How the Daily Mail responds to people who don't toe the line

Remember Julie Spence?  She's the Chief Constable and tabloid darling who got acres of fawning coverage in the Mail for speaking about how immigration strained the police in Cambridgeshire.  In 2007 and 8, she was at the centre of stories like 'Mass migration and a 'fractured' Britain', 'Police force spending over £1 million a year on interpreters due to rise in migrant workers', 'Immigrant motorists fuelling rise in road crashes, says police chief', 'Sex-trafficking soars with at least 100 brothels in Cambridgeshire alone', 'Chief constables called to crisis summit with Jacqui Smith on immigrant crimewave', 'Commentary: The facts behind crime and migration', 'Police chief calls for more cash to fight migrant crime despite official report claiming there isn't a problem', 'Extra funds promised by Government to help police deal with rising immigration levels', ''Economic downturn could spark ethnic tensions', says police chief', 'Mass immigration to blame for knife culture, chief constable warns' and 'It's NOT racist to tell the truth about immigration and crime, says leading police chief'.

Phew!  That's a lotta coverage. 

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When policy is based on made up nonsense

My favourite type of tabloid appeasing fake announcements of policy intent are the ones based on moral-panic reporting by lame news outlets that turns out to be wrong in the first place.  Those ones are really pointless and waste everyone's time.

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It's not Death Wish and you're not Charles Bronson

David Cameron's latest tabloid appeasing wheeze is to say that burglars leave their human rights at the door when they enter someone's house.  Wurrgh!  Tough, huh?  You could imagine him squinting a steely-eyed hundred yard stare as he said that, while chewing on a matchstick and growling.  Until you saw his stupid chubby posh face.

Predictably, the tabloids, never normally given to the abandonment of nuance in favour of the unrealistic cramming of everything into a simplified black and white worldview, love it.  'More please, Mr Cameron' says inaptly named John Gaunt.

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What am I going to do with my life?

There's this thing I used to do.  It's the sort of creative thing you can do as a career, but you  have to work your way into.  I went quite a distance, and people thought I was good at it.  People doing it as a career thought I'd be good enough to join them with a bit more practice, and people at the same level I was at then are successful now.  The future was looking pretty bright.

But I stopped.

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Never mind the earthquake, feel the voodoo

It's so common in comedy shows that it's a cliche - major disaster happens in foreign country, UK news agencies only take notice if British people are involved. Submit a script with that situation in and someone's bound to say, "Do we need to include that tired joke? It's been done about eight-million times before."

But it seems that tired old cliche is still actually relevant. As TabloidWatch pointed out yesterday, every daily newspaper on Thursday ran with news of the terrible earthquake in Haiti on the front page somewhere. Well, every daily except the Mail, which considered news about Gary McKinnon, the McCanns and a free Poirot DVD more important than a disaster that claimed thousands of lives. The earthquake was relegated eight or twelve pages in, depending on the edition apparently.

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Shameless, unrepentant and still lying

'SHAMELESS, UNREPENTANT AND STILL LYING' shouted yesterday's front page headline in the Daily Mail.  It was shouting about a man who had made sure information was misrepresented to the public to make things seem much more definite than they were, and far more threatening than reality.

You know what's coming now, right?  You just need to guess what articles I'm going to use as examples.  Seriously, I might as well just fling random pages up in the air and pick the ones that land face up.

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Because occasionally even the Mail can be right

That's all from me.  Septicisle and Anton Vowl have good words about this, and you can discuss the front page at MailWatch.