Wednesday 13 September 2017

War of the Words: Guardian vs Mail

ON June 22nd, this year, Dominic Ponsford writing in the PRESS GAZETTE remarked that 'The Daily Mail has launched its most savage ever editorial attack on long-time critic The Guardian accusing it of “fake news” and being a “purveyor of hatred”.'
Mr. Ponsford claimed at that time that:
'Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre appears to have been spurred into action by a Guardian cartoon which depicted the van which attacked mosque worshippers at Finsbury Park with the words: “Read Sun and the Daily Mail” on the side of it.'
 It seems that the Guardian had run a few stories in which it had compared the Daily Mail to an 'open sewer' and a reader’s letter which said it was an 'organ of hate speech'.

The Mail editor Paul Dacre responded that it wouldn’t matter if The Guardian’s 'infantile lies' were confined to the pages of a 'little-read dying paper'.
'But in this age of social media, they are spread and amplified through the great distorting echo-chamber of the internet, where the mob really does rule…'


In May, The Observer, from the same stable as the Guardian, had run a piece by the journalist Tim Adams in which he asked 'Is this the most dangerous man in Britain?' in an headline over a photo of Daily Mail editor, Paul Dacre. 
Mr Adams claimed that 'Paul Dacre had never had much time for what he christened Cameron’s “chumocracy”.'
Tim Adams describes the intensity of Dacre's work ethic thus: 

'Each weekday evening between about seven and 10pm he leaves his office to sit on the paper’s back bench and remorselessly rehash that day’s offering, all the while delivering what staff call “the vagina monologues”, heated critical assessments of his journalist’s efforts, with scattershot use of his favourite word, “cunt”.  Though the Mail’s website, with its sidebar of celebrity shame, is the most visited news site in the world,  Dacre has little interest in technology.  He edits with a blunt pencil, often apparently with enough vitriol to shred his page proofs.'

Meanwhile, the current issue of Private Eye's 'Street of Shame' column describes how the great dictator Dacre seeks to deliver a 'style guide' to his paper's sub-editors on how to use the English language 'to ensure that [his] readers will perceive the world the way editor Paul Dacre prefers to see it...'.  The Eye asks 'DO YOU SPEAK DACRE?'.

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