What started out as a bit of seasonal marketing for Christmas giftwrap ignited a social media furore attracting masses of media coverage and dividing opinion.
Yesterday morning (Monday 20 November) greeting card and stationery retailer Paperchase publicly apologised for running a ‘free giftwrap promotion’ in Saturday’s Daily Mail as a result of negative feedback from the public. The retailer stated on Twitter that it will not work with the newspaper group again.
The retailer made the Twitter post in ‘having listened’ to hundreds of complaints it received online from members of the public. Many were responding to action by campaign group, Stop Funding Hate, that has taken issue with some of the ‘divisive stories’ that have appeared in the Daily Mail, including recent ones concerning trans gender people.
The BBC, Guardian, Huffington Post and Press Gazette were among the media to have picked up on the story, some questioning whether Paperchase did the right thing in responding as it did.
Airing both sides of the argument, The Guardian yesterday (November 20) explained what had happened as well as how Paperchase’s action has infuriated some commentators who feel that the retailer has responded to ‘bullying’.
Paperchase will have to live with losing Piers Morgan (TV presenter who also writes for Daily Mail online) as a customer over the issue. The com tweeted: “I hope @FromPaperchase understand that British people don’t like snivelling little cowards who let themselves get bullied into virtue-signalling bulls**t. I’ll buy my cards from @ClintonsTweet in future.”
The Daily Mail, the UK’s second most read newspaper, has issued a statement saying it found it “deeply worrying” that Paperchase had been “bullied into apologising – on the back of a derisory 250 Facebook comments and 150 direct tweets – to internet trolls orchestrated by a small group of hard left Corbynist individuals seeking to suppress legitimate debate and impose their views on the media.”
