The Rise and Fall of the British Press by Mick Temple

Author:Mick Temple
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2017-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

The mid-market duo

Peter Cole pointed out that you don’t have to like a paper to understand why some people want to read it, but in the case of the Express titles he couldn’t understand ‘why anyone would choose to’ (Cole 2007), an assessment that is still difficult to dispute. What was once the most successful and vibrant British daily newspaper now seems a pale copy of the Mail. The wonderful Sunday Express of the 1950s and 1960s has likewise disappeared. Bought in 2000 by Richard Desmond, owner of celebrity and top-shelf magazines, the sales decline continues, as does its obsession with Princess Diana and Madeleine McCann.

The Mail titles also have problems, but not of professionalism. Both the daily and Sunday paper dominate the mid-market sector. Whether you like their views or not, the papers are well-written and, crucially, capture the concerns of their audiences – both the daily and Sunday papers know their readers (and their prejudices) and deliver an entertaining and often authoritative read. However, a wide swathe of people – what the Mail would call the ‘liberal metropolitan elite’ (Drury 2016) – regard its social and political coverage with disgust, arguing that the paper and its editor Paul Dacre exacerbate societal tensions. Some critics regard Dacre as ‘the most dangerous man in Britain’ (Beckett 2001) and more see the papers’ approach as characterised by anger and vitriol (in Adams 2017). For them, the Daily Mail has become a joke, the print equivalent of American radio’s ‘shock jocks’.

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