The morning newspaper is a British household institution; such an important one that, until the laws were relaxed in the early 1990s, newsagents were the only shops that were allowed to open on Sundays. People could not be expected to do without their newspapers for even one-day, especially a day when there was more free time to read them. The Sunday papers sell slightly more copies than the national dailies and are thicker. Some of them have six or more sections making up a total of well over 200 pages.
Another indicator of the importance of ‘the papers’ is the morning ‘paper round’. Most newsagents organise these to, and more than half of the country’s readers get their morning paper delivered to their door by a teenager who gets up at around half-past five every day in order to earn a bit of extra pocket money.
The two types of national newspaper.
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’. The ‘quality papers’, or ‘broadsheets’, cater for the better educated readers. The ‘popular papers’, or ‘tabloids’, sell to a much larger readership. They contain far less print than the broadsheets and far more pictures. They use larger headlines and write in a simpler style of English. While the broadsheets devote much space to politics and other ‘serious’ news, the tabloids concentrate on ‘human interest’ stories, which often means sex and scandal.
However, the broadsheets do not completely ignore sex and scandal or any other aspects of public life both types of paper devote equal amounts of attention to sport. The difference between them is in the treatment of the topics they cover, and in which topics are given the most prominence. For example, compare headlines of newspapers for one date (25 march 1993) The Sun “I’ VE MESSED UP MY LIFE”, The Daily Express “MINISTER URGES SCHOOL CONDOMS” and The Times “ South Africa had nuclear bombs, admits de Klerk”, The Guardian “Serb shelling halts an airlift”
The reason that the quality newspapers are called broadsheets and the popular ones tabloids is because they are different in shapes. The broadsheets are twice as large as the tabloids. A word tabloid was first used for pharmaceutical substances compressed into pills. The tabloids compress the news, and are printed on small sheets of paper. “It is a mystery why, in Britain, reading intelligent papers should need highly-developed skills of paper-folding. But it certainly seems to be the rule.” (James O’Driscoll “Britain”, 1997)
Sunday press
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 appears on Sunday 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 ‘popular’ papers. In 1989 a new paper was published the Sunday Correspondent, advertising itself as the country’s first ‘quality tabloid’. It is closed after one year.
Politics.
The way politics is presented in the national newspapers reflects the fact that British political parties are essentially parliamentary organisations. Although different papers have differing political outlooks, none of the large newspapers is an organ of a political party. Many are often obviously against the policies of this or that party, but none of them would ever use ‘we’ or ‘us’ to refer to a certain party.
However, each paper has an idea of what kind of reader it is appealing to and fairly predictable political outlook. 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. The Guardian belongs to the left wing and The Independent holds to the centre. Of the popular papers only the Daily Mirror regularly supports Labour. The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The Star and especially The Sun represent the right. The right seems to be heavily over-represented, not because such a large majority of British people holds right-wing views. It is partly because the press tends to be owned by conservative party supporters. Plenty of Labour voters read popular papers with Conservative inclinations, but do not change their political opinions 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.
What counts for the newspaper publishers is business. All of them are in the business first and foremost to make money. They primary concern is to sell as many copies as possible and to attract as much advertising as possible. They normally put selling copies ahead of political integrity. A good example is change of The Sun’s Scottish edition’s attitude in early 1991. It had previously vigorously opposed any idea of Scottish independence or home rule; but when it saw the opinion polls in early 1991, it decided to change its mind completely.
Most of the newspapers are owned by big companies, some of which have vast interests in other things, ranging from travel agencies to 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 ‘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 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 notional papers. Its editorial independence is protected by a supervisory body, but in the 1980’s 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 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 Beaverbrool 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 1940’s. 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 tempted to 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 1960’s 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 1970’s 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 1980’s 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 that has continued to give special emphasis to scandals. But by 1990’s its sales were only two- thirds of their former highest figure of eight million.
Scandal.
The other feature of the national press that is partially the result of the commercial interests of its owners is its shallowness. Few other European countries have a popular press, which is so ‘low’. Some of the tabloids have almost given up even pretence of dealing with serious materials. Apart from sport, their pages are full of little except stories about private lives of famous people. Sometimes their ‘stories’ are not articles at all, they are just excuses to show pictures of almost naked women. During the 1980s, page three of the Sun became infamous in this respect and the women who posed for its photographs became known as ‘page three girls’.
The desire to attract more readers at all costs has meant that, in the late twentieth century, even the broadsheets in Britain can look rather ‘popular’ when compared to equivalent ‘quality’ papers in some other countries. They are still serious newspapers containing high-quality articles whose presentation of factual information is usually reliable. But even they now give a lot of coverage to news with a ‘human interest’ angle when they have the opportunity.
The Weekly and Periodical Press.
Good English writing is often to be found in the weekly political and literary journals, all based in London, all with nation-wide circulations in the tens of thousands. The Economist, founded in 1841, probably has no equal anywhere. It has a coloured cover and a few photographs inside, so that it looks like Times and Newsweek, Der Spiegel and l’Express, but its reports have more depth and breadth than any of these. It covers world affairs, and even its American section is more informative about America than its American equivalents. Although by no means ‘popular’, it is vigorous in its comments, and deserves the respect in which it is generally held. It is fairly obviously right-wing in its views, but the writing is of very high quality and that is why it has the reputation of being one of the best weeklies in the world.
The New Statesman and Spectator are weekly journals of opinion, one left, one right. They regularly contain well- written articles, often politically slanted. Both devote nearly half their space to literature and the arts. The New Statesman absorbed New Society in 1988.
The Times has three weekly ‘Supplements’, all published and sold separately. The Literary Supplement is devoted almost entirely to book reviews, and covers al kinds of new literature. It makes good use of academic contributors, and has at last, unlike The Economist, abandoned its old tradition of anonymous reviews. The Times Educational and Higher Educational Supplement are obviously specialist, and useful sources for any serious student of these fields of interests. New Scientist, published by the company, which owns the Daily Mirror, has good and serious articles about scientific research, often written by academics yet useful for the general reader.
One old British institution, the satirical weekly Punch, survives, more abrasive than in an earlier generation yet finding it hard to keep the place it once had in more secure social system.
Its attraction, particularly for the intellectual youth, has been surpassed by its rival, Private Eye, founded in 1962 by people who, not long before, had run a pupils’ magazine in Shrewsbury School. It is satirical magazine, which makes fun of all parties and politicians, and also makes fun of the mainstream press. It specialises in political scandal and, as a result, is forever defending itself in legal actions. It is so outrageous that some chains of newsagents sometimes refuse to sell it. Its scandalous material is admirably written on atrocious paper and its circulation rivals that of The Economist.
The country’s best-selling magazine is the Radio Times, which, as well as listing al the television and radio programmes for the coming week, contains some fifty pages of articles. (Note the typical British appeal to continuity in the name ‘Radio Times’. The magazine was first published before television existed and has never bothered to update its title).
Glossy weekly or monthly illustrated magazines cater either for women or for any of a thousand special interests. Almost all are based in London, with national circulations, and the women’s magazines sell millions of copies. These, along with commercial television, are the great educators of demand for the new and better goods offered by the modern consumer society. In any big newsagent’s shop the long rows of brightly covered magazines seems to go on forever; beyond the large variety of appeals to women and teenage girls come those concerned with yachting, tennis, model railways, gardening and cars. For every activity there is a magazine, supported mainly by its advertisers, and from time to time the police bring a pile of pornographic magazines to local magistrates, who have the difficult task of deciding whether they are sufficiently offensive to be banned.
These specialist magazines are not cheap. They live off an infinite variety of taste, curiosity and interest. Their production, week by week and month by month, represents a fabulous amount of effort and of felled trees. Television has not killed the desire to read.
Local and Regional Papers.
Most of the significant regional newspapers are ‘evening’ papers, each publishing about 4 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 people 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.
Local morning papers have suffered from the universal penetration of the London- based national press. Less than twenty survive in the whole of England and their combined circulation is much less than that of The Sun alone. Among local daily papers those published in the evenings are much more important. Each of about seventy towns has one, selling only within a radius of 50 to 100 kilometres. The two London evening papers, the News and Standard, together sold two million copies in 1980, but they could not both survive, and merged into one, now called The London Evening Standard.
Most local daily papers belong to one or other of the big press empires, which leave their local editors to decide editorial policy. Mostly the try to avoid any appearance of regular partisanship, giving equal weight to each major political party. They give heavy weight to local news and defend local interests and local industries.
The total circulation of all the provincial daily papers, morning and evening together, is around eight million: about half as great as that of the national papers. In spite of this, some provincial papers are quite prosperous. They do not need their own foreign correspondents; they receive massive local advertising, particularly about things for sale. The truly local papers are weekly. They are not taken very seriously, being mostly bought for the useful information contained in their adverts. But for a foreign visitor wishing to learn something of the flavour of a local community, the weekly local paper can be useful. Some of these papers are now given away, not sold but supported by the advertising.
There is an exception to the dominance of the national press throughout Britain. This is in Scotland. It 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- fifth of the Scottish population, it sells well over million copies. Scotland’s cultural distinctness is reflected in its press.
The welsh press includes several daily papers as well as a number of weekly English-language, bilingual, or welsh-language newspapers.
Northern Ireland’s daily papers are all published in Belfast.
Freedom of the press.
The British press is controlled by a rather small number of extremely large multinational companies. This fact helps to explain two notable features. One of these is its freedom from interference from government influence. The press is so powerful in this respect that it is sometimes referred to as ‘the forth estate’ (the other three being the Commons, the Lords and the monarch). This freedom is ensured because there is a general feeling in the country that ‘freedom of speech’, is a basic constitutional right. A striking example of the importance of freedom of speech occurred during the Second World War. During this time, the country had a coalition government of Conservative and Labour politicians, so that there was really no opposition in Parliament at all. At one time, the cabinet wanted to use special wartime regulation to temporarily ban the Daily Mirror, which had been consistently critical of the government. The Labour party, which until then had been completely loyal to the government, immediately demanded a debate on the matter, and the other national papers, although they disagreed with the opinions of the Mirror, all leapt to its defence and opposed the ban. The government was forced to back down and the Mirror continued to appear throughout the war.
For a very long time the press has been free from any governmental interference. There has been no censorship, no subsidy. But the emphasis on revealing the details of people’s private lives has led to discussion about the possible need to restrict the freedom of the press. This is because, in behaving this way, the press has found itself in conflict with another British principle, which is strongly felt as that freedom of speech-, the right to privacy. Many journalists now appear to spend their time trying to discover the most sensational secrets of well-known personalities, or even of ordinary people who, by chance, find themselves connected with some newsworthy situations. There is a widespread feeling that, in doing so, they behave too intrusively.
In 1953 the organisations of the press themselves created a body called the Press Council whose main task were to defend the freedom of the press and to give its opinions about complaints. Its edicts often criticised 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. This organisation is made up of newspaper editors and journalists. It follows a Code of practice, which sets limits on the extent to which newspapers should publish details of people’s private lives. Journalists should not try to obtain information by subterfuge, intimidation or harassment, or photograph individuals without their consent. However, against the right to privacy the press has successfully opposed the concept of the public’s ‘right to know’.
Of course, Britain is not the only country where large companies with the same single aim of making profits control the press. ”So why is the British press so frivolous? The answer may lie in the function of the British press for its readers. British adults never read comics. Only children read these publications which consist entirely of picture stories. It would be embarrassing for an adult to be seen reading one. Adults, who want to read something very simple, with plenty of pictures to help them, have almost nowhere to go but the national press. Most people don’t use newspapers for ‘serious’ news. For this, they turn to another source- broadcasting.” (James O’Driscoll “Britain”, 1997)
Conclusion.
Despite the great concurrence from television British press is still alive. It has a remarkable history and some of today’s journalists are trying to keep this traditions. British press is considered to be the freest in the world, and tries to somehow rule itself in order not to be ruled by government. I think British press has future.
References:
Bromhead, Peter. Life in Modern Britain. Longman Group UK Ltd. 1991.
O’Driscoll, James. Britain. The Country and its People: an Introduction for Learners of English. Oxford University Press. 1995.
Collier’s Encyclopedia with Bibliography and Index. Volume 17 Macmillan Educational corporation.1974
