Response from the PCC

Received today via quailmail.

Thanks for your recent query to the PCC regarding communication you had received from the Daily Mail.

The original article was subject to a complaint which is in the process of being resolved by the newspaper to the satisfaction of the complainant. We cannot go into details of the resolution negotiated by the PCC (to respect the privacy of the complainant) but clearly the Daily Mail is addressing the concerns of the complainant.

It is the case that the PCC always does everything it can to negotiate a satisfactory resolution between complainant and the publication involved.

The PCC has not made any direct requests to bloggers or third parties. The PCC independently enforces the Editors' Code of Practice by which newspapers and magazines - who subscribe to the self-regulatory system - agree to abide. Clearly the newspaper concerned (following the wishes of the complainant, who may be distressed by the content of the original article) can only request that repeated text be removed by a blogger or third party.

Emphasis mine.

Please note that prior to this, my only communication to the PCC has been via Twitter, asking them if they could confirm that they had requested bloggers to remove content.

As yet, I have received no reply from the Daily Mail to the letter below.

The PCC has told us to remove our article so we'd like you to remove any evidence it ever existed from your blog, thanks.

Received today by quailmail:


Dear Sir/Madam,


It appears that you have reproduced parts of an article from our website (link below).


We have received a complaint from the Press Complaints Commission about this article and have as a result removed it from our websites and agreed to request that you do the same.


We would therefore ask that you remove this material and confirm removal.


Yours sincerely,


[name removed]
Deputy Managing Editor
MailOnline


http://www.dailyquail.org/2009/08/tawdry-dreams-of-daily-mail.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+dailyquail+(The+Daily+Quail)

Dear [name removed],

I write with reference to your correspondence of 16/02/2011 requesting removal of content at http://www.dailyquail.org/2009/08/tawdry-dreams-of-daily-mail.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+dailyquail+(The+Daily+Quail)

Please could you provide a copy of the PCC's ruling and the request that content be removed from the above URL. Could you also clarify the commission's specific requests on exactly what must be removed and their remit in ruling on non-newspaper blog content which - as far as I am aware - is not governed by the PCC. I was under the impression that blogs were not bound by PCC guidelines.

I would also appreciate some further information as to whether this is an ongoing complaint, if the article on MailOnline has been removed pending investigation or because it was found to contravene PCC guidelines, and, if the PCC has objected to content at the above URL, what specific issues they may have found.

Additionally, as quotes found in the blog post in question were taken from a print copy of the Daily Mail, is a notification of the ruling to be published in a future edition of the Daily Mail? I am more than happy to clarify that the original article on MailOnline has been removed and a correction provided in print, if this is acceptable.

Sincerely,

D. Quail.

The new, easy way to read the Mail!

We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate MailOnline for being the most popular national newspaper website for the third month in a row, with 28.8m unique users in the month of August.

This is marginally more traffic than The Quail receives from BNP members confused by irony and Google image searches for 'Cheryl Cole naked' on a Saturday night. Of course, MailOnline never uses such low tactics to boost web traffic and has rightly gained its spot at the top of the ABCe charts thanks to a peerless mix of brilliant writing, fair and balanced reporting, finger-on-the-button understanding of new media, and incisive polling.

However, we realise that clicking on links to MailOnline from this blog, and others, can be a time consuming source of minor irritation that the modern man could do without. As for modern women, well, they should be at home making dinner and having children.

Anyway, with this in mind, the Quail is glad to support 'Mail No More', a handy service that renders online Mail articles in double-quick time, stripped bare of unsightly advertisements and unpleasant images of the author's face. Simply copy the MailOnline URL into 'No More Mails' 'Mail No More' and enjoy your poorly written, unresearched bile fix without forcing those poor MailOnline advertisers to pay more for the privilege of your visit!

Think of it as doing your bit for the big corporations struggling through the recession. We're fairly sure the Mail won't miss your custom - chances are they hate you anyway (if you're gay, female, working class, upper class, a 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation immigrant, work in the public sector, earn more or less than the national average wage, do a "non-job", are a postman, a student, a liberal, or a Muslim, or if you watch the BBC)

The Quail will continue (for the moment) to link to the Mail as we feel that discussion of the various illuminating articles contained within Britain's most influential newspaper requires an appreciation of the original, and that linking to back-up copies of MailOnline pages might run the risk of costly squabbles with certain organisations over copyright and traffic leeching.

Thanks to Chris Grice for creating MNM, and Simon N Ricketts for pimping it.

MailOnline does not focus too much on celeb stories, says Mail

'Martin Clarke, publisher of Mail Online, has dismissed suggestions that success of the website was down simply to the volume of show business and celebrity stories it carries.

Clarke told Press Gazette: "It does annoy me that people say its all driven by search and showbiz stories because it’s actually not driven by either…"'

[hat-tip: Tabloid Watch]

From Alexa:

'Keywords that generate a significant number of queries on internet search engines and drive traffic to dailymail.co.uk. Ordered by the global popularity of the search terms, in combination with the number of website hits generated on dailymail.co.uk.'

WILL FACEBOOK IMPREGNATE YOUR MORTGAGE?

As you may be aware, Silly Season, the festive time of year during which newspapers find themselves with literally nothing to report on, is upon us.


Even our favourite bile-soaked rag, The Daily Mail, has difficulty filling its pages during Silly Season with anything approaching real news, instead giving over valuable column inches to articles like 'IT memo uses word that person points out is less accurate than other word', in desperate attempts to generate whatever outrage it can from stories about, well, nothing.

Thankfully, a reader has kindly suggested an alternative for those of you currently suffering withdrawal symptoms from a decreased dosage of daily fear and loathing.

To keep your bile levels tippity top, make sure to use the Daily Mail-o-matic while the real thing struggles to fill its pages with real stories of faux outrage. Simply pressing an easy to operate 'Refresh' button, you will be rewarded with such Mailish gems as 'ARE YOBS GIVING ENGLAND CANCER?', 'IS FEMINISM BURGLING YOUR PENSION?', and, 'IS THE MMR JAB IMPREGNATING YOUR CHILDREN?' - all questions we need answers to right away, I think you'll agree.

For extra fun, you may wish to capitalise on the recent news that Mail Online has taken the bold step into the world of unmoderated comments by generating your own headlines using the Mail-o-matic, then sharing the results with other fans in the comments under Mail articles. Should your garbled rubbish make it onto the hallowed pages of MailOnline, make sure to send a screengrab to The Quail, and we'll publish the best ones.

A merry Silly Season to all!

MailOnline infested with foreigners

Almost three-quarters of Mail Online readers are foreigners who don't even live in Britain but probably want to move here to claim benefits, it has emerged.

Shocking new figures have revealed that of the 29.3m people inexplicably visiting the Mail's online internetular hypertext webhate site each month, only 8.3m (28%) are decent British folk, while 72% reside in far off lands such as Iran, Africa and Wales.

While some of the foreign visitors can be accounted for by the millions of expats living in Spain who have been forced out of their homeland by two terms of New Labour tax-grabbing multicultural political correctness gone mad, fears are growing that a large proportion of foreign readers may be visiting Mail Online to learn more about Britain before coming over here to take things such as jobs and your house.

There are also concerns that overseas terrorists could use Mail Online to build a picture of modern Britain and it's people in order to explode things, somehow tomorrow.

Despite the influx of virtual immigrants, Mail Online publisher Martin Clarke said he was pleased that the site's strategy of filling its pages with pictures of scantily clad female celebrities on holiday, judicious use of popular keywords, and focus on the banal had delivered a 91% year on year rise in daily traffic. On average, 1.7m surfers got lost searching for celebrity nip slips and upskirt shots and ended up on Mail Online every day, said a delighted Clarke.

ComScore figures for May 2009 also reveal the increasing amounts of time MailOnline readers spend on the boob 'n' bile filled site.

MailOnline’s UK readers spend longer on the site per day than Telegraph, Times, or Guardian readers and spend more time looking at each page, presumably one-handed.