October 17th, 2009
Jan Moir demonstrates how the press still doesn’t “get” social media
The Jan Moir saga doesn’t just reveal the Daily Mail’s inherent prejudices; it also demonstrates how the printed press is still failing “get” the power of social media.
When it comes to the information superhighway, the printed press is still stuck in the horse and cart, moving along only marginally faster than the music industry.
I’ve long held the belief, and I’m far more qualified people that I hold similar beliefs, that the traditional media’s initial resistance and belated adoption of digital media will ultimately be what kills them off. There are few local newspapers that effectively execute a digital media strategy, with the nationals only marginally better at it.
This week, the tables were turned on the Daily Mail after columnist Jan Moir published a highly offensive, speculative and homophobic slur on the late Boyzone singer Stephen Gately, who passed away last weekend whilst on holiday in Mallorca; “Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death“.
Not long after the article was published (and I can’t believe that the term “Moirgate” hasn’t been coined yet), social networks went into meltdown. All of a sudden, this nobody of a journalist was the talk of Twitter, was being vilified on Facebook and was the subject of an unprecedented level of complaints that brought the website if the Press Complaints Commission crashing to its knees.
I’m not going to go into what was wrong with the content of the article itself, plenty of people have done that already and have done it far better that I would have been able to. What I will question is the Mail’s and Moir’s response to the outrage.
The Mail’s online team was faced an impossible damage limitation task on Friday. The headline of the feature was hastily changed and advertisers made it clear that they did not want to be seen to be endorsing such distasteful material.
A defence of Moir’s comments followed soon after, which did little to stem the tide of complaints and demonstrated little other than the Mail’s inherent prejudices and their misunderstanding of how social media works.
Moir claimed that her comments were being taken out of context, that it was “mischievous in the extreme to suggest that [her] article has homophobic and bigoted undertones” and that she was the victim of a “heavily orchestrated” campaign led by people who she doubted had even read the article, cleverly ignoring the Daily Mail’s “heavily orchestrated” campaign against Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand almost exactly twelve months ago. Indeed, there was poetic irony in seeing the Mail squirm after being hit with a huge overdose of its own medicine.
Moir is missing the point however. It is simply not possible to “orchestrate” social media on anything like that scale. No campaign can push a complete nobody to the top trending position on Twitter for more than fourteen hours, ahead of “Follow Friday“, “Balloon Boy” and that bloke from London Underground.
When it’s provoked, Twitter is a bird that can seriously bite back and what the Mail needs to understand is that it is a far more powerful being than any daily newspaper. The Daily Mail appeals to a narrow section of society. It knows who its readers are and it caters to their prejudices. Social media isn’t like that. Social media has no target audience, it has no editorial standpoint and it has no agenda. It is an eclectic mix of people who yesterday became united in their disgust at Jan Moir and her insinuations.
The furore is dying down, Twitterers have moved onto the next big topic of the day and so I think it’s safe to say that we’ve heard the last of this. The PCC are not particularly strong at the best of times and it is unlikely to open an official enquiry unless Gately’s family, partner or his close friends make a formal complain personally. Even if it did, the fact that Paul Dacre, editor of the Mail, is chairman of the Press Compaints Commission’s ethics committee leaves me fairly confident that the whole incident will be allowed to drift away unnoticed.
If there is something to take from this, it is that the mass media realises now, if it didn’t before, that it no longer holds the ability to influence what we think and what we feel is justified. Moir is free to say what she wishes in tune with the laws of the land, but she has no right to complain when the rest of the world bites back over what they believe is right.
