Clare Balding not upset by Daily Mail’s Liz Jones
The Daily Mail is many things; most we can’t list for legal reasons. But it seems today’s attempt at making telly personality Clare Balding cry hasn’t worked, and has instead seen fans of the presenter take to tweeting their support.
Reporter Liz Jones, bitter from having an interview request rejected by Balding, decided to take to her column to dish out some ‘honest’ home truths. Only, it’s not pointing out any obvious flaws with the presenter. It was a typical Mail-style character assassination for no reason.
While reporters often take to task personalities for one reason or another, it only really works if there is a reason. In this incident there was no reason, only a reporter having a strop because of her denial of access to Balding who is one of the new faces to Channel 4 Racing as well as hosting BBC One’s entertainment series Britain’s Brightest (pictured).
The headline was the first attempt at an insult, ‘You need more to be a TV role model than bad clothes, Clare’. With the article itself wondering why Balding doesn’t criticise the use of the whip by jockeys, or collapse in tears and rage when yet another horse has died after breaking its neck during a race.
For here Jones clearly believes presenters should have a view? And a view while broadcasting on air, so they’re not neutral? Does Jones therefore also think every time Hew Edwards announces a soldier’s death he should cry and pass a view on the situation? This is the same paper that would jump on the beeb for being bias in a broadcast…
The article stems from Baldings recent win at the Women in Film and Television Award where she was recognised for her presenting on BBC Sport’s London Games and Channel 4’s Paralympics coverage.
But it isn’t just the lack of forthright views not being thrust in viewers faces Jones takes issue with. She also makes note of the “cheap hat and shoes” Balding apparently wears and notes her nearest telly rival is – indirectly suggested a much more attractive and glamorous – Gabby Logan.
Liz also ironically notes Baldings apparent “sense of superiority” which is amusing coming from a newspaper which is full of misplaced superiority.
“I don’t dislike Balding because of her sexuality” Jones says in the paper, adding she isn’t against her because “of her looks or her bad dress sense. I don’t like her because she stands on the turf at Aintree or Goodwood in her cheap hat and shoes, wielding her microphone, and she does not criticise the use of the whip by jockeys, or collapse in tears and rage when yet another horse has broken its neck.
“I do not care when she was born or who she shops at DFS with – I dislike her because she promotes, without question, a sport that is intrinsically barbaric.” Liz Jones stated.
However after much support for Clare surfaced on Twitter earlier today, the sports presenter, tweeted:
“Please don’t turn today into a Liz Jones hatefest. I’m not upset at all. She has merely justified my choice not to be interviewed by her”
While Liz Jones may shop at Prada, money cannot buy her such sophistication in diplomacy.
[Written by Martha Kirkpatrick, Source: Daily Mail/Twitter]
Liz Jones is widely disliked, even by Mail readers, her target audience. When she wrote a recent sob piece on why she was all alone in January, the reader-response was not sympathetic
Dear Liz
Thank you for once again bringing the subject of animal welfare to the forefront In your recent article.
I worked or rather endured twenty two years as a welfare officer for a local council in Hampshire and saw, day by day, man’s inhumanity. Ms Balding’s high profile could be of much benefit if she would speak up and condemn the inappropriate use of aversives in the racing world. Just as race horses endure constant ill treatment, so to do greyhounds that are used and abused on a daily basis in the name of sport – we know it better as money making. The Animal Welfare Act 2006 makes it an offence to deliberately cause suffering to any animal. It is an offence to kick, beat or terrify an animal. Why then does not Ms Balding condemn the use of the whip? If cruelty is the conscious and deliberate causation of pain why is it left to you ( a powerful) but nevertheless isolated voice, to rage against the plight of animals.
During my years in Animal welfare I achieved much that I considered well done i.e the rehoming of hundreds of abandoned dogs, the rehabilitation of huge numbers of traumatised animals, education in schools and the creation of a council subsidised spay/neuter scheme. However I also achieved as much, if not more satisfaction from the results of a seemingly much humbler goal when through The Animal Welfare Act I was able to serve improvement notices on owners of rabbits whose cages did not allow sufficient height or space for their “pets” to exhibit natural behaviour, that is, amongst other behaviours, to sit up on their hind quarters to observe their surroundings, and do what rabbits do – jump, run, play. This provoked accusations of officialdom, but this is what the Act is for and it must be used to help both the high profile cases and those considered of less importance. Why should so called “pet” rabbits, most of them kept without companions, live their lives in tiny boxes? To return after a period of time to see these rabbits with space, light and an amount of freedom was a joy I shall not easily forget.
It is a natural behaviour for a horse or dog to run, but it becomes unnatural and an act of cruelty when this running is induced by the application of pain, or, as we know in the training of greyhounds, dubious methods and callous disposal of the less fleet. Why are not the trainers and jockeys served with similar improvement notices, as their crimes are equally, if not more inhumane.
Thank you Liz for what you do and for what you try to do.
PS. next year we will make sure you get a Christmas card from the creatures whose lives you have endeavoured to improve. One more to put on the piano.
Pam Macdonald
Clare has more style than anyone who works for the Daily Hate Mail ever will.