Express: A soft target?
A couple of people have said this to me recently: that attacking the Express is somehow a 'soft target' or a 'cheap shot'; that it's somehow unfair to criticise the awfulness of their output, because... well I never really understand the 'because', but I wondered to myself whether it might be the case. This was in relation to this post about how pitifully their embarrassingly banal food-obsessed stories compared with the genuine journalism being conducted by hard-working amateur bloggers.
But is there any truth in the accusation? Is the Express a soft target and am I just squashing a butterfly with a cricket bat by having a go at it? Well, I think it's true that they do often put tedious fluff on their front pages
and yes, when you look back over the course of the past few days, there have certainly been a few stories about dieting, food, health and related tedium. Is it really picking on a soft target to take a cheap shot at a national newspaper wasting its valuable front-page space on food-related health bollocks? Or have we really gone so far that we don't expect anything more?
However, it's not those front pages where the Express becomes really nasty. Sky News always puts up a list of front pages, which is where I harvest the images for this blog, but I couldn't help noticing something odd about this one, from last week:
That's odd. Why on earth might the bottom half of the page be missing? What was on there that Sky News decided not to publish? Well, the answer is
as Tabloid Watch points out, that the person in the picture is not a fanatic who wants to kill 'us':
the headline and the picture (no, not Alesha Dixon, the other one) strongly suggest the 'fanatics' in the headline are linked to loudmouth trouble-maker Anjem Choudhary. And yet, the story isn't about him at all.
Is the Express really a soft target? Is it really a cheap shot to think that our national media should be responsible when reporting issues as sensitive and inflammatory as Muslim extremism? Or is that just being a punter at the news-stands, appalled by what you're seeing?
Yes, the Express can be comically bad and laughably silly, as I've attempted to document down the months and years. But it's also got a nasty streak, particularly with regards to Islam and immigrants, one which is welcomed by far-right extremists and those who are also the enemies of 'us' - if you think of 'us' as being ordinary folk in Britain. I'd rather it stuck to the bollocks about mushrooms curing cancer and eating breakfast being good for you, but it doesn't. So in that sense it's a hard target, and one that deserves everything it gets.
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Hello. I'm a Bristol-based writer and soon-to-be-redundant journalist. You can read more about me and the Enemies site here, or follow me on Twitter. Email me if you like - antonvowl at live dot co dot uk
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December 3rd, 2009 - 13:47
If the express is a soft target then so is Littlejohn, so is Melanie Phillips, so is Moir.
If the express is a soft target it's no-one's fault but their own
December 3rd, 2009 - 13:56
The Express is an easy target.
Bu it's their own bloody fault.
December 3rd, 2009 - 14:03
No it's not a soft target. too many people in the UK fall under the influence of it's soft propaganda methods.
we need people like you to continually be on the watch. Too many people (voters) are just too gullible
December 3rd, 2009 - 16:39
I think all tabloids are soft targets, as they're the 'newspaper' (and I use the term sparingly) equivalent of The National Enquirer: though that shouldn't prevent them from being targets.
December 3rd, 2009 - 18:12
The Daily Express is the self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Newspaper". If you can't criticise #1, then who can you criticise?
December 4th, 2009 - 11:26
Whatever, keep up the good work!
December 4th, 2009 - 11:51
@ Martin…
Amen!
December 4th, 2009 - 23:46
It may be easy but that's because of it's lack of journalistic integrity. What makes it necessary to attack these sorts of easy targets is that thousands of people buy into this nonsense when they read that paper. And because it acts very authoratitive a lot of these people probably don't actually read any other papers and assume it's true.
December 5th, 2009 - 19:12
Anton! don't listen to the critics! keep blogging. i don't want to be a sycophant but i love this blog and no, i DON@T think the express is a soft target. it may print silly fluff, but it also prints nasty, untrue, lying and inflammatory stories. my grandparents read the express and the utter bullshit they come out with sometimes borne from reading the racist lies in the express is shocking and upsetting. they prey on people's fears, insecurities and "ignorance" (i don't like calling my grandparents ignorant but you know what i mean – in terms of not understanding the good point and advnatages of multi culturalism) in order to inflame an unpleasant and sometimes violent xenophobia, islamophobia, homophobia and racism.
i mean, even on their stupid medical stories you have the express telling women not to get the HPV vaccine, and telling parents not to have the MMR vaccines, something that could have massively dangerous repurcussions. they have suggested people who are innocent are criminals. takung the piss out of their food stories allows us to discredit the small things as well as the big.
so no, it is not a soft target. it is a very valid target.