Daily Mail
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Template:Infobox Newspaper The Daily Mail is a British newspaper, currently a tabloid, first published in 1896. It is Britain's most popular paper after The Sun and arguably the most right-wing. Its sister paper, the Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982, and an Irish version of the paper was launched on 6 February 2006. The editorial slant of the papers is of a social and political conservatism. The Daily Mail was Britain's first daily newspaper aimed at what is now considered the middle-market and the first to sell 1 million copies a day.
Originally broadsheet, the Mail switched to the tabloid format in which it is published today on 3 May 1971, the 75th anniversary of its founding (on this date it also absorbed the Daily Sketch, which had previously been published as a tabloid by the same company). Its chief rival, the Daily Express, has a similar political stance and target audience, but sells fewer than half as many copies. As of 2005 the publisher of the Mail, the Daily Mail and General Trust, is a FTSE 100 company and the paper has a circulation of more than two million, the second largest circulation of any English language daily newspaper, and the twelfth highest of any newspaper.
The Daily Mail occupies a position midway between the tabloid and broadsheet divide, covering much of the same celebrity ground as the tabloids but positioning itself as a more upmarket "middle class" publication. Those of the Hyacinth Bucket ilk.
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History
Early history
The Daily Mail, devised by Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe and his brother Harold (later Lord Rothermere), was first published on 3 May, 1896 and was an immediate runaway success. It cost a halfpenny at a time when other London dailies cost a penny and was more populist in tone and more concise in its coverage than its rivals. Soon after its launch it had more than half a million readers.
Controlled editorially by Alfred, with Harold running the business side of the operation, the Mail from the start adopted a vigorously imperialist political stance, taking a strongly patriotic line in the Second Boer War, leading to claims that it was not reporting the issues of the day objectively. From the beginning, the Mail also set out to entertain its readers with human interest stories, serials, features and competitions (which were also the main means by which the Harmsworths promoted the paper).
In 1906 the paper offered £1,000 for the first flight across the English Channel, and £10,000 for the first flight from London to Manchester. Punch magazine thought the idea preposterous and offered £10,000 for the first flight to Mars, but by 1910 both the Mail's prizes had been won.
In 1908 the Daily Mail began the Ideal Home Exhibition, which it still runs today.
The paper was accused of warmongering before the outbreak of World War I, when it reported that Germany was planning to crush the British Empire. Northcliffe created controversy by advocating conscription when the war broke out. On 21 May, 1915, Northcliffe wrote a blistering attack on Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War. Kitchener was considered a national hero, and overnight the paper's circulation dropped from 1,386,000 to 238,000. 1,500 members of the London Stock Exchange ceremonially burned the unsold copies and launched a boycott against the Harmsworth Press. Prime Minister H. H. Asquith accused the paper of being disloyal to the country.
When Kitchener died the Mail reported it as a great stroke of luck for the British Empire. The paper then campaigned against Asquith, and Asquith resigned on 5 December, 1916. His successor, David Lloyd George, asked Northcliffe to be in his cabinet, hoping it would prevent him criticising the government. Northcliffe declined.
1920 to 1950, Lord Rothermere, and the Mail's support for fascism
In 1922, when Lord Northcliffe died, Lord Rothermere took full control of the paper.
In 1924 the Daily Mail published the forged Zinoviev Letter which indicated that British Communists were planning violent Revolution. It was widely believed that this was a significant factor in the defeat of Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Party in the 1924 general election, held four days later.
For a time in the early 1930s Rothermere and the Mail were sympathetic to some degree with Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. Rothermere wrote an article, Hurrah for the Blackshirts, in January 1934, in which he praised Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine", though after the violence of the 1934 Olympia meeting involving the BUF the Mail withdrew its support.
The paper also published articles lamenting the number of German Jews entering Britain as refugees after the rise of Nazism.
Rothermere and the Mail supported Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, particularly during the events leading up to the Munich Agreement. However, after the Nazi invasion of Prague in 1939, the Mail changed position and urged Chamberlain to prepare for war, not least, perhaps, because on account of its stance it had been threatened with closure by the British Government. Up to this point, The Daily Mail had been the only British newspaper to consistently support the German National Socialist Party.
Recent history
In 1982, a Sunday title, the Mail on Sunday was launched (the Sunday Mail was already the name of a newspaper in Scotland, owned by the Mirror Group.)
In 1992, the current editor, Paul Dacre, was appointed.
The paper officially entered the Republic of Ireland market with the launch of an Irish version of the paper on 6 February 2005; free copies of the paper were distributed on that day in some locations to publicise the launch. The new dedicated Irish version comprises stories of Irish interest alongside content from the UK version.
Editorial stance
The Daily Mail considers itself to be the voice of Middle England, speaking up for the small-c conservative values of large swathes of the British population which it considers to be unjustly despised and neglected by a liberal establishment. It generally takes an anti-European, anti-immigration, anti-abortion (despite its widely criticised "Abortion-hope" headline following the supposed discovery of a so-called gay gene), and is correspondingly pro-family, pro-tax cuts and pro-monarchy, as well as advocating stricter punishments for crime. The paper is generally critical of the BBC, which it perceives as being biased to the Left, but it is less unequivocally supportive of deregulation and commercial broadcasting than more downmarket papers such as The Sun, and supports a return to a somewhat nostalgic idea of what the BBC once was in a way that The Sun generally does not. Some have said that this is because the Mail has no connections to a broadcaster such as British Sky Broadcasting, although its parent company does own a share in ITN.
The Mail states that it values the British countryside, while being pro-car and anti-environmentalist. In Richard Littlejohn, who recently returned from The Sun, it has arguably one of the most right-wing columnists in popular British journalism, alongside Peter Hitchens, who joined its sister title the Mail on Sunday in 2001. The editorial board has been highly critical of Prime Minister Tony Blair and endorsed the Conservative Party in the 2005 general election. [1]
The Daily Mail is currently the most widely read paper amongst women, and has a higher proportion of female readers than any other British national daily. It was the first newspaper to carry horoscopes (even though at the time it was still technically an offence under the Witchcraft Act), it also has popular puzzles pages with a crossword, Kakuro and Sudoku number puzzles.
The paper was one of the first papers to champion the case of Stephen Lawrence [2], a black teenager who was murdered in a racially motivated attack in Eltham, London. In February 1997 the Mail led its front page with a picture of the five men accused of Lawrence's murder and the headline "MURDERERS", stating that it believed that the men had murdered Lawrence and that "if we are wrong, let them sue us". This caused some surprise in media circles.
Editorials have been bitterly critical of the George W. Bush administration, particularly in connection with the Iraq War. This may suggest that the Mail supports an older, more Americosceptic school of British conservatism (a kind of British equivalent of paleoconservatism) as opposed to the more neoconservative sympathies of Rupert Murdoch's British titles (Michael Gove criticised the Mail for this reason in The Times in April 2004). The Mail issued a rather soft endorsement (titled "Time for a Change?") of U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry in the leader of 2 November, 2004. However, a leader after the election subsequently called Bush's re-election "a victory for the values that are so often ignored or derided by political establishments in Britain and Europe and are never (to our detriment) debated with the moral seriousness seen in America."
Criticism
The Daily Mail is regularly a target of criticism and satire by left-wing and left-of centre media and individuals, as well as satirical magazines.
Moral Issues
Owing to its stance on moral issues - for instance, its continuing condemnation of already-punished criminals such as Myra Hindley and Maxine Carr (whom the Mail believe were not punished enough), and its editorial outrage at television programmes such as Jerry Springer - The Opera or Brass Eye, some left-wingers refer to the paper with nicknames such as the "Daily Heil", "Daily Wail" and the "Daily Hate" (sometimes also the "Daily Snail", the pace at which it allegedly adapts to social and cultural change). The "Daily Hate" (or lately "Hate Mail") nicknames are in part because - according to Polly Toynbee in The Guardian [3] - the Mail's founder, Lord Northcliffe, said his winning formula was to give his readers "a daily hate".
Immigration
Another common criticism of the Mail is its treatment of asylum seekers. Several opponents (including London Mayor Ken Livingstone in a well-publicised argument) have claimed that the newspaper panders to racism in this respect. However, this must equally be compared to recent comments made by George Galloway, when he told an Arab Newspaper that the publication of the Danish Muslim cartoons was a worse offence than the 9/11 and 7/7 bombings. These comments brought calls from the media (most notably the BBC) that Mr Galloway was pandering to Muslims - although they were later shown to be the product of a mistranslation, prompting an apology in the Times.
Opponents of the paper on these grounds cite its editorial stance in the 1930s, when the Daily Mail ran inflammatory articles about Jewish immigrants, serialised The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and briefly supported the British Union of Fascists. The modern paper strongly repudiates far right groups in spite of apparent support for many of their policies, for instance on 3 February 2006 having the front page headline 'In Britain: Two members of the odious BNP go free over remarks offensive to most decent people' on the same day as publishing the article 'Cheers as BNP leader walks free'.
Pseudoscience
Another aspect of the Mail that draws controversy is its alleged promotion of pseudoscience. Astrology is often the subject of articles, and the newspaper runs a profitable telephone astrology service through its association with Jonathan Cainer. Regular features are also run on Alien abduction, the Bible code, and other such paranormal subjects. In the same vein, the Mail's opposition to the "single-jab" MMR vaccine was condemned by medical practitioners. It is not however a fan of all alternative treatments, and marked the 250th anniversary of the birth of homeopathy's founder with an article calling it "Undiluted Tosh!".
Conservative appearance
The Daily Mail is frequently criticised for its perceived conservatism, with its opponents seeing the paper as a symptom of what they see as wrong with traditionalist right-wing 'Little Englanders'. The Guardian, for example, referred to it as a "thick, grey tombstone of a tabloid". Conversely, however, many journalists - including those of political persuasions opposite to the Mail's - also admire technical aspects of its production, such as the thoroughness of its editing, and regard it as doing the job it sets out to do very well, without necessarily endorsing its point of view.
Satire
As a target of satire the stereotypical Daily Mail reader is characterised as a borderline-racist, homophobic, aspiring middle-class conservative who lacks the intelligence to read the broadsheet equivalent the Daily Telegraph, and are stuck in the past. In fact, in recent years the phrase 'Daily Mail reader' has become increasingly used in general parlance (not just in the media) as shorthand for any person with such attitudes. The term "Daily Mail reader" is a stereotype roughly opposite that of a "Guardian reader", epitomising a reactionary and backward person. Daily Mail readers have featured in a negative light in certain media portrayals:
- The comedy character Alan Partridge states that it is "the greatest newspaper in the world" in an episode of I'm Alan Partridge.
- In the Harry Potter series, Vernon Dursley, is depicted as reading the Daily Mail.
- In the adult comic Viz's strip Jack Black, a near-fascist "Boy's Own" adventure strip, the Daily Mail is the only newspaper anyone reads in the village, until in one episode an incoming Guardian reader is uncovered as protecting an Al Qaeda cell.
- In the BBC comedy show Little Britain, the racist Women's Institute member Maggie Blackamoor is depicted as reading the Daily Mail.
Property Market
The Mail is also often the subject of jokes for its supposed obsession with the property market. This has led to Private Eye mock-headlines such as Influx of asylum seekers cause house values to plummet, Property prices fall as asteroid prepares to wipe out life on Earth and Did Diana's death cause fall in house prices?.
Daily Mail writers
Current writers
- Keith Waterhouse
- Melanie Phillips
- Richard Littlejohn
- Roy Hattersley - former Labour Party deputy leader
- Michael Winner - film director
Past writers
- Paul Johnson
- Lynda Lee Potter
- Simon Heffer, who has recently left to join the Daily Telegraph
- Valentine Williams (1883-1946) General news correspondent and, during the First World War, chief of the Daily Mail war service. Later a popular mystery novelist. Source: Williams' memoir, The World of Action (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1938), which describes his career and journalistic adventures.
Mail on Sunday writers
Current writers
- Peter Hitchens
- Suzanne Moore
- George Galloway
- Keith Waterhouse
- Harry Blackwood (North-East England area only)
- Derek Draper
Past writers
See also
- Daily Chronicle, a newspaper which merged with the Daily News to become the News-Chronicle and was finally absorbed by the Daily Mail