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news
Evans Cycles logo 3x2Press Gazette calls on journalists to boycott Evans Cycles over Daily Mail boycott
The editor of the Press Gazette has called on journalists including Channel 4 newscaster Jon Snow to boycott Evans Cycles after the retailer’s announcement earlier this week that it was blacklisting advertising on the websites of the Daily Mail, Daily Express and The Sun.
Besides Snow – who also happens to be the president of the charity Cycling UK – Press Gazette editor Dominic Ponsford also named former London cycling commissioner Andrew Gilligan and the BBC broadcaster Jeremy Vine as being high-profile cyclists among the UK’s estimated 70,000 journalists.
“Today I urge this trio and all their cycling brethren in the news media to consider boycotting the UK’s leading bicycle retailer Evans Cycles,” he wrote.
“I for one will be taking my custom elsewhere the next time I need a replacement inner tube or high-vis top.”
Explaining why he was urging a boycott, Ponsford said: “The reason why is that Evans has (in my view) cast itself as an enemy of free speech by placing the Mail and Express titles and The Sun on a blacklist of advertisers who it will no longer spend money with.”
In a separate article published on the Press Gazette’s website, the Daily Mail accused Evans of a “blatant publicity stunt” over its decision to blacklist it.
Evans had made its decision in response to a request from the campaign group Stop Funding Hate after it emerged that adverts for the chain were appearing on their websites.
On Monday, the retailer tweeted: “We’ve now blacklisted any advertising placements on Daily Mail, Sun and Express. Should go through shortly. Happy to #Startspreadinglove!”
It added: “Needless to say, the content highlighted on these outlets go against our core values as a business. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.”
But a spokesperson for the Daily Mail told the Press Gazette that Evans does not advertise directly with it and that the adverts were generated automatically via a third party based on a person’s browsing history.
They added that a screenshot showing advertising from Evans on Mail Online appeared on an article from 15 years ago that had originally been published not by the Daily Mail, but the Mail on Sunday which it pointed out was a separate operation.
Those same points were made by Ponsford in his editorial, leading one commenter to suggest that it read as if it had been “written (or dictated) by senior management at Derry St,” the road in Kensington where the Daily Mail is based.
The Press Gazette editor said that the article in question – a comment piece by Peter Hitchens about Conservative MP Alan Duncan under the headline ‘I'm sorry Mr Duncan. if you're gay you are not a Tory’ as “admittedly fairly vile.”
Similarly, he chose to focus on the individual story appearing with an Evans advertisement on The Sun’s website – a comment piece by Rod Liddle – with Ponsford saying “It’s hardly extremist literature and difficult to understand why it has caused offence.”
He added: “It seems more likely that The Sun is being punished for past sins.”
Many people, including Stop Funding Hate’s almost 80,000 followers on Twitter, would see his – and the Daily Mail’s – focus on the individual story in question as rather missing the point.
To use an analogy from the print edition, which the Daily Mail says Evans does not advertise in, it would be like commenting on an advert appearing say in the sports pages without considering it in the wider context of the newspaper – or in this case, the website – as a whole.
While Ponsford may be talking his business elsewhere, the decision by Evans to blacklist the three outlets from its online advertising was warmly welcomed on social media this week by many past and present customers.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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55 comments
As a point of fact, the Daily Mail is actually quite a decent paper.
On more than one camping trip I've found it preferable to the small shiny squares that farmers's are almost universally inclined to supply in the bog block.
Tried to use it for that purpose myself but it turns out there was too much shit in it already.
Win/win - saves on chamois butter...
IMG_1678.JPG
The mail is a nasty paper. I'm happy that Evans don't give them any cash.
Freedom of speech ends where hate, prejudice and manipulation begins.
Exactly, the mainstream Anglo-American view seems to promote a concept of freedom that results in a free-for-all; on the roads, in the marketplace, and in the press, and which is very obviously the "freedom" to oppress others.
The Mail walks a very fine line promoting intolerance, prejudice, and bigotry which might not be classified objectively as "hate" but is clearly intended to fuel inequality and oppression.
Yep. And the engine for all of that is free-market capitalism. Except we will never have a free market.
Even in the 'free world' markets will always be controlled and regulated (or rigged and hamstrung, depending on your viewpoint), by regulators that are essentially answerable to incompetent gobshites who pontificate over what the likes of the Mail tell them to, or - worse - in the pay of lobbyists.
I don't think Mr Ponsford actually understands the concept of Free Speech - I was going to suggest that's strange for a journalist, but actually it's not at all, because a lot of journalists seem to think Free Speech means they must be provided with a platform for their views. Certainly there is nothing inherently anti Free Speech in deciding not to support certain viewpoints by not giving money to the platform which promotes them - Evans hasn't made any attempt to shut down any of those newspapers, it's simply no longer associating itself with them in any way. Even if enough advertisers follow a similar course that the newspapers providing a platform for such views are forced to shut down (sadly I doubt that is likely to happen), that still doesn't threaten Free Speech - nobody is stopping people from having such views or publishing those views themselves if they want to.
The irony of course is that Mr Ponsford doesn't seem to think Evans (or the other organisations behind such boycotts) are entitled to express their viewpoints.
Foot in mouth, own goal award of the month to Evans' Management. Stick to what you know and what you need to do.
Bleeding business to keener, nimbler online rivals, large cost base of shops stocking MOtR kit, not in the top three ports of call for many serious bike kit buyers and some genius thought it better to grandstand and pull advertising to the very demographic where they are more likely to find fertile growth. Dumb doesn't really cover it.
If I was an investor in this business the exec team would find themselves summoned to an EGM pronto to explain themselves under caution of being fired.
Equally, if I were an investor in the Press Gazette the same would apply to the editor.
But neither of us are fat cat investors, so what's your point?
(Other than, perhaps, to point out how 'free speech' is actually heavily controlled by those with the money).
Sorry but I fail to see the link between The Daily Mail and journalism
Evans is overpriced and the Daily Mail writes predictable drivel. I don't patronise either of them. Stuff them both.
I run a webforum. With advertisements on it. Never once has the Press Gazette advertised on it. They are denying me my free speech. There are a lot of other people in cahoots with them in this taking away of my rights. The conspiracy is vast: it even involves Kim Jong-Il and Donald Trump.
Having read the article I did not expect to scroll to the comments and see arguments about racism, homosexuality, pre-war Germany, BNP, hate speech and Marxists
Evans have just gone up in my estimation & if I ever need an inner tube, I'll gladly buy from them. Hi-viz on the other hand...!
I agree with your comment. Who gives a shit about the media, as long as we can buy or cycling bits.
JC4PM
So the Mail is free to demonize whoever but companies aren't free to decline to do business with them.
Do you mean that the mail is free to demonize cyclists, but cycle shops are obliged to advertise there?
Whether I buy anything from Evans largely depends on whether they've got what I want, when I want it and at a price I consider value for money and not where they spend their advertising budget.
Pretty much the same an any other retailer, then.
They lost me at "cycling brethren"
who bloody well cares. advertise where you want. buy your inner tubes where you want. pointless drama about nothing as usual
Only by knuckledragging scum who are happy to support racism if not racist themselves.
Just a brain-dead ad-hom attack. No-platforming is stupid. Let the far-right speak. Let people see how ridiculous the rhetoric of the EDL, BNP, Britain First et al is. No-platforming these people allows them a dubious claim to legitimacy - "they daren't let us speak the truth!" You only have to glance at a far-right Twitter account to realise that these people actually gain strength and claim the moral high ground precisely because they're having their accounts deleted.
I don't know if you noticed that we became the most tolerant country on the face of the planet before "Hate Speech" was even a thing. Bigoted attitudes have been challenged and intellectual arguments won against those who didn't want women to have the vote, people who thought homosexuality was a crime, landlords who wouldn't rent properties to black people, to give just three examples, in the last hundred years. Winning The Argument is important - it is the best way to defeat backwards attitudes. Not no-platforming. Not simply labelling people "racist" because they disagree with an organisation's approach.
I agree. I shall be applying to speak at your child's next school assembly. Following that I shall be appearing in your living room. I may also walk beside you in Sainsbury's during your weekly shop discussing phrenology, Jews, immigrants and abortion. Some people HAVE ACTUALLY TRIED TO STOP ME DOING THIS!
I totally agree.... In theory.
In practice it really isn't a fair fight.
One of May's first QTs after she became PM had Corbyn draw 3 relevant points into a coherent argument (house prices, rent prices and homelessness). May stood up and made a rehearsed soundbite that had sod-all to do with the argument. Guess what made the front page(!) headlines in 3 of the next day's papers - not the debate that the country should probably have; it was basically May pulling a moonie at Corbyn.
Being rational and giving the loonies enough rope really isn't the only answer when these three irrational rags set a large part of the political agenda. We have the recent example of the Tories kneejerking their way into (announcing, at least) a review of the Charlie Allistons, who aren't a problem, while completely ignoring (sorry, 2040-ing) the metal elephants in the room (and their mahouts) that fart pollution and shit driver, cyclist and pedestrian corpses. There needs to be an element of this 'campaign' that isn't afraid to gouge eyes or punch nuts.
(I don't even look at The S*n since Hillsborough anyway... and I'm an Everton fan).
Fantastic where can i get a major suit to wear when I have to drive my car?
broadly speaking I agree with you about letting the bad guys reveal themselves, and in my view anyone can hold and give any opinion they want.
But nobody is obliged to listen to them or to give them a platform. If they want a platform, let them provide their own, but don't expect me to listen to them.
oh, and where they do have a platform of their own, how generous are they with publishing opposing opinions?
This.
We're in the state we're in now because media coverage has been given to extreme views when reasoned and logical arguments have been ignored. Chasing headlines and clicks which engender fear and hate rather than presenting fact.
I agree. And of course, any business is free to decide who they do and do not advertise with, whatever the reason. What does not sit comfortably with me here is that a corporation has stated that their thinking is based on a desire to see certain elements of the free press close down, and not because the Mail vilifies cyclists and Evans are a cycling retailer, but becase they don't like its politics. The Sun/Mail/Express are rags, but if this is successful, my worry is that it doesn't stop there.
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