Sunday 27 February 2011

The Daily Mail

Whenever I see someone buy the Daily Mail, a little piece of me dies. With the Mail on Sunday, it's a slightly larger piece.

I can't read the newspaper without elevating my blood pressure and heart rate at the wild leaps of "reasoning" the frothy-mouthed articles make in order to foment the readership into righteous indignation.

That anyone would choose to read such poisonous tripe is profoundly disappointing, distressing, disturbing.
That anyone might accept it enough to act on it unthinkable.

A recent piece opened with the statement that cyclists had more heart attacks than other people. By the end of the article, the statement was revealed to be based on a creative interpretation of a piece of scientific research - an interpretation not endorsed by the authors of the research.

Now I don't have a problem with creative writing, but when it's dressed up as factual journalism, something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

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