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’”
A Dark & Curious Sausagefart
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Alex Mawgan
I’ve been reading LFF for a few months now, pretty interesting stuff generally, but am I right in thinking this “Media Watch” is just some chap reading the Daily Mail each day and then complaining about it? I hope it’s an unpaid intern or volunteer, I wouldn’t want someone’s money going towards such a vain hate-project. There seems to be an assumption that all Daily Mail readers are idiots who just need to be shown how silly they are being and they will suddenly convert to the Guardian – well I’d suggest that in fact they know it’s not the Encyclopaedia Britannica they’re reading, and they’re pretty happy with that. Live and let live 🙂
Ron Noname
I have owned an appliance repair business for approx 35 years.
Early on I found that the most dangerous thing about any appliance is the owner immediately putting the owner’s manual either in the trash or in a drawer to be forgotten and NEVER READ.
In all those years in the business, I have never ever been attacked by an appliance.
These same idiots are the ones who call about a problem and, when I get there, the appliance is functioning perfectly and they still ask, “Butt, can you fix it?” LMFAO
Jon Jones.
I hate the Mail and still read it everyday (online). But then I read almost all the papers daily (draw the line at the Expess/Sun) even uncluding some of the US papers.The weird thing is as a complete atheist I find one of the most balanced and sensationalist papers I read is the Christian Science Monitor. Go figure?
Jon Jones.
Nope. The Daily Mail and General Trust usually called the Daily Mail Group.