by Chris Barnyard

The Press Complaints Commission has received over 1000 complaints today over Jan Moir’s article in the Daily Mail.

She has released a statement through the PR firm Brown LLoyd James blaming an “orchestrated campaign” and denied her article was homophobic or bigoted.

New Media Age magazine today confirmed that Daily Mail Online had indeed pulled ads from her article.

They reported James Bromley, Mail Online MD, as saying:

We removed the advertising within minutes of the article being published as we saw the strong reaction This is done frequently and by other newspapers. For example, we wouldn’t want a mobile phone ad next to an article about mobile phone masts.

The Press Complaints Commission admitted that their website had slowed down tremendously because of the huge backlash to the article.

Times journalist Caitlin Moran tweeted a tongue-in-cheek message saying: “Jan Moir better pray she never needs another hair cut or interior design job again.”

Full statement by Jan Moir (via Ian Burrell)

Some people, particularly in the gay community, have been upset by my article about the sad death of Boyzone member Stephen Gately. This was never my intention. Stephen, as I pointed out in the article was a charming and sweet man who entertained millions. However, the point of my column-which, I wonder how many of the people complaining have fully read – was to suggest that, in my honest opinion, his death raises many unanswered questions. That was all. Yes, anyone can die at anytime of anything. However, it seems unlikely to me that what took place in the hours immediately preceding Gately’s death – out all evening at a nightclub, taking illegal substances, bringing a stranger back to the flat, getting intimate with that stranger – did not have a bearing on his death. At the very least, it could have exacerbated an underlying medical condition. The entire matter of his sudden death seemed to have been handled with undue haste when lessons could have been learned. On this subject, one very important point. When I wrote that ‘he would want to set an example to any impressionable young men who may want to emulate what they might see as his glamorous routine’, I was referring to the drugs and the casual invitation extended to a stranger. Not to the fact of his homosexuality. In writing that ‘it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships’ I was suggesting that civil partnerships – the introduction of which I am on the record in supporting – have proved just to be as problematic as marriages. In what is clearly a heavily orchestrated internet campaign I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones.”

More at Journalism.co.uk