"Well, I hate to tell you this, but my mother and father both read the Daily Mail when I was growing up. Neither of them were racist, facist, bigotted or non-accepting. It wasn't 'filled' with hate stories, as I recall."

Well, if it wasn't then, it certainly is now. But you've told us on several occasions that your dad fought in the war, Lizzie. Maybe he wasn't aware of the Daily Mail's fascist past...?

"In early 1934, Rothermere and the Mail were sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists[6]. Rothermere wrote an article, "Hurrah for the Blackshirts", in January 1934, in which he praised Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine"[7], though after the violence of the 1934 Olympia meeting involving the BUF, the Mail withdrew its support for Mosley.

Rothermere was a friend and supporter of both Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, which influenced the Mail's political stance towards them up to 1939. During this period, it was the only British newspaper consistently to support the German Nazi Party.[8][9] Rothermere visited and corresponded with Hitler on many occasions. On 1 October 1938, Rothermere sent Hitler a telegram in support of Germany's invasion of the Sudetenland, and expressing the hope that 'Adolf the Great' would become a popular figure in Britain.

In 1937, the Mail's chief war correspondent, George Ward Price, to whom Mussolini once personally wrote in support of him and the newspaper, published a book, I Know These Dictators, in defence of Hitler and Mussolini. Evelyn Waugh was sent as a reporter for the Mail to cover the anticipated Italian invasion of Ethiopia.

Rothermere and the Mail supported Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, particularly during the events leading up to the Munich Agreement. However, after the Nazi invasion of Prague in 1939, the Mail changed position and urged Chamberlain to prepare for war, not least, perhaps, because on account of its stance it had been threatened with closure by the British Government.[citation needed]

In 2001 at the 27th G8 Summit held in Genoa, Italy; 93 peaceful anti-globalisation protesters were brutally beaten by the Italian police, falsely imprisoned and made to chant fascist slogans. Posing as a British Embassy official, a woman from the Daily Mail took pictures of some of the prisoners including journalist Mark Covell. The next day the Daily Mail ran a front page story including an entirely false report describing Covell as having helped mastermind the riots. It took 4 years for the newspaper to apologise and pay Covell damages for invasion of privacy.[2]

The paper continues to be referred to on occasion by critics as the Daily Heil, referring to its right-wing stance and its past support for Mosley.[10]"


Re the Diane Appleyard e-mail - it's real. Roy Greenslade even commented in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2008/feb/19/howthedailymailhuntsfori