Quick quiz. A rapper shouts "Free Palestine" on stage, and days later he's off a stadium tour. A pop star with millions in the bank loses some Instagram followers. Which one is being cancelled? * If you read the Daily Mail, it's the pop star. * The story so far: Macklemore was opening for Ed Sheeran's US tour. At two New Jersey shows he shouted "Free Palestine" and played footage from Gaza. According to Sheeran, venues on the tour said they'd pull the shows if he stayed, and Robert Kraft, whose company owns Gillette Stadium, was among the people he spoke to. Kraft says Macklemore's performances and what Kraft calls a history of antisemitic rhetoric crossed a line. Macklemore says he was silenced for backing Palestinians. The promoter dropped him. Then every remaining support act quit in protest. * Now the Mail's words. One headline: "Ed Sheeran loses 200,000 Instagram followers in 24 hours as he faces cancellation." Another, on Wednesday: the "star faces being 'cancelled'." That story says he "faces the risk of being 'cancelled'" after shedding followers. * And the rapper who actually lost the gig? In the same pages he was "dropped," "removed" and "kicked off." Plain, tidy words. No drama. * So one man lost his place on a stadium tour after what he said on stage. Another man is still headlining it, with more than a dozen dates to go. Guess who got the victim word. * Look, losing fans hurts, and Sheeran says the call wasn't his. That's fair. But "cancelled" is the word people use when someone is punished for what they said. In our view, if anyone in this story paid a price for what he said, it was Macklemore. * To be fair to the Mail, it printed Macklemore's full statement word for word. And in that statement he says it himself: "I am not a victim. Ed Sheeran is not a victim." The Mail also printed a statement from Myles Smith, one of the acts who quit, saying much the same: Ed isn't the victim here, Palestinians are. * Two people inside the story said it. The headlines still went the other way. * In our view, the Mail picked its sympathy by fame. The rich star gets "cancellation." The guy with the political opinion gets a pink slip and a shrug.