Daily Mail apologises to women… really?!
When I saw this URL
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/12/daily-mail-apologises-to-women
I thought - at last! The Mail are going to apologise for Femail, hating women, slagging off women for being too fat/thin depending on how they're feeling this particular minute, employing Liz Jones to represent their gender, etc.
But no, sadly not. Instead of the long-overdue mea culpa from Mail Towers it's a bit of an oopsy after the Fail royally fucked up a story about adoption.
Katharine Parker, Thelma Davis, Lisa Beard-Rogers and Edwina Langley complained that the article – published in the Femail section of the paper on 5 November 2008 under the headline "How women are so afraid of losing their careers or their figures they're choosing adoption over childbirth" – misrepresented their motives for choosing adoption.
All four women said they had different reasons for choosing adoption, ranging from infertility issues to a concern to help children from difficult backgrounds.
So essentially the Mail began with a premise for a story and then tried to hammer these people's stories into the cookie cutter. And then bleated a tiny fart of an apology through the PCC when challenged about it, getting away almost completely free.
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February 23rd, 2009 - 22:12
Ah yes, the PCC, that not at all toothless entity which has a chairman appointed by the newspaper industry, and seven of whose other sixteen members are newspaper or magazine editors. Entirely impartial, I’m sure you’ll agree.
I’ve always felt that a basic requirement – like the entry level response – for an upheld complaint should be that it is presented in the same size, place and style as the offending article. So a double page spread on pages 6 and 7 of the News of the Screws containing exciting bullet-point headings like:
- We LIED about what happened
- Our reporter sensationally DOORSTEPPED a grieving widow
- Our alcoholic subeditor MADE UP the quotes by ‘an insider’ after a liquid lunch
and so on, with a half-page picture of the editor with his tits hanging out.
Is that too much to ask?