Tag Archives: jan moir

Vote Clegg – get Maggie’s support

Yesterday both Mark Pack and I blogged about the Daily Mail and other tabloids paying paparazzi  to stalk Miriam Gonzalez Durantez as she shopped at Rigby & Peller. Today it appears that the Mail have had second thoughts and pulled the article from their web site – only to replace it with something even more odious – a Jan Moir poison special.

Ms Moir is obviously still preening from her nasty, homophobic character assassination of Stephen Gately last year, as this time she goes for a full house. In one page she manages to make snide criticism about women who have their own careers, mothers who like to spend time with their children, fathers who like to spend time with their children, wives who support their husbands in their jobs, wives who don’t support their husbands in their jobs, women who earn more than their partners, people with a religious faith, people without a religious faith, women who shop for their own clothes, particularly in any ‘upmarket’ shop and women who do a grocery shop for food for their family. Gosh, that doesn’t leave many of us unscathed!

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Now the Daily Mail thinks election is about leader’s wife’s underwear

Elections used to about politicians. Then they became about politicians and their spouses. Now the Daily Mail introduces us to politicians, their spouses and their underwear choices with a “story” about where Miriam Gonzalez Durantez buys her underwear.

As Next Left points out, the story doesn’t have a name to it – just the generic “Daily Mail reporter” by-line. I wonder why?

UPDATE: As pointed out by several people on Twitter, the News of the World ran a similar piece first.

UPDATE 2: And as for Jan Moir’s contribution: sigh.

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Did all the complaints to the PCC over Jan Moir achieve something?

It’s a fair question to ask: lots of complaints made over Jan Moir’s piece on the death of Stephen Gately, none upheld.

However, as Enemies of Reason points out, that isn’t the only measure of success:

But I would like to hope – hope against hope – that the storm the Daily Mail found itself in after Moir’s ill-judged and venomous article made them, in some small way, feel they were a little more vulnerable to the outside world, and their own readers, than they were before. It’s easy to dismiss the rantings of a few pointless troublemakers like me, for example,

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The Independent View: Why it’s time to replace the PCC

Surprise, surprise. The Press Complaints Commission rejected the complaints about Jan Moir’s nasty attack on Stephen Gately.

If there’s any good to come out of this affair, perhaps it’s that this case reinforces the case for wholesale reform of the PCC. Here’s why.

The PCC is not independent

The PCC claims to be independent. One of the advantages of self regulation ought to be that it keeps the press out of the hands of politicians while still holding newspapers to account.

The PCC fails on both counts.

The Chair of the 17-member Commission is Baroness Buscombe, a Conservative member of the House of Lords. Her party …

Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Also tagged , , and | 3 Comments

Opinion: PCC’s rejection of Jan Moir complaint shows it up as entirely toothless

The Guardian reports that the Press Complaints Commission has rejected a complaint from Andrew Cowles, the partner of the late Boyzone singer Stephen Gately, over a Daily Mail article by Jan Moir originally titled “Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death”. Moir stated that Gately’s death was not natural, despite official reports to the contrary, and claimed that the circumstances were “more than a little sleazy”.

Over 25,000 people complained to the PPC over the article, claiming that it was homophobic and slanderous. The article went on to compare Gately’s death to the suicide of Kevin McGee, …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 20 Comments

Stephen Gately’s partner complains to PCC over Moir article as a “connected party”

From the BBC:

“Stephen Gately’s civil partner Andrew Cowles has formally complained to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) over a Daily Mail article about his death.

Mr Cowles claims Jan Moir’s column, published in October, breached guidelines on accuracy, intrusion into grief or shock, and discrimination.

A PCC investigation will also consider the 25,000 complaints about the piece.”

As Mark pointed out in October the Press Complaints Commission’s remit states:

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What should be done with the PCC?

That’s the question asked in today’s Media Guardian, following the controversies associated with the Press Complaints Commission in the last month.

First, there was the PCC’s ruling that the Daily Mail didn’t owe Iain Dale an apology for branding him ‘overtly gay’. Then there were the record-breaking 22,000 complaints submitted to the PCC following the Daily Mail’s publication of a snide piece by Jan Moir attacking Boyzone singer Stephen Gately’s lifestyle and implying it contributed to his death.

And then the PCC’s new Chair, Baroness Buscombe, delivered a lacklustre and confused address to the Society of Editors, before setting any number of hares running by suggesting the PCC might have a role in regulating blogging.

Finally, the Guardian’s editor Alan Rushbridger quit the PCC’s oddly named Code Committee after the regulator’s pusillanimous response into allegations of illegal phone hacking by a number of tabloid newspapers.

All in all, a busy month for the PCC.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 4 Comments

Jan Moir: the dilemma for the PCC (and what you should say in your complaint)

The reaction to Jan Moir’s article about the death of Stephen Gately has been widespread and swift. Fuelled primarily by Twitter and Facebook, complaints about homophobia flooded in on the Daily Mail, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) and the firms who were unlucky enough to have their adverts appearing on the page. The headline was changed, the PCC’s website crashed, the adverts were pulled and many members of the public got a taste of how effective a simple tweet, email or phone call can be.

The big dilemma now is for the Press Complaints Commission because, although many of the messages urging people to complain to the PCC were helpfully specific about which clauses of its code should be referenced, the real issue for the PCC to decide is not in the code itself.

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