Ed Miliband calls for owner of Daily Mail to launch inquiry into 'culture' of his papers

 
Ed Miliband and Lord Rothermere
Getty / Rex
4 October 2013

Ed Miliband today took his battle against the Daily Mail to its owner and demanded an inquiry into the “culture and practices” of the newspaper group.

He wrote to Lord Rothermere, the chairman of Daily Mail and General Trust, after a reporter from the Mail on Sunday attended a memorial service to his late uncle.

“Sending a reporter to my late uncle’s memorial crosses a line of common decency,” the Labour leader wrote to Lord Rothermere. “I believe it a symptom of the culture and practices of both the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday.”

The incident comes days after the Daily Mail ran an article about Mr Miliband’s late father headlined: “The Man Who Hated Britain.”

The editor of the Mail on Sunday, Geordie Greig, phoned Mr Miliband immediately on learning about the memorial service and issued a fulsome apology for “this deplorable intrusion”. Mr Greig suspended two journalists and began a full investigation.

He said: “I unreservedly apologise ... The reporter was sent without my knowledge; it was a decision which was wrong.” He said Lord Rothermere would reply to Mr Miliband’s letter.

Mr Miliband said his family “feel understandably appalled and shocked” after the service held at Guy’s Hospital for Professor Harry Keen.

Labour sources said after the service ended that Professor Keen’s daughter was approached by a woman who shook her hand and offered condolences, before introducing herself as a reporter.

The journalist asked whether the daughter wished to comment on the Daily Mail article about Mr Miliband, a Marxist writer, and was told “no comment”. After asking a second time, the reporter left.

Writing to Lord Rothermere, the Labour leader urged: “You should conduct your own swift investigation into who was responsible at a senior level for this latest episode and also who is responsible for the culture and practices of these newspapers which jar so badly with the values of your readers.”

Nick Clegg today backed Mr Miliband, accusing the Daily Mail of “overflowing with bile” about modern Britain. The Deputy Prime Minister told LBC listeners: “They don’t like working mothers, they don’t like the BBC, they don’t like members of the royal family, they don’t like teachers, they don’t like the English football team — the list goes on. Talk about kettles and pots.

“It seems to me that if anyone excels in denigrating and often vilifying a lot about modern Britain, it’s the Daily Mail.”

Labour MP John Mann, who chairs an all-party Parliamentary Group Against anti-Semitism, tweeted that the article had been a “classical age-old anti-Semitic smear about disloyal Jews”.

A source at the Mail said: “This was purely about politics and Ed Miliband’s anti-freemarket views. We find any suggestion of anti-Semitism in what is a purely political debate to be absolutely spurious.”

Both the author of the article, Geoffrey Levy, and the paper’s deputy editor, Jon Steafel, are Jewish.

Daily Mail columnist Stephen Glover accused the Labour leader of staging a “show of calculated hysteria” for political reasons, saying he “realised that his diatribes against this paper would go down well with the party faithful, and possibly convince the wider electorate that he was stronger and more determined than they had thought”.

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