Mail article 'set a bad example'
The headteacher of a leading private school has added his voice to the row over the Daily Mail's attack on Labour leader Ed Miliband's late father.
Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington College, said the article in last Saturday's edition of the newspaper, which accused Marxist academic Ralph Miliband of "hating Britain", set a bad example to children.
He told the Observer: "If the Mail speaks for Britain, it is not a Britain I want to be part of."
Referring to the original piece, which had the headline "The man who hated Britain", Mr Seldon said: "It sets a very bad example to young people to belittle someone who is dead. I think it is nasty, it lacks taste and decency, and I worry about antisemitism.
"Everything that I value and try to get across to young people here, this seems to cut across. It is antithetical to everything I try to teach our pupils.
"The constant trashing of people for the sake of selling newspapers is demeaning and destructive of trust."
The Bishop of Bradford, the Right Rev Nick Baines, also told the Observer he thought the Daily Mail was "corrupt and dangerous".
He said: "It is not a matter of taste. It is a matter of the corruption of civic life and the public discourse to do what the Mail did with Miliband."
Mr Miliband has claimed the attack on his father, and the subsequent gatecrashing of a private memorial service for his uncle by sister title the Mail on Sunday, are symptomatic of the culture at the titles.
He was given the right to reply to the Daily Mail's essay on his father, who died in 1994, but the newspaper accompanied his piece on Tuesday with an editorial accusing the left-wing thinker of leaving an "evil legacy".
Viscount Rothermere, chairman of the company which owns the newspapers, has apologised after a Mail on Sunday reporter turned up uninvited to an event commemorating Mr Miliband's uncle.
But in Lord Rothermere's reply to a letter from Mr Miliband he said he did not believe the incident reflected the culture and practices of the Daily Mail or Mail on Sunday.
Mail on Sunday reporter Geordie Greig has also apologised to Mr Miliband after a reporter attended a memorial service for his late uncle Professor Harry Keen, being held on the 29th floor of Guy's Hospital in central London.
Mr Greig apologised unreservedly and said that two journalists on his paper had been suspended pending a full investigation into what he said was "a terrible lapse of judgment".
