Tuesday, 20 October 2009

Police to investigate The Daily Mail for being The Daily Mail

Police are set to investigate Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir after ten of thousands of people complained about her article on Stephen Gately's death being filled with some of the worst kind of Daily Mail imaginable. Constable Alec Peters confirmed that he would be looking into the offending article. "If there's been a complaint made about vitriolic abuse, incitement of hatred and clear instances of Daily Mail, then we have to investigate."

The uproar over Moir's article is a result of her insinuation that Gately's death due to natural causes was linked to him being a homosexual. "Sure, there might be a perfectly reasonable explanation for this tragedy which might be established by some scientific method," wrote Moir, "But that's exactly what gays want you to believe. That way it won't seem strange when they crawl into our ears at night and lay their eggs."

Editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, defended the article. "Yes the article did contain clear elements of prejudice," said Dacre, "there was also quite a bit of ignorance and factual inaccurarcy too. But the again, if you're going to establish editorial guidelines, they need to be maintained."

The publication of the article caused an outbreak of outrage, ironically the same type that is normally fermented by the Daily Mail in response to programmes it hasn't seen. One of the plaintives was Greg Halford who posted: "As a gay man, I have taken some abuse over my sexuality. I've been shouted at, beaten up and called all kinds of horrendous names. But I have never had to put up with this sort of Daily Mail. It beggars belief"