See the connection? The Daily Mail and their readers don't.

As all intelligent people who ever read the Daily Mail know, the newspaper isn't the most consistent, but these two articles I noticed today just magnified this.To compound it they were both placed in the same box of stories, almost next to each other:

Does the Mail seriously not see the links between the two stories? Let's first look at the "Council carried out out risk assessment on boy, 14, who wanted to mow tiny patch of village grass" story. This fits into the normal Mail narrative of something being stopped by the 'Elf and Safety brigade,' and if you didn't read the actual story it would be quite reasonable to expect that they stopped him from mowing the grass. Turns out they didn't and just carried out a slightly lengthy risk assessment.


My issue with the Mail here isn't their coverage of the story which doesn't blame it on the 'elf and safety brigade' but on council red tape, but more the fact that they saw fit to cover the story in the first place. In the consideration of whether a story is newsworthy, one of the things to be considered by the editor is what reaction it will engender from the readers. The Mail is perfectly aware that this story, fitting into their overall narrative of 'red tape' 'elf and safety' and appealing to their readers hatred of bureaucracy is going to enrage their readers and therefore they don't dig too deep and look for the real reason behind red tape and bureaucracy.

The real reason, in many cases is the compensation culture that is prevalent in many parts of society these days, as illustrated in this article: "Mother sues National Trust for £300,000 after son, 11, is killed by falling branch during visit to stately home"

This story is a relatively simple one and it is chosen mostly because it again advances a tabloid narrative, the 'compensation culture' that their readers will get worked up about. The same readers might comment with something like: "this cultural [sic] of litigation is getting out of hand" and then go over to the other article and comments something about how this bureaucracy is getting out of hand without making the link between the two, in that the bureaucracy  is often caused by the culture of litigation, often fuelled by the tabloids. It seems like concious doublethink on the Mail's part but it just feeds their readers stupidity and stops them seeing the full story beyond their narratives.

Maybe it's not doublethink by the Mail, maybe it's just plain and simple stupidity or the fact that the articles may be written by different journalists. However, the people in charge - Dacre and his sub-editors - must notice the direction their newspaper is taking and unless they're just completely stupid, it's just deliberately misleading to the readers, fuelling their prejudices.

Basically, what the Daily Mail does best.