The Sun (United Kingdom): Difference between revisions
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In the [[Republic of Ireland]], an Irish edition of ''The Sun'', known as ''The Irish Sun'', is published. This contains much of the same content as the main UK edition, but with some Irish news and editorial content, as well as advertising. However, it uses a sightly bigger paper size to the UK version, and costs €0.80. |
In the [[Republic of Ireland]], an Irish edition of ''The Sun'', known as ''The Irish Sun'', is published. This contains much of the same content as the main UK edition, but with some Irish news and editorial content, as well as advertising. However, it uses a sightly bigger paper size to the UK version, and costs €0.80. |
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==See also== |
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*[[Tabloid]] ("red top") |
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== External links == |
== External links == |
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Revision as of 22:25, 9 December 2005
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Tabloid |
| Owner(s) | News International |
| Editor | Rebekah Wade |
| Founded | 1964 |
| Political alignment | Right wing |
| Headquarters | Wapping, London |
| Website | www.thesun.co.uk |
- For other uses, see Sun (disambiguation).
The Sun, a tabloid daily newspaper published in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, has the highest circulation of any daily English-language newspaper in the world, standing at around 3,200,000 copies daily in late-2004. The daily readership is just under 8,500,000 and it has more than twice as many readers in the ABC1 demographic than its upmarket stablemate The Times. It is published by News Group Newspapers of News International, itself a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Despite its mass popularity, many people hold negative views of the paper. They accuse it of being coarse and unprofessional; its journalistic style of being sensationalist, designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator and "dumb down" public discourse; and its editors and staff of being willing to print stories based on tenuous evidence, and to manipulate the news and even fabricate stories for partisan reasons.
History
The Sun was launched in 1964 as a replacement for the Daily Herald, an ailing left-wing newspaper which Mirror Group Newspapers had bought from Odhams Press and the TUC. The circulation continued to decrease until in 1969 the paper was sold to Rupert Murdoch. He immediately relaunched the newspaper as a tabloid, and established The Sun as a sister paper to The News of the World, the Sunday newspaper which he had bought the previous year. The Sun used the same printing presses, and the two papers were now managed together at senior executive levels.
The editorial content of the paper was popularised and coarsened (initially remaining loyal to the Labour Party) and the circulation increased, particularly when the Page Three Girl feature changed, on its first anniversary in 1970, from being a nude glamour photograph to top-half-only nude, although "Page Three" was not a daily feature at first.
By 1978 The Sun had overtaken its erstwhile stablemate The Mirror in circulation, partly thanks to remorseless advertising on ITV, voiced by actor Christopher Timothy. From 1981, the Sun used Bingo as a promotional tool to increase its circulation still further.
Despite the industrial relations of the 1970's - the so-called "Spanish practices" of the print unions - The Sun was very profitable, enabling Murdoch to expand to the United States from 1973. In 1986 Murdoch shut down the Bouverie Street premises of the Sun and News of the World and moved operations to the new Wapping complex, blocking union activity and greatly reducing the number of staff employed to print the papers; a year-long picket by sacked workers was eventually defeated (see Wapping dispute). The increased profitability of the two tabloids helped Murdoch to launch the Sky satellite channels and to pursue predatory pricing of The Times (from 1993) against its own rivals.
Political stance
In the two 1974 elections, the paper's attitude to the Labour Party was "agnostic", according to Roy Greenslade in Press Gang (2003); the then editor, Larry Lamb, was originally from a Labour background, with a socialist upbringing. Deputy editor Bernard Shrimsley was a middle class (although not committed) Tory. Both Lamb and Shrimsley were essentially bound by the decisions of Rupert Murdoch, who decided to back the Conservatives (See Chippindale, P. & Horrie, C. (1999) Stick It Up Your Punter).
As the Labour government limped on and declined in popularity, the Sun's editorial stance became sympathetic to the Conservative Party and it urged its readers to vote for them in the election of 1979. The paper was a strong champion of the Conservative leader, Margaret Thatcher, and her policies. It maintained its support for the Conservatives after Thatcher was succeeded by John Major in 1990. On the day of the 1992 election, its front-page headline was "If [Labour leader] Neil Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights", and two days later the Sun was so convinced of its contributions to the Conservative victory that it declared "It Wos The Sun Wot Won It".
Subsequently, the paper switched support to Labour following the 1994 election of Tony Blair to the leadership of the Labour Party. Since then it has - despite strong criticism of some of Labour's policies - supported Labour in elections, partly because of a personal relationship between Blair and Murdoch. Murdoch has been accused of trying to exploit his relationship with Blair, and with Thatcher before him, to further his business interests and influence public policy, whilst both politicians have been accused of pandering to the media mogul. More recently, some critics have suggested that both News Corporation staff and politicians in Britain have over-estimated the influence of The Sun on voters.
Notoriety
Critics of the paper accuse it of being jingoistic, sensationalistic and subservient to Murdoch's point of view. It infamously printed the headline "Gotcha" when, during the Falklands War, Argentinian ship the General Belgrano was sunk, and often refers to foreign leaders in unflattering terms — such as dubbing president Jacques Chirac of France "le Worm". Support of British troops — referred to as "Our Boys" — in action is invariably unequivocal and, like all Murdoch-owned media, the paper has fully supported the ongoing war in Iraq. The tabloid is also famous for its anti-German headlines and stories, for example in connection with Football, Pope Benedict XVI and the European Union.
More generally, The Sun frequently makes remarks disparaging of foreign countries, especially neighbours of the United Kingdom, with the usage of slurs. The Sun however is very overtly Atlanticist, and supportive of the United States.
Also controversial has been the paper's alleged homophobia. This started in the 1980s as the new Greater London Council led by Ken Livingstone gave (modest) financial support to various gay rights and support groups. When Peter Mandelson was "outed" by Matthew Parris (a gay former columnist on The Sun) on Newsnight in October 1999, the paper called for it to be stated whether Britain was governed by a "gay mafia", as there were then several openly gay members of the British Cabinet, only for the paper's attitudes to be completely reversed the next day, because of the uproar which had ensued. In reality, Chris Smith, Nick Brown and Mandelson were by no means allies.
The Sun was condemned for its coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium disaster in Sheffield, where it printed allegations against Liverpool football fans that were later found to be untrue. This caused a boycott of the Sun in Liverpool. It made a full page 'apology' on July 7, 2004, 15 years after the disaster, which has been criticised by some as self-serving [1]. For more on this controversy, see 'The Sun newspaper' section in 'Hillsborough disaster'.
More recently, The Sun has labelled many British MPs as traitors, for failing to vote in favour of controversial anti-terrorism laws [2].
Tabloid values
The paper relies heavily on the entertainment industry, royalty and sport as well as news and politics for its content, with many items often revolving around celebrities and similar individuals. In addition to writers covering celebrities-about-town and the latest soap opera storylines, the paper is always on the lookout for celebrities in trouble or dishabille. Pictures are preferred and The Sun often uses pictures taken by paparazzi. Outside celebrity-based content, common story themes include immigration, security scandals, the so-called "destruction of the British way of life" by Europe, domestic abuse and paedophiles - though some people suggested that the latter was once undermined by a beautiful baby competition (with plenty of photographs of young children) run at the same time which they claimed might attract the attention of unsavoury individuals.
Editorially, the paper takes a right-wing view, staunchly anti-European and conservative, although this has not stopped it giving support to the ruling "New Labour" Government under the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Blair since 1997. This was repeated in 2001 and 2005, despite Labour usually having opposite views to the paper.
The current editor is Rebekah Wade, the first female editor in the paper's history. In the early hours of November 3, 2005 Wade was briefly held in custody for an assault on her husband, the actor Ross Kemp, though she was released without charge after eight hours. In the preceding few weeks, the newspaper had been running a campaign against domestic violence.
Editors
- Sidney Jacobsen (1964–1965) (previously editor of the Daily Herald before the name change)
- Dick Dinsdale (1965–1969)
- Larry Lamb (1969–1972)
- Bernard Shrimsley (1972–1975) (Lamb was "editorial director", supervising both the Sun and NOW)
- Larry Lamb (1975–1980) (Lamb took an enforced six month sabbatical before being sacked by Murdoch)
- Kelvin MacKenzie (1981–1994)
- Stuart Higgins (1994–1998)
- David Yelland (1998–2003)
- Rebekah Wade (2003–)
Related newspapers
Other newspapers published within the UK with "tabloid values" are the Daily Express, the Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Star, and the Daily Sport. Of these, only the Mirror supports the Labour Party, the others are conservative. See List of newspapers in the United Kingdom for a comparison of The Sun to other newspapers.
Note: the Sunday equivalent of The Sun in the UK is the News of the World – the Sunday Sun is an unrelated tabloid newspaper, published in Newcastle upon Tyne.
In the Republic of Ireland, an Irish edition of The Sun, known as The Irish Sun, is published. This contains much of the same content as the main UK edition, but with some Irish news and editorial content, as well as advertising. However, it uses a sightly bigger paper size to the UK version, and costs €0.80.
See also
- Tabloid ("red top")