Can anyone take The Daily Mail seriously?

I get really frustrated by the Sunday papers and their magazines - full of complete pap - handbags for sale for for £1000; clothes that no-one ever wears costing a fortune and photographed seemingly deliberately to make it impossible to see what the garment is really like; shallow articles about relationships and fashion. It makes it hard to take the rest of the paper seriously when they are loaded with this nonsense. They have no idea how most of us live, and do not seem to care!

Signed: Grumpy Old Lady

the sun's reading age doesn't even reach 11. it's 8-9. we were told at university, and had to use it in our teacher training, to help us work out where to pitch language for non-academics.

I once read that The SUN has a vocabulary of 500 words only.

Being old labour I have never read the Daily Mail which my mother called a Tory rag and since then have not heard that much has changed.

One of the most interesting weekend reads is The Financial Times weekend edition. I found this out on a BA flight when it was the only paper left. I soon got into some very interesting articles and the time passed quickly.

Now I always look for it when flying.

Is there a labour rag? Or do papers with a left slant always print the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

The Mirror is apparently a labour rag....whether it's truthful or not I couldn't say!

Of course our media print or tell us nothing but the truth! Well as they see it. Have given up with all of them, I want one which tells me the news and not their views.

Murdoch was supporting Labour until he thought they were going to lose, then he switched The Sun to supporting the Tories, boasting with their usual flair for English 'It was the sun wot did it'. All newspapers are businesses and they court the powerful.

I agree Mishap - and you need a wheelbarrow to carry them home.

Greatnan I am dismayed at your disparaging remark of "Sun readers probably not being in the top IQ" I had always thought that you made balanced comments but I'm afraid that was far from it. Whilst I am not a Sun reader myself I know several people who are and I can assure you they could give you a run for your money in their intelligence. Please don't think I'm being confrontational, but sweeping generalisations like that really annoy me.

I am sorry that you are dismayed. The classification of newspaper readership by socio-economic groups can be found if you google 'Newspaper Marketing Agency' - they are not my figures. Of course, you may think there is no correlation whatsoever between level of education, intelligence and socio-economic class and that is probably more true now than it has been for many years, as more people are made redundant.
It may well be that there are many people of high intelligence who enjoy reading a newspaper which requires a reading age of less than 11 and I apologise unreservedly to all of them.
I will draw no inferences from the data on The Sun showing how the readership is divided into male and female because I know more men than women read newspapers across the board.

What are we into now? IQ snobbery? If newspaper choice is correlated to IQ, I wonder what The Royal Family read!

petallus

I don't think the Royals have ever laid claim to high intelligence, but the queen has managed to stay out of trouble for 60 years and I think she is pretty shrewd.
I would guess that The Racing Paper and Horse and Hound are her preferred choice of reading.
It is a fact of life that some people find it easier than others to absorb new information, retain it, and regurgitate it in IQ tests. It does not make them superior human beings and in fact they may be total idiots when it comes to many areas of life. Having spent many years teaching children and adults with what are now called learning difficulties I am well aware that they were often very bright, inventive and able to contribute a great deal to their community. IQ tests are hopelessly cuturally biased anyway. Most of the CEO's of the top 100 companies in the UK are not academics but nobody would question their intelligence.

I've never quite managed to decide what the difference is between intelligence, cleverness and wisdom.

I regard people as intelligent if they can understand new information and relate it to what they already know. It is not what is tested by intelligence tests. I don't see a distinction between intelligence and cleverness, except the latter seems to be used in a derogatory fashion. A person surviving in the Amazonian rain forest would need a different kind of intelligence from that needed to survive in Britain.
Wisdom is the ability to distinguish between what can be changed and what must be accepted.
There are different kinds of intelligence, such as emotional, technical, and academic. I have only one of the three. I think I suffer from mild autism.

There are also different IQs and the ones with less intelligence who can't manage their financial affairs or read and understand their bills, need help. You will not get help for them if everybody gets upset about some people being cleverer than others.
It is fact of life.

How can there be 'different' IQs, Charlotta? Surely one's IQ is determined by a standardised test.

Perhaps you mean different levels of intelligence?

I think a person is intelligent if they can use their skills and knowledge well to his/her benefit and that of others, and are ALWAYS interested in learning and looking to improve their skills and knowledge in many different ways. Clever people can be intelligent but not all are & they can often do one thing really well. Wise peope are rare! Some people are good at remembering facts and figures but don't use that knowledge in any purposeful way..unless they are on my team in the pub quiz!

Oh and NO re Daily Mail but always sad /shocked/worried it sells so many copies!

Like that!

Too right, nanaej. In our small and very middle-class town with a big elderly population, the DM is by far the biggest selling paper.

It is quite likely that many people who read the DM agree with its stance on immigration, benefit 'scroungers', working mothers, political correctness, etc. I just find its hypocrisy amusing - so sanctimonious about single mothers and underage sex, and so determined to publish photos of scantily dressed women at every opportunity. They especially like pictures of celebrities falling out of taxis flashing their knickers. It is all very playground stuff.
On a journalistic level, acres of paper are taken up with shots of the outside of court buildings which add absolutely nothing to our understanding of the story. Every story includes the estimated cost of the victim's/witness's home, no matter how irrelevant it is.
In my opinion, it is simply a poor newspaper.

Greatnan if you dislike the paper so much why do you continue to look at it? Obviously I can only speak for myself, but I find that if something irritates me I do not keep going back to it, and I presume that you do, bearing in mind your comments about "Every story including the cost of the witness's/victim's home". I would understand if it was the only publication available to you, but as this is not the case I am puzzled.

nannym - I read most UK papers on line every day. I find the DM amusing . It is fun to see how they can twist a story to fit their own agenda.
Single mothers are a particular bete noir - if they go out to work they are neglecting their children. If they stay at home they are benefit scroungers (unless they are rich and famous, of course). Immigrants, of course, are an easy target -they take jobs and clutter up schools.
Have you not noticed their penchant for showing as many half-dressed women as possible, for no apparent newsworthy reason? At least The Sun is honest about displaying Page 3 girls for the titillation of readers.