Kendall Jenner / Kardashian: Mailbait extraordinaire

Following on from my post on how the Mail hypocritically cashes in on publishing vast quantities of semi-nude photos of celebrities, all the while wagging their fingers and shaking their heads in disgust it is even more disturbing when the girl featured is only 14 years old. One of their favourite female celebrities is Kim Kardashian – who the Mail once put down with the observation that she: ‘has made a bit of a name for herself from turning up to the opening of an envelope’, which must make the Mail even more pathetic given that they feel the need to cover each non-event in huge depth with a flurry of articles.

Kendall Jenner (Kardashian is always used nearby to get maximum traffic) is famous for two reasons:

1. She is the half-sister of Kim Kardashian.
2. Aged 14 she posed in a bikini on a beach. The Daily Mail now insists on always referring to it as ‘THAT bikini shoot’ whenever Kim or Kendall are mentioned, along with an obligatory photo.

To make the point really sink in about just how utterly pathetic the Mail website is let’s get down to some figures. First off, the Daily Mail is so disturbed by ‘racy’ photos of a 14 year old in a bikini they publish them in at least 6 separate articles:

1. After THAT bikini shoot, Kim Kardashian’s little sister Kendall lands a role in a pop video.
2. ‘I never intended to be racy’: Kim Kardashian’s 14-year-old sister Kendall defends bikini photo shoot.
3. Now that’s more age appropriate! Kim Kardashian’s little sister Kendall is back to being a regular teenager.
4. Kendall’s the rebel Kardashian as she hits the red carpet in biker boots NOT high heels.
5. That’s better! Kardashian sister Kendall, 14, dresses her age after bikini row.
6. Keeping up with the Kardashian’s careers: Now youngest sister Kylie’s a model. [This article features photos of 12 year old Kylie, photos which are more 'age appropriate' than the bikini shot of Kendall they print immediately below.]

You can kind of spot the logic behind how they print the bikini shots; basically if Kendall wears anything other than a bikini the Mail can write a story about how she is finally dressing ‘appropriate to her age’ whilst at the same time they can publish once more the bikini shoot photos. Even for the Daily Mail website this is really scraping the barrel of what can be considered newsworthy.

Next up, a simple search of the Mail website for ‘Kardashian’ returns 427 articles. I don’t even know what this person does. After flicking through a few articles it appears she is some kind of ‘reality TV star’ who is famous for being famous, if that makes any sense. The Daily Mail love her because she takes a good photo and being on reality TV they can publish screen prints of her doing something completely innocuous and pass it off as news.

A worldwide Google search for ‘Kim Kardashian’ reveals a Daily Mail article on page 2, which is not a bad result. However, search for UK pages only and the Mail website dominates results – getting 3 out of 3 ‘news results’. Again, this kind of gutter journalism is all about driving traffic to the website. The Daily Mail might pretend to have moral objections to a 14 year old posing in what they label as a ‘racy’ photo shoot. However, these objections still don’t stop them publishing said photos over and over again in complete non-stories.

Once again, please forgive me for publishing this statement from Mail Online editor Martin Clarke:

News is far more important to us that showbiz. News is what drives our site.

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