Freedom of speech? Not for luvvies (part 2)

Update Saturday 24 September:

Rod Liddle's brief Twitter timeline

SubScribe is not the only commentator to have picked up on this column by Rod Liddle. And the response seems to have struck a chord with him. 

He appears to have set up a Twitter account specifically to apologise for this piece, which he says was "crass, crude and poorly judged".

With only a handful of followers and one retweet, this apology (assuming the account is genuine) does not seem to have reached as wide an audience as it should.

His piece was spectacularly ill-judged - for the reasons spelled out below - but SubScribe applauds him for holding up his hand.

Have you got your notebooks out?
Yesterday, Christopher Hart of the Daily Mail produced a helpful list of "luvvies" who should not be allowed to express opinions.
SubScribe apologises for not noticing that Rod Liddle was simultaneously offering the same service in The Sun. So you may wish to add some names to your collection.
He, too, dismisses Amal Clooney (remember Hart called her a dubious poseuse celebrity lawyer), describing her as hugely irritating and smug.
Liddle's "posh luvvies and their tiresome wags" also include "moppety actress" Carey Mulligan, of whom he says "I'm ashamed you're British", but he saves the real bile for Emma Watson.
She gets a picture and section all to herself, which I reproduce in full:

Hermione Granger has been addressing the United Nations General Assembly. Nope, not kidding.
The actress Emma Watson, right, is a UN "Goodwill Ambassador". What's that, when it's at home? I haven't a clue.
Anyway, instead of telling them all the rules of quidditch or how to turn someone into a frog, she bored them all rigid with whining, leftie, PC crap.
Just like all actresses do if people are stupid enough to give them the chance.
Why do we indulge these luvvie slebs, most of whom know nowt? I don't object to them having views and expressing them. I just don't understand why we take them seriously.
I suppose they got Emma in because Angelina Jolie is a bit tied up with other stuff at the moment.

It may be old-fashioned, but it seems pretty basic journalism that if you don't know what you're writing about, you find out before you start typing.
SubScribe suspects that Mr Liddle knows exactly what a goodwill ambassador is - and that he is feigning ignorance for effect, rather as Donald Trump does when he says something preposterous, holds out his arms and adds: "I don't know."
But just in case, it may be worth explaining that goodwill ambassadors are appointed because they are famous. That's the point of them: to use their fame to get a message across that might otherwise be lost.
The first was Danny Kaye; perhaps the most famous (until Angelina Jolie) was Audrey Hepburn. She worked for years for UNICEF and oOthers who have followed in her footsteps include Tom Hiddleston, David Beckham, Lionel Messi, Simon Rattle and Queen Rania of Jordan. Pierre Cardin and Herbie Hancock spread the word for UNESCO; the singer Craig David flies the flag for the World Health Organisation in trying to  prevent the spread of TB.

As to "knowing nowt", Watson was talking about sexual assaults on campus and gender equality at university, subjects on which - as a fairly recent graduate - she is probably well-qualified to speak.

And "boring them all rigid"? Watson is regarded as one of the UN's most valuable goodwill ambassadors and other reports of the event described the audience as "rapt" as she described the HeForShe campaign that she leads on behalf of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. (Was Liddle aware of the title - if so, how did he resist poking fun at it?) The aim is to persuade men to fight for equality and supporters include heads of state and the Secretary-General of Nato. More than a million men have made "practical commitments".

Meanwhile, across at the Express, Leo McKinstrey was also having a go. He lifted the phrase "tasteless stunt" from Monday's Mail to describe the Parliament Square lifejacket demonstration, then added his own twist, calling the organisers "immigration fanatics". His "luvvie" list was shorter:   Juliet Stevenson,  "privileged left-wing actor" Carey Mulligan (squawking here, rather than whining), and "left-wing privately-educated" Benedict Cumberbatch.

These columnists are entitled to their view that a tougher approach to the boat people might dissuade others from risking their lives at the hands of unscrupulous traffickers. They may feel justified in taking Angela Merkel's words this week as an acknowledgement that her "open doors" approach to, migration was flawed.
They are further entitled to say what they think, to put their views to a wider public.
But why do they think they have the right to tell anyone else to shut up?

Freedom of speech anyone?

A reminder of the Sun's view on free speech - for itself and for "luvvies"

Should've asked what would be on the front

If you have a brand strong enough to warrant trade-marking the first word of your catchphrase, you presumably care a lot about it and where it is seen. That involves choosing carefully where and when to advertise.

Yesterday Specsavers took a Page 1 slot in the Daily Express and a further full page inside to promote a hearing aid offer. It was the company's first front-page ad in the paper - certainly for the past couple of years - and the promotion did not appear in any other national paper, so it seems to have been targeted at the Express's ageing readership.

But by last night, it was Specsavers rather than Express readers who were the target. The appearance of the ad under a story headlined "New migrant rush to Britain" prompted a Twitter challenge from the Stop Funding Hate campaign:

Hey @specsavers – can’t you see the harm this causes? #stopfundinghate pic.twitter.com/ilkZf2PyqQ

— Stop Funding Hate (@StopFundingHate) September 7, 2016

The post was widely retweeted and as the day wore on, Specsavers came under pressure to respond. To its credit, its social media team decided to engage.

@gdhpearson Specsavers advertises in a variety of media. We have no affiliation with/or prior knowledge of editorial that ads appear on.

— Specsavers (@Specsavers) September 7, 2016

That provoked a mini avalanche of tweets about its "short-sighted" approach, the need for it to "focus" and how there were "none so blind that will not see". Several people said they would take their custom elsewhere - but probably too few to make a difference to the company's profits.

Stop Funding Hate is trying to counter what it sees as excessive anti-foreigner press coverage by urging advertisers to abandon the Sun, Mail and Express - which it sees as the biggest "offenders".
Boycotts are a traditional and sometimes effective way to persuade organisations, and even countries, to change their outlooks and behaviour.
But they are also fraught: if you choose not to buy clothes made in Bangladesh sweatshops, you may hope to improve conditions for the workers, but you may also risk denying those same workers their only source of income.
And information is precious. Should pressure groups or advertisers be seeking to influence which stories are covered and how they are treated?

Take the Daily Mail, for example. A couple of weeks ago it published a list of products containing microbeads. It urged readers not to buy them in an effort to persuade the manufacturers to stop using the beads. It would not, however, take kindly to anyone who suggested boycotting its own product to persuade it to stop writing about immigration.
For a start, there is strong evidence that the microbeads damage wildlife (and they are to be banned), while there is only circumstantial evidence that newspaper coverage of immigration is damaging community relations.

SubScribe would contend that the level of hostility towards foreigners, particularly in the Express, is dangerous and that the papers should desist. Immigration may be the issue most frequently mentioned as causing concern by voters questioned for opinion polls, but it is not the only issue. People also worry about the economy, law and order, the health service, defence, poverty, housing and education, yet these issues do not get anywhere near the same space.  A little more variety in the news diet would be desirable.
But how can this be achieved without bringing accusations of censorship? Answers on a postcard please.

For the time being, let's consider the relationship between advertising and editorial.
Last year Peter Oborne loudly resigned from the Daily Telegraph because of its failure to cover the HSBC tax avoidance story that dominated the news agenda for a week. The paper rejected the suggestion that its news judgment had been informed by the fear of losing a high-spending advertiser, but its denials were not universally believed. It was generally accepted that it would be a Bad Thing if any paper were so influenced.

Yet isn't that exactly what campaigns such as Stop Funding Hate are advocating? That advertisers threaten to withdraw their custom to secure the suppression of what one title regards as news?
Not quite.

As SubScribe wrote at the time of the Oborne resignation, advertisers cannot stipulate what editorial appears on the pages alongside their material. But they can make an educated guess about the sorts of stories that will feature in any given part of the paper - and decide accordingly whether to take the space. M&S is unlikely to buy an ad for its "dine with wine" packages that might land on a story about famine in Africa. Conversations will take place.

Yesterday's Daily Express was the 51st to lead on migration out of 214 papers so far this year - so Specsavers should have known that there was a one in four chance that its advertisement would appear under such a story.
If the company was uncomfortable with the Express's attitude to foreigners and thought that one-in-four risk too great, it could have bought its ad on the basis that it would not run if migration featured on the same page.

That would not be unusual - advertisers are free to pull their custom if they feel that the surrounding material would harm their image. Disasters have a habit of leading to a flurry of ads being dropped - businesses don't like to seem insensitive - while others, detailing rescue efforts, pour in.

It will be interesting to see where, if at all, that Specsavers ad appears next and whether the company continues to spend with the Express after last night's Twitter chorus. It will doubtless be weighing up the good publicity that would probably follow a decision to take its ball home against the possibility of attracting a million potential hearing aid customers through the Express.

Richard Wilson, who is leading the Stop Funding Hate campaign, obviously hopes it will have a change of heart:

Specsavers’ brand association with the Daily Express just doesn’t sit right. But there’s also a chance now to do something good - something that will send a strong signal that the demonisation and scaremongering have to stop. We hope that Specsavers will now listen to their customers, do the right thing, and suspend their advertising with the Daily Express.

Wilson accepts that there may be questions about the potential threat to editorial freedom from his campaign, but adds

Editorial is already being influenced and skewed -  massively -  by the fact that writing disproportionately negative stories about migrants and other demonised groups is currently a good way of selling papers.
Advertisers benefit from these headlines because they mean they get a wider circulation for their messages. The overriding aim of our campaign is to try to cancel out that perverse market incentive. We aren't asking Specsavers to lean on the Express and pressure them to change their content. We're asking them to stop making us complicit.
We're asking them (and others) to walk away, and let the market do the rest.

It's a fine distinction. 

SubScribe was on the fence on this one. But this afternoon the Express published a story on its website headlined "Sore losers in the Remain camp will hijack the PROMS with thousands of EU flags". The language of the text was the usual fare: 

“Sore losers” who cannot get over the fact Britain voted to leave the European Union are planning to hijack the Last Night of the Proms – arguably the most British night of the year.

Bitter Remain supporters are raising money to buy thousands of EU flags so they can hand them out to Prom-goers in a bid to stir-up support for the Brussels bloc.

The sneering attitude is one thing, but in the middle of the piece is an online poll in which readers are invited to vote on whether the flags should be banned. As it happens, that poll has been hijacked, too. So that instead of the usual 98% backing the desired answer, it is currently showing 78% against,

It's hard to have qualms about censorship when the publication whose freedom you're inclined to protect wants to ban a flag.

So just in case you felt like joining in, here's the link to the poll:

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/708386/Brexit-Remain-sore-losers-hijack-BBC-Proms-music-EU-flag-British

The Press and immigration: reporting the news or fanning the flames of hatred?

For a couple of days last year, the cacophony subsided. For five years the noise had been growing in intensity to the point where it was almost unbearable. Then a photograph of a small boy's body and a Turkish soldier almost silenced it.
Suddenly the snarling was replaced with compassion. Suddenly the "cockroach" was a child.
Aylan (or Alan as he is styled now) Kurdi drowned with his brother and mother on September 2 last year after his Syrian father paid people traffickers to ferry them from Turkey to Kos. Their boat capsized within five minutes of setting sail and Aylan's body was washed up on the beach.
The next day the Independent ran a photograph of the child's body on the shore. Others used the picture of the soldier carrying him up the beach. Newspapers not known for their sympathy for African refugees or their dangerous voyages across the Mediterranean demanded action.

The Sun September 3, 4,5

The Sun launched an appeal and within two days was hailing its readers as heroes for raising £350,000 to help children like Aylan; families put up their hands to say they would offer foster homes to the young refugees. David Cameron, who two days earlier had said that Europe's migration crisis would not be solved "by taking more and more refugees", apparently promised to admit thousands, prompting headlines such as "Britain opens its arms to refugees". Fifteen, twenty thousand people would be admitted to Britain, foreign aid money would be diverted to help asylum seekers, "Refugees welcome" banners appeared across the country.

But then there was a new season of Strictly and X Factor and another twist in the VIP child abuse inquiry saga - and the tabloids lost interest. 

By the end of the following week, Cameron had ordered a drone to kill a pair of Britons fighting as jihadis in Syria, the Queen had become the country's longest reigning monarch and Paula Radcliffe had been accused (falsely) of being a drugs cheat. Who had time for the boat people now?

Autumn was here, the political machine was cranking up after the summer break and for the newspapers it was time to return to the usual news mix. And, as far as migrants/refugees/asylum seekers were concerned, to return to the usual mix of hand-wringing and hostility.

Daily Mirror September 3, 4 and 14

The Daily Mirror, the one paper that has shunned front-page stories about migration, broke step for three days to cover the Kurdi story and the deaths of four more refugee babies two weeks later.  It had not led on any aspect of migration in the previous eight months and has not returned to it since.

The Daily Express, the paper that has been most vociferous in its rejection of immigrants in any circumstances, did not break step. It did not publish the Aylan photograph either on its front or inside, but instead spent a couple of days berating the EU for the human catastrophe unfolding on its borders before resuming normal service with a diabetes breakthrough.

Daily Express, September 3,4 and 5 last year

As the rest of Fleet Street finally recognised that the "swarm" of refugees was actually a collection of individuals with individual stories, Leo McKinstry kept his eyes focused on the issues that mattered: the trains running on time.

As the immigration crisis deepens, a mood of anarchy is descending across Europe. Our once well-ordered civilisation is sliding towards chaos in the face of the unprecedented, colossal influx of foreign arrivals. The signs of dislocation are all around us.Only yesterday the Eurostar service from Paris to London suffered massive delays because of a major security alert sparked by migrants climbing on to tracks and trains.

Against the Mirror's three migration splashes last year and this, the Express has managed 90.

Promises were easy to make the day after that photograph appeared

The fifteen or twenty thousand have not, of course, reached our shores. And by April this year Cameron was denying entry to three thousand unaccompanied children on the grounds that they were already "safe" in Europe. 

For this he was taken to task by the Daily Mail, which has the sophistication to differentiate between the vulnerable and those it deems to be unworthy, even if its readers haven't. It also has the chutzpah to take credit where it may not be due and so when Cameron did an about-turn, the paper that vilifies economic migrants and foreign nurses hailed its "victory for compassion". 

Ever watchful for hypocrisy in others, the Mail acknowledged that it was "robust" in its opposition to mass migration and took a quick dig at the "liberal elite" who enjoy the services of cheap plumbers, nannies and cleaners, as it tried to square the circle of its demand that children who may be uncomfortable but who were not in danger should be allowed into the country while those who might contribute to the economy should not.

The three thousand haven't got here either. And what hope is there for them doing so when 178 children with an absolute legal right to come to Britain - because they are alone in Europe and have family here - can't cross the red tape?

If it's business as usual for the Press, politicians are just as recalcitrant.

The Sun pages 1, 2 and 5 on August 31

It is not only the Mail that can differentiate between "good" and "undesirable" migrants. Last Saturday, Arkadiusz Jozwik was kicked to death by a gang of teenagers in a small shopping arcade in Harlow, Essex, apparently because he was speaking Polish. The crime was shocking and the Sun was one of only two national papers to recognise its newsworthiness. It splashed on the story - and then, without a hint of irony or self-awareness, published a set of statistics on page 2 about hundreds of thousands of "hidden" EU migrants.
So on page 1, the paper mourns a solid family man who came to Britain thanks to his homeland's membership of the EU, and on the very next page decries the fact that anyone should be able to enter the country on those terms.

Oh yes, and a little further back there was a spread that likened the Calais Jungle to a festival site, describing a "booming micro-economy" with shops, restaurants, churches, mosques, two musical halls, a nightclub and a boxing gym. An accompanying single says that one "illegal" is stopped every hour in the UK.

The Sun pages 8-9 on the day it reported the murder of Arkadiusz Jozwik

The paper might rightly argue that once here, anyone should be safe from murderous gangs, but might it not also pause to consider whether the rhetoric coming from Fleet Street is inflaming the situation?

Only a few days earlier, the paper's first instinct on learning that five young men had been drowned on Camber Sands was to ask if they were illegal immigrants - on the basis that they were not white and had been wearing shorts. They turned out to be a group of friends on a day trip from London.

The Leave campaign in the EU referendum and its newspaper supporters made great play of immigration and of how leaving the community would give Britain back control of its borders - and there has been strong evidence of a rise in racist or "hate" crimes since the vote in June.
A certain section of our society appears to have believed that the moment the votes had been counted, all foreigners would be put on the next boat and that any who remained were fair game. It is frightening.
Going through the Sun's coverage of the issue so far this year, SubScribe had collated 120 almost entirely negative news reports and opinion pieces when this one from June 28 turned up:

This spread, from June 28, was The Sun's 121st "migrant" story of the year

The Mail and the Sun may be able to tell the difference between refugees from war zones and Romanian car-washers, but how often do they bother - and can their readers? And why be so nasty about anyone wherever they come from?

People are, sadly, mugged at cashpoints all over the country every day, but if the perpetrator is a Romanian,  it's national news. And if the crime is more serious - rape or murder - it's worth a page lead at least.

For the Daily Express, all foreigners are a problem and everything is Europe's fault. Since the Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010, the paper has splashed on migration issues on 179 occasions - including today - with a marked acceleration since the run-up to January 2014, when Romanians and Bulgarians were given full access to the UK. And that's not taking into account all the puffs at the top of the page when advice on living longer or rising house prices take centre stage.

Why? The paper has yet to respond to SubScribe's inquiries, but it may be supposed that if one were forthcoming, the answer would be "because it is what most concerns readers". 

In that it would have corroboration from Ipsos-Mori's monthly "issues" polls. Since that 2010 election, immigration has regularly emerged as the subject most frequently mentioned by voters. Fair enough, but another such topic is the health service and yet - miracle cures apart - the state of the NHS has bothered the Express's splash headline writers on only a handful of occasions over the past six years.
[The Mail, which - with 122 - comes second to the Express on the number of migration splashes since May 2010, is constantly on the case of the NHS, GPs and junior doctors.]

But do these papers reflect or feed public fears about immigration?

SubScribe has been monitoring front pages for some years and it's actually quite hard to determine what should be included in these "migration" charts and the composites @gameoldgirl routinely posts on Twitter.
There's a lot of complaining about the proportion of the national budget spent on foreign aid (0.3%), how it should be diverted and the dodgy places that it is sent to (with some justification). These sorts of stories have been excluded.
So, too, have been stories about benefits going abroad to expats, those about Muslims who may not have integrated into UK society quite as the Mail or Express might wish, and all terror-related splashes.
It should also be pointed out that the "heavies" - the Telegraph in particular - are perhaps under-represented, since they often have immigration stories on their fronts, but these are only included on the #chartofshame if they are the lead to the paper.

That still leaves rather a lot.

As mentioned before, the Mirror does not lead on migration. The Sun and Star see footballers and reality TV stars as better sellers, but are generally hostile. The Telegraph is not quite as fevered as the white-top tabloids, but shares their outlook. The Guardian, i and Independent are all generally sympathetic, while the Times tries to steer a middle course.

The chart above relates to print editions, since the papers are collated on the basis that they are what people see in the supermarkets and on television, and so have a greater impact than their circulations alone might imply.
The Independent figure therefore runs only to the end of March, when it ceased publishing in print. Since then, it has continued to produce and share "front pages" of its digital edition and nine of these were devoted to immigration - most of them neutral or sympathetic.

The same cannot be said of the Express, Mail or Sun. And there is a groundswell of opinion that something needs to happen to stop this dangerous drip-feed of negative headlines.

How can that be achieved?

My tweets are widely shared and common responses are "don't buy that rag" or "it should be shut down". Well, it's not a good idea to shut down a newspaper just because you disagree with it - and 60 million people don't buy any of those three papers, so "not buying" doesn't seem to be having any effect at the moment. 

Now at least two groups are mobilising to try to affect change.

CitizensUK is an organisation that seeks to help to settle immigrants into the community and it is particularly concerned about Britain's slowness in helping refugees and about the recent rise in "hate" crime.

Yesterday it organised a "memorial" service for Aylan Kurdi outside the Home Office, urging politicians and officials to act speedily to admit those 178 children who have an absolute right to be here and a further 209 who could come under Alf Dubs's amendment to the immigration bill. That seeks to help the most vulnerable, who may not have relatives in the UK, but have "valid claims for protection".  Next week the group will host a "Refugees welcome" summit in Birmingham to assess progress since last year and consider further action. 

The Aylan memorial outside the Home Office. Photo: Ana Ferreira

In the meantime, some of its members are looking at ideas to try to persuade newspapers to tone down their language, including an approach to the Press regulator Ipso.

SubScribe asked Ipso if it was comfortable with coverage as it stood and whether there was any way it could tackle the cumulative effect of stories that might not individually contravene the editors' code. Its director of external affairs Niall Duffy confirmed that the regulator considered stories on a case-by-case basis, but pointed out that it did have the power to instigate an investigation of its own without any complaint if it considered the issue serious enough. It did, indeed, do exactly that with the Brooks Newmark sting a couple of years back. SubScribe is still awaiting a reply to the question of whether the immigration coverage might qualify.

The signs are not auspicious, however, given the ruling - in the face of an intervention from the UN high commissioner for human rights -  that Katie Hopkins's notorious "cockroach" column did not breach its guidelines on discrimination.

There are those who believe that Ipso cannot be an effective regulator because it is still in the pay of the big newspaper publishers. The putative rival regulator, Impress, recently started consultation on its own draft code of conduct. 

Policy and complaints officer Brigit Morris was hopeful that the end product would be strong enough to tackle such drip effects, describing them as a very important and challenging area for regulation. Morris said that the code committee had considered the issue and that Impress's discrimination provision set a high bar for publishers, including an obligation not to incite hatred against a group.

While the draft code does not specifically address cumulative discrimination as this is very difficult to enforce in a regulatory sense, Impress believes that the draft provision would generate a better culture at news publications when it comes to running stories that discriminate against individuals or groups on the basis of their protected characteristics

She added, however, that - like Ipso - complaints could not be advanced based on a collection of articles, but that the Impress board - again like Ipso - would have the power to start its own investigations in serious circumstances "where there is evidence of systematic wrongdoing".
In other words, it's pretty much the same - and no national publisher has yet signed up to be regulated by this organisation.
Not encouraging.

Another approach is to try to convince advertisers not to spend with newspapers that paint a relentlessly negative portrait of foreign nationals coming to our country or in need of our support. Step forward Richard Wilson.

Sixteen years ago, Wilson's elder sister was among the victims of a massacre in Burundi. What happened next coloured his view of life and the Press. A Daily Mail reporter approached his mother - who had taught English to refugees from a slew of conflicts - to tell her story. She gently showed him the door, explaining that she had lost count of the number of newspaper articles - many from the Mail - that she had seen portraying refugees as liars, cheats, frauds, “bogus” people.
 

My mother had seen the effect of these stories on government policy, and she’d seen the effect of those increasingly harsh policies on her students. She would feel she was betraying them now if she had anything to do with the Daily Mail... Just three days after suffering one of the worst blows of her life, faced with a representative of an organisation that she and most of her colleagues regarded as something close to “hate media”, she’d shown a calmness and dignity that I found quite extraordinary.

When Wilson saw Katie Hopkins's column in the Sun describing Mediterranean boat people as cockroaches, it struck a chord. It was the very simile used by "hate radio" stations to explain the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. A year later, the tide of anti-immigration coverage before the referendum spurred him to set up a Facebook page called Stop Funding Hate and a petition aimed at persuading Virgin to stop advertising in the Express, Mail and Sun. A big target, but a well-chosen one, since Branson himself had advocated the power of petitions in his own blog a few years back.
Virgin is still advertising with the target tabloids, but the Facebook page has had more than five million views, attracted 78,000 "likes" and the petition has more than 41,000 signatures.
Wilson says:

Our aim is to shift the balance of incentives so that running hate campaigns costs newspapers more money through lost advertising than it makes them in sales.
We hope that this will contribute to a long-term improvement in the quality and tone of Sun, Mail and Express coverage about the groups that they have previously demonised.
I hope that we can also contribute to a wider debate about the extent of demonisation and hate speech across the board. It clearly isn't just about the right-wing press. It also seems endemic in left wing discourse and everywhere in between. Somehow describing human beings as "vermin", "traitors", "cockroaches" and "monsters" seems to have become normalised. And these words have consequences.

So what's the strategy?

  

We are building a team of volunteers to carry out more in-depth research - to identify and track advertisers in the Sun, Express and Daily Mail more systematically - especially where there seems to be a strong clash with the company's brand values and/or with the values of the advertiser's target customer base. This research will then inform the development of the campaign as we start to widen it out.
We've already found some quite surprising cases - for example this week Waitrose, Iceland and M&S were all running adverts in the Daily Express. What's striking is that companies that might shy away from supporting other types of socially harmful activity don't yet seem to make the connection when it comes to media hate campaigns. We're hoping that strong consumer pressure might start to change this. Obviously the first company that does pull their advertising will be showing that they're ahead of the curve in responding to the deep public concern around this issue, so there are some positive incentives too.

It'll be a difficult trick to pull off. The whole essence of an independent Press is that it shouldn't be influenced by people with power or money in their pockets, so do we really want advertisers dictating or censoring editorial content? [SubScribe admits it supports Stop Funding Hate's ambition, but is hesitating about signing its petition for this very reason.] Wilson recognises the delicate balance he must achieve with his campaign, saying the objective is to modify behaviour, not to censor.
And is it not unreasonable for companies to decide that it's not good for their image to be associated with a particular brand or organisation? Look at what happened to Maria Sharapova's sponsorship deals after her failed drug test.
The extreme example of this is the closure of the News of the World when advertisers deserted after the Milly Dowler phone-hacking story. But if Rupert Murdoch hadn't actually wanted to close the NotW, he would have brazened it out.
The campaigners are taking on hugely powerful players who can be guaranteed to deploy their big guns if they feel their challengers are gaining traction. It's not surprising that both groups are turning their attention first to the Express rather than Dacre or Murdoch.

So, finally, what are these groups fighting?
Here are some of the composites, the stats, that SubScribe has collated over the past couple of years, the accumulation of venom and bile coming from an honourable trade that is supposed to hold authorities to account, to defend the oppressed and inform the people.  The language and mood are ugly.
The freedom of the Press is an essential element of democracy, but surely we need to find a mechanism that can both protect that and stop this:

Sometimes a story is so beguiling that it can be regurgitated several times over a few years. See this old blog post and look at the pictures below illustrating Express stories from 2010 and March this year (a follow-up to a Sun spread the day before). Doesn't the house and its interior look familiar?

The drip-feed effect

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

...and it's not just the splashes (of which more will follow next week). There are the puffs:

...and the columnists:

All of which send just one message:

Photograph: Getty Images

Further reading

The whitetops and immigration: the inside story of 2016

By the end of the year, our paid-for national newspapers had led on migration a total of 277 times, with more than half coming from the Mail and Express. This follow-up post looks at what they put on the inside pages.

Express does its utmost to keep readers alive

After the angst of the referendum and the relentless assault on migrants and refugees, it was something of a relief this morning to see an old favourite dominating the Daily Express front page.

An Oxford University study has concluded that people who take statins to lower their cholesterol may be at a "slightly increased risk" of developing diabetes.

This risk was, however, "greatly outweighed" by the benefits of statins in preventing heart attacks and stroke, according to lead researcher Dr Michael Holmes.

The hypochondriac Express has five big health concerns: dementia, diabetes, arthritis, heart disease and cancer. Statins straddle two of the them - helping to prevent one, while possibly causing another - so the paper is always interested in medical experts' (often contradictory) pronouncements on the drugs.

Today's is the 22nd statins splash from the Express and its Sunday sister since the start of 2014 - and third to say that the drugs cause diabetes. The Sunday is distinctly sceptical about the drugs and has produced ten of those front pages, not only linking them to diabetes, but also to Parkinson's, hundreds of deaths and even saying they can cause the very conditions they are designed to prevent. 

The Express is far more positive, hailing their capacity not only to help heart conditions, but also to combat dementia and cancer and prolong life. 

Confused? Who wouldn't be? No wonder GP surgeries are struggling to cope, their waiting rooms must be full of Express readers fretting about whether they should continue taking the drugs or give them up.

Or asking for any one of the new miracle cures the Express promises with such regularity. 

This morning's lead story, and the paper's return to its health-obsessed status quo after the battle of Europe, inspired a little audit of its medical coverage over the past two and a half years. SubScribe has looked only at causes, prevention and treatment, not at costs, policy or the impact on the health service. 

By far the biggest concern for the daily is dementia. Since January 2014, it has splashed on Alzheimer's, memory loss and related conditions 49 times. There have been lifestyle changes to prevent it, new tests to spot it, and new drugs on the way to fight it.

That, indeed, is the pattern for all the paper's pet conditions. Here are the 33 stories about diabetes over the same period (this time with a contribution from the Sunday - but only because of statins):

In third place, we have arthritis - with the Sunday offering one of the 26 pages.

And in joint fourth place, we have heart disease/stroke/high blood pressure (excluding statins stories) and cancer on 21 apiece:

The Sunday, as we have seen, is concerned about heart attacks, but apparently not about cancer:

So what does Dr Express advise readers who wish to avoid these dread diseases?

Well here's a quick rundown of "good" foods:

Chocolate, fatty foods, spicy foods, yoghurt, eggs, rhubarb, bananas, carrots, broccoli, tomatos, mushrooms, grapes, walnuts.

And those to avoid:

Junk food, red meat, bacon, chicken (sometimes).

Drinking wine, tea and coffee is good; drinking fruit juice and fizzy drinks is dangerous.

Whatever you eat, it's best if you don't have too much of it.

Almost anything can be made better by a walk in the sunshine or  some gardening - the vitamin D will help to lower your blood pressure and prevent diabetes, and the exercise will beat arthritis, help to ease back pain, counter diabetes and add years to your life. 

It's a good idea to keep your brain active, too. By going to work or doing puzzles, for example. 

And try to get a good night's sleep - but don't overdo it, because naps are bad for you and too much sleep might kill you. Be especially careful if you need sleeping pills.

Does any of this surprise you? Well it should - because the idea of eating healthy food in moderation and taking exercise is apparently sufficiently unusual for it to make the splash on 99 occasions in just over two and a half years. 

Here's the collection of wonder diets:

And here are the dangers:

Of course, the nirvana is to live forever - or at least long enough to enjoy your pension (which is constantly being threatened, but that's another story). There is apparently a pill on the way that will allow us to reach 120, though heaven knows who'd want to. 

Anyway, advice on achieving an extended lifespan, including various "easy steps" and "golden rules", has made the lead for the daily 36 times since January 2014 (the Sunday doesn't seem particularly concerned about longevity):

The Express has, as we know, an ageing readership, so its diseases of choice are unsurprising. But it is not averse to mentioning others when there are no breakthroughs in its preferred fields: it has reported on two cures for blindness (yes, only a certain form - but never let that spoil the heading), acknowledged the agony of back pain and migraine (twice each), promised a cure for the common cold and advised that bananas and a honeysuckle drink can fight flu. 

And, er, that's it, taking the grand total of medical splashes over the period to 216 - almost double the number on immigrants.

Some duplication was inevitable. First, a reminder of where we started:

Sometimes you can say exactly the same thing using completely different language (sunshine is also good for fighting diabetes):

And here's another example of expressing essentially the same message using different examples:

If you want to convey what is practically the same advice on consecutive days, try offering two sides of the same coin thus:

Sometimes deploying a different combative verb works (chocolate also helps you to live longer):

... or playing with nouns and adjectives:

All hail the multi-taskers:

But sometimes, there's no avoiding that absolute sense of deja vu:

In the course of these 200-plus stories,the Express papers reported on 10 breakthroughs, 20 cures, and 33 "new" treatments (including 15 pills, 8 drugs and 6 jabs),  six of which were "on the way". 

There were 37 ways to "beat" disease and 29 ways to "fight" it. They dealt with 17 risks and 5 dangers and sought to alleviate 4 agonies and  15 pains.

All in all, the papers - most especially the daily - are showing commendable dedication to keeping their declining readership alive.

So what else can one do but raise a glass of red wine and wish readers the very best of health.