"that must a fair cross section of society, you can't label them all right wing reactionaries, no matter. "
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't anyone necessarily is. It's the sentiments and practices of Mail journalists which we're scrutinising. But that doesn't change the fact that (as you do sometimes with the Guardian), there are people with an extremely rosy view of the Mail that take what's in it at face value when they simply shouldn't. I'm sure a fair number of the Mail's readers do not do so - my mother is one of them. But the fact is that some do.
"If it prints stories of travellers, gays, Muslim extremeism, its news, the same stories that are printed in other papers, just couched in a different way"
Except it's not that simple, is it? The Mail does recycle old stories to make the same point (if you like, I'll dig back through the ones that 5CC and some other bloggers have unearthed and show you them myself - it just make take a while). Have you ever heard of selection bias? While it usually refers to statistics, it's something of a necessary evil in journalism because obviously a paper can't report everything. But it also can be a tool for portraying the world in a certain way. Why shouldn't we analyse it? Or attack if we think it's distortive?
Plus the way that something is presented is not as trivial as you're making it out to be. The sensationalist tone in which the Mail poses things can make them seem like things that they're not. Again, if you'd really prefer examples and are willing to wait, I'll go and find some for you to show you.
I'm not entirely clear what you're arguing against, em. You seem to have a problem with the idea of vigilance toward big-circulation, influential newspapers with a reputation for exaggeration and sensationalism. Why? On what grounds? I'm sure there must be more to your responses than I'm making out.