Posted in October 2009 …

Oct 29 2009
4 Comments
Books, Religion

[Guest post] Book review: The Greatest Show On Earth

This is a guest post by Joel Snape.

The Greatest Show On EarthI got in an argument with some creationists the other day. The usual story: I was on a food run, they were handing out leaflets, I absentmindedly took one, they said “‘Oh, do you think about Jesus much,” and I went “Wait, this is about Jesus? Have your leaflet back.” I would have walked away, but before I had the chance one of them told me he believed that everything in the Bible was literally true, and before I knew it I was late back with the butternut squash. My girlfriend was furious.

Anyway, of the fish-in-a-barrel fun I had over those thirty minutes*, this was my favourite exchange:

Christian: You know, I’ve studied evolution.

Me: Which books have you read?

Christian: Well, I actually did political science at university, but…

Me: So did I, that’s fine, I’m just asking which books on evolution you’ve read. I’ve read loads.

Christian: Well, I went to the same university as Richard Dawkins.

Me: I went to the same university as Victoria Wood, but I couldn’t [thinks desperately]… write a sitcom about dinner ladies to save my life.

Christian: …

Me: [in my head, so as not to ruin the moment] ZING!

You know what? I wasn’t just being a dick: I have read loads of books on evolution. But these creationists were pretty well-informed – in the sense of knowing an awful lot of ‘facts’ that were actually convincing-sounding lies – and somewhere during the conversation, I realised that I’ve never read a book that contains simple, comprehensive proof of why evolution is definitely real, alongside easily-memorable ripostes to the ill-thought out arguments most creationists parrot.

The Greatest Show On Earth is exactly that book.

It’s also a bit of a return to form. The God Delusion is comprehensively structured and intimidatingly well-argued, but – perhaps because he’s used to delivering the same material to denialist buffoons – the tone can get a bit hectoring. By contrast, this is Dawkins at his most avuncular – the twinkle-eyed, tweed-jacketed professor you’d like to give a non-ironic apple. He’s talking about a subject that he genuinely loves, and you’d have to have visited an awful lot of Noah’s Ark-themed petting zoos not to be swept along by his enthusiasm.

Describing bacteriologist Richard Lenski’s experiments in evolution, for instance – a twenty-year exercise in tedium, repetition and very carefully moving things between jars – Dawkins is clearly in awe of what Ben Goldacre would probably call Proper Science, and it’s impossible not to feel the same. In other moments, Dawkins describes the elegance of evolution with a sense of wonder that doesn’t seem to have dimmed through the years, getting excited about obscure plants or interesting fossils in a way that makes you wish he’d taught you biology at school.

Meanwhile, he marshals his arguments like Tony Hart making the New York skyline out of scrap metal – a nudge here, a prod there, and suddenly you have a genuine understanding of radioactive clocks or the reasons for the Cambrian gap, along with easily memorised rejoinders to most of the typical creationist tropes. It’s not going to convince everyone – Dawkins can’t resist including a transcript of his chat with a particularly blinkered Concerned Woman Of America – but if nothing else, it should make sure I never have to bring up the fact that I shared a university with Chris Tarrant. I’m pretty sure I could do whatever his job is.

* Bonus round 1: if you need a couple of single-sentence creationist-upsetters, try “What did the carnivores eat on the ark?” or “If god’s omnipotent, how can you say Jesus was his only son?”

Bonus round 2: here’s something I should have said to the creationists but didn’t, which I’m going to call the Last Biscuit argument:

Imagine I’ve got a packet of biscuits on my desk, but there’s only one left. One of my colleagues is hungry, so I give him the biscuit. That’s a pretty big sacrifice, especially if my colleague decides that instead of taking advantage of the biscuit properly he’s going to just crush it underfoot and then chuck the crumbs in my face. Now imagine that I know in advance what my colleague’s going to do to the biscuit and that I could make a new packet of biscuits appear out of thin air. Surely that’s stretching the meaning of sacrifice a bit?

Text © Joel Snape, 2009

The Greatest Show On EarthI got in an argument with some creationists the other day. The usual
story: I was on a food run, they were handing out leaflets, I
absentmindedly took one, they said ‘Oh, do you think about Jesus
much,’ and I went ‘Wait, this is about Jesus? Have your leaflet back.’
I would have walked away, but before I had the chance one of them told
me he believed that everything in the Bible was literally true, and
before I knew it I was late back with the butternut squash. My
girlfriend was *furious.*Anyway, of the fish-in-a-barrel fun I had over those thirty minutes*,
this was my favourite exchange:Christian: You know, I’ve studied evolution.

 

Me: Which books have you read?

Christian: Well, I actually did political science at university, but…

Me: So did I, that’s fine, I’m just asking which books on evolution
you’ve read. I’ve read loads.

Christian: Well, I went to the same university as Richard Dawkins.

Me: I went to the same university as Victoria Wood, but I couldn’t
[thinks desperately]…write a sitcom about dinner ladies to save my
life.

Christian: ….

Me: [in my head, so as not to ruin the moment] ZING!

You know what? I wasn’t just being a dick: I *have* read loads of
books on evolution. But these creationists were pretty well-informed -
in the sense of knowing an awful lot of ‘facts’ that were actually
convincing-sounding lies – and somewhere during the conversation, I
realised that I’ve never read a book that contains simple,
comprehensive proof of why evolution is definitely real, alongside
easily-memorable ripostes to the ill-thought out arguments most
creationists parrot.

The Greatest Show On Earth is exactly that book.

It’s also a bit of a return to form. The God Delusion is
comprehensively structured and intimidatingly well-argued, but -
perhaps because he’s used to delivering the same material to denialist
buffoons – the tone can get a bit hectoring. By contrast, this is
Dawkins at his most avuncular – the twinkle-eyed, tweed-jacketed
professor you’d like to give a non-ironic apple. He’s talking about a
subject that he genuinely loves, and you’d have to have visited an
awful lot of Noah’s Ark-themed petting zoos not to be swept along by
his enthusiasm. Describing bacteriologist Richard Lenski’s experiments
in evolution, for instance – a twenty-year exercise in tedium,
repetition and *very carefully* moving things between jars – Dawkins
is clearly in awe of what Ben Goldacre would probably call Proper
Science, and it’s impossible not to feel the same. In other moments,
Dawkins describes the elegance of evolution with a sense of wonder
that doesn’t seem to have dimmed through the years, getting excited
about obscure plants or interesting fossils in a way that makes you
wish he’d taught you biology at school. Meanwhile, he marshals his
arguments like Tony Hart making the New York skyline out of scrap
metal – a nudge here, a prod there, and suddenly you have a genuine
understanding of radioactive clocks or the reasons for the Cambrian
gap, along with easily memorised rejoinders to most of the typical
creationist tropes. It’s not going to convince everyone – Dawkins
can’t resist including a transcript of his chat with a particularly
blinkered Concerned Woman Of America – but if nothing else, it should
make sure I never have to bring up the fact that I shared a university
with Chris Tarrant. I’m pretty sure I *could* do whatever his job is.

*Bonus round: If you need a couple of single-sentence
creationist-upsetters, try ‘What did the carnivores eat on the ark?’
or ‘If god’s omnipotent, how can you say Jesus was his only son?’

Bonus round: here’s something I should have said to the creationists
but didn’t, which I’m going to call the Last Biscuit argument.

Imagine I’ve got a packet of biscuits on my desk, but there’s only one
left. One of my colleagues is hungry, so I give him the biscuit.
That’s a pretty big sacrifice, especially if my colleague decides that
instead of taking advantage of the biscuit properly he’s going to just
crush it underfoot and then chuck the crumbs in my face. But it’s not
*that* massive, because after all I could just go and buy another
packet of biscuits.

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Oct 27 2009
12 Comments
Politics

[Infographic] Where are the BNP’s voters?

BNP sympathies are a reaction to immigration and a sense of cultural endangerment in the white working class, right? Not exactly, according to this infographic from Information Is Beautiful, which shows many areas of relatively high BNP support (well, over 0.04% of the population) are remote from the largest non-white populations:

BNP membership vs ethnic minority population

It’s possible for voters to live at great distance from ethnic minority communities, and still think there are too many of them over here, apparently – but conversely, it also looks as though support for racist politics largely fades out where non-white faces are most visible. For the very small minority who actively support the BNP, it seems that beliefs about immigration are unlikely to have been formed by direct experience of it.

(Some caveats: the National Institute Of Statistics information is pretty old, and shows ethnic make-up rather than immigrant populations. If anyone has a more recent analysis they think is relevant, stick it in the comments.)

Text © Sarah Ditum, 2009. Image © David McCandless, used under Creative Commons. Spotted by @UAF.

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Oct 27 2009
3 Comments
Media, Politics

Did Griffin’s Question Time change anything?

A survey (PDF) by YouGov for the Daily Telegraph polled 1,314 adults after Griffin’s Question Time appearance and compared the results with a survey taken during the summer. (The figures in the left-hand column are from 29 May to 4 June; those in the right-hand column from 22-23 October.) The results show such tiny shifts that it seems fair to say that the programme caused no change in voting intentions or political sympathies.

YouGov The BNP’s “total positive” score fell by two points, its “total negative” score fell by one, and its “ambivalent” score increased by two – so far, Question Time seems to have been neither a devastating exposure of the BNP viewpoint, or a crossing-over into the mainstream. But over on page two of the PDF, there’s a more depressing figure: 22% of those surveyed reported that they “would or might consider voting BNP”. Considering that only 3% say that they intend to vote BNP, that’s a whole chunk of people who don’t identify with the BNP yet don’t see their politics as off-limits – presumably including people who read and believe headlines like these.

It’s regularly asserted that we need “debate” about immigration. But immigration is constantly being debated, and as Alex Massie points out, the terms of that debate are almost entirely in agreement with the BNP. Immigration is presented as a problem which must be controlled, culture is offered as an internally consistent entity that will be destroyed by change – and we saw on Question Time that none of the three major parties is willing to step away from this strikingly illiberal line. The authoritarian, isolationist tendency is already at home in UK p0litics. It’s never really gone away.

**Edit ** LibCon highlights possible efforts by the BNP to bias YouGov polls in their favour. If that’s true, and this is still the best showing they could manage, they’re not doing it very well.

Text © Sarah Ditum, 2009

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Oct 26 2009
6 Comments
Media

It’s like thinking but it’s not thinking

LightbulbClive Jame has something to say about scepticism. It’s a “light-hearted” something, says the strap, which is a handy because you might otherwise have thought it was “emptily provocative” or “quite stupid”. Clive James wants you to know that he’s a sceptic, and not one of your fairweather sceptics who’ll research something and then come to a provisional conclusion: “What remained constant was my scepticism, which is surely, as a human attitude, more valuable than gullibility.” That sounds about right, doesn’t it? Question everything! Stick it to the gulls, CJ!

But these are hard times for the sceptic, continues James:

Since [the time of Montaigne], a sceptical attitude has been less likely to get you burned at the stake, but it’s notable how the issue of man-made global warming has lately been giving rise to a use of language hard to distinguish from heresy-hunting in the fine old style by which the cost of voicing a doubt was to fry in your own fat.

Whether or not you believe that the earth might have been getting warmer lately, if you are sceptical about whether mankind is the cause of it, the scepticism can be enough to get you called a denialist.

It’s a nasty word to be called, denialist, because it calls up the spectacle of a fanatic denying the Holocaust.

Holo-what-now? I thought we were being light-hearted. Now we’re accusing people who agree with the scientific consensus on global warming of secretly wanting to set fire to those who differ from them. But what is the consensus anyway? Maybe we’ve been mislead by our media, and the existence of climate change (and its cause, if it does exist) is more disputed than we realise:

I still can’t see that there is a scientific consensus. There are those for, and those against. Either side might well be right, but I think that if you have a division on that scale, you can’t call it a consensus.

But Clive, you haven’t told us what the scale of the disagreement is! Just the existence of an unspecified, unnamed number of dissenters with unknown evidence is enough to undermine a consensus. Perhaps by now you’re thinking that James’ approach is a bit empty, that he doesn’t seem to be familiar with any research of any kind, and he’s being just a tiny bit flippant about a potential global catastrophe. Well, you would be wrong to do so, because James cares more than you will ever know, with your craven preference for “data” and “analysis”:

Sceptics, say the believers, don’t care about the future of the human race. But being sceptical has always been one of the best ways of caring about the future of the human race. For example, it was from scepticism that modern medicine emerged, questioning the common belief that diseases were caused by magic, or could be cured by it.

So, to recap: if you accept that climate change is both ongoing and caused by humans, then you’re a gullible person with a taste for immolating your enemies, and you probably think the squinty-eyed lady up the road is trying to kill you with her mind. If you disagree with the widely-held opinion of climate scientists, then you’re going to save the human race with the power of pure thought. QED. Now go and turn all the lights on so you can illuminate this darkening world with your exquisite scepticism.

Text © Sarah Ditum, 2009. Photo by beana_cheese, used under Creative Commons.

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Oct 24 2009
1 Comment
Media

Magazines dead, says Jimmy Wales

Does the end of Gourmet mean the end of the traditional magazine? Jimmy Wales thinks it does, and by “traditional” he means “made by professional journalists”:

Recently, Conde Nast announced the closure of Gourmet Magazine. What happened there? It’s really very very simple: the traditional magazine has not kept pace with the needs of readers or advertisers. It isn’t that reading is going out of style – quite the opposite. It isn’t that people don’t care about quality – quite the opposite. The death of the traditional magazine has come about because people are demanding more information, of better quality, and faster.

Jimmy Wales, “Is the magazine dead?”

In their place, he anticipates the rise of HP Magcloud print-on-demand journals created by Wikia communities. There’s an interesting addendum to the Gourmet example, though: Gourmet was published by Condé Nast, which also publishes Bon Appétit magazine. With ad rates and circulation in decline, carrying two food titles made no sense, so Condé Nast chose to preserve the one with the best profile and chop the other. In August, the Wall Street Journal put together a comparison of the two titles. Bon Appétit was losing ad pages at a lower rate, maintaining a higher circulation, and attracting readers with a higher income – in those terms, it was the obvious keeper.

BA vs WikiaBut in online terms, it was the straggler. Wales compares the figures for Gourmet’s website with those for recipes.wikia.com, and uses them to argue that Wikia had superceded its print rival. Gourmet ranks 17,234; the Wikia site ranks 8,426; but Bon Appétit ranks 21,178 (all according to Quantcast). The better performer in print appears to be substantially the worse performer online.

This doesn’t mean that Wales is wrong to assume that a strong internet readership for a Wikia community represents an accessible market for a print product. But it does mean that, for the Gourmet example at least, print performance and online performance don’t correlate – and you can’t necessarily predict one from the other. It’s a commonplace that print publishers have a lot to learn about online communications. Would it be a surprise if online publishers also turned out to have a lot to learn about paper and ink?

Text © Sarah Ditum, 2009

Oct 23 2009
1 Comment
Media, music

Editions of you: Roxy and magazines

For Your PleasureBefore home video made it possible to possess film, print was the only was the only to claim ownership of visuals. Roxy Music made records, but they made a world too – a freakish outgrowth of the style mags, and one built on print.

In the More Than This documentary, designer Anthony Price talks up the prestige of being a “Roxy girl”: “It was quite a benchmark of success. It was second only to a Vogue cover.” And Bryan Ferry reckons that print culture was part of the reason for Roxy’s success: “I think in Europe, people’s taste was more informed by magazines, by music newspapers, and music was analysed and talked about. In America, it was all about what was on the radio.”

12″ sleeves and the glossy magazines can’t define dreams and desire in the same way anymore. The music press has ground down to the NME, which seems to be more taste-chasing than taste-making, and retro-looking monthlies. With Roxy, magazines mattered.

Text © Sarah Ditum, 2009. Full review will appear in DVD And Blu-Ray Review.

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Oct 23 2009
13 Comments
Media, Politics

Nick Griffin’s day out

QT grabNick Griffin’s Question Time appearance was spectacularly bad. Previously on Paperhouse, I’ve said that I don’t think the QT format is equipped for challenging debate. I agree with Nelson’s reasons for not wanting the BNP on there at all. But I reckoned on the QT panel’s usual dynamic being in place: instead, three career politicians and one media professional all turned up, determined to tax Griffin hard on his obnoxious history and flimsy justifications for racism.

He looked abysmal – partly because there is no good answer to a question like, “Haven’t I seen you sharing a stage with a Ku Klux Klan leader?” (And if there is a good answer, it isn’t to say that the KKK were “largely non-violent.”) Partly, as well, because he’s got a set of ticks that howl unpleasantness. He spent the entire show hand-rubbing, leering and clapping himself with mock jollity every time a blow landed on him.

The other panellists were well-prepared and adequate, apart from Bonnie Greer, who was well-prepared and splendid. And, not being a career politician, Greer didn’t drop into the infinite recursion of immigration policy when the panel were asked about its alleged “failures”. She was able to say that immigration is constant and inevitable. Warsi, Huhne and Straw are committed to the rhetoric of toughness – and when no representative of the three major parties is willing to say that the problem with immigration might be more perceived than actual, you could wonder where, exactly, they draw the philosophical lines that separate them from the BNP.

Text © Sarah Ditum, 2009

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Oct 22 2009
56 Comments
Media, Politics

[Guest post] Having my say: Griffin on QT

This is a guest post by Nelson of spEak You’re bRanes.

Do you think I don’t understand what my friend, the Professor, long ago called The Hydrostatic Paradox of Controversy?

Don’t know what that means? – Well, I will tell you. You know that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would
stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, – And the fools know it.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Image by Beau Bo d'Or (click for link)Like any thoughtful person, I think the BBC’s “Have Your Say” (HYS) is fucking rubbish. It’s not entirely down to the inherent futility of arguing on the internet, and it’s not just because the BNP appear to be actively targeting it, creating the perception that public opinion is skewed towards hate and stupidity. It’s down to the concept of “balance” which, in BBC world at least, appears to involve treating every opinion equally, no matter how idiotic or dangerous it might be.

Unlike the Guardian site or the Daily Mail site, the BBC don’t often allow all comments (with occasional moderation, of course) but rather tend to hold everything in a moderation queue before making editorial decisions about which to publish. This is apparently done in an effort to keep things “balanced”. Frankly, it does my nut that, somewhere at the Beeb, there are otherwise intelligent people who subscribe to the idea that choosing what to publish and what to suppress is somehow going to make things more representative of public opinion. Presumably these people are so ludicrously impartial, so supremely capable of stepping outside their own frame of reference that they are able to divine the mood of the nation better than the nation itself.

As a result of this highly-educated lunacy, HYS is worse than “Comment is Free” at the Guardian and it’s worse than the Daily Mail, where everything gets published but people can at least vote comments down as well as up.

Everyone knows HYS is shit. It’s why I created the Speak You’re Branes blog and it’s why people read it. We all share this bemusement and a kind of grumbling baseline level of anger that the BBC are wasting our money nurturing the awfulness. But this is not why I’m having my say now. I’m always a bit angry about the BBC (BBC news specifically) whether it’s their refusal to broadcast a charity appeal when Palestinians are being murdered or the remarkable deference and credulity they extend to powers who’ve been caught lying and cheating over and over again. Today, however, I’m very angry at the BBC. Angry enough that I finally have to say something serious about their craven behaviour.

Tonight the BBC will host an episode of Question Time on which they have invited the ex-National Front, holocaust-denying, criminal, racist Nick Griffin to appear. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not bang up to date with the fucking news but as I understand it Peter Hain tried to mount a legal challenge to this and has sadly failed. I’m very much behind the idea that, as a criminal “whites only” organisation, the BNP shouldn’t be accorded the same status as other political parties but what if, as seems likely, they change their rules to fit within the law? Much as I’d love to see every last brown-skinned person in this country join the BNP and destroy it from within, I doubt that will happen. We cannot oppose the BNP on legal grounds alone.

I think the BBC is presenting two, equally facile, arguments here. Firstly, let’s get the free speech thing out the way. The issue is not free speech. Free speech is what I’m doing right now. It doesn’t entitle me to get on Question Time. In fact, the kind of language I use would be deemed too offensive. Unlike that revolting wanksock Nick fucking Griffin. By preventing Griffin from appearing on Question Time they would be making the same class of decision as when they decide not to invite Gok Wan on. It’s an editorial decision. The BBC trust are mostly fairly clear on this themselves, but when the point is pressed, Mark Thompson starts to talk about democracy, censorship and free speech. Free speech does not mean providing a platform, on Question Time, for anyone that would like one.

The second problem is the idea that, just because the BNP exist and are a political party, they are somehow entitled to be listened to. This is all down to the BBC’s retarded idea of “balance”, only now it’s not funny. It’s moved from creating a comically stupid comments board to legitimising a bunch of far-right racists and, almost certainly, contributing to their future electoral success. As Wikipedia puts it:

Because voters have to predict in advance who the top two candidates will be, this can cause significant perturbation to the system:

* Substantial power is given to the media. Some voters will tend to believe the media’s assertions as to who the leading contenders are likely to be in the election. Even voters who distrust the media will know that other voters do believe the media, and therefore those candidates who receive the most media attention will nonetheless be the most popular and thus most likely to be in one of the top two.

[...]

* If enough voters use this tactic, the first-past-the-post system becomes, effectively, runoff voting – a completely different system – where the first round is held in the court of public opinion.

You may even be agreeing with everything here but think that the BNP should still be allowed to appear, in which case I’d ask you to have a think about where you would draw a line. Would you allow a platform to a party that wanted to bring back slavery? A party that wanted to take away the right of women to vote? A party that wanted to lower the age of consent to 14? What about 10? 5? 2? I’m hoping we’d all draw the line somewhere. My point is simply that we can’t pretend there’s some kind of universal accepted threshold, written on a stone tablet by an omniscient moral arbiter. We have to decide, as a society, what is and isn’t acceptable and draw the line at that point. Everyone I know would agree that all humans, regardless of nationality or skin colour, are equal. Yet the BBC, by allowing the BNP a platform on Question Time, have drawn that line in such a way as to make racism appear acceptable. It’s not a forced move, they’ve made a disgusting, cowardly choice. Fuck everyone involved.

Text © Nelson, 2009. Image © Beau Bo d’Or, 2009.

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Oct 19 2009
2 Comments
Media

PCC to follow up on third-party complaints over Jan Moir

The PCC’s standard position on third-party complaints is to dismiss them. Their initial response to contact about Jan Moir’s poisonous Stephen Gately column implied that they intended to hold to the same line in this case, although there was a small suggestion that they could be pressed into expanding their remit:

On initial examination, it would appear that you are, therefore, a third party to the complaint, and wemay [sic] not be able to pursue your concerns further. However, if you feel that your complaint touches on claims that do not relate directly to Mr Gately or his family, please let us know, making clear how they raise a breach of the Code of Practice. If you feel that the Commission should waive its third party rules, please make clear why you believe this.

Email from the PCC, 16 October 2009

It appears that the massive response to Moir’s column (21,000 complaints) has caused them to follow up on that hint of action, because today they sent out a further response:

The  PCC generally requires the involvement of directly-affected parties  in its investigations, and it has pro-actively  been in touch with representatives of Boyzone  – who are in contact with Stephen Gately’s family – since shortly after his death.  Any complaint from the affected parties will naturally be given precedence by the Commission, in line with its normal procedures.

If, for whatever reason, those individuals do not wish to make a complaint, the PCC will in any case write to the Daily Mail for its response to the more general complaints from the public before considering whether there are any issues under the Code to pursue.

Email from the PCC, 19 October 2009

One of the problems with the PCC is its institutionalised refusal to look on accuracy as a responsibility held by newspapers to all their readers, rather than a duty they only have towards the people they choose to write about. That means that the PCC has previously been able to ignore any complaints from a third party, and avoid adjudicating on matters (like Moir’s Gately column) when the harm and offence caused spreads much wider than the direct subjects of the piece.

It’s welcome, then, that the PCC will give consideration to the prejudice and inaccuracy in Moir’s piece that animated so many people to complain. At the same time, the PCC is still composed of print industry figures (including Mail On Sunday editor Peter Wright) – and even if they did wish to punish the Mail for this, they have very few sanctions to use.

When the Scottish Sunday Express offered an “insufficient apology” for its intrusion into the privacy of Dunblane survivors, the PCC couldn’t compel the paper to do any more. In the Gately case, the attention on the PCC may be so extreme that they will have to be seen to take convincing action, or face imminent and widespread unhappiness with the self-governing structure.

Text © Sarah Ditum, 2009

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Oct 18 2009
2 Comments
Media

Link the thing you hate

LinksBloggers don’t kill the thing they love: instead, they cascade potentially valuable attention onto the things they hate. Linking is part of online culture’s rhetoric of transparency. You’re inviting your reader to go back to the original, confirm your commentary, add to it if they wish to – giving credit to content you find praiseworthy, demonstrating your trustworthiness in handling something you oppose.

The problem is that both sorts of link feed traffic, and all traffic looks the same when traffic is what’s being measured, as with ABCe figures. The latest of these show the Mail’s website attracting the most unique visitors, beating the Guardian by about 200,000 users. And with the Jan Moir atrocity, the numbers for the Mail are likely to look even more impressive when October gets tallied up.

But that assumes that ABCe results are comparable to ABC numbers as a measure of audience engagement. I don’t think they are. Using a website isn’t the same as buying a paper: it’s more like flicking through a discarded copy you’ve found at a bus-stop. It requires no investment of money or identity. I use the Mail website, but I’m a Guardian reader. My politics, my interests, my tastes are not the same as the politics, interests and tastes of the person advertisers on the Mail website are presumably trying to reach – when, that is, the advertisers aren’t being jumped into pulling their ads by the negative publicity.

I suppose that, in theory, the Mail could sell the advertising around their most virulently illiberal content so that it would appeal to the outraged. Trailers for E4 shows. American Apparel. That sort of thing. But that would mean alienating a core audience who enjoy and agree with content like Moir’s, and that sounds like a pretty dicey strategy. I’m willing to credit most advertisers with the intelligence to know that a deluge of unhappy, agitated users won’t be taking away the warmest of feelings about a brand they see in the sidebar.

Text © Sarah Ditum, 2009. Photo by Ravages, used under Creative Commons license.

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