Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Real-life trolls

We've seen marvellous scenes today as Twitter has joined together against the horrific, homophobic, deeply unpleasant article by Jan Moir about Stephen Gately's death. I am delighted to have been a tiny part of it, and hello to all the new readers. I'm not usually this rubbish. Bit of stage fright.

I'd love to think that it would make a difference to complain to the PCC and I certainly wouldn't want to put anyone off doing so - the relevant clauses include privacy, intrusion and accuracy. Let's hope it will. History doesn't bode especially well, though: when the PCC said the Express's reaction to its Dunblane story atrocity was unacceptable, the Express just shrugged its shoulders and said: "What are you gonna do about it?" - and that was the end of that. Perhaps this time that won't happen. Sure, it'll be embarrassing for Paul Dacre, who is a senior player with the PCC and coincidentally also the editor of the Daily Mail; but it's not like they haven't ridden the storm out themselves in the past.

You have to ask why Moir wrote what she did in the first place. Was it prejudice, laziness, being an idiot or just plain trolling? I might even head towards the latter, and I'll explain why: fellow Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn was feted with an award this week, an 'Editorial Intelligence' award if you can believe it for 'polemicist of the year', despite having been caught lying, getting his facts wrong and writing appallingly offensive pieces about gay people, gypsies and immigrants all year long. As Tabloid Watch put it:

It comes after his unreserved apology for falsely claiming most robberies are committed by Eastern Europeans, making up a dog story, claiming £8 billion could pay off a £800 billion debt many times over, stating there are nearly three times more illegal immigrants in the UK than most academic researchers, knowing no offence was given in a conversation he hasn't heard, knowing better than a jury what the outcome of a trial should be when he hasn't attended any of it, claiming someone has been granted asylum when they haven't, attributing an MP to the wrong party, attributing a town to the wrong county, and - of course - mistaking humans for labradors.
And all that's just since the start of September.

There's awards in doing that kind of thing as a columnist - being a real-life troll, a photo-bylined and salaried troll, not patrolling internet sites to try and snipe at other people's views but just to go all-out and be offensive off your own bat. After all, the Mail website will have garnered a whole load of web traffic today and some people might imagine there's no such thing as bad publicity - but I disagree. This has been a terrible backfire for the Mail - they've been shown up to be hopelessly out of date, prejudiced, nasty, disrespectful and disgraceful. This is the bloody 21st century. It's not a question of even 'tolerance' - it's a question of not giving a shit about what other people get up to in the bedroom.

That's where Moir has fallen down. She claims to write what everyone else is thinking, but today everyone else is thinking: "That Jan Moir's pretty nasty and pathetic, isn't she? What the hell did Stephen Gately do to deserve that?"

There's even a Facebook group been set up in response, calling for the article to be withdrawn. In the meantime, the Mail has changed the headline. But it wasn't the headline that was the problem. The headline was only written the way it was because of the content of the story underneath it; it's the actual article that has caused an angry response, not the headline. Changing that won't make a difference.*

Yes, the Mail website will get some traffic, but it's only right and proper to link to the things you talk about, even if you hate them (I sometimes break this rule with Littlejohn and the BNP, but I try to be good really). The only people who will be appalled by what that brand is doing. It's been said before that the Mail can create a toxic environment for brands through the sheer offensiveness of reader comments, but this is one step beyond that: this is offensiveness through the content of its editorial. *update* thanks to Malcolm Coles and RTs on Twitter, adverts have been removed from the article.

That's a whole different matter. Littlejohn is no doubt wiping sweat off his brow (well it's still quite warm in Florida) and thinking: there but for the grace of God. Because it could so easily have been him. But no, he ends the week with an award, whereas it's Jan Moir who's been vilified.

See also (if you haven't seen them already):

Daily Quail: Why there's nothing natural about these gays
Eric the Fish: No matter what they say

If you've got any other suggestions then feel free to mention it in the comments.

* Johann Hari this week warns against complaining on the basis of headlines. He has a point, but headlines are generally reflective of the article beneath them; I think it's only when they're not that the writer can try and claim it's nothing to do with them.

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