The Daily Mail, UK: seekers of the truth?

Are the Daily Mail seekers of or censors of the Truth? I am left to wonder after a recent attempt to comment on one of their stories, online.

You see, two British papers - at least - covered a story about a walking six month old baby. They made a really big story of it. Now, as regular readers of this blog will know, my son Ainan was walking at six months. So I tried to comment on these stories pointing this out and also pointing out that in many other ways my children were more precocious than the child covered (he hadn't started speaking yet, for instance), and yet, oddly, had been ignored by the media.

The Daily Telegraph published my comment. The Daily Mail did not. Now you may say perhaps they have not had time to publish it: well, it is now Wednesday and I tried to comment on Friday. The Daily Telegraph carried my comment eight hours later (they had gone to bed, so had to wait until morning). The Daily Mail has ignored my comment and failed to publish it despite asking on their page: "If you know of a more advanced baby let us know." Well, I let them know...but they didn't want to let any of their readers know. Now, why is this? Could it be because it puts their story into a bit of a shadow? Could it be that I wrote "Singapore" on the location entry...and that they wouldn't want to cover a "Singaporean" above a Brit - not knowing that I grew up in Britain? It is all a little disappointing. You see, I used to read the Daily Mail. I used to enjoy their moral sounding campaigns on many issues. How moral are they being now? Is it moral to censor a story that surpasses one already covered? What would a true journalist do in that circumstance? I would have thought that a real journalist, on hearing of a better story would not censor it, but would actually contact the person concerned and cover it. That is what journalism should be about. Clearly, that is not what the Daily Mail is about these days.

There are some very advanced babies in this world - but curiously, your national newspaper may do nothing to let you learn of them. Interesting isn't it?

I am not impressed.

(If you would like to read about Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and three months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, three, and Tiarnan, thirteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)