Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is a British newspaper, a tabloid, first published in 1896. It is Britain's most popular daily 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 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.

The Mail was originally a broadsheet, but switched to its current tabloid format on 3 May 1971, on 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. Since 2005, the publisher of the Mail, the Daily Mail and General Trust, has been 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.

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.

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 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.

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, eg 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", 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 Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, which influenced the Mail's political stance toward them up to 1939. During this period it was the only British newspaper to consistently support the German Nazi Party. The Mail's consistency regarding this controversial stance has lasted to the present day, a remarkable feat regardless of one's political persuasion. 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.

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.

The paper continues to be referred to on occasion as the Daily Heil, referring to its firm right wing stance and its support for Mosely.

Recent history

The paper enjoyed a period of considerable commercial and journalistic success in the 1980s, employing some of the most inventive writers in old Fleet Street including the diarist and feature writer Paul Callan and his protégé, the gossip columnist Nigel Dempster. 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.

The paper has a weekly international edition known as The UK Mail, carrying a selection of articles from the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.

It 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 new dedicated Irish version comprises stories of Irish interest alongside content from the UK version. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Irish edition had a circulation of 55,311 for July 2006. From 24 September 2006 Ireland on Sunday, the Irish Sunday newspaper acquired by Associated in 2001, will be replaced by an Irish edition of the Mail on Sunday, to tie in with the weekday newspaper.

Editorial stance

The Daily Mail considers itself to be the voice of Middle England, speaking up for the "small-c" conservative values and against what it sees as a liberal establishment. It generally takes an anti-European, anti-immigration, anti-abortion (despite the "abortion hope" headline -see below) view, 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.

In common with many of its left-wing critics, it has strongly opposed the growing of genetically modified crops in the United Kingdom. In Richard Littlejohn, who returned in 2005 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]

On Middle East issues it is generally pro-Israel, although it has expressed doubts about the Iraq War, and in 2004 Michael Gove wrote a piece in The Times accusing it of allying itself with the anti-war Left.

The Mail 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".

Moral Issues

The Mail takes a strong stance on numerous moral issues, including continuing condemnation of criminals who have already been punished, such as Myra Hindley and Maxine Carr, and harsh attacks on television programmes such as Jerry Springer - The Opera or Brass Eye. 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". It is also seen as anti-gay, for example running the headline [4] "Abortion hope after “gay genes” find" in response to the supposed discovery of "gay gene".

Immigration

The Mail takes a strong stance on immigration, and its treatment of issues such as asylum seekers has prompted opponents (including London Mayor Ken Livingstone in a well-publicised argument) to claim that the newspaper panders to racism in this respect. In the 1930s, the paper 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, 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'. Despite its anti-immigration stance the paper has also campaigned for failed asylum seekers from Zimbabwe to be allowed to stay in Britain, making a distinction between supporting the right to asylum for people (it deems to be) genuinely fleeing persecution on one hand, and opposing economic migration (arguably) disguised as asylum seeking on the other.

Common satirical target

"Daily Mail reader" has become something of a phrase in its own right in the UK. The stereotypical Daily Mail reader is characterised as an insular, homophobic, aspiring middle-class conservative who lacks the intelligence to read the broadsheet equivalent the Daily Telegraph, and is stuck in the past. A roughly opposite stereotype to "Daily Mail reader" is the "Guardian reader" (denoting left-wing self-proclaimed intellectuals); this epitomises the conflict between the classic right- and left-wing viewpoints in British middle-class society.

Daily Mail readers have featured in a negative light in certain media portrayals:

• The comedy character Alan Partridge states that it is "arguably the best 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.
• The satirical magazine Private Eye often refers to the Daily Mail as the Daily Hate Mail.
• In the BBC comedy show Monkey Dust, the editor of the Daily Mail is portrayed as a pile of excrement, with overtly bigoted and racist front pages of the paper shown in the background on a regular basis.
• On an episode of Room 101 Linda Smith referred to fans of Tim Henman as “awful people with copies of the Daily Mail in their pants”. The show's presenter, Paul Merton, responded by saying “Well, it’s very absorbent.”
• The spoof TV listings site TVGoHome included a reality show entitled Daily Mail Island in which contestants were denied access to any form of media except for the Daily Mail. As the show progresses the inhabitants become increasingly right-wing and irrational.
• David Aaronovitch, writing in The Observer, referred to the self-righteous as "those who have the Daily Mail where their hearts should be".
• In the comedy series Extras a copy of the Daily Mail appears with the headline "Asylum seekers are eating our pets."
• The Manic Street Preachers satirised the tabloid in the song "Royal Correspondent" from their Know Your Enemy album, with the line "Dream of the Daily Mail, it is the Holy Grail".
• Stephen Fry, on the BBC series Comedy Connections, described some fans of A Bit Of Fry And Laurie as "…a massive audience out there for people who may not understand a single word... a rather strange constituency of Daily Mail readers..."

Daily Mail writers

Current writers

• Alex Brummer
• Keith Waterhouse
• Melanie Phillips
• Richard Littlejohn
• Des Kelly
• Stephen Wright
• Roy Hattersley - former Labour Party deputy leader
• Michael Winner - film director
• Neil Sears
• Liz Jones
• Bill Mouland
• Nick Craven
• Peter Allen
• Charlie Bain
• Sam Greenhill
• Dan Newling
• James Mills
• Olinka Koster
• Charlotte Gill
• Tahira Yaqoob
• Gordon Rayner
• Michael Seamark
• David Williams
• Christian Gysin
• Beth Hale
• Tom Kelly
• Rebecca Camber
• Additional reportingRebecca English

Daily Mail Photographers

• Mark Large
• David Crump
• Jamie Wiseman
• Murray Sanders
• Roland Hoskins
• Mark Richards
• Jenny Goodall
• Colin Davey
• Dave Parker

Past writers

• Paul Johnson (left the Mail in 2001; now writes for the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator)
• Lynda Lee Potter (wrote for the Mail from 1967 until her death in 2004)
• Paul Callan
• Simon Heffer (left in 2005 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
• Keith Waterhouse
• Derek Draper
• Frank Barrett

Past writers

• Norman Tebbit
• Julie Burchill
• Harry Blackwood (North-East England area only)

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

External links

• Daily Mail official website
• A biography of the 1st Lord Rothermere
• Daily Mail Watch - website mocking Daily Mail and Daily Express headlines

Parody sites

• "The Rockall Times"
• "Daily Mail Maker", a spoof front page creator

Credits

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