirot DVD.

Even when they do turn their attention to Haiti, it ends up like this:


Still, with the story leading the Mail's website - in one form or another - for most of the day, surely it would make Friday's front page?


Nope. Still no room for Haiti. What Beyonce did two weeks ago, another Poirot DVD and - believe it or not - a bird feeding kit are considered far more worthy.

15 comments:

  1. A joke of a newspaper. I'm surprised they didn't have an article about Princess Diana.

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  2. Did it really say caught between two "teutonic" plates!?

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  4. I could almost "suspcept" the Mail of not caring about Johnny Foreigner.

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  5. Noticed the "teutonic" plates reference too. A rag written by ignorant twits for the consumption of ignorant twits.

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  6. Yup - I risked my eyes and brain to visit the "starf*cking, character assassination and woo in the paper of the damned." I can exclusively[1] report that it does indeed have the phase "teutonic plates."

    *headdesk*

    [1] Exclusive as used in the Daily Mirror sense of "extensively covered elsewhere first"

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  7. *Facepalm*. Teutonic plates.. I feel weak.

    As for today's papers, the Star is back on Celebrity Big Brother, while the Express goes for "HERO FORCED TO SELL HOME", throwing in some police- and immigrant-bashing for the subhead and, I will venture to presume, the main article.

    At least they cared for a single day, I suppose.

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  8. Ah, forgot to mention the poor-bashing from the Express as well.

    ("Yet Romanian squatters take over house as police stand by").

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  9. http://hypem.com/search/haiti%20arcade%20fire/1/

    I hate it when I see reports of disasters talking about the dead British like they're more important. Been thinking a lot lately about Einstein's edict that nationalism is 'an infantile disease'.

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  10. Is the "Teutonic plates" comment a Freudian slip?

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  11. "I'm surprised they didn't have an article about Princess Diana"

    The webshite currently has a story about a woman who apparently fell into the pond in Kensington Gardens (just opposite the Mail offices) and then froze to death overnight.

    Or, as the Mail put it, "Body of young woman found 'frozen to death' just yards from Princess Diana's former home".

    So the fact that a woman who died 13 years ago once lived nearby is somehow relevant? Hmmm. Then they stoop lower still by showing long-lens photos of the woman's body as the police examine the scene.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1243498/Body-young-woman-frozen-death-just-yards-Princess-Dianas-home.html

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  12. I'm reminded of a long-ago comment from my ex-mother-in-law concerning a disaster which had happened somewhere far away: "And the worst thing about it is, some of them were British!". Hmmmmmmmmm.

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  13. There are a variety of newspapers so people can choose what they read, if you don't like it I'm sure there is another paper to suit your tastes.

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  14. Anonymous: There are a variety of blogs so people can choose what they read, if you don't like I'm sure there is a shitter blog to suit your Mail-reading tastes. Try Peter Hitchen's blog, for example.

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  15. When the poison dripped by these rags is such, we have a duty to report on it and criticise it.

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