A May 8 NewsBusters post by Tim Graham cites not one but two articles in the British newspaper the Daily Mail. To which we ask: Why is Graham so into British newspapers?
Perhaps because British papers have a little lower standard of accuracy than American papers do, and thus, are a convenient way for the American right to attack a Democratic president. This happened during the 1990s, when conservative British papers were used a way to legitimize attacks on Clinton, since they filtered from there into right-wing American papers. This phenomenon is happening all over again with the Obama adminstration, as Media Matters has documented.
While Graham is not citing any Obama-bashing stories from his paper of choice, the Daily Mail, in his post — his main goal is to take a whack at MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski — the Mail has a decidedly checkered record of accuracy. It has promoted the idea that Obama has had brain surgery, pushed a discredited story about a purported Sarah Palin stalker, and touted birtherism. Most recently, it was duped into running what it claimed was a picture of the corpse of Osama bin Laden. Given that the main focus of the Daily Mail appears to be celebrity gossip — it dominates the front page of its website — it’s no wonder that the standards are lower.
Just because the British have low journalistic standards doesn’t mean Americans must as well. Graham might do well to remember that.