The Daily Mail have today been accused of ‘an attack on Christianity’ after choosing to use the controversial politically-correct C.E. date format – showing blatant disregard for the AD/BC system based around the year of OUR lord. Critics suggest that a Diktat has been issued by senior staff to all journalists to scrap the use of AD/BC with immediate effect.
The guilty article carries the byline ‘Daily Mail Reporter’ suggesting that the writer is afraid of suffering from an aggressive backlash from the ‘ageing dinosaurs’ that make up a large proportion of the Daily Mail newsroom. The article brazenly uses C.E. without even offering the AD/BC equivalent:
The same object that dazzled skygazers in 1054 C.E. continues to fascinate astronomers today by pumping out radiation at higher energies than anyone expected.
Sources suggest that several big name columnists are set to ignore the Diktat – with Richard Littlejohn reported as saying: ‘Luckily my only terms of historical references are 70′s cop shows, the Carry on films and 80′s sitcoms so although I will make a point of only using AD/BC my readers might not notice’. Other senior figures at the newspaper have labelled the decision as ‘barmy’ and ‘political-correctness gone mad’. Some have suggested the terms are being quietly written out of history in order to ‘avoid antagonising Muslims’ and ‘the flood of immigrants that swamped this country under New Labour’.
An unnamed source quoted Paul Dacre as launching a ‘tirade’ on the subject as he insisted his staff ‘stop living in some kind of fake 1950′s Utopian that had never existed’. Indeed, Dacre – known for his modern outlook – has been battling to enforce his liberal vision of Britain onto the Daily Mail’s writing team throughout his loyal years of service and this is just his latest attempt to embed what he describes as ‘multi-cultural marxism’ into the house style and editorial outlook of the newspaper.
For his dwindling Christian readership this might be one step too far from the daringly liberal, forward-thinking Dacre and critics suggest that a national boycott might occur.
UPDATE:
The Daily Mail have now changed the article:
The same object that dazzled skygazers in 1054AD continues to fascinate astronomers today by pumping out radiation at higher energies than anyone expected.
Initially they updated it to BC, rather than AD which is amusing.
As people in the comments have also pointed out, this article is also a classic bit of churnalism, taken from here.
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22 Comments
Typical of the Muslim-appeasing politically correct Mailistas. Is there nothing they won’t do to perpetuate the Marxist plot to destroy civilisation from the inside?
WAKE UP SHEEPLE.
And so on.
They’ve changed it now to BC but that is wrong as well. It should be AD.
They’ve changed it to BC now!
Ha ha. This is one of your best yet. Surpasses even the Daily Mash.
Well done for saying the things that can’t be said! Dacre and his Marxist comrades won’t rest until every last Christian in our once proud nation has been literally crucified on the alter of political correctness…
PS, the actual reason for the C.E. in that article can be found here:
http://churnalism.com/tt74h/
What was it Dacre said about the DM and churnalism again?
It’s just a date – chill out ;>
Ha, brilliant
If only the article hadn’t been copy-and-pasted *entirely* from this press release
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2011/pr201128.html
it might not have happened…
Hehe, very good!
Brilliant satire… one of your best yet.
Hope you did a FreezePage – they’ve already changed it to AD!
They’ve changed it to “AD”, the spoilsports.
That’s what you getting for plagiarising stories from elsewhere, I suppose – http://churnalism.com/8fw3r/
Do you have a screenshot? They’ve fixed it now.
It never surprises me how small-minded religious zealots get all wound up when someone challenges their cozy little fantasy worlds or allegedly insults their imaginary friend. I totally agree that we should stop using “BC/AD” and always use “BCE/CE” instead, and that’s what I do when teaching my astronomy courses – In astronomy, an “epoch” is simply an arbitrary date used as a reference point for fixing the positions of stars as they slowly move across the sky – Current maps use 2000 as the current epoch and, before that, it was 1950. Maybe we should all switch to the Julian Date system and eliminate the whole question altogether?!!
Religion – It’s like a history lesson without the facts!
Good work.
HAHAHAHA! That is priceless! Hoiseted on their own petard!
Double Lulz for changing it to B.C.
I’m a Daily Mail subscriber and I can’t believe how you are twisting the facts. Dacre hasn’t issued a Diktat, it’s purely down to the choice of the journalist. In fact the Mail released this statement.
“It is incorrect to say that the Daily Mail has replaced date systems BC and AD with Before Common Era (BCE) and Common Era (CE). Whilst the Daily Mail uses BC and AD like most people as standard terminology, it is possible to use different terminology, particularly as it is now commonly used in historical research. The Daily Mail has issued no editorial guidance on date systems, and the decision rests with the individual editorial and production teams.”
Adrian, I don’t honestly think the DM’s attack on the BBC has much to do with religious zealots. Most commenters on DM articles are generally negative about Christianity except as a token of “our way of life” under threat from Muslims and the PC Brigade. I doubt any of the complainers on the BC/AD story watch or listen to the BBC’s Christian output as they seem unaware of it. It’s just opportunistic Beeb/PC bashing.
Dacre is a Marxist. That explains a lot.
Chris all this blog is doing is what your’re precious daily mail is doing to the BBC. Man up idiot.
Adrian@14 – I think you need to calm down a little over this. Why should this be an issue? What is wrong with using BC/AD. It has nothing to do with religious zealotry. It is just a useful shorthand which has been established over centuries.
Strikes me this is one of those issues (like votes for prisoners a few months ago) where the average person had no strong views about and would not even had thought about this time last year.
You know you can be left wing and be perfectly comfortable with BC/AD.
This is a direct attack on families.
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