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HomoHate - It Must Be Profitable To Be This Common In The Media
A few months ago, upon the death of Walter Cronkite, I was struck by how the "traditional media" has changed. There was a time when we tuned into the news, or opened our newspapers, that we could expect to see facts reported to us in context. It made reading the paper an informative activity, something you even encouraged children to do to teach them about the world. These days, so much of the traditional media is so full of hate and homophobia, I feel like Reverend Lovejoy's wife on The Simpsons wailing out "What about the children? Won't someone think of the children" Because if these people actually cared one bit about “protecting the children" the traditional media would be closed down for being irredeemably offensive. Need proof of that? Let’s start with newspapers in that most civilized of countries, the U.K. Stephen Gately, of the boyband Boyzone died last week, and it seemed that Britain, Ireland, and even the U.S.A. stopped for a respectful moment of silence. Then the speculation began. Drugs? Too much alcohol? Was his partner, Andrew Cowles, having sex with a young Bulgarian man in the next room? This was certainly vile speculation given a young man was dead, but they really weren’t beyond-the-pale when it comes to celebrity death. Heath Ledger’s passing prompted plenty of rude speculation as well. But then Jan Moir, a columnist for the Daily Mail, chose to use Gately's death as a jumping off point for a homophobic rant. Spewed Moir: Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael. Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately's last night raise troubling questions about what happened. It is important that the truth comes out about the exact circumstances of his strange and lonely death. As a gay rights champion, I am sure he would want to set an example to any impressionable young men who may want to emulate what they might see as his glamorous routine. For once again, under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see. Free speech is a funny thing – in America, we might be outraged, we might even call for an advertiser boycott, but that would be the end of it. Evidently in the U.K., newspapers have a code of responsibility they can be held in violation of. I’m not going to go into the details of that, because I’m not a lawyer, and I’d get it wrong. But social media sites are enabling fans to put pressure on the government to do something about Moir's hateful words.
The Facebook group has over 3500 members since this morning. Illusionist Derren Brown took to his Twitter account to urge action, and was even kind enough to provide the sections of the code that Moir broke.
Twitter is showing this subject as the #1 trending topic. Stephen Fry, being a comedian, took a slightly drier approach to his outrage, noting that at best, the paper was a fringe piece of tabloid.
Being seen with the Daily Mail is like wearing last year's Marc Jacobs. The Mail knows it has a problem, because earlier stories reported that the original headline has been changed from “Why there was nothing natural about Stephen Gately’s death” to the ‘friendlier’ “A strange, lonely and troubling death.” I’m not sure how long it takes for the PCC, which has regulatory authority in Britain, to act, but at this point, their complaint website has reportedly crashed multiple times.
Even South park knows Bill Donohue is crazy. In the American haters department, we have the head of the Catholic League head Bill Donohoe. He has a new book to shill, so he went on CBN to be interviewed by Pat Robertson, who I’m guessing is the only person that will talk to him these days.
Pat Robertson leads Bill down one of the most bizarre rabbit holes I’ve ever heard when it comes to sexual abuse of minors by priests in the Catholic Church. Left leaning liberals have infiltrated the Catholic Church in order to manufacture a pedophilia problem that doesn’t exist. In other words, they don’t have a pedophilia problem, they have a homosexual problem. .
There’s evidently not enough homosexual shoulders to lay the blame on, because Donohoe decides to rip on Episcopal churches and in something new to me – pro-abortion nuns. Does such a thing exist? In numbers large enough to warrant a national media outing, even if it’s just on a pseudo-news program that ABCFamily is legally obligated to air?
Last week Buju played nice with gays after half his tour got canceled. Finally, I’ll bring your attention to the Caribbean nation of Jamaica, which is under boycott from many gay brands in the United States for tolerating homophobia that leads to open violence. For weeks, there’s been a campaign to have the shows for murder-music king Buju Banton canceled, since he built a career around the idea of murdering gays. Last week, he met with San Francisco gay activists led by Michael Petrelis, and seemed conciliatory. Evidently that was just to get his concert in the Bay Area back in a venue. Now that Buju has gotten to perform and line his pockets, he said “No end to the war between me and the gays” when speaking today with The Jamaica Observer.
Even the Jamaican paper seems to think he's an opportunist. So there were are surrounded on all sides in the media by homophobia that profits large media conglomerates. Are people so scared of the world right now that this still works? And while I’d like to be able to say that we queers are the last group that it’s cool to hate on, I open up my browser and discover a justice of the peace is denying a marriage license to an interracial couple? What. Is. Wrong. With. The. World? Now excuse me, I need to go scream at my television some more. Submitted by on Fri, 2009-10-16 14:56. |
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Donohoe’s terribly upset that churches that don’t allow gays to
adopt can’t get federal funds (and why is the federal government funding
churches in the first place?), and that we’re all a bunch of cultural nihilists. Evidently we’re
not Marxists, because we don’t have a replacement blueprint for when we tear
down this “Christian Nation.”
I think you will find that
I think you will find that Stephen's partner is called Andrew Cowles not Knowles.
A lot of the problem is not so much that she had an opinion that went against gays but that she felt that despite the autopsy results that she felt that he died from being gay rather than natural causes, in fact she stated that she was sure his death was not natural. She seemed so sure that the death was not natural and that her opinion was so much better than a trained pathologist.
I'm not quite sure that I have said what I wanted to but what got to me was her implying that no young man could die naturally.
"The sugar coating on this fatality is so saccharine-thick that it obscures whatever bitter truth lies beneath. Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again.
Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this. All that has been established so far is that Stephen Gately was not murdered."
Fixed
thankyou
The Daily Quail said it
On Jan Moir
There's a great column by Charlie Brooker on The Guardian, about that ignorant, hateful hag:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/16/stephen-gately-jan-moir
Asshat of the Week!
Can we nominate Bill Donohoe as our Asshat of the Week?
"It's weird. It's just different. It's not men. It's just him. It's only him." - Ianto Jones
Jan Moir
The Daily Mail
Same arguments
a justice of the peace is denying a marriage license to an interracial couple?
But they are thinking of the children, Ed! Just like the supporters of Prop 8, it is all about protecting hypothetical children from imaginary dangers.
Racists and homophobes agree, what a surprise! No.
:(
I need a drink.
Thinking of the children...
Yup, we've got to consider the children - it's not like a mixed race child would grow up to be President of the United... oh um, never mind.
Right
I'm sure they're taking that fact into consideration and would love to prevent it to ever happen again.
:(
The Daily Mail is a laughing
The Daily Mail is a laughing stock. Even so, I suppose some people must take it seriously otherwise it wouldn't still be blighting the newsagents. I think the Jan Moir thing shows that homophobia isn't profitable in the media. Quite literally, as The Mail have lost advertising over it. I'm quite heartened by the way everyone has denounced her, especially as The Daily Mail have such a track record for whipping up public outrage. Nice to see them on the receving end for once. I was surprised to find out there isn't any sort of code of accountability for the press in America. Then again, there's also widespread opposition to free healthcare, so maybe it's just too socialist.
And what do you know, hardline Catholics and Jamaican musicians are still homophobic. How depressingly unsurprising.
Jan Moir
Jan Moir's article is just disgusting, especially on the eve of Stephen's funeral when his family are grieving. She makes assumptions about his personal life, links his death to his sexuality and completely disregards the word of the coroner who said that Stephen died of natural causes. I find it incredible that it even made it to print in the first place. Its brilliant to see how many people have been moved enough to complain though. The Facebook group calling for the article to be retracted now has over 7000 members.
Jan Moir
I read her article online and I was staggered that even a rag as despicable as The Daily Mail would put it out.
I have to confess to being very lazy when it comes to reacting to things I find objectionable in the media but for the first time ever I complained about it and if anyone else feels the same they can go to the Press Complaints Commission website and make their feelings known. There have been so many complaints so far that they have had to set up a specific link for complaints about Jan Moir.
I've heard she's going to blame the backlash on 'an orchestrated internet campaign'. Must be that gay mafia I've heard so much about.
Only expect it to get worse
With the Right still hurting from the last election, poisoned discourse is their only real outlet.
Whereas liberals like to laugh at those we hate (which is why Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert did so well during the Bush Administration) conservatives prefer to just hate openly. So rather than issuing any kind of intelligents statements or criticisms, they are doing what they always do - start hurling insults. This is why Obama has been near-constantly labelled a "socialist", "communist" and "fascist" (amazing how he can be all those things at once).
Likewise, the progress of LGBT rights has done nothing but outrage the bigots who live to hate us.
For Jan Moir and people like her in the U.K., matters are even worse. Their Republican-equivalent the Tories, although almost guaranteed to win the next election, offer no support to their homophobia. Party leader David Cameron continues to be openly supportive of civil partnerships so there's not much chance he'll ever try to do away with them if he becomes Prime Minister. To find truly committed anti-gay company people like Moir would need to hang out with the ultra-Right-wing BNP.
Here in the U.S., the advances in LGBT rights continue to gaul anti-gay bigots, who even in a time when more American families are under threat from the bad economy than from anything else still seek to focus their time and energy fighting against same-sex marriage.
Blaming things like the Catholic Church sex abuse scandals on the gays is not new. The Church itself did so as a semi-official stance, and many of their supporters like Rick Santorum parroted the notion very loudly. The Vatican, by the way, is increasingly bitter over their declining influence in the First World and so they are only getting more shrill in a lot of ways.
Only now they are unshackled. Right wing commentators actually suffered under a Republican administration because they could spew their hate quite so freely at a government run by their own party. But now that it's a Democratic majority in DC they can once again spout their bigotry freely.
The media, never as liberal as they like to make it out to be, will of course provide countless venues for these kinds of people. Even basic courtesy and respect are alien to conservatives, except when they're demanding for themselves.
So we should be prepared for this sort of thing to only get more widespread, not less.
What. Is. Wrong. With. The. World?
What. Is. Wrong. With. The. World?
when you find the person who can answer that, let us know what they say.
"For once again, under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see."
^ I don't even get angry when i read something like this. i don't know what that makes me. i guess i am so use to this bullshit that all i can do is laugh and then wonder how this person came to this conclusion.
wonder how a gay man dying (who happens to be a celebrity) is more different than a straight man (also celebrity) who died (elvis anyone?)
that crap can be said for ANY celebrity. A lot of people in showbiz live these crazy, wild lifestyles that consist of drugs, clubbing and all that stuff.
It's just hilarious to me that this woman didn't sit down and think. it's obvious that if she did, she would've probably realized her argument made no sense whatsoever.
ah, idiots. i really love them.
that makes me want to puke
Reading Jan Moir's nonsense made me want to vomit. She outright called Stephen Gately's mother a liar for suggesting that a hereditary heart condition may have had something to do with his death. Her whole line of reasoning was "he was gay and they had somebody over, which means foul play." I rarely get super mad, but I was so angry, I could have screamed. If I lived in the UK, I'd definitely be complaining. I am quite relieved that so many other people have reacted to her. She really is a vile person.
The Catholic guy is also disgusting and completely deluded.
Thank you.
These days, so much of the traditional media is so full of hate and homophobia, I feel like Reverend Lovejoy's wife on The Simpsons wailing out "What about the children? Won't someone think of the children" Because if these people actually cared one bit about “protecting the children" the traditional media would be closed down for being irredeemably offensive.
As a parent I find I can't express any degree of concern about that or any other issue regarding children and the media without being ripped to shreds.
I'm A Buddhist....
and I believe in "Karma".Today what you seeds for and next time you will receive what you seeds.( Don't" hit the person when he is down ".)One day,you will have the same situation what his family go through when you losing someone you love/care for.(So stop to make this stupid article-Ms.JM)
Stephen Gately
It's Saturday morning; I'm listening to the radio and watching the TV. The radio is a phone-in and people are queuing up - gay, straight, Chistian, Jew, Islamic and Hindu, virgin and hedonist, all ages and all strata of society - and almost to a man and woman they are criticising Jan Moir's article. On the BBC news channel they are covering Stephen Gately's funeral and every person who has been asked about what Moir wrote has either been dumbfounded that someone could be so crass or outraged that she is so vicious and ignorant.
Moir's piece is also the most complained about article in British newspaper history - that's about 300 years worth of concentrated thought, brilliance, tittle-tattle and drivel interspersed with crosswords and cartoons. Indeed, so great have the number of complaints been to the Press Complaints Commission that their website crashed and they've now set up a special section just so people can complain about Moir.
The cynic in me doesn't think Moir will face any sanction, though.
The Press Complaints Commission is largely a waste of space. It was set up by the newspaper industry as a self-regulating body to head off any attempt by Parliament to introduce privacy legislation. It's a long-winded and bureaucratic organisation that usually rules in favour of the newspapers.
The PCC has a Code of Practice (if you want to read it, see it here: http://www.pcc.org.uk/cop/practice.html), and Moir's gobbet of filth clearly violates the first article that demands journalism should be accurate. It also violates the third article that demands journalists should respect privacy. And it violates the twelfth article that insists that a journalist shoould not discriminate against people on the grounds of their sexual orientation.
To the thousands of complainants, the PCC has sent the response that they can only investigate if you had a personal relationship with Stephen. In effect, they have already prejudged and said that Moir's writing may or may not have violated the fifth article of the code, which says that a journalist must not intrude on grief.
But even if the family and friends do complain, they will probably be silenced. The person who chairs the committee dealing with breaches in the code of practice is Paul Dacre. Dacre is the editor of the Daily Mail, the rag that published Moir's foecal extreta in the first place. Currently, Moir has the temerity to be claiming she is the victim in all this and her newspaper has backed her up.
However, there might be one thing that is positive about Stephen Gately's death. As Ireland is about to legislate on civil partnerships, the Catholic priest officiating at the funeral has brought Andrew (Stephen's partner) into the church service as readily as he would any other spouse and their love is being celebrated just as equally as it would for any other couple. No matter what the higher-ups in the church say, at the grass-roots - in the full glare of publicity - the priest and people are recognising and endorsing real and deep love and partnership of two men.
I worked with people who were close to Stephen Gately and every single one has said (before his death) that he was one of the nicest people people in the world. He was as charming and funny and as down-to-earth in private as he was in public. At almost every level, the death of this young man was a tragedy and people like Moir and her publishers should be castigated by any decent member of society.
We can only hope Stephen's death...
We can only hope Stephen's death serves as a wakeup call to many people. That he, an Irishman, had to live in England to enjoy the benefits of a legally-recognized civil partnership with the man he loved should send a strong message to the lawmakers there.
But it's such a tragedy for poor Andrew. It's not enough that he has lost his husband, especially in such a tragic way. That he has to endure this furor all because of Jan Moir's bigotry is outrageous. As if he hasn't enough pain to cope with right now.
Of course bigoted editorials are nothing new in journalism. But Moir certainly has gone for the gold standard. To so explicitly insult both the deceased and the bereaved, and to try and spin the whole thing into a broader anti-gay argument took a shocking level of audactity and malice. I do wonder if her BNP membership card is in the post or if they plan to hand deliver it to her?
The real tragedy too is that she clearly singled Stephen out because of his sexuality. His life to-date has in truth not been one of the fast-living out-of-control celebrity hedonist. General consensus even before he died was that he was a very nice guy. Perhaps Moir herself is a Puritan who has never gone out partying, and thus feels free to connect such activities an untimely death. But all evidence is that Stephen actually led a rather sedate life compared to most celebrities.
I also took personal umbrage at Moir's assertion that young people don't just die. My sister died of a cerebral hemmorhage at age 27, in her own home, riding an exercise bike. She was not on drugs, nor drunk, nor capping off a day of partying. Moir's idiotic assertion hearkens back to Medieval notions that sudden death was God's way of smiting "sinners". It was an insult to anyone who has ever had a loved-one die unexpectedly.
Perhaps the only positive thing is simply that it served as a shocking wakeup call as to just how alive and well bigotry is. Jan Moir clearly hasn't even a shred of basic decency or respect in her, and she shouldn't expect any respect in her turn, except perhaps from her fellow bigots. But maybe that will help draw the matter into stark relief for a lot of the public who may have been lulled into thinking such bigotry was a thing of the past in this era of civil partnerships and gay snogging in the Whoniverse.
It's just that the price seems so terribly high. Stephen shouldn't have been forced into the role of martyr by this post-mortem ugliness and Andrew certainly shouldn't have to suffer any more than he already is. If Moir is not to face any formal punishment then I hope that at least social ostracism accompanies her and the Daily Mail.
great article
Just adding to Moir's suffering
She has been reported to the police - presumably on the grounds of promoting hatred based on sexuality. Obviously, I don't think anything will come of it apart from long screeds of self-serving wimpery in the Daily Mail and boundless guff about 'the freedom of the press' - but at least she'll have the discomfit of the interviews with her lawyers and the police.
And it'll serve to keep the issue in the public eye longer so that the political parties will have to take a stance and we'll finally see whether the Conservative support of equality and gay rights goes any deeper than David Cameron's PR spin.
Anything to make her squirm
I suppose Andrew could hit her with a libel suit, but given that the Mail's little better than a tabloid I've no doubt that they maintain a stable of litigators for just such situations, which probably come up weekly.
It seems doubtful that Cameron can care much for the Mail, as they're no friends of his. From what I've read (yes, I do scan their web site as part of my efforts to piece together the mysteries of public opinion) they only grudgingly accept him as Tory leader and would definitely prefer someone further Right in his seat. But it's doubtful that he would speak too freely against them. Unless of course public opinion were overwhelmingly against them, which it may be. More likely though, most non-gay MP's are likely to sit this one out unless they think it could distract from expenses issues.
In any case, hopefully Moir is having a bad time of it.
Moir just gets worse
Poor old Jan Moir. It's embarrassing when - with a thousand complaints - she has written the most complained-about article in British newspaper history. Now that the number has risen to 21,000 in just a couple of days (that's more complaints than the PCC has received about every other aspect of the press for the last five years), you'd expect her to be mortified - or at least keep quiet.
Instead, the silly bitch (I know, but I can't think of a more appropriate word) has twittered that she tried to ring Stephen Gately's family over the weekend - as they were burying their son - but couldn't get through because they'd left the answerphone on. She finished her tweet with 'How rude'.
She must have mental, emotional or behavioral difficulties because I just can't believe anyone 'normal' could be so self-obssessed and crass.
her twitter
Oops updated for Moir
Sadly, I don't know. I just read the reports of it. I suppose you could try just janmoir and see if that works. I don't use Twitter so I don't know how it works.
Umm... and I need to edit my piece above. I stated that 21,000 complaints had been made to the PCC. During the time I was posting that, the number jumped to 22,00. So by the time I post this, the number of complaints is probably slightly over 23,000.
Moir is probably asking her editor for a pay-rise right now.
Moir is clearly a "first person" sort of gal
My sense is that she probably doesn't devote a whole lot of mental effort to trying to imagine anyone else's point of view. Hence her inability to comprehend Stephen's family being unavailable the weekend of his funeral to speak with her so that she could inform all of Britain that she had spoken to them and "worked it out".
Meanwhile the Mail is probably hailing all the hits their web site is getting from incredulous Boyzone fans as good ratings and trying to convince advertisers that it's a good thing when they print something that triggers mass outrage.
You are sadly too right...
All you have to do is look at Moir's new Twitter account where she belittles the outrage, the complaints, other Twitter users, Stephen Fry, Derren Brown, and anyone else involved. How she talks out of both sides of her mouth like in 140 characters is truly awe-inspiring.
Meanwhile she crows about traffic at the Daily Mail being up 21% over the weekend. Anything nasty tweeted in her direction she retweets and then blocks the account.
She is truly a piece of work. I started to write a follow-up piece on the subject but I decided I'd just be feeding into her ego.
The saddest part, as I understand it (and don't claim to be an expert), nothing is going to happen to her. The PCC is toothless, even if they were predisposed to act (and they're not). Even if they wanted to act, their own guidelines say that a complaint only has weight if the person filing it has a direct, personal relationship with the person wronged. So Boyzone fans don't qualify, and I doubt it's high on the family's list of priorities.
She's going to get away with it, and probably get a raise for her troubles.
Crow: to triumphalise or to eat?
No matter how much the traffic at the Mail went up, the advertisers removed all advertising from her page - so thankfully the Mail didn't make any money and actually had to suffer a public rebuke from respectable, family-oriented companies like Marks and Spencer's and Nestle. Given her inherent nastiness, I think there is going to be pressure for that advertising boycott to continue. If enough fuss is made, it's going to cost the Mail more in lost advertising revenue to keep her on than it will to fire her.
The PCC's guidelines don't actually state that weight has to be given to family or friends of Stephen Gately. That's just the way they've chosen to interpret the guidelines because, effectively, it's a very corrupt organisation. However, in this instance they're a rabbit trapped in the headlights.
The sheer volume of complaints means that the PCC has to do something publicly and if they don't do the right thing, as I stated below, I think the voters/election year interface is going to force politicians to intervene. I get the impression that there's a lot of quiet, especially middle-class, fury about this because it has offended British ideas of 'decency'.
I suspect the test will come if members of the public start questioning politicians about the matter in public. The normal route would be if someone asks a question on Thursday night's Question Time programme on BBC1. Unfortunately, this Thursday, the BBC is courting controversy by allowing the British National Party a platform on Question Time for the first time, so the big political row this week is likely to be racism.
Having said that, if the local radio phone-ins are still discussing Moir on Monday morning, it'll show that grass-roots outrage hasn't abated and Moir and her employers are going to be in real trouble. One of the driving forces of the British psyche is 'that's awful, something ought to be done'.
In fact, that's one of the reasons the Mail is such a successful newspaper - it constantly wants something to be done because it is constantly outraged by 'decency' issues. Working mothers, single mothers, lesbian mothers, gay men, black men, men who don't have sex and men who do have sex are all causes of concern for the Mail. It exists in a never-ending tizzy about how the world is going to hell in a handbag. It mounts regular campaigns about how there ought to be standards of 'decency'.
In fact, Moir's article was a year to the day after she had mounted an attack on Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand after they had played a particularly bad-taste joke on elderly, much-loved comedy actor Andrew Sachs. In her article then, Moir had called for curbs to the freedom of broadcasters on the basis of 'taste'. Brand lost his job and Ross was suspended for three months. Even her most fervent fans remember that, so accusations of a double standard and hypocrisy have some resonance with her readers as well as her critics.
Tomorrow, just for the hell of it, I'm going to raise the Moir-Gately thing with my local radio host - a woman called Vanessa Feltz who was at Stephen Gately's funeral. At the risk of 'orchestrating' something, I'd ask any other AE readers in the UK or Ireland who are pissed off by Moir to do the same thing. The woman is vile. She earns hundreds of thousands by being nasty to people and now is the time she should face the ought in terms of making British life better.
Woo-hoo!
Question Time - the flagship BBC political programme in which members of the public actually question senior national politicians - has just been broadcast. It was an historic event because the leader of the British Nationalist Party (Americans: think Ku Klux Klan sans the pillow cases on their head) was allowed to appear on TV in a politics programme and almost every question was about the horrific, racist policies of the BNP.
There was only one, non-BNP question in the entire hour. And that was about Jan Moir's vile article on Stephen Gately. The entire panel - left, right, centre and whoopsie-daisy nutty - all agreed that Moir's article was totally out of order. Odious was the word used.
When even the BNP are criticising Jan Moir for attacking a queer, she's really in the shit. It may not happen quickly, but it's going to happen. Her days are numbered.
Is it possible if the PPC
Dunno
The PCC is a toothless tiger, but the only reason it exists is because it promises to punish newspapers so the government doesn't impose a legislative organisation on them. The PCC has never faced this kind of problem before. The Daily Mail is pushing the line that this is an 'orchestrated attempt to make it change its editorial line led by the internet'.
This defence by the paper has been already been undermined by the PCC who've said that most of the complaints seem to have been individually written - not a mass cut-'n'-paste job.
However, the current chair of the PCC is Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail and the person who allowed the article to be published in the first place. Efffectively, he'd have to preside over his own punishment.
My feeling is that the PCC will try to pull a PR stunt that seems like the PCC is punishing Dacre and Moir without actually doing anything serious. If they do that, I suspect that'll be the death knell of the PCC. Those 22/23,000 people who've complained thus far aren't stupid and a tremendous number of them seem to be middle-class people who vote for all three main political parties.
If the PCC does nothing and insults the intelligence of the complainants, I'm pretty sure those people will be angered enough to take the fight to their MPs and insist on changes. As this is an election year, I suspect the political parties will have to respond by suggesting policies to make the newspaper industry more accountable. I'm not sure that'd be such a bad thing - and I work in the industry.
that jan moir article
Boils my blood,what a horrible thing to post in the wake of his death,disgusting woman,I joined that FB page,I hope she gets what's coming to her
People fear what they don't understand.Thats why homophobes are so scared of gay people.
Ebay Auction for MSF Teddy Bears
The Matthew Shepard Foundation-sponsored Ebay auction has ended, and I am the proud winner of one of the teddy bears. Will someone be doing a follow-up aritcle on this? I am happy to give to the foundation, but I also want to know what happens next. I haven't heard a thing from anybody other than to receive a message from Paypal asking for payment. Because I live overseas, I have arranged to have the bear sent to a Stateside address. I am eager to see the bear, but I am also eager to receive some acknowledgement from the Foundation. Is anyone else in a similar bind?
"The mountain has wings."