The Philpott Case - A Letter to the editor of The Daily Mail

Below is an e-mail I have just sent to the editor of the Daily Mail, concerning their front page today, the 3rd of April. If you haven't seen it, don't look at it on their website (they would earn advertising money from it); you can find it on Twitter. Essentially it blames the deaths of six children in a blaze started by their father on the 'Welfare State.' Please write to the editor as well, and to the Press Complaints Commission. If you have the time, also write to major advertisers in the Mail. Such vile lies must be exposed and condemned, and the shameless exploitation of children's deaths for ideological purposes is an affront to human decency.

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To the Editor of the Daily Mail,

Tonight I have seen the preview edition of this morning’s (3rd of April, 2013) front page. I am therefore writing to express in the strongest possible terms my outrage and disgust at this callous and twisted hijacking of the deaths of six children. Let me say that again: the deaths of six children. Six human beings, six lives, six souls, who died in the most horrific circumstances. And what did those deaths mean to you? Another grubby story, another slanderous headline, another paper sold. To use their deaths, to ascribe them to that favourite monster of yours, ‘the welfare state’ is nothing short of monstrous itself. It seems there is nothing to which the Mail will not stoop in pursuit of its own hideous agenda.

Perhaps the most offensive part of the front page is one single word, which crystallises your pitiful rag’s attitude: the word ‘bred’. Not ‘had’, not ‘fathered’. You chose a word we use for animals and livestock, and you chose it carefully, because that is what you wanted to convey: that these children were bred, not conceived, that they are animals, that they are not human. You think they are less than you, and that your life is of more value than theirs, don’t you? Say it, you cowards, say it.

You lie. You lie and you lie and you lie, simply because it is easiest for you, because it best helps you peddle your vicious myths. And you don’t print such bile because it is what your readers think; you print it because it is what you want your readers to think, because you want them to hate. And so it spreads, as you mould your readership’s mind, warping it and willing it, in the forlorn hope that one day they might hate as much as you do.

To say that you politicised a tragedy is true in fact but not in spirit. You did more than that. You violated the memories and the dignity of dead children in the most flagrant breach of that moral code which you so hollowly profess to uphold.

Print this, you cowards.


Nathan Gower

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