National Daily and Sunday Papers

The British buy more newspapers than any other people except the Swedes and the Japanese. The daily press differs in two obvious ways from that of any similar Western European country. First, all over Britain most people read 'national' papers, based in London, which altogether sell more copies than all the eighty-odd provincial papers combined. Second, there is a striking difference between the five 'quality' papers and the six mass-circulation popular 'tabloids'.

These characteristics are still more salient with the Sunday press. Almost no papers at all are published in Britain on Sundays except 'national' ones: six 'popular' and five 'quality', based in London. Three appear on Sundays only; the others are associated with dailies which have the same names but different editors, journalists and layouts. The 'quality' Sunday papers devote large sections to literature and the arts. They have colour supplements and are in many ways more like magazines than newspapers. They supply quite different worlds of taste and interest from the 'popular' papers.

Scotland has two important 'quality' papers, The Scotsman in Edinburgh and the Glasgow Herald. The Glasgow Daily Record and Dundee Courier and Advertiser survive as 'popular' papers. On Sundays the Sunday Post, of Dundee, claims to be read by four-fifths of the Scottish population. Scotland's cultural distinctness is reflected in its press.

The dominance of the national press reflects the weakness of regional identity among the English. The gap in quality is not so much between Labour and Conservative, as between levels of ability to read and appreciate serious news presented seriously. Of the five quality morning papers only The Daily Telegraph is solidly Conservative; nearly all its readers are Conservatives. The Times and Financial Times have a big minority of non-Conservative readers. Of the popular papers only the Daily Mirror regularly supports Labour. Plenty of Labour voters read popular papers with Conservative inclinations, but do not change their political opinion because of what they have read. Some of them are interested only in the human interest stories and in sport, and may well hardly notice the reporting of political and economic affairs.

Most of the significant regional newspapers are 'evening' papers, each publishing about four editions between about midday and 5 p.m. London like every other important town has one. All these 'evening' papers are semi-popular, but none has a circulation approaching that of any popular national paper.

Except in central London there are very few newspaper kiosks in town streets. This may be because most pavements are too narrow to have room for them. In towns the local evening papers are sold by elderly men and women who stand for many hours, stamping their feet to keep warm. Otherwise, newspapers can be bought in shops or delivered to homes by boys and girls who want to earn money by doing 'paper-rounds'.

Most of the newspapers are owned by big companies, some of which have vast interests in other things, ranging from travel agenciesto Canadian forests. Some have been dominated by strong individuals. The greatest of the press 'barons' have not been British in origin, but have come to Britain from Canada, Australia or Czechoslovakia. The most influential innovator of modern times is partly Indian, and spent his early years in India. He pioneered the introduction of new technology in printing. By now the press in general has replaced expensive old printing methods by new processes which make it possible to operate economically. But it took years of strikes, disrupted production and some violent confrontations before the changes were introduced.

Among the 'quality' papers the strongly Conservative Daily Telegraph sells more than twice as many copies as any of the others. It costs less to buy and its reporting of events is very thorough. The Financial Times has a narrower appeal, but is not narrowly restricted to business news. The Guardian has an old liberal tradition, and is in general a paper of the Left.

The most famous of all British newspapers is The Times. It is not now, and has never been, an organ of the government, and has no link with any party. In 1981 it and The Sunday Times were taken over by the international press company of the Australian Rupert Murdoch, which also owns two of the most 'popular' of the national papers. Its editorial independence is protected by a supervisory body, but in the 1980s it has on the whole been sympathetic to the Conservative government. The published letters to the editor have often been influential, and some lead to prolonged discussion in further letters. Under the Murdoch regime it has continued a movement away from its old austerity.

Since 1986 The Times has had a serious new rival, of similar quality and character: The Independent. It has achieved a circulation not much smaller than that of The Times - and greater than The Times' circulation a few years ago.

The popular newspapers are now commonly called 'tabloids', a word first used for pharmaceutical substances compressed into pills. The tabloid papers compress the news, and are printed on small sheets of paper. They use enormous headlines for the leading items of each day, which are one day political, one day to do with crime, one day sport, one day some odd happening. They have their pages of political report and comment, short, often over­simplified but vigorously written and (nowadays) generally responsible. They thrive on sensational stories and excitement.

The two archetypal popular papers, the Daily Mail and Daily Express, were both built up by individual tycoons in the early twentieth century. Both had a feeling for the taste of a newly-literate public: if a man bites a dog, that's news. The Daily Express was built up by a man born in Canada. He became a great man in the land, a close friend and associate of Winston Churchill, and a powerful minister in his War Cabinet. The circulation of the Daily Express at one time exceeded four million copies a day. Now the first Lord Beaverbrook is dead, and the daily sales are not much more than half of their highest figure. The history of the Daily Mail, with its more conventional conservatism, is not greatly different.

In popular journalism the Daily Mirror became a serious rival of the Express and Mail in the 1940s. It was always tabloid, and always devoted more space to pictures than to text. It was also a pioneer with strip cartoons. During the Second World War it was the Government's fiercest and most effective critic, and at one time Churchill was temptedto use the Government's special wartime powers to suppress it, but he left it free. After 1945 it regularly supported the Labour Party. It soon outdid the Daily Express in size of headlines, short sentences and exploitation of excitement. It also became the biggest-selling daily newspaper. For many years its sales were above four million; sometimes well above.

Until the 1960s the old Daily Herald was an important daily paper reflecting the views of the trade unions and the Labour Party. Then it went through several changes, until in the 1970s its successor, The Sun, was taken over by Mr. Murdoch's company. In its new tabloid form it became a right-wing rival to the Daily Mirror, with huge headlines and some nudity. In the 1980s its sales reached four million and exceeded the Daily Mirror's. Mr. Murdoch's News International already owned The News of the World, a Sunday paper which has continued to give special emphasis to scandals. But by 1990 its sales were only two-thirds of their former highest figure of eight million.

For a very long time the press has been free from any governmental interference. There has been no censorship, no subsidy. But for several decades it has seemed that some newspapers have abused their freedom. In competing with one another to get stories to satisfy a public taste for scandal, reporters and photographers have been tempted to harass individuals who have for one reason or another been involved, directly or indirectly, in events which could excite public curiosity. Prominent people of all kinds, as well as obscure people who come into the news as victims of crimes or accidents, have been pursued into their homes for photographs and interviews.

In 1953 the organisations of the press themselves created a body called the Press Council, whose main tasks were to defend the freedom of the press and to give its opinions about complaints. Its edicts often criticized the behaviour of some newspapers and their journalists, but were treated with indifference. In 1990 the government asked a committee to examine the situation, and its report concluded that the Press Council had been ineffectual. The organisations of the press appointed a working party of editors to draw up a published code of practice, and a new Press Complaints Commission to enforce it. Journalists should not try to obtain information by subterfuge, intimidation or harassment, or photograph individuals without their consent.

‘Intrusions and inquiries into an individual's private life without his or her consent are not generally acceptable and publication can be justified only when in the public interest.’ The justification of 'public interest' could include detecting or exposing crime... or seriously anti-social conduct, protecting public health or safety, or preventing the public from being misled by someone's statement.

A retired professor of social institutions, who had already been for ten years chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority, was appointed as the first chairman of the Press Complaints Commission. The government had made it clear, with the agreement of the opposition, that this must be the last chance for the press to regulate itself. As the chairman said, in an interview with The Independent, reported in the Sunday Times, ‘It would require only one word from us that the press was not giving its full commitment to enforcing its code … and statutory intervention would be on the cards again.’