A regional daily has warned a national newspaper it is “not welcome” on its patch if it continues to “insult” women from its area.
The Liverpool Echo has published an open letter to the Daily Mail regarding what it sees as “negative coverage” of racegoers attending the annual Grand National meeting at Aintree, particularly on the traditional Ladies Day.
The Echo says that each year the Mail’s coverage of the festival is “intent on putting our girls down”, claiming the paper has “become renowned for published unflattering pictures of Liverpool ladies, who are just out having a good time.”
Addressing Mail journalists and photographers in the letter, Echo retail and leisure reporter Catherine Murphy declared “enough is enough”.
Racegoers at Aintree
Wrote Catherine: “Each year thousands of racegoers head to Aintree’s Grand National festival having spent weeks, if not months trying to find the perfect outfit. They are excited about the day – spending time with loved ones, letting their hair down, having fun and making memories.
“What they don’t deserve, is to end up splashed across your newspaper and website, having been caught at an unflattering angle in what is clearly nothing more than an attempt to embarrass them. Year after year this has happened, and while the sneering headlines might have been toned down, the sentiment is still there.
“Having attended Aintree for many years both as a racegoer and a journalist, I have seen thousands of well dressed ladies in beautiful outfits, who have taken the time to get the perfect look. Yet you don’t seem to want to publish pictures of these women. Unless you catch them – heaven forbid – looking a bit worse for wear.
“Instead, you repeatedly choose pictures of what you think are the ‘fashion fails’ or any embarrassing moment you can capture, to bait your Sidebar Of Shame keyboard warriors. I have seen and heard first hand the dread of ladies at Aintree as they walk in fear that they will do something embarrassing and end up on your website.”
Catherine went on: “Aintree’s Grand National festival is one of the biggest race meetings in the world and there is so much positive coverage you could give to the event. Instead you choose to insult, ridicule and put down the women of Liverpool.
“Every year, the Echo website is filled with galleries of racegoers looking their best, enjoying themselves and highlighting one of the elements our city is loved for – its humour.
“Frankly, we’re tired of the negative coverage – our girls deserve better. So, if you can’t let them enjoy themselves without making fun of them, you’re not welcome in Liverpool anymore.”
HTFP has approached the Mail for comment.
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Well done Catherine for speaking out. I see the Mail have gone right ahead and published a piece anyway…
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Mail is a nasty, sneering paper. I wonder if all its hacks are the same? Thank heavens most journos never felt the need or desire to work for it. Well done Echo.
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@paperboy – you are the one who is sneering. I was a “stringer” for it some years ago based in Brussels. It was one of the toughest papers I ever worked for – it expect ted several stories a day, not all of which it used, but it paid well for the lot of them. Can that be said about many other papers. It certainly toughened me up in fending off by those trying to adopt a soft approach to the reporting of the EU etc. And by all accounts it is probably the most successful compared with many others in terms of both circulation and financial results. Look at how the once mighty Mirror, for example, once of the best in Fleet Street has fallen down the ladder. The Mail is also still owned by the successors of the families who started it – whereas the others are mostly in the hands of distant conglomerates. Perhaps that is why people sneer at it because we hate success in this country.
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@paperboy again – No , not all the hacks on it are the same. And if I remember rightly plenty were and still are clamouring to work for it because they recognise a successful paper. I rarely had a problem in getting people to speak to me about a story I was working on. Yes – the news desk was relentless in pursuing a story. Whereas they could still be chasing me well into the evening to check facts the Express reporter was rarely troubled by his news desk after midday. Just compare the circulations – the Express was also once a mighty paper in terms of its readership and circulation. Can that be said about it today. You don’t come into journalism for a soft life.
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wordsmith. I never doubted that people work hard on the Mail. Or its ability to chase down a story. In fact I greatly admire the way the paper is put together. Its story construction and writing style is excellent, as is its sport.
It is its sneering, lecturing tone that depresses me. And plenty agree.
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@paperboy. I think we will have to agree to disagree about the “sneering” – I don’t see it like that. But then, perhaps, I maybe getting too long in the tooth !!! The point I was also trying to make is that it has somehow managed to fend off inroads from the conglomerates who now control too many papers and treat them as if they were no different from a branded tin of sardines as has happened, especially, in the regional press which is a pity.
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As the Liverpool Echo should well know, pictures of people doing stupid things get clicks and sell papers. Seeing as the Mail Online makes a good profit, maybe the Echo should follow suit and try harder. The women choose to roll around drunk in skimpy outfits in freezing temperatures and know full well there are photographers about. They love the attention.
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I’ve noticed more and more of these “opinion” stories filling up the pages of -websites. Easy clickbait copy is so much easier than real news. It’s not even an original opinion – the Echo churns this out every year.
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I don’t like the Daily Mail but I’ve just watched the humourless, unsmiling Ms Murphy on breakfast TV and failed to generate an ounce of sympathy for the drunken ladies she’s trying to defend.
And I’m worried that the Liverpool Echo may well be totally out of step with public opinion.
Just what will the editor do if there’s a really big outbreak of female drunken behaviour at the Grand National which millions watch on TV? Surely the Echo won’t simply ignore it? That’s close to censorship in my book.
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Let’s be honest, the DM clearly has a long-running problem when it comes to women, while a case could be made that some of their reporting has stirred racial hatred – Gina Miller must be their ultimate nightmare.
And don’t even get me started on the Mail’s treatment of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party in general, although a backlash against this possibly contributed to the surprisingly close result of the 2017 general election – an effect I expect will be magnified when we next go to the polls..
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Doesn’t the Mirror own the Liverpool Echo ???
Daily Mirror Online Headlines
Grand National’s wackiest outfits and weirdest moments from bare bums to strippers
https://www.mirror.co.uk/grand-nationals-wackiest-outfits-weirdest-14219891
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Dave S. Your comment that they love the attention, smacks of an old era that is long gone. It reminds me of 80’s assault victims who ‘asked for it’ because they dressed a certain way. I wonder how many of the 19 likes you got are women? I thought we had moved on.
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While I don’t particularly disagree, ironically few outlets have done more to damage Liverpool’s reputation than the Echo with its endless stream of gun/crime/gangster obsessed front pages (something it itself has tentatively acknowledged in the past). Likewise it’s clickbait web stories with such hard-hitting subjects as ‘do you call it ASDA or ‘The’ ASDA?’.
They’ve always played a bit on the ‘scousers against the world’ stuff and depicted themselves as the guardians of the city, but having done shifts there and known lots of people who worked there – going back decades – there were ironically never more than a handful of scousers actually working there, I always got the feeling they prided themselves on it. I know one guy got promoted to the newsroom from the free paper (the merseymart) specifically because they felt they didn’t have enough scousers in the news room.
Indeed, a former editor of mine actually laughed and said ‘you’ve got no chance of working there if you’re a scouser’. Whether that’s true or not I don’t know.
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Lydia – why do some people get offended by anything, believe it or not some women love the attention, point a camera in their direction as they’ll play up for the photographer. You’ll find lots of people at race meets may be dressed up, but are working class (or lower) and enjoy a good day out and drink a fair bit. The blokes maybe doing the same as the women, but they are all wearing dark suits which doesn’t make interesting pictures, unless they are fighting. Websites know what gets the clicks, which is why yesterdays coverage of Aintree was at the top of the Mail Online for a while as it was the most read story. I did click it to see what was used, but my wife looked at it before me, she laughs at it as well, freezing cold with women wearing virtually nothing.
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wordsmith. i agree. we should agree to disagree.
Agreed?
Apologies for the Brexit style.
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@paperboy. Agreed.
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