KEYBOARD GUIDE (PC)
DEFUND THE DAILY MAIL
The Daily Mail is one of the most vicious and dangerous purveyors of racist propaganda in the UK, and that danger spreads globally through its website.
But like the rest of the media, the Mail’s ability to churn out racial hatred, misogyny and anti-LGBT bigotry is
only made possible by the support of its advertisers.
The campaigns by Stop Funding Hate and Sleeping Giants have made incredible progress, in the way they have targeted and reduced the advertising revenue that keeps these racist media companies in business.
Stop Funding Hate regularly publish lists on twitter of the daily top advertisers in the Daily Mail, with the hope that people can use that information to pressure those businesses to stop funding the Mail’s hatred through ad sales.
I wanted to make something that could help visualise the way advertisers fund racist propaganda, so I made these stickers and started going into businesses that advertise in the Mail and stickering their products, catalogues and leaflets, announcing their financial support for the Daily Mail’s bigotry.
The idea is that other people also get involved in this. I’ve made the printable file available here so you can print at home, or work. Or if you prefer you can order the stickers directly above at cost price.
I think this idea will work best if we can also photograph the products with the stickers on them, share it online, tagging the company and calling on them to end their support for the Mail. We need to make marketing departments feel uncomfortable about their brands financially supporting and being associated with a toxic and racist newspaper.
You can also take a pile of leaflets home, sticker them, and then drop them back into the shops, as I did with Nectar card and Lloyds bank leaflets.
Unfortunately, we’ve seen it time and time again, the monetised racism spread by the right-wing press radicalises people to violence, and with the rise of the far-right globally, the violence and hatred and the profits the right-wing media make from that hatred will only increase if left unchecked.
It’s important to remember we’re not powerless against media corporations. Through public pressure we can sabotage their advertising-based business model.
This is just one idea, it’s cheap and easy to do. But there are many other ways we can try to restrict the Daily Mail and other media outlets ability to spread racist and bigoted lies.
A previous project I started last year involved stickering the Metro’s distribution bins. The Metro is owned by the Daily Mail so I wanted to discourage people from supporting the Mail by picking it up. You can also get these stickers from my website. These stickers are still going up, and staying up.
I hope some of you reading this can take part, or that this gives you ideas for other ways we can resist and subvert right-wing propaganda.
CLICK HERE FOR A CURRENT LIST OF THE DAILY MAIL'S TOP ADVERTISERS
GET INVOLVED
ORDER STICKERS
Cost price. 50p for a sheet of 117 printed stickers.
You can change the quantity on the checkout page
DOWNLOAD AND PRINT
STICKER SHEET
If you want to print at home you'll need A4 sheets of "117 Round Labels Per Sheet, 19mm Diameter" for it to work with the artwork above. Or download the single sticker below and duplicate it across whatever size sticker sheet you have.
INDIVIDUAL STICKER
GALLERY
Please post photos online and tag the company as well as @darren_cullen on tiwtter or @spellingmistakescostlives on instagram and facebook
THANKS
Thanks to Danny Squarelips for his help making the film.
And massive thanks and tons of respect to Stop Funding Hate, Sleeping Giants and Media Matters for all their work defunding racist media. While I did this project independently, it was inspired by, and intended to compliment their campaigns.
They've had some great successes:
Why Lego stopped advertising in the Daily Mail
Fox News backs Tucker Carlson as advertisers drop show following comments on mass immigration
Media Matters targets Hannity advertisers
Please support their work!