Is the Daily Mail trying to scare us to death?
From the newspaper that brought you ‘Poison in the kitchen…How tap water could damage your brain, blind or even kill you’:
“You can’t switch them off. They’re packed with inflammable insulation that can give off toxic gas. Meet the most dangerous appliance of all…
Could your fridge burn your house down?“
So yells the Daily Mail, which presumably starts with the headlines, then goes looking for supporting material.
It could be argued that an electric fireplace is a more ‘dangerous appliance’ than a fridge. Or a gas cooker.
In fact, the Mail can’t seem to make up its mind.
On June 14 the paper revealed ‘How your washing machine or dishwasher could set your house on fire’.
A month earlier, it was dishwashers again: ‘Do you have a danger dishwasher? Hundreds of thousands of fire risk appliances’.
In October it was ovens:
‘Is there a killer in your kitchen? Ovens linked to the gassing of ten people. Fridges and tumble dryers blamed for house fires.’
In 2010 the paper reported on
‘Killers in your kitchen: Gender-bending packaging, exploding floor cleaners and toasters more deadly than sharks‘.
In 2013 the Mail said ‘Millions of death-trap appliances are sitting in homes‘, while in 2014 it revealed, er, ‘Millions of dangerous electrical devices are lurking in homes‘.
Don’t you just hate it when electrical devices ‘lurk’?
Meanwhile, the Mail’s worthless health pages have warned that too much sleep can kill you, and asked important questions about sausages.
On and on it goes. As the Mail might put it,
Is the Daily Mail trying to scare us to death?
There may well be a problem with fridges bursting into flames, and journalism can be an essential tool in protecting people from dangerous products.
But this does not require that a newspaper try to frighten people or treat them like idiots.
Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
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25 Responses to “Daily Mail says fear your fridge – ‘the most dangerous appliance of all’”
Lacombe57 .
Let me guess…the Daily Mail is owned by Rupert Murdoch?
Cole
Oh come on. I don’t like Corbyn, but you can’t seriously suggest he’s some later day Stalin. A bit like saying Farage is a latter day Hitler (which he isn’t).
And there is clear continuity in the Mail’s attacks on Jewish immigration in the 1930s and the endless anti-immigrant bile it promotes today – with the same family in charge.
Giles Farthing
what a lovely nice person you must be
Giles Farthing
i was thinking more Marx
Giles Farthing
Well I for one am glad i live in a country where people have the right to write inane rubbish about fridges, something the left would no doubt like to ban. but answer me this, who is the bigger idiot? A journalist writing a non story about fridges to fill column inches or a lefty fool who reads a paper they hate just to pick on something and shout LOOK LOOK they said a thing about some stuff they are evil! and of all the stuff the mail writes, that’s what you find most objectionable. I think you should seek some mental health advice