The Daily Mail’s Jan Moir, who should need little introduction, has used her weekly column in a bid to explain herself again (first attempt here), in the face of over 25,000 complaints to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).
In her latest piece, at this link, she claims she has had thousands of supportive emails from readers. An extract:
“To say it was a hysterical overreaction would be putting it mildly, though clearly much of it was an orchestrated campaign by pressure groups and those with agendas of their own.
“However, I accept that many people – on Twitter and elsewhere – were merely expressing their own personal and heartfelt opinions or grievances. This said, I can’t help wondering: is there a compulsion today to see bigotry and social intolerance where none exists by people who are determined to be outraged? Or was it a failure of communication on my part?
“Certainly, something terrible went wrong as my column ricocheted through cyberspace, unread by many who complained, yet somehow generally and gleefully accepted into folklore as a homophobic rant.
“It lit a spark, then a flame and turned into a roaring ball of hate fire, blazing unchecked and unmediated across the internet.
“Yet as the torrent of abuse continued, most of it anonymous, I also had thousands of supportive emails from readers and well-wishers, many of whom described themselves as ‘the silent majority’. The outcry was not as one-sided as many imagine.”
Related on Journalism.co.uk:
Jan Moir instead of showing some respect for the 25,000 members of the public who complained to the PCC had chosen to dig herself into an even deeper hole, in her column today(Friday 23 October)
Moir squirms like a snake attempting to defend herself while still believes that genuine people who complained to the PCC were orchestrated, what contempt! does Jan not credit us with some level of intelligence.
We now await the findings of Paul Dacre and the PCC, will they demonstrate that they are spineless and that it is more evidence while we all support press freedom that the industry needs a watchdog not self governed.
Meanwhile myself and colleagues/friends have chosen to cancel all future deliveries of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday until some action is taken against Jan Moir and her gutter press journalism, she had the opportunity to issue a unreserved apology, that she declined and now she needs to accept the consequences, the public are not willing to accept offensive journalism that she wrote about the late
Mr S Gately.