ANGRY MOB

I've just finished reading Nick Davies Flat Earth news and it is a brilliant book that ends with a chapter on the Daily Mail that I really wish every Daily Mail reader was forced to read. In it Davies describes the Daily Mail selecting stories based on what readers want to read, serving up any distortion that it knows will satisfy its readers: attacks on black people, gays, women, the loony-left, Muslims, asylum-seekers, immigrants, single parents and so on. Likewise, popular stories that did not fit into the narrow worldview of the Daily Mail reader were simply not run - no matter what their inherent news value may have been.

This week the Daily Mail have buried the story of Terrance Gavan - an ex-BNP member (according to the Daily Mail at least) and former soldier given 11 years for making and hoarding a substantial cache of weapons and explosives. Someone like Anjem Choudary for example is constantly attacked by the Daily Mail - pointing out that he is on benefits and digging into his past: 'Swilling beer, smoking dope and leering at porn [all things that the average Mail reader despises], the other side of hate preacher 'Andy' Choudary'. A search for 'Anjem Choudary' on the Mail website brings up 80 articles attacking him because he is exactly the kind of target that Mail readers want to go after: he is a Muslim extremist, he is a supporter of terrorism and is clearly someone with a badly distorted view of the world.

However, the same accusations could easily be levelled at Terrance Gavan: according to The Times he told police he was a BNP member (whatever Mail readers may argue in the comments: this is an extreme political party), furthermore he had specifically joined the BNP because he had a 'strong hostility towards immigrants in this country' (the words of Judge Calvert-Smith) and had indicated that he had 'planned to target an address he saw on a TV programme that he believed was linked to the July 7 bomb attacks in London (words of the Times). So here we have someone who was equally linked to extreme political views but someone who had actually manufactured the devices to enable him to carry out attacks, their is currently no evidence to suggest that Anjem Choudary - no matter how unpleasant his views may be - has ever actually tried to manufacture explosives or other weapons.

Yet the Mail reader gets 80 articles on Anjem Choudary and just 1 article on Terrance Gavan (this is the only result a search for 'Terrance Gavan' the Mail website yields). It is clear to see the news value of the average Daily Mail reader dictating the coverage that the Mail gives to these two individuals. Davies argues in Flat Earth News that this selective deliverance of news has not only made the Daily Mail the most popular, profitable and therefore powerful newspaper in the UK, it has also made it one of the most distorted in terms of the worldview that it projects.

It isn't just the amount of articles run by the Mail on Terrance Gavan that demonstrate that the Mail isn't interested in the story, but its prominence on their website:

As we can see, this story is firmly demoted underneath a vast range of other stories, whilst above it we can see such newsworthy stories as: 'Revealed: The Muslim toyboy who's secretly married Boris's ex-wife' (a story that only seems to be newsworthy because the toyboy happens to be a Muslim) and this story: 'Young mother is sent death threats by N-Dubz rapper (who is also Ed Balls' cyber-bullying tsar)' (presumably this is because the man accused of making the threats is a rapper - a culture that didn't exist in the 1950s).

Furthermore, next to this list of headlines we have the vitally important question: 'Did this man really tattoo a pair of glasses onto his face... or is it a Ray-Ban viral?' (my guess is whether it is a viral advert or not Ray-Ban will be thrilled with such a large advert displayed so prominently on the Mail website). And finally, we can see that the section of important stories underneath the headline column is led with the story of the Muslim toyboy. The message is clear: any Muslim, even when they have done nothing more than perfectly legally marry someone, is more newsworthy to the Daily Mail than a white person convicted of making and owning weapons and explosives - with ambitions of targeting people with them. In order to be as accurate as possible here, the Daily Mail do give another bit of space to Terrance Gavin, towards the bottom of the section of headlines led by the 'Muslim toyboy' ('Muslim toyboy' story is circled in blue, Terrance Gavan in red):

As you can see, the Daily Mail is careful to bury stories that it feels it must cover, but knows will not be too popular with the majority of its readers. Moving on from prominence, what about the accuracy of the story? I noticed that the other media outlets (The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, (even) The Sun - 'BNP Bomb Nut Jailed', The Belfast Telegraph etc - you get the point) refer to Terrance as a BNP member - either in headlines or prominently within the article. The Daily Mail on the other hands introduces Terrance Gavan - the very first words of the headline - as an ex-BNP member. Are they perhaps trying to appease the BNP supporters who so prominently target their articles on the BNP and regularly turn the comments section into an outright base of support for the BNP?

The Times mentions that Terrance Gavan joined the BNP in 2007, but make no mention of him leaving. The Guardian states that: 'He told police he was a BNP member and letters to him from the party, as well as a copy of its magazine Hope and Glory, were found at his home.' It makes no mention of him leaving the party either.

We now get to the interesting detail of how the Daily Mail distorts this story to appease its readers. Firstly, it suggests that Gavan is no longer a BNP member. To support this the Daily Mail provides absolutely no evidence that this is the case. Secondly, the Daily mail reports that Gavan is an 'former neo-nazi'. Again, absolutely no evidence of him being a neo-nazi or a former neo- nazi is provided. The only implication the Daily Mail is making with putting these two claims in seems to be that his bomb-making and weapons cache are not related to his membership of the BNP or the ideology or neo-nazism. What the Daily Mail seems to be attempting is to cleverly subvert the reasons behind his bomb-making and weapons cache: he is portrayed as a dangerous loner obsessed 'with things that go bang' and the Mail puts forward with a straight face that he merely 'made the guns and bombs "for the illicit thrill of owning them, to see if you can make them and then play with them"'.

The Daily Mail - in the way they so often do - bury any racial aspects of the story right at the bottom: 'in 2007, he joined the BNP. Alongside letters and magazines from the BNP found in his bedroom, officers found a notebook of his rants against illegal immigrants'. Now, here we can spot another Daily Mail distortion, attacking one of their favourite targets: the 'illegal' immigrant. If you read other news reports (The Times, The Guardian and even The Sun) they all refer to his hostility being aimed at 'immigrants', which is important because the judge states: 'You had in 2007 joined the BNP and written in your own notebooks indicating strong hostility towards immigrants in this country.' He makes it clear that the hostility of Gavan is aimed at 'immigrants' whilst the Daily Mail distorts this and aims his hostility at the far more acceptable group (in the eyes of their readership at least) 'illegal immigrants'. The change is small, but very powerful and this story now forms part of the cannon of stories about an individual simply responding to the wave of 'illegal immigrants' (because in the eyes of the Daily Mail this forms part of a valid defence), rather than someone being driven by racism.

So, to conclude: the Daily Mail buries this story, reducing it to a solitary article half-way down the page - being trumped by stories such as 'Muslim gets married'. Furthermore, they then distort the story so that rather than clearly being about a paranoid racist (Gavan wrote in one of his notebooks: 'The patriot must always be ready to defend his country against enemies and their governments') it is about someone who instead likes 'bangs' and illicitly owning weapons, who isn't a neo-nazi, doesn't belong to the BNP and is merely hostile towards 'illegal immigrants' rather than simply immigrants.

The importance - as Davies argues in Flat Earth News - of such distortion is that it neatly fits into the worldview of the average Daily Mail reader. We can see this argument supported by the comments section underneath the Mail article. We see the support for the BNP being given credence by the Mail reporting Gavan as an ex-BNP member (remember the following comments are the highest positively rated):

Here we see the Mail distortion has worked perfectly to suit the worldview of its readers. Mail readers can now focus on how unjust the story is because why is 'ex-BNP' relevant to the story, this is merely an attempt at smearing the BNP (Don questions whether it might be discrimination because he is white, completely inverting the racism in the original story). Also, an attack levelled at the BBC who refer to him as a 'BNP Member', the Mail readers do not question who is right, they simply assume that the Daily Mail is attacking the BNP by referring to Gavan as an ex -BNP member, but at least the Mail isn't as bad as other news outlets who refer to him as a full BNP member. The Daily Mail could not avoid mentioning the BNP angle because it was so prominent to the story, so they used doubt as their weapon and created doubt in its readers about the relevance of the link. We can see from the comments that the doubt sewn is powerful enough for Mail readers to dismiss other news outlets reporting that he was a BNP member as a lie - when it appears that the Mail is the only one lying about his membership:

'Thank you, Daily Mail, for lying to me in order to protect my values and worldview.' Would seem to me a fair translation of Mr G's comment. And finally, the real point of making Gavan an ex-BNP member and 'former neo-nazi' is that it effectively removes the context of the story:

So, the story is no longer about a racist harbouring a hostility towards immigrants and thoughts of targeting an address he suspected may have been linked to the July 7 bombs, it is simply about a loner who happened to have a collection of weapons - where is the real harm in that? Isn't 11 years all a bit health and safety gone mad?

Of course, one can only imagine - given that 'Muslim marries woman' easily trumps the story of Terrance Gavan - what the Mail coverage of this story would have been if Gavan had been brown- skinned and a Muslim.