Friday, July 27, 2012

For a newspaper which regularly campaigns against the 'sexualisation of children' the Daily Mail shows a remarkable lack of concern about the content of its own online presence.

Mail Online is one of the most viewed news sites on the web.

And it intends to stay that way. Part of its strategy is to find popular gossip with lots of raunchy pictures. Never mind the danger of 'sexualising children' - after all that's only what other media outlets get up to.

But the Mail isn't just guilty of hypocrisy. It can't be trusted either.

Take a look at this story about the Olympics.

Amongst all the salacious details and imagery, you'll note the Mail is quite clear that Tom Daley and Tonia Couch are an item - they are 'dating' and they are 'a couple'

But if we now look back to an article in the Mail just days before, we find a rather different piece about Tom Daley. In this piece we learn that Tom and Tonia are nothing more than good friends, and they have been for several years.

The other interesting thing we discover is that Tonia - "a close confidant" of Tom's - was speculating on whether Mr Daley might be involved in a fledgling romance with an American diver called Kassidy Cook.

Clearly there's a lot of nonsense being written about Mr Daley. Could the reason be something to do with what we saw on the recent BBC One documentary - Tom Daley: Diving for Britain

Jamie Cunningham (Tom's agent): China is going to be a very important market for Tom over the next decade. Why? Well, because diving - its home really is in China. As we saw yesterday at the Worlds, they won all the gold medals. This is where, as a sport, it has the biggest impact on the planet. It's very important that we do the right media and commercial work here to help him over the next decade.

Tom at press conference webcast -

Tom Daley: Hi to all the QQ web users.

Questioner: OK, so who do you think is the most beautiful Chinese female athlete?

Tom thought Guo Jingjing was the most beautiful Chinese female athlete, but felt it right to add that she was "too old" for him.

Jamie Cunningham made no secret that he would like to manage Tom Daley's career over the next few years. So, who knows, we might soon be reading that Tom has found himself a girlfriend - and maybe even a Chinese girlfriend at that!

In other Daily Mail news, we see that Nick Grimshaw wasn't phased at all about being in the company of two topless women.

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