Can anyone take The Daily Mail seriously?

Is it? I read The Daily Mail occasionally - it carries some good features! Can't say I've come across any blaming of the poor for the country's ills....

Next time they skew a headline to fit their agenda I will post it here.
And have you never noticed how often they find it necessary to print photos of 'celebs' having 'a wardrobe malfunction' -one glimpse of a nipple and they are salivating.

the daily mail is good for simple and informative articles and for bias. this makes it useful with pupils as a discussion starter. i use the times or independent for comparison and the free papers for the lower end of the market.

i read the mail at my mum's house. i rarely buy a paper for myself but if i do, i buy the times because its quite funny.

I think The Express is the best for headlines! One day it's 'House prices falling!' and the next it's 'House prices rising!'

Yes, granbunny, it is amusing to look at the other papers and compare the different spins they put on the same item.

I used to do that all the time when I was teaching a media studies course to Access to HE students. It was a very effective exercise.

Does anyone else have that excellent book where major events in history are related in The Sun" style? Hilarious and very clever, but also very useful for comparative work in GCSE English. Or so I recall.

Please bear in mind that none of the papers print the truth - they print what they think will sell. The truth is irrelevant and there is no respect for people's privacy.

If I could get my hands on a certain journalist ............

true enough, *chocolatepudding". that's part of what we're trying to get across. my subject is religious education, and its so important that young people look at a variety of views and work out their own opinion, and know why they formed it, as well as considering what world religions say about contemporary issues.

there's no edit button! sorry chocolatepudding - i'm reverting to the keyboard of my youth and keep mixing up *, " and @.

No I can't take it seriously but sometimes it worries me, although not half as much as the Sun (the country's best-selling newspaper).

I used to rely on The Guardian to give me some accurate and unbiased reporting, but it sold out to Blair, so now the only publication I trust is Private Eye. At least reading a broad spectrum of daily papers gives me a chance of working out the truth.
The Sun probably sells because it shows bare breasts on page 3 - I think the bulk of its readers are possibly not in the top IQ range. The Daily Mail also shows much bare flesh, but it disguises its prurience as 'Isn't this an awful thing to show?'
When you look at the trivia that dominates the front pages of the 'red tops' you are tempted to despair at the intelligence of the great British public.
A footballer having extra-marital sex ranks higher than the election in Burma.

The red-tops are supposed to have the vocabulary of an eleven-year-old...

I agree about Private Eye. It's the only place that I have seen the story of the riots starting the October before - which I checked out, and they did.

Private Eye has also long been hinting that all is not as it should be in the Inland Revenue and has exposed corruption and veniality in many businesss, local councils and national politics. I hope every teacher of older pupils discusses the stories with them.
I had serious doubts when the 26-year old Etonian Ian Hislop took over the editorship, but he has proved himself fearless in pursuit of the truth (and his wife is a damned good novelist!). Most people know him from Have I got News for You, where his rapport with Paul Merton is so patent.

Greatnan what about The Independent - The Daily Mail is always blaming the poor, very anti immigration despite the fact that this country has been guilty of that for hundreds of years.

Yes, I do usually find The Independent deals with issues fairly.

I sometimes despair of the Guardian when it is trying too hard to be trendy and 'yoof' orientated. I am not sure what demographic it is aimed at. Independent less so. I read them and do the crosswords on line and, if I'm going on a train journey, I buy the I, which I think has been the best innovation in the press since the Independent itself was born.

I used to get the Guardian...a while ago. It's the first newspaper I ever read, when it was the Manchester Guardian, and I remember when it got called the Grauniad because of all the mistakes, especially during elections!

But I am not in tune with it recently, Or it's not in tune with me! I have bought the 'I' but I usually read a paper when waiting for my daughter who is shopping, which she does at snailpace - and there is more to read in the Eye!

I took the Guardian for years but eventually decided it was 'smug'. I still do their crossword online though.

Sometimes I read the the Mail or Express when I'm in a cafe.

Yes, I trust Private Eye.

Looked this up on a whim:
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/05/manchester-guardian-work-in-progress

I didn't know it was that old. BUT - have they got the rose-tinted glasses on or somthing, if they think it hasn't changed?

Oh, and when did it go national and drop the Manchester?

1959, according to Wiki. I didn't think it was so long ago!

Wiki seems to have said a lot of stuff that the Guardian site left out.....!

Oxon70 just had a look at the article. I see the characteristics the Guardian attributes to itself are:

truthfulness, free thought, honest reporting, a plurality of opinion, a belief in fairness, and most importantly of all independence.

Talk about blowing your own trumpet.