Mail Editors should follow your lead

Dear Sir,

As editor of the Congleton Chronicle, you rightly state that it is your policy to follow the requirements of I.P.S.O. (Independent Press Standards

Organisation) requiring you to take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information.

What a pity that the editors of some of our national newspapers woefully fail to follow your example.

In my opinion one of the worst offenders for poor journalism is the Daily Mail.

Wikipedia editors rarely put a blanket ban on a publication but in 2017 they voted to ban the Daily Mail as a source for their website because of the Daily Mail's "reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism and flat-out fabrication".

One recent example of the Daily Mail's shoddy journalism was its article on 27th July, 2018 titled "Powder Keg Paris". This story was about 300,000 illegal immigrants living in the French suburb of Saint-Denis with a state of a lawless "no-go zone" and inhabitants unable to sell their properties.

One French Muslim, Marwan Muhammad, dissected this story demolishing it completely including pointing out that in 2014 the total population of the suburb of Saint-Denis was 110,733 so how on earth could there be 300,000 illegal immigrants ? Foreign journalists applauded Marwan Muhammad's quick fire fact checking and shared their own pictures of Saint-Denis revealing it to be a neighbourhood indistinguable from many of Paris' other suburbs.

I fully agree with Marwan Muhammad when he wrote "We too in France have tabloids who couldn't care less about the truth, but I have to say you're (meaning the Daily Mail) in a league of your own".

This story is indicative of the drip-drip negative and sometimes false stories generated by some of the irresponsible press and sadly has been a significant factor for this country's negativity about immigration when in fact the truth of the matter is that immigration on the whole has been a positive benefit to the U.K.. A study by University College, London in 2016 found that immigrants who arrived from the E.U. after 2000 contributed £ 1.34 to the U.K. economy for every £ 1 they took out.

Given the Daily Mail is such an irresponsible newspaper, might I suggest that local businesses who provide a complimentary copy of the Daily Mail for their customers replace it with the more reputable Congleton Chronicle. By making this change, not only would their customers benefit from more responsible journalism but the businesses replacing the Daily Mail with the Congleton Chronicle would be helping to support the local economy as well as saving themselves a significant sum of money.

Yours faithfully,

Robert Douglas,

2 Hollycroft

Congleton CW12 4SH.