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13th Jun 2016

‘Daily Mail’ is being absolutely slated for not mentioning Orlando club massacre on its front page

The Queen's earrings trumped the murder of 50 gay people in a club

Her

The murder of over 50 people at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida early on Sunday morning has shocked and repulsed people worldwide.

As the scale of the horror became apparent throughout the day yesterday, it was clear that this was a massive news story, not just for the US but for the world.

US president Barack Obama described the mass murder as “an act of terror”, and pointedly “an act of hate” against LGBT people.

Sure enough, most of America’s and the world’s media reflected the magnitude of what had happened.

But there was one notable exception. Monday’s cover of the ‘Daily Mail’ makes absolutely no reference to the Orlando tragedy, instead splashing on a story about a “plot to let 1.5 million Turks into Britain”, along with coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday, plus an offer to get a pair of earrings like Her Majesty’s.

According to ‘The Guardian’, “the only recognition that [The Mail] had initially underplayed the story in its first edition was to move its spread forward from pages 10-11 to pages 4-5 by the second.”

There has been a scathing response to the Mail’s lack of front page coverage.

Writing in ‘The Guardian’, Roy Greenslade tries to unpack the “eccentric” decision to not splash on the biggest story of the day, concluding that: “It would appear to have been a mixture of its Eurosceptic fanaticism (the so-what speculative splash) plus commercial cynicism (a preordained determination to plug its readers’ offer: “pearl and white sapphire earrings, inspired by the stunning pearl earrings worn by the Queen… worth £35”).”