Everyone loves Harry Potter, but apparently not everyone loves JK. The children's fiction writer is seeking compensation for "distress" and damage to her reputation after the trashy paper published an article both in print and online implying that she had offended members of her local church.
It has now been removed from their online archive.
Rowling's lawyers claim that the paper suggested she had falsely represented her life as a single mother living in Edinburgh. Originally published as a two page spread in September last year, they argue that the Daily Mail falsely accused her of saying that local parish goers had behaved cruelly towards her.
A statement from them read: "The article falsely and inexcusably accused her fellow churchgoers of behaving in a bigoted, unchristian manner towards her, of stigmatizing her and cruelly taunting her for being a single mother."
Proving once again that you can't trust everything you read, it is alleged the writer did not actually do any investigating before writing the article. The idea behind the entire piece seemed to have been based on one single incident that Rowling herself wrote about in an article for single parents charity Gingerbread, which she is president of.
10 days before the Daily Mail piece was published Rowling had written of how the years raising her kids were the proudest of her life, and detailed one specific incident where she was treated meanly by a church goer. It was this one example in an otherwise positive story about her time in Edinburgh, that the writer twisted.
The damage for the Mail might not have been so bad as to have them sued, had they not broken journalistic practice and ethics by failing to offer her the chance to respond to the accusation before going to print. They got in touch with her representation, but only to inform them of the article's publication.
It's OK JK Rowling, the tabloids might have it in for you, but we know they're just mad because they know the Sorting Hat would put them in Slytherin.
Gemma Clark