Is now the time to start treating Daily Mail stories with a degree of suspicion?

[sp1814]

Many posters here, including myself, use links to the Daily Mail (stops those on the political right from using the accusation of left wing bias if the story comes from their 'house rwg')

Anyway, does this stunning piece of journalistic hubris mean that we should start treating Daily Mail stories as fictionalised versions of the news?

http://www.malcolmcol...og/daily-mail-guuilt/

Both The Sun and The Guardian posted incorrectly, that Knox had been found guilty, but The Daily Mail went MUCH further. Check out some of the quotes from the piece.

Just think, if Knox HAD been found guilty, we would've read that story thinking that it were all true!

[boxtops]

sp - "....start treating with suspicion"? what, you mean you haven't before now?

[sp1814]

boxtops

I'm a trusting soul...

[jno]

I believe the Guardian and the Sun simply posted online that Knox's appeal had failed because that was what the judge said - he went on to say it was just the slander appeal, the rest had succeeded; and so the two reports were quickly corrected. Only the Mail seems to have prepared a totally fictional report in advance, and published it.

I regret to say I wasn't totally flabbergasted.

[sp1814]

shortstraw

Didn't realise this had already been posted.

In a way, I can understand journalists wanting to break the story online before their competitors - and I know that all major papers have obituaries ready to print if a celebrity dies (at least for those who are considered 'at risk' eg. Lindsay Lohan).

But this goes way beyond that. They actually printed quotes and decried what happened.

It's jaw-dropping!

[jno]

another gem of British journalilsm raised by the Knox case

http://www.guardian.c...ew-wright-amanda-knox

[BrainsTracy]

It's common practice to write 2 stories and publish the relevant one. Sometimes they even take a punt to run the presses early. Not suggesting that happenned here but I think they just run the worng story through some sort of c0k up.

[ummmm]

And the made up comments??

[jno]

just so, ummmm. It is common practice to write two stories in which certain significant points are different (eg Guilty/Not Guilty). It is not common practice, at least outside the Mail, to fill one of them with lies.

[BrainsTracy]

From what many say here, I think that is common practice jno.

[jno]

I think they're wrong. Most papers write true stories. That's why the News of the World (and no doubt other papers) went to so much trouble hacking phones: in order to find out things that did happen, not things that didn't.

[ludwig]

Anyone who doesn't treat everything they read in all tabloid newspapers with a hefty dose of suspicion is pretty daft.

I reckon 20% is spot on, 60% contains inaccuracies or distortions, and 20% is pure fiction.