Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is a British newspaper, currently published in a tabloid format. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper, The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982. An Irish edition of the paper was launched in 2006 and an Indian edition in 2007. 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.^[2]

The Mail was originally a broadsheet, but switched to its current compact format^[3] 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 long-standing rival, the Daily Express, has a broadly similar political stance and target readership, but nowadays sells one-third the number of copies. The publisher of the Mail, the Daily Mail and General Trust is currently a FTSE 100 company, and the paper has a circulation of more than two million, giving it one of the largest circulations of any English language daily newspaper, and the twelfth highest of any newspaper in the world.^[4]

Circulation figures according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, in October 2007 show gross sales of 2,400,143 for the Daily Mail, compared with 789,867 for the Daily Express. Twenty-five years ago the circulation was 1.87 million copies a day compared to over 2 million copies per day by the Daily Express at the same time period.^{citation needed} According to a December 2004 survey, 53% of Daily Mail readers voted for the Conservative party, compared to 21% for Labour and 17% for the Liberal Democrats.^[5]

History

Early history

The Daily Mail, devised by Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) and his brother Harold (later Lord Rothermere), was first published on 4 May 1896 and was an immediate success. It cost a halfpenny at a time when other London dailies cost one 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 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.^who? 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. (For full list see Daily Mail aviation prizes.)

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.^clarify 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, who resigned on 5 December 1916. His successor, David Lloyd George, asked Northcliffe to be in his cabinet, hoping it would prevent him from criticising the government. Northcliffe declined.

Inter-war period

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. (In some Labour circles, e.g. by former Labour leader Michael Foot, the paper is often referred to as "The Forgers' Gazette").

Support for Nazism and Fascism

In early 1934, Rothermere and the Mail were sympathetic to 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"^[6], though after the violence of the 1934 Olympia meeting involving the BUF, the Mail withdrew its support for Mosley.

Rothermere was a friend and supporter of both Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, which influenced the Mail's political stance towards them up to 1939. During this period, it was the only British newspaper consistently to support the German Nazi Party.^[7]^[8] Rothermere visited and corresponded with Hitler on many occasions. On 1 October 1938, Rothermere sent Hitler a telegram in support of Germany's invasion of the Sudetenland, and expressing the hope that 'Adolf the Great' would become a popular figure in Britain.

In 1937, the Mail's chief war correspondent, George Ward Price, to whom Mussolini once personally wrote in support of him and the newspaper, published a book, I Know These Dictators, in defence of Hitler and Mussolini. Evelyn Waugh was sent as a reporter for the Mail to cover the anticipated Italian invasion of Ethiopia.

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.^{citation needed}

In 2001 at the 27th G8 Summit held in Genoa, Italy; 93 peaceful anti-globalisation protesters were brutally beaten by the Italian police, falsely imprisoned and made to chant fascist slogans. Posing as a British Embassy official, a woman from the Daily Mail took pictures of some of the prisoners including journalist Mark Covell. The next day the Daily Mail ran a front page story including an entirely false report describing Covell as having helped mastermind the riots. It took 4 years for the newspaper to apologise and pay Covell damages for invasion of privacy.[2]

The paper continues to be referred to on occasion by critics as the Daily Heil, referring to its right-wing stance and its past support for Mosley.^[9]

Recent history

The Daily Mail was transformed by its editor of the seventies and eighties, Sir David English. Sir David began his Fleet Street career in 1951, joining The Daily Mirror before moving to The Daily Sketch, where he became features editor. It was the Sketch which brought him his first editorship, from 1969 to 1971. That year the Sketch was closed and he moved to take over the top job at the Mail, where he was to remain for more than 20 years. English transformed it from a struggling rival selling two million copies fewer than the Daily Express to a formidable journalistic powerhouse, which soared dramatically in popularity.

After 20 years perfecting the Mail, Sir David English became editor-in-chief and chairman of Associated Newspapers in 1992.

The paper enjoyed a period of journalistic success in the 1980s, employing some of the most inventive writers in old Fleet Street including the gossip columnist Nigel Dempster, Lynda Lee Potter and sportswriter Ian Wooldridge (who unlike some of his colleagues - the paper generally did not support sporting boycotts of white-minority-ruled South Africa - strongly opposed Apartheid). 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.) There are Scottish editions of both the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, with different articles and columnists. In 1992, the current editor, Paul Dacre, was appointed.

Foreign editions

The Daily Mail officially entered the Irish market with the launch of a local version of the paper on 6 February 2006; free copies of the paper were distributed on that day in some locations to publicise the launch. Its masthead differs from that of UK versions by having a green rectangle with the word "IRISH", instead of the Royal Arms. The Irish version includes stories of Irish interest alongside content from the UK version. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Irish edition had a circulation of 63,511 for July 2007 and is steadily increasing on each survey.^[10] Since 24 September 2006 Ireland on Sunday, the Irish Sunday newspaper acquired by Associated in 2001, was replaced by an Irish edition of the Mail on Sunday (the Irish Mail on Sunday), to tie in with the weekday newspaper. The newspaper entered India on 16 November 2007 with the launch of Mail Today,^[11] a 48-page compact size newspaper printed in Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida with a print run of 110,000 copies. Based around a subscription model, the newspaper has the same fonts and feel as the Daily Mail and was set up with investment from Associated Newspapers and editorial assistance from the Daily Mail newsroom.^[12]

Controversies

On 27 April 2007, film star Hugh Grant accepted damages over claims made about his relationships with his former girlfriends in three separate tabloid articles published in the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday on 18, 21 and 24 February. His lawyer stated that all of the articles' "allegations and factual assertions are false."^[13] Grant said, in a written statement, that he took the action because: "I was tired of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday papers publishing almost entirely fictional articles about my private life for their own financial gain. I'm also hoping that this statement in court might remind people that the so-called 'close friends' or 'close sources' on which these stories claim to be based almost never exist."^[14]

World soccer's governing body, FIFA, also filed a lawsuit against the Daily Mail due to libellous comments made by sportswriter Andrew Jennings against the organisation and its president Sepp Blatter.^[15] On 31 May 2008, fans of emo music, many of them followers of the band My Chemical Romance, marched through London's Hyde Park to the offices of the Daily Mail, accusing the newspaper of attacking emo music by referring to it as "suicide cult".^[16] The Daily Mail responded by stating, "The Daily Mail's coverage of the 'Emo' movement has been balanced, restrained and above all, in the public interest."^[17]

Editorial stance

The Daily Mail considers itself to be the voice of Middle England speaking up for "small-c" conservative^[18] values against what it sees as a liberal establishment. It generally takes an anti-EU, anti-mass immigration, anti-abortion view, based around what it describes as "traditional values", and is correspondingly pro-family, pro-capitalism (though not always supportive of its aftereffects), and pro-monarchy, as well as, in some cases, advocating stricter punishments for crime. It also often calls for lower levels of taxation. The paper is generally critical of the BBC, which it argues is biased to the left. However, it is less supportive of deregulated commercial television than The Sun (a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch), and unlike The Sun it seems to be broadly nostalgic for what it believes the BBC once was.

In the late 1960s the paper went through a phase of being liberal on social issues like corporal punishment, but this proved short-lived and it soon reverted to its traditional right-wing conservative line.

In Richard Littlejohn, who returned in 2005 from The Sun, it has one of the most right-wing columnists^{citation needed} in popular British journalism, alongside Peter Hitchens, who joined its sister title the Mail on Sunday in 2001, when his former newspaper, the Daily Express, was purchased by Richard Desmond, the owner of a number of pornographic titles. The editorial stance was highly critical of Tony Blair, when he was still Prime Minister, and endorsed the Conservative Party in the 2005 general election^[19] However, in Blair's earlier years as Labour leader and then Prime Minister the paper often wrote positively about him and his reforms of the party. Opponents of Littlejohn have accused the columnist of being preoccupied with homosexuality (which he frequently calls 'poovery') and lying about asylum seekers being 'hosed down in benefits'^[20].

The Mail championed the case of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager who was murdered in a racially motivated attack in Eltham, London in April 1993. 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 adding "if we are wrong, let them sue us". In a 2002 interview, editor Paul Dacre described the Lawrence story as a "pivotal moment" and stated that "the old Daily Mail, I'd be the first to admit, was slightly racist... but we are not now and Stephen Lawrence was the turning point on that".^[21]

The Mail has also opposed the growing of genetically-modified crops in the United Kingdom, a stance it shares with many of its left-wing critics.

On international affairs, the Mail broke with the establishment media consensus over the 2008 South Ossetia war between Russia and Georgia. The Mail accused the British government of dragging Britain into an unnecessary confrontation with Russia and of hypocrisy regarding its protests over Russian recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia's independence, citing the British government's own recognition of Kosovo's independence from Russia's ally Serbia.^[22]

Immigration

Generally, its journalists argue emphatically in favour of managed migration whilst criticising what it calls Labour's "open door" immigration policy which, as is often quoted, has reportedly seen the UK's population increase by around 1.2 million.^[23] However, its fervent treatment of issues such as asylum seekers has prompted opponents (including ex-Mayor of London Ken Livingstone in a well-publicised argument)^[24] to accuse the Mail of engendering racism.

The paper has also been accused of misquoting information about immigration in order to support its anti-immigrant line, a move criticised by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), who warned that media campaigns against immigrants could lead to a risk of "significant public disorder". However, the paper chose to interpret this as meaning that the disorder would be caused by immigrants, and failed to mention the media's role when reporting ACPO's statement.^[25]

The newspaper is sometimes accused by its critics of having an anti-semitic past, being described by Ken Livingstone as having campaigned not to admit Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, that it described Jews as infiltrating and undermining the pre-Hitler German government, supporting the Nazis, and blaming the Jews for having caused bad feeling against them in Germany.^[26]

Supplements and features

Regular cartoon strips

Current cartoon strips that are in the Daily Mail include Garfield which moved from the Daily Express in 2006 and is also included in The Mail on Sunday. It is usually written by Jim Davis. I Don't Believe It is another 3/4 part strip, written by Dick Millington. Odd Streak and The Strip Show, which is shown in 3D are one part strips. Up and Running is a strip distributed by Knight Features and Fred Basset follows the life of the dog of the same name in a two part strip in the Daily Mail since 8 July 1963.^[29] The Gambols are another feature in the Mail on Sunday.

The long-running Teddy Tail cartoon strip, was first published on 5 April 1915 was the first ever cartoon strip in a British newspaper. It ran for over 40 years to 1960, spawning the popular Teddy Tail League Children's Club and many annuals from 1934 to 1942 and again from 1949 to 1962. Teddy Tail was a Mouse, with friends Kitty Puss (a cat), Douglas Duck and Dr. Beetle. Teddy Tail is always shown with a knot in his tail, the reason why is explained in one of his stories.^[30]^[31]

Online media

The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday publish most of their news online in a service called the Mail Online. Most of the site can be viewed for free and without registration, though some services require users to register.

Contributors

Notable regular contributors (past and present)

Past writers

Contents