Daily Mail

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Daily Mail
Daily Mail front page
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Tabloid
Owner	Daily Mail and General Trust
Publisher	Associated Newspapers Ltd
Editor	Paul Dacre
Founded	1896
Political allegiance	Conservative/Right-Wing
Language	English
Price	£0.50 (Monday-Friday) £0.70 (Saturday)
Headquarters	2 Northcliffe House, London
Circulation	2,353,807[1] (October 2007)
ISSN	0307-7578
Website: Mail Online

The Daily Mail is a British newspaper, currently published in a tabloid format. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is Britain's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper, The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982. 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.^[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. This is an increase of almost a third over the sales figures for the Daily Mail 25 years ago, when it sold 1.87 million copies a day. By comparison, the Daily Express was selling over 2 million copies a day, so its sales have reduced by 60% over the same period. 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]

[edit] History

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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').

[edit] 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.

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]}

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

[edit] 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.

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 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. 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 November 16 2007 with the launch of Mail Today, 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.^[10]

[edit] Editorial stance

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The Daily Mail considers itself to be the voice of Middle England speaking up for "small-c" conservative^[11] 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, and unlike Rupert Murdoch's tabloid 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^[12] 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'^[13].

To the surprise of some of its critics^{[citation needed]}, 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".^[14]

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.

[edit] Moral issues

The Mail is well-known for its right wing stance on numerous issues which it sees as being of moral significance. These include continuing condemnation of convicted criminals such as Myra Hindley and Maxine Carr and television programmes such as Jerry Springer - The Opera or Brass Eye, abortion and reverse discrimination in the UK.

[edit] Immigration

The Mail is also known for its strong stance on immigration^{[citation needed]}. 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.^[15] 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)^[16] 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.^[17]

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.^[18]

The paper now 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".^[19] Despite its anti-mass immigration stance the paper has campaigned for failed asylum seekers from Zimbabwe to be allowed to stay in Britain.

[edit] Reader feedback

This section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (May 2008)

The Daily Mail's online presence with its "comment" features beneath the articles has given some insight into the political views and allegiances of the paper's readers. However, this should be treated with caution as those reading the paper online may not be the same type of people who purchase the paper, and people may have been referred to specific articles from other sites.

An example of feedback which suggests that Daily Mail readers are not as "right wing" as some claim is a 2007 article by Lowri Turner regarding her feelings of anxiety about having had a mixed-race child. The article attracted 16 comments every one of which was critical of her stance and many of which accused her of harbouring racist attitudes.^[20] On the other hand, other articles feature large numbers of comments that are supportive of the British National Party.^[21]

[edit] Common satirical target

The paper, and the stereotypical "Daily Mail reader" have become stock characters in the UK (as the phrase "Guardian reader" has become for the left/liberal archetype), and are often featured in a negative light in other publications and media:

• Alan Partridge, a television comedy character, states that it is "arguably the best newspaper in the world" in an episode of I'm Alan Partridge.
• A stand up comedy show at the Edinburgh Festival 2007 was called All Daily Mail Writers Must Die, by a comedian called William Hanmer-Lloyd.
• In the Harry Potter series, the hero's obnoxious uncle Vernon Dursley is shown reading the Daily Mail; series author JK Rowling has confessed to loathing the paper.^[22]
• In the adult satirical comic Viz 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.^{[citation needed]} In the Eye's frequent spoofs of the Mail's style, the by-line is usually "Sir David Fester": this refers to Sir David English (see above) and to a court case between the two publications, which the Mail won and then ran the story under the title "Anatomy of a festering lie".
• The satirical website theVoiceofReason.co.uk [2] spoofs the Daily Mail as the Daily Moan because of its frequently preachy editorial stance.
• 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 and TV show 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.
• In the comedy series Extras a copy of the Daily Mail appears with the headline "Gypsies are eating our pets."
• 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..."
• The Irish nationalist song "The Man from the Daily Mail" attacks the Daily Mail (and British media in general) for its coverage of Irish issues and portrayal of Irish people [3].
• Bloc Party's "Hunting for Witches" from their 2007 album A Weekend In the City illustrates the terrorist attacks on London's transportation system in July 2005 and contains the lyric "The Daily Mail says the enemy's among us, taking our women, and taking our jobs."
• The title track from The Smiths' album The Queen Is Dead features the lines "I said Charles, don't you ever crave to appear on the front of the Daily Mail dressed in your Mother's bridal veil."
• In Series E of BBC TV show QI the episode dedicated to Europe contained a round called Call My (Euro) Bluff given to lampoon the supposed euroscepticism the paper allegedly displays towards supposed European legislation - "laws" declaring that the sale of curved bananas is to be made illegal, tightrope walkers have to wear hard hats due to health and safety regulations, sausages can't be called sausages anymore and trawlermen have to wear hairnets whilst fishing were all revealed to be completely untrue, despite the Mail, and other newspapers such as The Sun, reporting them as fact.
• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' 'Babe, I'm on Fire' includes 'The man from the Daily Mail / With his dead refugee' in a catalogue of grotesque figures.
• Daily Mail-o-matic produces stereotypical bizarre headlines such as "Will council tax give cancer to lesbians?"

[edit] Supplements and features

Daily Mail City & Finance - City & Finance is the business part of the Daily Mail, and the Financial Mail is the business paper free with the Mail on Sunday. City & Finance features City News and the results from the London Stock Exchange, and also has its own website [4] called This is Money. Travelmail - Contains travel articles, advertisements etc. Femail - Femail is an extensive part of the Daily Mail's newspaper and website, being one of four main features on Mail Online others being News, TV & Showbiz and Sport. It is designed for women and is similar to magazines with life stories such as Bella Magazine and Take A Break. Weekend - The Daily Mail Weekend is a TV guide published by the Daily Mail, included free with the Mail every Saturday. Weekend magazine, launched in October 1993, is issued free with the Saturday Daily Mail and has more ABC1 readers than any other national magazine. Weekend was originally launched with the intention of raising the Saturday circulation up to around 1.8 million copies. Today, the Daily Mail on a Saturday circulates over 3.2 million copies and is read by over 6.4 million adults. The guide does not use a magazine-type layout but chooses a newspaper style similar to the Daily Mail itself. In April 2007, the "Weekend" had a major revamp which included new articles and the end of other ones, such as the popular Nigel Andrew's View next to the guide every day. A feature changed during the revamp was a dedicated Freeview channel page to ensure that the guide was more 'user-friendly' for people with the most used digital box in Great Britain.

The Financial Mail on Sunday Mail on Sunday Financial Mail on Sunday - now part of the main paper, this section includes the award winning Financial Mail Enterprise, focusing on small business. You - You magazine is a women's magazine featured in the Mail on Sunday. Its mix of in-depth features plus fashion, beauty advice, practical insights on health and relationships, food recipes and interiors pages make it a regular read for over 3 million women (and 2.3 million men) every week. The Mail markets it, with Live magazine, as the only paper to have a magazine for him (Live) and for her (You). The Mail on Sunday is read by over six million a week[23]. Live - this is the magazine is aimed at men. The main features are columms by well-known people such as Piers Morgan, Has a particular stance towards iPod style equipment, and as such has been criticised for brand favouritism. Mail on Sunday 2 This pullout includes review, featuring articles on the arts, books and culture and it consists of reviews of all media and entertainment forms and interviews with sector personalities, property, travel and health. Sportsmail - on the back pages of the Mail. It features different sports including an emphasis on alternative sports such as darts and snooker. Football Mail on Sunday - this reviews Premier League, Championship and Football League games from Saturday as well as any important international games.

[edit] Regular cartoon strips

• Garfield
• I Don't Believe It
• Odd Streak
• The Strip Show
• Up and Running (by Knight Features)
• The Gambols (Sunday, in the Cartoons section)
• Fred Basset
• The Middletons (Sunday, in the Cartoons section)
• Peanuts (Sunday, in the Cartoons section)

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 July 8, 1963.^[24] 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. ^{[25] [26]}

[edit] Online media

Main article: Mail Online

The Daily Mail and its Sunday sibling, The Mail on Sunday publish most of their news online in a service called the Mail Online. It contains almost all of the stories from the Daily Mail as well as a large archive of important stories from years ago. The Daily Mail's sister paper has it's own website, but the format and stories are much the same.

The search engine on the Daily Mail website is also widely used, being one of Internet Explorer 7`s default web searches, alongside names such as Google, Yahoo! and eBay. Most of the site can be viewed for free and without registration, though some services require users to register.

[edit] Contributors

In recent times, like some other British newspapers (see, for example, Bruce Anderson's contributions to The Independent), the Daily Mail has taken to including some columnists with a very different political stance from the paper's own editorial line. Notable in the Mail's case is Roy Hattersley, a former Labour minister, who still takes a classic social-democratic line and nowadays attacks his own party very much from the left. Hattersley has written frequently for both the Mail and its political antithesis The Guardian, as has Geoffrey Wheatcroft.

[edit] Notable regular contributors (past and present)

[edit] Past writers

• Paul Callan
• William Comyns Beaumont (left in 1903 to create The Bystander)
• Anthony Cave Brown (worked from mid-1950s through mid-1960s, won 'Reporter of the Year' award in 1958)
• Nigel Dempster
• Simon Heffer (left in 2005 to join the Daily Telegraph)
• 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)
• William Le Queux -- A prolific writer of invasion literature in the pre-First World War period.
• 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.
• Ian Wooldridge, a sportswriter on the paper from 1961 until his death in 2007

[edit] 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

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Mail Online
• This is Money
• A biography of the 1st Lord Rothermere
• Mailwatch