Hope and fear among Mail readers
What are we to make of Mail readers? You know, it's wrong to try and classify them as some giant mass of seething fear, hatred and bigotry. Because that's not the case. Sure, there's a lot of fear, hatred and bigotry in there, but that doesn't mean that everyone who happens upon the Mail website is (a) the target Mail audience anyway or (b) even if they are, they may be intelligent folk who disagree with some of the more frenzied excesses of the Mail's editorialising.
Have a look at two stories today in the Mail. The first is about science and evolution; the second is about Donald Rumsfeld's rather startling Christian propaganda in the Iraq war.
The Mail says:
The news is certain to anger Muslim critics of the invasion, whose claims that a Christian superpower was trying to overthrow an Islamic nation were rebuffed at the time by the White House.
It's a typical attempt by the Mail to slant the story in a particular way - as if only Muslims could possibly be angered by such an appalling atrocity against humanity. But it's not just Muslim voices who respond to this story. Take a look at the best-rated comments:
Well now, that's quite encouraging, in a way, isn't it? You might not expect that Mail readers would behave that way. But then you have to always keep an open mind about these things.
Secondly, with the story about a fossil of a primate having been found in the United States, you might expect that Mail readers might agree with the Mel Phillipses of this world and claim an intelligent design/creationist view of 'science'. And some do, but look at how they take an absolute pasting:
So there are reasons for some optimism. We mustn't just lump all Mail readers together; there's hope for some who appear on the website, at least, although that may be an altogether different readership from those who pick up a newspaper - after all, I turn up on the Mail's website every day, don't I?
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May 20th, 2009 - 12:22
The attitude the Mail readers on either story isn’t really that surprising. You need to bear in mind who the average Mail reader is.
They are typically white, lower middle class, with probably a higher proportion of Christians than the population as a whole.
They are, however, more of your CofE, maybe Methodist, traditional hymns on an organ type Christians where their religion is part of their life rather than being their life. You’ll find that such Christians will have a much more moderate approach to science and evolution and are quite comfortable with it. Similarly they find those prepared to wage holy wars etc as pretty much objectionable as you do.
What they are highly unlikely to be are arm waving, guitar playing, happy clappy Baptists who, despite being more likely to read the Guardian, are also more likely to be evangelical and not believe in evolution.
May 20th, 2009 - 12:48
If only the BBC would take a leaf out of the Mail’s book and allow people to vote down comments on HYS.
May 22nd, 2009 - 13:19
“there’s hope for some who appear on the website, at least, although that may be an altogether different readership from those who pick up a newspaper – after all, I turn up on the Mail’s website every day, don’t I?”
Yeah, me too. It’s probably not very representative of their actual (paying) readership, since there’s presumably a lot of people (like you and I) trying to balance the tone of things in the comments, who wouldn’t be seen dead buying a copy of the Mail.
It’s also probably significant that the Mail usually does very well on Google’s page ranking – for example, searching for ‘news’, the Mail crops up at the bottom of the first page of results, while the Indie is at the bottom of page two, and the Guardian is second-bottom of page three.
I’m not suggesting that Google is biased against the more liberal media – presumably the Mail spent more money on SEOs – but it inevitably means their website gets a lot more traffic, so your stereotypical Mail reader gets drowned out by the voices of the more balanced majority. Also, as Akela points out, the stereotypical Mail reader is probably a lot less typical than we (or its journalists) tend to think.
Still, it’s always nice to see the loons being put in their place.