why i read the daily mail..

this week, as most people know the headline grabbing most peoples attention from the mail was 'vile product of welfare uk'. People on twitter were up in arms and calling for people to boycott the paper. As I did my daily read of the site I somehow felt that I was doing something wrong, and perhaps should have turned on private browsing or similar.

I want to blog about why I read the mail, and do so on a regular basis. I don't buy the paper, but then I don't buy any newspaper, preferring it on line. The first reason is quite simple, I am studying disability studies at university. I am really interested in welfare reform and I love reading about it in the media. I don't discriminate and when I find an article in one paper I look at it in all of them. It provides me with a balance of views and opinions that help to construct my own argument. How can I argue against what the mail thinks without first reading it and understanding their point of view?

Sometimes I feel like an enemy spy when I read the mail, and I do it so other people dont have to. In fact, thats what my twitter feed is now pretty much. I subscribe to some feeds that I created around welfare reform and I link to them on twitter. I dont agree with them, but I think it helps to have them there, after all this is what some people think. We need to have a right of free press, otherwise ironically there will just be more papers like the mail and less like the guardian.

Trying to link reading the mail or any other right wing type media to being a right wing thinker and politician is as tenuous as the link the mail and the government are trying to make with welfare and the recent story in the paper where 6 children lost their lives at the hands of a very nasty person. What you choose to read doesn't make you change your perspective or make you into a different person. It is, purely and simply a newspaper, or article which has some opinions in it that are sometimes designed to provoke a reaction. nothing more.

I know that disability hate crime is going up, and I know its in part due to the media rhetoric surrounding disability and welfare. But, as I am learning from my dissertation, that doesn't exist in isolation. It has to have come from somewhere, and in this case its usually the government. Reading this news, although it might seem somewhat evil to do so is actually important. Finding out what the mail thinks, and what the right wing press thinks is important. It is being fed from the government and learning what it is we are fighting is important.

so I will continue to read the mail, and the guardian, and the telegraph and the independent and any other news source that I find. It wont make me into a bad person.