The Poke - Daily Mail’s secret editorial formula revealed

If you have not yet seen this, it is genius.

For legal reasons he can only be named as ‘Journalist F’, but today this young member of The Daily Mail’s editorial staff is in hiding as threats and invective continue to spew from Paul Dacre’s office after their top secret editorial formula was leaked to the press.

Journalist F, rumoured to be less than five years in the job, somehow gained access to Dacre’s high-security office, known in journalistic circles as ‘Fortress Britain’, and saw the secret formula tacked to the wall. Shocked by its similarity to a public transport system so often maligned within The Daily Mail’s own pages, he rolled it up, put it under his jacket and walked out of his job into a media firestorm.
“He’ll never work in this town again,” promised Jan Moir today, “We all know who it is and even if he becomes bisexual, moves to Hackney and smokes a pipe, he won’t even be able to get a job on The Guardian. He won’t get that far down the street. We have eyes, you hear me? Eyes!”

To read the full story and see the full map in full glorious colour from The Poke.

PCC rejects complaint over Jan Moir article on Stephen Gately's death

Back in October last year following the tragic and very sudden death of Stephen Gately, Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir stuck the knife in and kicked out making some wild and unjustified accusations.

I, among many of my friends, colleagues and many others blogged about this at the time, you can read the posting here.

At the time, emotions were running high and Jan Moir said;

"In what is clearly a heavily orchestrated internet campaign I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones."

This was her understanding of how the Social Media arena responded.  What this showed in fact was not an orchestrated campaign but in fact a heavy out pouring of grief for Stephen, Boyzone, his partner Andrew and Stephen's family but also a group united against a fairly solitary voice attacking Stephen Gately and making some wild accusations.

Jan Moir misread the public mood.

Following her article, 25,000 people including Andrew Cowles and Polydor complained to the Press Complaints Commission, a number never seen before complaining about one article or even a TV show, such was the anger of people out there.

Well, now the PCC has published it's findings - here.
I have read the adjudication and the Commission's ruling in full under each of the three relevant parts of the Code - Clause 1 (Accuracy); Clause 5 (Intrusion into grief or shock); and Clause 12 (Discrimination) this you can find here.
 
I think the PCC had a difficult role here, but could have proved their worth and showed they even had some teeth, but they failed.  Instead they have backed a journalist columnist who made homophobic comments at an insensitive time and made allegations, proved to be untrue, about Stephen's death.
 
I will be honest, I think the adjudication is a load of tosh, I just found my self shouting at my laptop, (it's okay, it didn't talk back).
 
Take their ruling on Clause 12.

Clause 12 makes clear that the press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual's sexual orientation. The question of whether the article was homophobic or discriminatory to gay people in general did not fall under the remit of the Code.

That paragraph to me is completely bonkers, so the PCC doesn't rule on homophobic statements, is that what they are actually saying?

While many complainants considered that there was an underlying tone of negativity towards Mr Gately and the complainant on account of the fact that they were gay, it was not possible to identify any direct uses of pejorative or prejudicial language in the article. The columnist had not used pejorative synonyms for the word "homosexual" at any point.

The Commission made clear that this part of the Code was not designed to prevent discussion of certain lifestyles or broad issues relating to race, religion or sexuality. There was a distinction between critical innuendo - which, though perhaps distasteful, was permissible in a free society - and discriminatory description of individuals, and the Code was designed to constrain the latter rather than the former.

The Commission may have been uncomfortable with the tenor of the columnist's remarks on the topic; it did not consider, however, that the column had crossed the line on this occasion such as to raise a breach of the Code

So, Jan Moir and the Daily Mail walk free to make any comments they like, mostly because, apparently it was obviously the view of the columnist not the newspaper.

To me, the PCC got this ruling wrong - as Jan Moir got her article wrong and the timing even more wrong.

A sad day today.

Mariah Carey's diva demands just to turn Christmas lights on

I really couldn't believe my eyes this morning when in the Daily Telegraph they were reporting that to turn the Christmas lights on at the Westfield shopping centre in West London Mariah Carey was being a diva, darling.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Mariah Carey's demands included;

• Driven in a pink rolls royce, down a pink carpet to a pink podium, where she was to wave a want to turn them on!
• 80 security guards, plus an entourage of 15
• Confetti shaped like her favourite insect, the butterfly

Now, those were the ones that the organisers apparently complied with......

Those that were turned down included;

• 20 white kittens
• 100 white doves

Honestly, I really hope this is one of those nonsense made up celebrity stories that there are in the media now and again although as reported in the story a source told the Daily Mail "We have worked extremely hard to make sure that Mariah's event is fantastic. Even the model of car had to be changed six times to one that her people liked."

What a load of nonsense, yes she can sing but let us get a grip here and get back to real life.

Jan Moir tries to apologise but still misses the point

Jan Moir's recent homophobic column in the Daily Mail about the death of Stephen Gately was awful and I have previously blogged about it, you can read it here.

Well, it does appear that Jan Moir is trying to apologise in her latest column, titled "The truth about my views on the tragic death of Stephen Gately."

Initially as you read it you feel there may actually be a genuine change of heart, although there are some lines it that make me feel otherwise. I have spent a lot of time since Jan Moir's first column reading some of her past columns and I have come to the conclusion that she isn't homophobic, but uses people's sexuality a little bit too liberally in the columns when it really doesn't add anything to the content.

"What had been reported about that night is that Stephen and his civil partner Andrew Cowles went to a nightclub and brought back a Bulgarian man to their apartment."

This line from the apology proves a point, the Bulgarian man, is a close friend, yet still Jan is trying to imply something sinister.

"There have been complaints about my use of the word 'sleazy' to describe this incident, but I still maintain that to die on a sofa while your partner is sleeping with someone else in the next room is, indeed, sleazy, no matter who you are or what your sexual orientation might be."

There is no proof at all that this is the event that took place, just nothing more than gossip and since then it has come out that it is in fact untrue, that Andrew Cowles and the friend in question were in fact in different bedrooms.

"The point of my observation that there was a 'happy ever after myth' surrounding such unions was that they can be just as problematic as heterosexual marriages. "

But Jan, that isn't what you said, so surely if that is what you meant then perhaps you should have said it and it might have avoided a lot of uncertainty?

The original column also talked about other gay stars, dead and alive, again with absolutely no justification, perhaps as stars accept complete hogwash is written about them the public should too, but I don't think it is acceptable for "journalists" and I say that in the loosest term with some people to just say what they want without facts being part of their research.

Jan Moir may not be homophobic, but in my opinion the original column was and some of the content is sheer hogwash. As for the apology, nice try but way off the mark and not genuine as there are too many caveats and justifications that undo the original part.

The one part of the apology I felt was real was that about the timing of the original column - it was very bad timing indeed.

Jan Moir's homophobic column in the Daily Mail

I have been in some General election and Scottish election planning meetings all day today so was catching up on Twitter as waiting for the bus home from the city centre and saw that Jan Moir was being attacked for her column today.

So, I saw on Caron's blog that as usual homophobia was alive and well in the Daily Mail in the form of a column by Jan Moir and that during the course of the day online advertising had been removed from the site, such is the power of the internet these days.

Anyway, unlike a lot of my friends and colleagues on the web I am going to link to it because people need to read this crap that the Mail's columnists get paid to write and hopefully they will stop buying it because of articles such as this.

Surely, Stephen Gately's family, partner, friends and fellow Boyzone members deserve some time to grieve and therefore as a mark of respect Jan Moir should have kept her trap shut, we don't all need to know her opinion, her poisoned thoughts and innuendo and implication rather than basing her column on fact.

She says; "Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one." What makes her think this? Just a feeling or a hunch, certainly not fact unless all of a sudden she has become a first class doctor.

She goes onto say; "Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships."

What myth is this she speaks of? I am sorry, but marriages don't last forever either so what exactly is her point? No people I know who have had a civil partnership have claimed it is going to be happy ever after, but like any relationship you have to work at it. I have been with my partner for 16 years and we have not had a civil partnership, yet, my only regret about not having had it yet is that my Mum won't be there to see it.

Then earlier this evening Jan Moir has bitten back against the backlash she has received since the article came out, she makes some points in the piece such as the point above about the happy ever after myth of civil partnerships, in the statement she says that they have proved to be as problematic as marriages - but Jan Moir you didn't say that in your original article, you cannot whinge afterwards if you couldn't be bothered to put it in the original.

The original piece has generated some 1,000+ complaints to the Press Complaints Commission, To read Moir's full statement, see below;

Some people, particularly in the gay community, have been upset by my article about the sad death of Boyzone member Stephen Gately. This was never my intention. Stephen, as I pointed out in the article was a charming and sweet man who entertained millions.

However, the point of my column – which I wonder how many of the people complaining have fully read – was to suggest that, in my honest opinion, his death raises many unanswered questions. That was all. Yes, anyone can die at anytime of anything. However, it seems unlikely to me that what took place in the hours immediately preceding Gately’s death – out all evening at a nightclub, taking illegal substances, bringing a stranger back to the flat, getting intimate with that stranger – did not have a bearing on his death. At the very least, it could have exacerbated an underlying medical condition.

The entire matter of his sudden death seemed to have been handled with undue haste when lessons could have been learned. On this subject, one very important point. When I wrote that ‘he would want to set an example to any impressionable young men who may want to emulate what they might see as his glamorous routine’, I was referring to the drugs and the casual invitation extended to a stranger. Not to the fact of his homosexuality. In writing that ‘it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships’ I was suggesting that civil partnerships – the introduction of which I am on the record in supporting – have proved just to be as problematic as marriages.

In what is clearly a heavily orchestrated internet campaign I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones.

Well Jan Moir, I did read your original article, three times in fact and I am afraid your choice of words and language leave me in no doubt that you were trying to whip up hysteria, with homophobic comments and innuendo.

I hope Stephen's partner, friends and family can bury Stephen and grieve in private knowing that there are hundreds of thousands of us with them in spirit - gay, straight, bi and those who have no idea.

Right wing newspaper apologises, not, for homophobic comments

So, as you may have read on my little blog yesterday, Right Wing homophobic Newspaper Strikes Again, well it appeared late last night that Iain Dale had received a personal apology from Peter McKay who does the Ephraim Hardcastle column in the Daily Mail.

However, as the first editions were published online it appeared this apology was nothing more than a hoax, as today's column says;

"Tory blogger Iain Dale complains about an item here yesterday. I mentioned that Dale, who is gay, is hoping to become the Tory candidate at Bracknell, Berkshire, and invited subscribers to PinkNews, the homosexual website, to attend the open primary on October 17, saying: 'You don't even have to be a Conservative to attend.' Dale says my comment - 'Isn't it charming how homosexuals rally likeminded chaps to their cause?' - is homophobic, as is my description of him as 'overtly gay'. He has complained to the Press Complaints Commission, and suggested his readers email complaints. I have nothing against Dale. Nor am I homophobic. But if he wants to become an MP, surely he'll have to become a little less sensitive. Incidentally, the Tories are having their first gay pride event at their Manchester conference next week. They'll promote a new 'gay-friendly' logo, Conservative Pride. Isn't life grand"

I really disagree with Peter McKay, this isn't about sensitivity. As I said yesterday if a person is suitable for a job what difference does their sexuality, skin colour or even religion make? None

The line I find offensive is the "Isn't it charming how homosexuals rally likeminded chaps to their cause?" - it is homophobic and bloody patronising and to be honest comments like this are what drive some of the homophobic bullying that goes on today in workplaces and schools up and down the country.

Right wing homophobic newspaper strikes again

I am a Liberal Democrat, through and through not a Tory, never have been and never will be.

I have never met with Iain Dale but I do have some respect for him as a blogger, footie fan and a political campaigner.

I am gay though (and bloody proud of it), and when I see sheer open homophobic comments like this by Ephraim Hardcastle in the Daily Mail I get angry.

"Overtly gay Tory blogger Iain Dale has reached the final stage of parliamentary selection for Bracknell, telling PinkNews: 'I hope any PinkNews readers who live in Bracknell will come to the open primary on October 17 to select their new candidate.

You don't even have to be a Conservative to attend.'

Isn't it charming how homosexuals rally like-minded chaps to their cause?"

Firstly, Iain Dale has pushed and advertised all three of the Tory primaries - Totnes, Bedford and now Bracknell. So Ephraim you are out of touch and bloody awful at research because a quick search on Iain's blog would have shown you that very answer.

Any candidate, of any party if like Iain are high profile and are asked to do an interview they are going to promote their candidacy. I also thought the line "overtly gay" really has nothing to do with him standing as the candidate for Bracknell.

When a job is advertised the candidates are then interviewed on their suitability for the job, not on what they do outside of work. So what the hell has Iain being gay got to do with the Bracknell primary which is seeking to select the Conservative candidate to fight the general election to become the MP?

I am gay but Ephraim sorry to disappoint but I won't be attending the Bracknell primary and guess what every gay person I know has their own mind and just because we read a line in a gay or other publication by a gay person doesn't mean we will act as lemmings and follow.