The Daily Mail let rip in a truly epic full page leader by Tom Utley this morning, laying into the Guardian and distancing itself from its own Derry Street stablemate MailOnline. According to the Mail, MailOnline has “a very different worldview“:  

“Earlier this week, a Guardian writer attacked the Daily Mail for carrying comments by the controversialist Katie Hopkins. That was a lie. The Guardian and its writer know that Ms Hopkins has nothing to do with the Daily Mail, but works for Mail Online — a totally separate entity that has its own publisher, its own readership, different content and a very different world view.”

To be fair to the Mail, their leader is bang on about the Guardian and partly correct about MailOnline. The Mail and MailOnline have different audiences and a completely different flavour, and Katie Hopkins isn’t in the paper. But are they really “separate entities“? They may be in editorial structure and decision making, but they share a huge amount of content: a quick search shows at least 22 articles with Daily Mail bylines have appeared on MailOnline since midnight. The paper’s leader usually goes up on MailOnline, funnily enough it didn’t today…