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The Daily Mail and its Sunday edition the Mail on Sunday are British newspapers, first published in 1896. For many years, it has had a right-wing editorial slant. For most of its history it was a broadsheet but is currently published in a tabloid format. Its chief rival, the Daily Express, with a similar political stance and target audience, sells less than half as many copies. As of 2004 the paper's publisher, Daily Mail and General Trust, is a FTSE 100 company and the newspaper has a circulation of over 2 million giving it the second largest circulation of any English language newspaper, and the twelfth highest of any newspaper.

Contents

1 History 1.1 Brief chronology 1.2 The 1930s 1.3 Editorial stereotypes and satire 1.4 See also 2 External links

History

The Daily Mail was devised by Lord Rothermere and Lord Northcliffe as an alternative to the newspapers of the day. The paper was first published on May 4, 1896. The Mail was the first tabloid newspaper in Britain, and was popular because of its short, simplified news stories, and pictures. A particularly popular feature of the paper was the introduction of serials. The paper initially cost a halfpenny, and the first edition was 8 pages. Soon after its launch the paper had over half a million readers.

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 in 1910 both Rothermere's prizes had been won.

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. Lord Northcliffe created controversy by advocating conscription when the war broke out. On May 21, 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 Stock Exchange ceremonially burned the unsold copies and launched a boycott against the Harmsworth Press. Herbert 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 December 5, 1916. His successor, David Lloyd George, asked Northcliffe to be in his cabinet, hoping it would prevent him criticising the government. Northcliffe declined.

Brief chronology

In 1908 the Daily Mail began the Ideal Home Exhibition, which it still runs today.

In 1922, when Lord Northcliffe died, Lord Rothermere took full control of the paper.

In 1924 the Daily Mail contributed to the defeat of Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Party in the General election, by publishing the Zinoviev Letter, later shown to have been forged, claiming that showed British Communists were planning violent Revolution.

In 1926 the newspaper had a circulation of 2 million.

The 1930s

For a time in the early 1930s Rothermere and the Mail were sympathetic to some degree with 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". This was perhaps more naive than sinister; the BUF of the early 1930s was not the Nazi Party of the Holocaust, and after the violence of the 1934 Olympia meeting, involving the BUF, the Mail withdrew its support.

The paper also published articles lamenting the number of German Jews entering Britain as refugees after the rise of Nazism. It should be remembered that was before the major horrors of Nazism had occurred.

Rothermere had several meetings with Adolf Hitler. He argued that the Nazi leader wanted peace, and in 1934 campaigned for the African colonies confiscated in the Versailles Treaty to be returned to Germany. It should be remembered that all of this occured in the post World War I period when most Europeans' most ardent longing was to preserve peace, and many were desperate to believe that this was possible. It is anachronistic to see it as evidence of opposition to democracy.

Rothermere and the Mail supported Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, particularly during the events leading up to the Munich Agreement, as did the majority of democratic politicians at the time, including liberals and socialists. However, after the Nazi invasion of Prague in 1939, the Mail changed position and urged Chamberlain to prepare for war.

Rothermere died in November 1940.

Editorial stereotypes and satire

The Daily Mail, (and its columnists, such as Simon Heffer and Melanie Phillips) is a target of satire and parody in the liberal media and certain satirical magazines. The level of criticism of the paper is a reflection of its great influence in the United Kingdom, where it is is the second highest selling daily newspaper, and a leading opponent of what it would see as smug liberal orthodoxies. It seeks conflict with the liberal establishment, and gives as good as it gets.

Among the criticisms made is the allegation that the Mail vilifies asylum seekers and blames for the country's misfortunes, and that it regularly over-hypes bad news, especially the predicted property price collapse in Britain — this tendency has given rise to the mocking name of Daily Wail. The satirical magazine Private Eye regularly runs headlines like Influx of asylum seekers cause house values to plummet, Property prices fall as asteroid prepares to wipe out life on Earth, under the Daily Mail banner. The paper is also referred to be its enemies as the Daily Hate, not least because, according to the Guardian [1] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1178434,00.html) the Mail's founder, Lord Northcliffe said his winning formula was to give his readers "a daily hate". It should be pointed out that that was around a hundred years ago, and is not necessarily an accurate guide to current editorial policy, and may indeed have been a tongue in cheek remark at the time.

The Mail, it is claimed, also likes to take a moral stand based on the morals of the 19th century Christian right-wing, and will also vilify any group of individuals who do not follow its moral code, leading to the parody "New 'Fun' craze sweeps the nation, we must ban this sick filth". Some columnists in The Guardian call it The Daily Misogynist due to some of its columnists' alleged anti-feminist slant. However, many of its readers are young women who are thought to read it more for its horoscope and television pages, than for its political stance. The Daily Mail has a strong anti-European Union policy.

The stereotype of the Daily Mail reader in certain satirical publications and generally among liberal commentators is of a racist, aspiring middle-class, conservative female housewife, who is too stupid to read the Broadsheet equivalents (such as The Times or the Daily Telegraph). Like most stereotypes, this one is not wholly accurate and should be taken only as a general overview of the satirical or general stereotype of the paper held by the liberal establishment and hostile publications, and not as a serious comment on the content of the paper.

See also

• Paul Dacre, the current editor
• 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 (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/)
• A biography of the 1st Lord Rothermere (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/BUrothermere.htm)

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