tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/tabloid-journalism-28447/articlesTabloid journalism – The Conversation2023-05-29T20:07:48Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2049142023-05-29T20:07:48Z2023-05-29T20:07:48ZRupert Murdoch: how a 22-year-old ‘zealous Laborite’ turned into a tabloid tsar<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527924/original/file-20230524-10299-l4fgym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C17%2C3970%2C1976&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The successor: Rupert Murdoch, on right, with his parents Sir Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch around 1950.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">New South Publishing</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In September 1953, Rupert Murdoch arrived in sleepy Adelaide to take up his inheritance of News Limited. He was only 22 and had little experience of working at a newspaper, let alone running one, but his family had inherited a majority stake in the company following the death of Rupert’s father, the well-known journalist, editor and media executive <a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-before-rupert-keith-murdoch-and-the-birth-of-a-dynasty-49491">Keith Murdoch</a>. </p>
<p>After Rupert had completed his matriculation at Geelong Grammar in 1949 with marks that had not impressed his parents, he had worked briefly as a cadet reporter at the Melbourne Herald under his father’s watchful eye, spending a few months at the police courts with a friend from school before heading off to the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>Keith had accompanied him to London in early 1950 and introduced Rupert to leading figures in Fleet Street, helping his son land a summer stint as a junior reporter on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Gazette">Birmingham Gazette</a> – where Rupert made an impression when he told the proprietor the editor was so incompetent he should be sacked.</p>
<p>Rupert had then studied at Worcester College, Oxford. Again, he did not excel academically, but his contemporaries noticed he was financially astute and a shrewd problem-solver and risk-taker. Like Rupert Greene, his namesake grandfather on his mother’s side, Rupert dabbled in gambling and drinking beer more than his parents felt was good for him. And, like his father had been as a young man, Rupert was attracted to Labour politics. He famously kept a bust of Lenin in his room at Oxford. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528502/original/file-20230526-25-5faty3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528502/original/file-20230526-25-5faty3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528502/original/file-20230526-25-5faty3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528502/original/file-20230526-25-5faty3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528502/original/file-20230526-25-5faty3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528502/original/file-20230526-25-5faty3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528502/original/file-20230526-25-5faty3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528502/original/file-20230526-25-5faty3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Keith Murdoch was confident son Rupert would ‘outgrow his socialist ideals’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Keith tolerated Rupert’s excursion into left-wing politics and, in earlier years, had put him in touch with Labor prime minister <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Chifley">Ben Chifley</a>, who always replied courteously to Rupert’s letters. Keith told Chifley his 18-year-old son “is at present a zealous Laborite but will I think (probably) eventually travel the same course of his father”.</p>
<p>In the last months of his life, Keith was confident that Rupert was on the right track and would outgrow his <a href="https://theconversation.com/socialism-is-a-trigger-word-on-social-media-but-real-discussion-is-going-on-amid-the-screaming-113507">socialist</a> ideals. After finishing his studies at Oxford, Rupert worked on the subeditor’s desk at Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express, edited by the legendary <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Christiansen">Arthur Christiansen</a>, considered one of Fleet Street’s greatest editors.</p>
<p>Christiansen was obsessed with detail and worked up to 18 hours a day for more than 20 years. His memorable instructions to staff were handed down through the ages, including his exhortation to “always, always tell the news through people”.</p>
<p>The Daily Express was chosen for Rupert because it was one of the toughest and most prestigious schools in journalism. Keith had personally asked Beaverbrook to arrange this work experience for his son and Rupert trained as a down-table sub (a junior subeditor).</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Daily Express was ‘one of the toughest and most prestigious schools in journalism’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gillfoto">gillfoto</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When Rupert took up the reins at News Limited, that was the extent of his experience – a few months each at the Herald, the Birmingham Gazette and the Daily Express, plus all he had picked up from his father’s shop talk at home and the detailed letters Keith sent Rupert during his school years.</p>
<p>As part of the grandeur surrounding his rise, it is often said that Rupert built an empire out of just one tired Adelaide newspaper. To be pedantic, that is not quite true. When he inherited a controlling interest in News Limited, it published the News (Adelaide’s afternoon newspaper), the (Sunday) Mail (also in Adelaide) and the Barrier Miner (in Broken Hill). It also had a large stake in Southdown Press, which was housed in West Melbourne and published the national women’s magazine <a href="https://www.newidea.com.au/">New Idea</a>. </p>
<p>The company also controlled radio station 2BH Broken Hill and had a minor holding in 5DN Adelaide. Certainly, it was a small company by comparison with the then giant of the media industry, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Herald_and_Weekly_Times">Herald and Weekly Times</a>, but it was still a substantial start for a 22-year-old. It is true that the News was a tired and insignificant paper. It had a stagnant circulation and was drained of resources and revenue. </p>
<p>When Rupert arrived in Adelaide, he set about changing that and gave himself the unusual title of “publisher”. Old-timers raised their eyebrows and expected Rupert would sit in a corner at the News for a few years until he knew enough to contribute. They were misjudging him.</p>
<p>Rupert was a hands-on proprietor from the beginning. Editorially, he initially relied on, and gave a good deal of leeway to, <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rivett-rohan-deakin-11533/text20575">Rohan Rivett</a>, who had been editor of the News for almost two years. </p>
<p>Rupert and Rivett were already close friends because Keith had sent Rivett to report from London between 1949 and 1951, with a side instruction to keep an eye on the boss’s son. Rivett, the grandson of <a href="https://theconversation.com/alfred-deakin-provides-a-contrast-to-an-abbott-lost-for-words-37900">Alfred Deakin</a>, had been a war correspondent, and for three and a half years a prisoner of war, including on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/world-war-ii-ended-70-years-ago-while-the-forgotten-death-railway-was-completed-45612">Burma–Thailand Railway</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c2jSxlORxiM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">News editor Rohan Rivett was the grandson of Alfred Deakin.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From Keith’s perspective, Rivett had some radical views but he was satisfied that Rivett was no <a href="https://theconversation.com/still-under-the-bed-red-baitings-long-history-in-australian-politics-and-why-its-unlikely-to-succeed-now-177543">communist</a>, and in the early 1950s he was a favourite Murdoch confidante. Rivett even named his son after Keith. </p>
<p>When Rupert arrived in Adelaide, Keith’s older protégé turned nemesis, Lloyd Dumas, chairman of the Advertiser, gave Rupert a memorable welcome by trying to push him out of business before Rupert even got started. On October 24 1953, the Advertiser launched the Sunday Advertiser.</p>
<p>It was designed to crush News Limited’s weekend paper, the Mail, which was the biggest-circulation paper in the state and a solid earner. The intention was to force Murdoch’s heirs to sell out so the Herald Weekly Times could reclaim the News. Dumas was a knight, a pillar of society in Adelaide, a city renowned for its “luminous and eccentric” establishment, its British-style manored estates, and blue-blood <a href="https://adelaide-club.asn.au/">Adelaide Club</a> members.</p>
<p>But Rupert showed immediately that he was not going to play by the usual rules of conduct, including the unwritten rule that newspaper owners did not publish stories about each other. A month after the Sunday Advertiser launched, Rupert’s Mail published a front-page story airing some industry dirty linen. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527674/original/file-20230523-57503-uzgrf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527674/original/file-20230523-57503-uzgrf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527674/original/file-20230523-57503-uzgrf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527674/original/file-20230523-57503-uzgrf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527674/original/file-20230523-57503-uzgrf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527674/original/file-20230523-57503-uzgrf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527674/original/file-20230523-57503-uzgrf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527674/original/file-20230523-57503-uzgrf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adelaide was renowned for its ‘luminous and eccentric’ establishment and manored estates. Pictured: St Peter’s Cathedral.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It reported that, after Keith Murdoch’s death, Dumas had gone to his widow, bound her to secrecy so she could not consult anyone, and told her to sell the family’s controlling stake in the company to him. When Elisabeth refused, he gave her an ultimatum: either sell him the Mail, or the Advertiser would start a new weekend paper and drive the Mail out of business. The article included excerpts from a private letter Dumas had sent to Elisabeth.</p>
<p>Dumas and Rupert fought a “nasty circulation war”. The challenger Sunday Advertiser was the better product but many of the Mail’s readers stayed loyal and it remained in front. As Adelaide was not large enough to support two Sunday papers, both companies bled money for nearly two years before the opponents called a truce and agreed to merge. Both took 50% of the newly merged Sunday Mail from December 1955. With no competition, it was very profitable. Rupert considered this co-venture a great victory and let it be known that Dumas had backed down.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-secret-history-of-news-corp-a-media-empire-built-on-spreading-propaganda-116992">The secret history of News Corp: a media empire built on spreading propaganda</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Liberalism and sensationalism</h2>
<p>Rupert let Rivett develop the News into the most liberal daily paper in the country, one with a social conscience that published very different views to
the establishment Advertiser. </p>
<p>Murdoch learned all he could by working in various roles at the paper and developed a reputation for his overwhelming energy and for rolling up his sleeves and observing every phase of the production process. He was also becoming known for criticising and trying to make constant changes. One overwhelmed staff member called them “Rupertorial interruptions”.</p>
<p>Rivett focused on editorial while Murdoch focused on increasing advertising revenue, improving circulation, cutting costs and making production more efficient. Murdoch was particularly good at gaining retail and some new classified advertising for the News. News Limited’s profits jumped from $62,000 when he began in 1953, to $432,000 in 1959.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zXcjW4QplsQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Rupert Murdoch was known from the start for being very involved in his media properties.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Murdoch had his eye on expansion immediately. His first move was to expand News Limited’s interest in magazine publisher Southdown Press. His next move,
in October 1954, was to acquire Western Press Ltd, publisher of Western Australia’s only Sunday paper, the Sunday Times, in Perth. (It also owned a Saturday publication called the Mirror, and 20 country newspapers.)</p>
<p>The Sunday Times was where Murdoch honed his <a href="https://theconversation.com/rupert-murdoch-and-the-news-international-tabloid-grotesquerie-2330">tabloid techniques</a>. The paper was “tawdry” even before Murdoch bought it, but <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/902842.Murdoch?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=GwPBFNOkUt&rank=1">he made it</a> more “sparkily so”. </p>
<p>Murdoch began flying to Perth every Friday to personally hammer the paper into a more sensational style to increase its sales. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2298216.Citizen_Murdoch">Murdoch biographer, Thomas Kiernan</a>, said the Sunday Times was the birthplace of Murdoch journalism, “the exaggerated story filled with invented quotes; the slavishly sensationalised yarns; the eye-shattering, gratuitously blood-curdling headline”. </p>
<p>An infamous early one was “LEPER RAPES VIRGIN, GIVES BIRTH TO MONSTER BABY”. He also used competitions and zealous promotion to sell the paper. These became some of the other hallmarks of Murdoch’s tabloid approach.</p>
<p>The Sunday Times purchase was funded by a loan. Rupert’s new bank was the Commonwealth Bank in Sydney. It was then relatively small and had become a trading bank only in June 1953. Its general manager, Alfred Norman “Jack” Armstrong, and Vern Christie, who later became a managing director, thought Murdoch was a good risk, commercially savvy and always met his repayments.</p>
<p>The Commonwealth Bank’s willingness to lend Murdoch huge sums would prove crucial to the growth of his media empire. </p>
<p>Rupert stayed in Adelaide for seven years, from 1953 to 1960. Aside from newspaper production, he was also learning everything he could about radio and television, including on trips to the United States. It was a crucial turning point when Murdoch’s Southern Television Corporation Ltd (60% owned by News Limited) <a href="https://televisionau.com/2019/09/tv-at-60-tv-comes-to-adelaide.html">was granted</a> one of two commercial television licences in Adelaide in 1958.</p>
<p>After a visit to the Philadelphia office of the popular US magazine TV Guide, Murdoch launched an Australian weekly television magazine. Southdown Press began publishing <a href="https://televisionau.com/feature-articles/tv-week">TV-Radio Week</a> in December 1957, 14 months after Australian television had begun (it was called TV Week from 1958). Murdoch was also buying up small papers in remote towns across the country. He acquired the Cold War–born NT News and the Mount Isa Mail at the end of 1959. </p>
<p>Murdoch would fly into town in a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_DC-3">DC-3</a> and haggle with the owner. Former News Limited executive Rodney Lever said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>His technique was simple: he would bully the owner into selling his paper with a threat that he would start a competing paper in the town.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Murdoch soon turned the NT News into a tri-weekly, and the Mount Isa Mail into a bi-weekly. By 1965, both were daily papers.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-irreverence-to-irrelevance-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-bad-tempered-tabloids-113656">From irreverence to irrelevance: the rise and fall of the bad-tempered tabloids</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Bold moves</h2>
<p>Murdoch made two bold moves in Adelaide in 1958–59. One was political
and the other commercial, and as journalist and author George Munster noted, these moves were not well coordinated; they ran in opposite directions.</p>
<p>The News took a strong stance on the trial of <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/catalogue_resources/92649.pdf">Rupert Max Stuart</a>, an Indigenous carnival worker who had been convicted in 1958 of the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl. </p>
<p>After a confession to police over which there hung significant doubt, Stuart was sentenced to death and his conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court of South Australia. Rivett was convinced Stuart had not had a fair trial and the News campaigned fiercely for the case to be reopened. The paper’s attacks on authorities in South Australia’s police force and courts were the talk of the city.</p>
<p>Murdoch supported Rivett “wholeheartedly” and saw the case as a way to attack both the Adelaide establishment and the conservative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Playford_IV">Playford government</a>, which had been in office since 1938 as the beneficiary of a ruthlessly gerrymandered election system.</p>
<p>Labor politician <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Cameron">Clyde Cameron</a>, who was dining and socialising with Murdoch at this time, found Rupert “was much further Left than me”. When the case was at its height, Murdoch said to him: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m in a spot, Clyde. Myers [sic] have phoned to say that unless we drop our campaign in favour of Stuart, they are going to withdraw all of their advertising from the News and that means a lot to us … I told them to go to hell.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Playford was forced to set up a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_in_regard_to_Rupert_Max_Stuart">Royal Commission</a> to examine <a href="https://sahistoryhub.history.sa.gov.au/events/stuart-case">the Stuart case</a> and the News ran fierce attacks on it too, including lambasting royal commissioners for improperly sitting in judgement of their own earlier decisions. The <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-18/max-stuart-rupert-murdoch-true-crime-case/10614666">News’ coverage</a> landed Rivett, Murdoch and other employees in court on a string of charges, including the archaic, rarely used charge of seditious libel, which could have seen them imprisoned. </p>
<p>Rupert was said to be deeply shaken by the potential risks and how far matters escalated. Eventually, the charges were dismissed and the News ran an editorial apologising and disavowing criticism of the judiciary members. There was
speculation that Playford had dropped the charges in return for the News halting its campaign against his government.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527678/original/file-20230523-19-t87qwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527678/original/file-20230523-19-t87qwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527678/original/file-20230523-19-t87qwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527678/original/file-20230523-19-t87qwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527678/original/file-20230523-19-t87qwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527678/original/file-20230523-19-t87qwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527678/original/file-20230523-19-t87qwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527678/original/file-20230523-19-t87qwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">US President John F. Kennedy meets a young Rupert Murdoch (on right) in the oval office in 1961.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An old friend sacked</h2>
<p>While the Adelaide establishment was still buzzing about the Stuart case, Murdoch made an audacious bid to gain control of the Advertiser. Backed by the Commonwealth Bank, Murdoch made an offer of more than £14 million in shares and cash to Advertiser Newspapers Ltd. At a time when News Limited had less than £1.8 million in shareholders’ funds, it was one of the biggest corporate takeover bids in Australian history.</p>
<p>Dumas quashed the bid. The Advertiser announced in its pages that its board rejected the takeover bid and Dumas announced that the holders of more than 50% of Advertiser shares refused to accept Murdoch’s offer. </p>
<p>Dumas added tartly that the South Australian community and the paper’s shareholders have a “real pride in the Advertiser and would never agree to its being modelled on the News”, nor let Murdoch, as head of Cruden Investments, “a Victorian company”, exercise “complete individual control” over the Advertiser as he did with the News.</p>
<p>The Herald Weekly Times’ old hands had blocked Murdoch but he had made a strong impression and provided a bold declaration of his ambitions. He had also shown the business world he could muster significant capital and it was becoming obvious he would not easily be bought or driven out.</p>
<p>Five weeks after the last charges over the Stuart Royal Commission were withdrawn, Murdoch wrote a curt note from Sydney that “summarily dismissed” Rivett as editor.</p>
<p>This was a man Murdoch had considered “like the brother he never had”. Some speculated that Rivett’s sacking may have been part of the deal with Playford. Others believed it was inevitable because Murdoch was asserting himself more and his priorities were changing. Either way, it was strong evidence that Murdoch was not going to let friendship get in the way of business.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527622/original/file-20230523-15-u9lnp7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527622/original/file-20230523-15-u9lnp7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527622/original/file-20230523-15-u9lnp7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527622/original/file-20230523-15-u9lnp7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527622/original/file-20230523-15-u9lnp7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527622/original/file-20230523-15-u9lnp7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527622/original/file-20230523-15-u9lnp7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527622/original/file-20230523-15-u9lnp7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Stuart case had happened at a formative time for Murdoch, when his political views were still developing. Back in 1953, with a state election imminent in South Australia, he had written to Rivett, “I implore you not to speak out too loudly on either side.” </p>
<p>Personally, Rupert had strong views on <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-robert-menzies-and-the-birth-of-the-liberal-national-coalition-74533">Robert Menzies</a> though. He was said to loathe the prime minister because he was part of the Melbourne business establishment that had rejected him after his father’s death. Menzies had essentially chosen Jack Williams at the Herald and Weekly Times over Murdoch. Murdoch also thought Menzies was holding Australia – and himself – back.</p>
<p>In 1958–59, Murdoch had tried taking on the establishment in Adelaide by bringing on a showdown with the premier and the Adelaide Club, but had to back down. The experience seemed to chasten him and turn him away from advocacy journalism for the moment, and toward safer forms that did not clash with his commercial goals.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from <a href="https://unsw.press/books/media-monsters/">Media Monsters: The Transformation of Australia’s Newspaper Empires</a> by Sally Young (New South Publishing).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Young received funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) future fellowship scheme to study newspaper history and press power. Since 2019, she has been a research committee member of the Centre for Public Integrity which conducts research aimed at strengthening Australian democracy.</span></em></p>Young Rupert took up his inheritance in Adelaide in 1953 with minimal journalistic experience. He quickly revealed himself to be a ruthless rule-breaker and hands on, expansionary proprietor.Sally Young, Professor of Political Science, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1554232021-02-17T14:48:28Z2021-02-17T14:48:28ZBritain’s right-wing tabloids have turned to ‘green nationalism’ to sell climate action<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384743/original/file-20210217-13-hr1ugk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lenscap Photography / shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Britain’s right-wing tabloids have historically not been champions of action on climate change and other environmental issues. In fact they have prominently opposed such action, regularly providing space for <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4503006/global-warming-sums-experts-bullies-james-delingpole-opinion/">climate scepticism</a> and running frontpage stories that <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/leo-mckinstry/370670/Global-warming-is-nothing-more-than-an-expensive-con">challenged the existence of global warming</a> and <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/146138/100-reasons-why-climate-change-is-natural">its relationship to human activity</a>. </p>
<p>In this context, the recent launch of a “major new” environmental campaign by the Daily Express for a “<a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/1394652/Green-Britain-campaign-daily-express-pollution-wildlife-nature-boris-johnson">Green Britain Revolution</a>” has generated an understandable mix of surprise, distrust and <a href="https://twitter.com/LeoHickman/status/1358724099179167744">wary welcome</a> from long-term supporters of environmental change.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1358724099179167744"}"></div></p>
<p>The Sun has also launched a less prominent but similarly focused “Green Team” campaign encouraging its readers to make “<a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/12904172/green-team-campaign-changes-save-money-planet/#comments">small lifestyle changes to help save the planet</a>”. The paper has also <a href="https://www.news-future.com/p/as-environmental-concerns-grow-the">appointed a dedicated correspondent</a> to provide sustained coverage of the run up to the UN’s COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow in November 2021.</p>
<p>Whatever the reason for their <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/gary-jones-express-long-way-as-paper-surprises-with-climate-change-campaign/">new-found concern for environmental action</a> (and it’s still not clear how much the <a href="https://twitter.com/ColinBaines1/status/1360604961755852801">overall editorial line</a> has changed), UK tabloids require new kinds of storytelling. Climate change is a notoriously difficult story to tell. Many of the existing frames have been seen as too negative, too reliant on doom and gloom and apocalyptic scenarios, or perceived as elitist and “holier-than-thou”, too eager to blame unthinking ignorant consumers. </p>
<p>I have researched environmental storytelling in <a href="https://www.keele.ac.uk/humanities/study/mcc/ourpeople/pawasbisht/">my work</a> for the past ten years. So, how have historically right-wing tabloids, that in the past denied and belittled climate change, framed the issue so that it is relevant to their largely conservative readerships?</p>
<h2>Framing environmentalism as patriotic duty</h2>
<p>The campaigns – and the reporting accompanying them – demonstrate astute understanding of the need to make environmentalism resonant with the moral and emotional values of their readership. Nationalism, invoking a history of global leadership on the part of the UK, and green entrepreneurialism, the promise of a prosperous future for the nation powered by a green economy, are two key components of the storytelling. </p>
<p>The Daily Express campaign for instance is presented as a national mission, a “green crusade”. The headline accompanying the launch invites readers to <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/1394685/green-britain-dale-vince-ecotricity-daily-express-campaign">get behind the “Green Industrial Revolution”</a> positioning the industrial revolution as a glorious heritage of “ingenuity and ambition” that will engender the new green future.</p>
<p>The narrative is further personified in the choice of “green entrepreneur” <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/1397855/Green-Britain-campaign-plant-trees">Dale Vince</a> as a key spokesperson for the campaign. Vince is a former hippy who now owns the electricity company Ecotricity, and his life story of making millions from green energy companies emphasises a “can do” optimism and a focus on technological solutions to environmental crises. The pandemic is also used as part of the narrative. Britain’s role in the development of the COVID vaccine is cited to strengthen the claim the country should lead the global environmental challenge. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1361236506178895872"}"></div></p>
<p>Overall, the climate crisis is presented as a problem that is eminently solvable through green energy technologies and entrepreneurial innovation. These are areas where Britain has existing global strengths, and therefore it is seen as an opportunity for a glorious national revival that is both morally sound and materially prosperous.</p>
<h2>Limits and dangers of green nationalism</h2>
<p>What we are seeing is the development of a story about environmentalism informed by nationalistic pride and the promise of a materially better future. If successful, this kind of storytelling would allow an older and more conservative readership to feel part of the wider environmentalism narrative, and as a result they might even put their weight behind demands for urgently required policy action. </p>
<p>In the long term, it may help to gradually shift some established conservative political orthodoxies that have prevented climate action. For instance, a key demand of the Daily Express campaign is for the UK government to <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/1394662/green-britain-zero-for-zero-explained-sign-express-petition">actively intervene in the economy</a> – using taxes, subsidies and regulations to favour greener enterprises and penalise those that harm the environment. This idea of active intervention from the state in the market in favour of a green economy is a significant shift in conservative political values. </p>
<p>On the other hand there remain significant problems. The invocation of the national frame, here presented as global leadership motivated by ecological concerns, could easily slip into a more problematic and exclusionary vision of <a href="https://theconversation.com/green-nationalism-how-the-far-right-could-learn-to-love-the-environment-76035">preserving “a green and pleasant land”</a>. A linked problem of a retreat into the local, already evident in the Sun’s urge to “<a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/JS-Graphic-ECO-Part4.jpg">go local, buy local</a>”, is that it removes focus from the systemic and global issues underpinning climate change and pollution. </p>
<p>Finally, the uncritical narrative of a glorious national past and prosperous green future silences issues around inequalities in the experiences and effects of environmental degradation both <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1361920919300392#!">within the UK</a> and <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/climate-change-reinforces-inequalities-even-in-developed-countries/a-50596957">globally</a>. Neither the Express nor the Sun afford much space to global climate justice and the narratives and demands of <a href="https://www.redpepper.org.uk/an-open-letter-to-extinction-rebellion/">environmental movements from the global south</a>. Ultimately, these are significant limitations that should temper our enthusiasm.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155423/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pawas Bisht receives funding from the British Academy's Humanities and Social Sciences’ Tackling Global Challenges Programme, supported under the UK Government's Global Challenges Research Fund.</span></em></p>An academic expert in environmental storytelling reads the Sun and the Express.Pawas Bisht, Lecturer in Media, Communications and Culture, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1187872019-06-28T07:43:24Z2019-06-28T07:43:24ZEdward Lloyd: 100 years before Murdoch, the father of English tabloid journalism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281588/original/file-20190627-76705-qga5cb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Edward Lloyd founded the first million-selling newspaper.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Morris Gallery, Waltham Forest Council</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We live at probably the last moment when press barons such as Rupert Murdoch can hope to shape the political agenda, such are the <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/national-newspaper-abcs-mail-titles-see-year-on-year-circulation-lift-as-bulk-sales-distortion-ends/">waning fortunes of the print media</a>. But who founded the popular press – and who created the sensationalist approach of the tabloids? </p>
<p>Some say it was <a href="https://theconversation.com/press-baron-and-propagandist-who-led-charge-into-world-war-i-29855">Lord Northcliffe</a>, who established the Daily Mail in 1896. Northcliffe was, however, preceded by the transformative figure of Edward Lloyd. Never heard of him? Lloyd (1815-1890) has never been given his due. He published the first newspaper to sell a million copies and shaped the popular imagination in fundamental ways. </p>
<p>Before he became a Victorian press baron, Lloyd was one of the dominant forces behind the sale of popular fiction to a growing market of increasingly literate working-class people. When we think of the 1840s, we think of the publication of major novels such as Jane Eyre or Vanity Fair. The reality is that many readers were as likely to consume <a href="http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=48938">Ada the Betrayed</a> as well as <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vileroy-Horrors-Zindorf-Castle-Chivalry/dp/1497527864">Vileroy, or, The Horrors of Zindorf Castle</a> – both shockers issued by Lloyd’s publishing house.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281546/original/file-20190627-76713-xm1z7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281546/original/file-20190627-76713-xm1z7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281546/original/file-20190627-76713-xm1z7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281546/original/file-20190627-76713-xm1z7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281546/original/file-20190627-76713-xm1z7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281546/original/file-20190627-76713-xm1z7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281546/original/file-20190627-76713-xm1z7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281546/original/file-20190627-76713-xm1z7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It might have been a penny dreadful, but it was very popular in its day.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AMazon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hailing from a humble background, Lloyd became a leading publisher in London, promoting a group of hacks who would knock out cheap fiction. He knew what would sell: horrors, romance and thrills. </p>
<p>He launched a wave of “penny dreadfuls” on to the market in the 1830s and 1840s, all assisted by lurid pictures. As Lloyd exclaimed to his illustrators: “There must be blood … much more blood!”</p>
<p>The best known of these stories was <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-string-of-pearls-or-the-barber-of-fleet-street">The String of Pearls</a> in 1846 which introduced the enduring character of Sweeney Todd. Even before the serial had finished publication, Sweeney Todd had been taken up by the popular stage. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281547/original/file-20190627-76738-8iv38l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281547/original/file-20190627-76738-8iv38l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281547/original/file-20190627-76738-8iv38l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281547/original/file-20190627-76738-8iv38l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281547/original/file-20190627-76738-8iv38l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281547/original/file-20190627-76738-8iv38l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281547/original/file-20190627-76738-8iv38l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281547/original/file-20190627-76738-8iv38l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sweeney Todd origin story.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Audiences loved the barber who murdered men who came to his Fleet Street shop for a shave and gave their bodies to Mrs Lovett next door to be made into meat pies. The dark humour is captured in the words of one character who says: “I’d eat my mother, if she was a pork chop.” </p>
<p>This was not the only ghoulish character to emerge from Lloyd’s offices. James Malcolm Rymer wrote <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/varney-an-early-vampire-story">Varney the Vampire</a> for Lloyd, the most important undead character before Dracula. This was a form of distinctly working-class horror fiction, marked by a taste for blood and violence.</p>
<h2>Nicking Dickens</h2>
<p>Lloyd had no time for originality. He built up his firm by <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-48691408">publishing plagiarisms of Charles Dickens’s works</a>. The reading public was thus treated to works such as The Penny Pickwick, Oliver Twiss and Nickelas Nickelbery. Dickens was outraged by this treatment but was powerless to prevent such works appearing. </p>
<p>It is possible that many working-class readers first encountered Dickens via a Lloyd plagiarism, rather than one of the author’s own works (a perspective that should make us rethink the initial reception of Dickens).</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281589/original/file-20190627-76722-dr40e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281589/original/file-20190627-76722-dr40e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281589/original/file-20190627-76722-dr40e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281589/original/file-20190627-76722-dr40e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281589/original/file-20190627-76722-dr40e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281589/original/file-20190627-76722-dr40e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281589/original/file-20190627-76722-dr40e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dickens plagiarised: the cover of the Edward Lloyd rip-off of Oliver Twist.:</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">source goes here</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cheap newspapers came to dominate Lloyd’s output. Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper was launched in 1842 and became one of the most important newspapers aimed at a popular readership at a time when the press had been forced since 1819 by the government to pay stamp duties (the “Taxes on Knowledge”) which inflated the price of print. He combined serious news reporting with stories of horrible murders, train crashes and aristocratic divorces. In some respects, his newspaper employed the techniques of popular fiction to grab an audience with accounts of true crime.</p>
<p>Lloyd also revolutionised newspaper production by introducing <a href="http://scihi.org/ruchard-march-hoe-rotary-printing-press/">Richard Hoe’s rotary press</a> to Britain, which sped up the process of putting out newspapers and made mass publication possible. With the abolition of the stamp and paper duties by the early 1860s, Lloyd was able to lower the price of his paper to one penny. The popular press had arrived.</p>
<h2>Yellow press</h2>
<p><a href="https://stbridefoundation.wordpress.com/2015/02/16/the-life-of-edward-lloyd-an-article-to-commemorate-200-years-since-his-birth/">Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper</a> was one of a series of mass circulation Sunday papers, including The News of the World (issued in 1843), which created a newspaper reading habit in increasingly literate workers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281598/original/file-20190627-76726-1hxppxk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281598/original/file-20190627-76726-1hxppxk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281598/original/file-20190627-76726-1hxppxk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281598/original/file-20190627-76726-1hxppxk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281598/original/file-20190627-76726-1hxppxk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281598/original/file-20190627-76726-1hxppxk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281598/original/file-20190627-76726-1hxppxk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281598/original/file-20190627-76726-1hxppxk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, from 1891.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lloyd was also a great believer in self-promotion. At one point he took to embossing coins with which he paid his workers with a stamp promoting his paper. This was denounced by The Times and an act of parliament had to be passed in 1853, making the defacing of the coinage illegal.</p>
<p>As his newspaper became more popular, Lloyd left his penny dreadfuls behind and was later embarrassed that they had been the source of his fortune. His paper tended to support Gladstone and the Liberal party, helping it to dominate mid-Victorian politics. The Conservative Party identified Lloyd’s as promoting “pernicious doctrines”, which included worker rights, free trade and democracy.</p>
<p>Lloyd died in 1890 but his newspaper remained popular, selling a million copies for the first time in 1896. As it went into the 20th century, the paper was outgunned by new rivals such as the Daily Mail and came to an end in 1931, having appeared for almost 90 years. </p>
<p>Lloyd’s reputation has gone into eclipse and he is seldom remembered. He was, however, a true pioneer. His legacy remains the sensationalism of the popular press but it can also be found in every slasher film, vampire drama and gothic romance from Twilight to the television series Penny Dreadful.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118787/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward Lloyd And His World, edited by Rohan McWilliam and Sarah Louise Lill, is published in June 2019 by Routledge.</span></em></p>As well as founding England’s first million-selling newspaper, Lloyd shamelessly sold plagiarised versions of some of Charles Dickens’ best-loved novels.Rohan McWilliam, Professor of Modern British History, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1093092019-03-01T14:20:00Z2019-03-01T14:20:00ZBrexit and migration: our new research highlights fact-free news coverage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254757/original/file-20190121-100273-h6j1sf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/">Immigration anxieties</a> played <a href="http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-report/british-social-attitudes-34/key-findings/brexit-and-immigration-a-country-divided.aspx">a significant role</a> in British people’s decision in June 2016 to vote to leave the EU. This has fuelled a debate over the quality of media reporting on migration issues. </p>
<p>In order to get a better idea of the role the media played, we examined nearly 1,000 news items, feature articles and editorials from six UK newspapers: the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, the Sun, the Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian, published in 2006 and in 2013. </p>
<p>These were politically important years: 2006 was the year before Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU and the time when it was becoming clear that migration forecasts for the countries that joined the EU in 2004 had been way off. In 2013 David Cameron, delivered his <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/eu-speech-at-bloomberg">Bloomberg speech</a> in which he promised the EU referendum.</p>
<p>One thing that quickly became apparent was that media coverage contained a selective mixture of statistics, reported comments from politicians and other public figures, academic studies, think-tank reports, and emotive polemics backed with no evidence at all. The practice of mentioning evidence in passing and then dismissing or overriding it was also present. </p>
<h2>Bolt the door</h2>
<p>The most prominent theme was that mobility within the EU damages British sovereignty. Newspapers from across the political spectrum suggested that intra-EU mobility was impossible to control and that the free movement principle overrides British sovereignty. The theme was also marked by growing scepticism towards migration data and evidence. </p>
<p>The language used to describe EU migration tended to emphasise quantity and scale (“mass”, “vast”, “large scale”). There were lots of “floods” and “waves” and extensive use of military metaphors (“army”, “war”, “battle”, “siege” or “hordes”) in the tabloid press. </p>
<p>When covering migration from Bulgaria and Romania, the press regularly trotted out the figure of <a href="https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/reports/bulgarians-romanians-in-press/">29m migrants</a> – which, in fact, is the combined population of the two countries. Rather than reporting on actual migration of Bulgarians and Romanians, papers preferred hypothetical scenarios where they would migrate en masse simply because they could. </p>
<p>An <a href="https://www.lexisnexis.com/uk/legal/results/enhdocview.do?docLinkInd=true&ersKey=23_T28495996547&format=GNBFULL&startDocNo=0&resultsUrlKey=0_T28495996549&backKey=20_T28495996550&csi=234674&docNo=1&scrollToPosition=0">opinion piece</a> from the Sun, dated September 22 2006, claimed that “any Bulgarian or Romanian will be free to come here as they please – and come they will, because their own countries are very poor and there is no work”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261651/original/file-20190301-110115-7ftqxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261651/original/file-20190301-110115-7ftqxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261651/original/file-20190301-110115-7ftqxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261651/original/file-20190301-110115-7ftqxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261651/original/file-20190301-110115-7ftqxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261651/original/file-20190301-110115-7ftqxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261651/original/file-20190301-110115-7ftqxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daily Mail, 2006.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gideon via Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Overall, the Guardian did a better job than the other papers when it came to using evidence. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/29/rise-labour-migration-from-eurozone">An article</a> from 2013 used statistics form the Department of Work and Pensions to reveal that immigration to Britain from southern European member states had increased by 50% while using national insurance registrations to show that “data shows little evidence of any surge in Romanians or Bulgarians arriving”. </p>
<p>One article in the Sun covered the story <a href="https://www.lexisnexis.com/uk/legal/results/enhdocview.do?docLinkInd=true&ersKey=23_T28496006505&format=GNBFULL&startDocNo=0&resultsUrlKey=0_T28496006507&backKey=20_T28496006508&csi=234674&docNo=1&scrollToPosition=0">from a different angle</a>, arguing that because of the negative impact of the financial crisis on the building trade in Italy and Spain, migrant workers were bound to be laid off and flood into Britain. The article was centred on an interview with “jobless William Razval, 24” – who, it said, “is desperate to lead the exodus”. </p>
<h2>Benefits scroungers</h2>
<p>The topic of EU nationals abusing the welfare system was the second most popular theme. Despite official figures, newspapers often chose to ignore evidence and play on public fears that welfare abuse was all but inevitable. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"642285075871215617"}"></div></p>
<p>The press trotted out crude decontextualised comparisons between living standards in Britain and eastern Europe. Once again, newspapers focused on the hypothetical possibility of welfare abuse, rather than on specific instances where it has actually taking place. In 2006, <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/honestys-the-best-immigration-policy-634982">Tony Parsons</a>, then a columnist with the Daily Mirror, asked: “At what point does mass immigration, even if it’s good for the economy, push our social services to breaking point?” </p>
<p>Nothing much had changed by March 2013, when a news article from <a href="https://www.lexisnexis.com/uk/legal/results/enhdocview.do?docLinkInd=true&ersKey=23_T28496052119&format=GNBFULL&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=0_T28496052147&backKey=20_T28496052148&csi=10939&docNo=2&scrollToPosition=0">the Times</a> quoted Iain Duncan Smith, who claimed that it was “too easy for EU migrants to claim access to social housing, health care and tax credits” without providing any evidence as to show how many were actually doing so. In June of the same year, the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2334550/Softer-benefit-rules-immigrants-Not-IDS-around.html">Daily Mail</a> sounded a familiar dog whistle, claiming: “It is easy to imagine how a public fed up with abuses of the welfare state would react.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"883020914295799808"}"></div></p>
<p>In light of <a href="https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/reports/decade-immigration-british-press/">recent arguments</a> that journalists become increasing proactive in framing and reshaping migration debates instead of being content with reporting them, it is important to assess the relationship between news coverage and evidence. After all, anti-immigration, eurosceptic reporting did much of the grunt work for the Leave camp and put immigration anxieties in the centre of Brexit discussions and negotiations. </p>
<p>Now we are faced with the danger of race-to-the-bottom <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/11/immigration-regime-after-brexit-risks-new-windrush-scandal">post-Brexit immigration policies</a> where EU citizens could be downgraded to migrants overnight on the basis of unsupported anxieties and wild speculations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109309/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denny Pencheva does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A close reading of news articles and editorials from 2006 and 2013 shows that UK newspapers have systematically ignored the evidence to influence the public against EU migrants.Denny Pencheva, Associate Teacher, UK and EU migration policies; Assistant Teacher, Comparative Politics, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/979502018-06-07T16:55:12Z2018-06-07T16:55:12ZDaily Mail editor Paul Dacre to step down (but don’t expect much to change)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222190/original/file-20180607-137306-1lh2nat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The middle man.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.paimages.co.uk/search-results/fluid/?q=paul%20dacre&amber_border=1&category=A,S,E&fields_0=all&fields_1=all&green_border=1&imagesonly=1&orientation=both&red_border=1&words_0=all&words_1=all">Ben Birchall/PA Wire/PA Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Among the glowing tributes to Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre – who has announced he will <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44391449">step down in November</a> after 26 years at the helm – I have yet to spot one that mentions this description of his methods from a recent <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Mail_Men.html?id=DyB2DQAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">unauthorised history</a> of the newspaper:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On the editorial floor, Dacre was very much proving to be “insensitive” to some of his staff as he prowled his domain. The word “cunt” remained his favourite expletive, to be fired at anyone who displeased him.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I have never met the man but, for me, this captures the very essence of the newspaper he nurtured and edited over the past 26 years. The words suggest an aggressive, overconfident, macho thug who instils fear both inside and outside the newsroom.</p>
<p>In his tribute to Dacre, the Mail’s (non-domiciled) proprietor, Lord Rothermere, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jun/06/paul-dacre-to-step-down-as-daily-mail-editor-in-november">describes him</a> as “the greatest Fleet Street editor of his generation”. Well, to quote Evelyn Waugh’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/books/review/the-great-fleet-street-novel-evelyn-waughs-scoop.html">fawning editor from Scoop</a>: “Up to a point Lord Copper”.</p>
<p>Of course, it all depends on what is meant by “greatest”?</p>
<p>As a propagandist Dacre has had few peers. One of his greatest “achievements” was to set Brexit in motion. He did this despite his boss Lord Rothermere being widely thought of as a “Remainer”, although there was never any suggestion that Dacre’s position was imperilled by his suicidal mission to help take Britain out of the EU. </p>
<p>But Brexit was only the culmination of, what for me, was Dacre’s greatest skill – his ability to convince editors, journalists and – most importantly of all – politicians, that by some weird chemistry the Daily Mail (and by implication its editor) had exclusive access to the pulse of “Middle England”. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"794305335158853634"}"></div></p>
<p>Broadcast editors, consciously or otherwise, would slavishly follow the Mail’s news agenda. And politicians were even more spineless, fearing the wrath of Dacre and his cohorts if they were seen to breach the Mail’s interpretation of what Middle England (note, not “Middle Britain”) was apparently thinking. </p>
<p>For Dacre’s wrath could be biblical. We should not forget his disgraceful full-frontal attacks on the independence of the judiciary, or the right of backbench MPs to carry out their constitutional duties. But his attack on the former Labour leader Ed Miliband, via an appalling <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/01/ralph-miliband-what-daily-mail-said">character assassination</a> of the politican’s father was a low point.</p>
<p>Fellow journalists might accuse me of failing to recognise Dacre’s abilities as a tabloid editor. But praising his undoubted achievements in the arenas of newspaper circulation and profitability, is like praising Donald Trump for his ability to to work a crowd or create a Twitter storm, ignoring the message and the motivation. </p>
<p>But what about Dacre’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/jan/04/stephen-lawrence-parents-daily-mail">widely praised response</a> to the murder of Stephen Lawrence? One has to wonder if the Mail would have pursued the Stephen Lawrence killers with such tenacity had the murdered teenager’s father not worked <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/media/paul-dacre-admits-daily-mail-ran-murderers-stephen-lawrence-splash-because-neville-lawrence-did-his-his-plastering/">as a decorator on Dacre’s house</a>.</p>
<p>There’s no doubt the Mail did some great work on the Lawrence case. But that cannot excuse the bile and propaganda that Dacre has been discharging into the national conversation for over two and a half decades.</p>
<h2>The Daily Mail question</h2>
<p>A few years ago, I was in Malawi working on an election project. On a visit to the local office of the UK’s Department for International Development to seek funding for media monitoring of the election, an official asked me: “What’s the answer to the Daily Mail question?” </p>
<p>I didn’t need an explanation. She was asking how the department should respond if the Daily Mail was made aware of this item of expenditure (£25,000 – the cheapest national media monitoring operation I know of) and responded with predictable outrage over what the paper would no doubt describe as a “waste” of taxpayers’ money.</p>
<p>And on the subject of tax, one is bound to ask questions about a newspaper editor who finds himself happily in bed with the tax-cutting Taxpayers Alliance, while himself <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/30/daily-mail-editor-paul-dacre-received-88000-eu-subsidies-2014">receiving</a> substantial tax rebates from the hated EU Common Agricultural Fund for the 20,000 acres of forest he owns in Scotland? </p>
<p>So now, before he turns 70, Dacre is resigning. But before the EU bunting starts fluttering from the portals of the Daily Mail’s Kensington headquarters, there may well be a Brexit-style fly in the ointment. </p>
<p>For as soon as Dacre steps down from being editor of the Daily Mail, he will be stepping up to become chairman and editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers. </p>
<p>This may well mean it is not only the Daily Mail that bears the poisonous Dacre imprimatur, but also the Mail on Sunday and the Mail Online – two parts of the business which have until now managed to establish themselves as more or less Dacre-free zones. But that might change – and not for the better. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/then-they-came-for-the-experts-how-the-daily-mail-is-threatening-how-you-think-86553">Then they came for the experts: how the Daily Mail is threatening how you think</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97950/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ivor Gaber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Mail man has enjoyed 26 years of power in journalism and politics.Ivor Gaber, Professor of Journalism, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/672002016-10-21T14:03:32Z2016-10-21T14:03:32ZNo shortage of media schadenfreude as ‘fake sheikh’ is sent to prison<p>The machetes of condemnation are out for the investigative journalist and self-styled “king of stings”, Mazher Mahmood. The man who <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3690886.stm">dominated the British tabloid world</a> for decades with his “fake sheikh” operation at the now defunct News of the World has been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37727631">jailed for 15 months</a> for tampering with evidence in a high-profile case.</p>
<p>There is something about the modern Greek tragedy in the narrative of the crusading – and to quote media commentator Roy Greenslade, “tawdry and disgusting” – tabloid entrapper, who ended up standing in the dock to face the kind of justice he wished for his many targets.</p>
<p>Such is the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37563509">coverage his trial has received</a>, you could be forgiven for thinking Mahmood had committed a crime much worse than the paedophilia, terrorism, class A drug supplying, arms dealing, immigration rackets, and political corruption, dodgy doctors, solicitors, pimps, judges, bent cops and even murderers that his adventures sought to expose. </p>
<p>In fact, he has been found guilty along with his driver, Alan Smith, of one offence: plotting to pervert the course of justice by suppressing evidence in the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37429114">drugs trial of pop star Tulisa Contostavlos</a>. The singer had been accused of arranging for Mahmood to be sold £800 worth of cocaine by one of her contacts. Her case was later dismissed after Mahmood’s evidence was called into question. </p>
<p>This was in the context of one of Mahmood’s elaborate stings for The Sun on Sunday, the paper he joined after <a href="https://theconversation.com/news-of-the-world-closes-a-new-page-for-rupert-murdoch-2240">Rupert Murdoch liquidated</a> News of the World – the most successful ever Sunday newspaper – following the toxic Milly Dowler <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/10429135/Phone-hacking-trial-News-of-the-World-told-police-Milly-Dowler-was-hacked.html">phone hacking scandal</a>.</p>
<p>When the trial judge realised Mahmood had given evidence in direct contradiction to what he had said in a pre-trial hearing, Contostavlos was acquitted. The tables then dramatically turned on the journalist who had posed as a film producer and plied Contostavlos with alcohol as they discussed an acting role alongside Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio.</p>
<p>The phone hacking victims’ lawyer Mark Lewis <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/05/new-corp-20-lawsuits-fake-sheikh-conviction">talked about £800m of claims by Mahmood’s “past victims”</a>. The Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service, once enthusiastic and grateful champions of Mahmood’s operations, became <a href="http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-rev1.htm">reverse ferrets</a> of criminal justice.</p>
<p>The Crown Prosecution Service has since dropped live cases given to them by Mahmood’s alter ego and has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/dec/04/fake-sheik-mazher-mahmood-cases-reviewed-cps">reviewing 25 past convictions</a>. Six <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fake-sheikh-mazher-mahmood-tulisa-court-cases-reviewed-dropped-a7347396.html">cases of high-profile figures</a> have been taken up by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the grinding of the wheels of justice, within the profession of journalism the methods of the “fake sheikh” have always attracted controversy. Greenslade <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/oct/06/mazher-mahmoods-journalistic-game-has-finally-been-brought-to-book">has been on his case</a> ever since the pair worked together on The Sunday Times. In 2006, Greenslade wrote a piece in The Independent with the headline: “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/why-i-am-out-to-nail-mazher-mahmood-6103585.html">Why I am out to nail Mazher Mahmood</a>”. The formidable John Sweeney of the BBC <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04p1zlb">turned Mahmood over in 2014</a>; Channel 4 castigated Mahmood’s tactics and reputation in a documentary in 2012 which was made with the help of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2012/aug/01/mazher-mahmood-newsoftheworld">one of his former assistants who had turned against him</a>.</p>
<p>However, this whole affair has been diminished into a reductionist fable of good and evil with no tolerance for the light and shade, moral ambiguity and rough and tumble of raucous tabloid sensationalism. The past is being judged harshly by the politics and values of the present.</p>
<p>Domonic Ponsford, the editor of Press Gazette, found himself under attack for <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/in-the-race-to-demonise-mazher-mahmood-dont-forget-his-victims-which-rich-people-driven-by-greed-to-do-bad-things/">suggesting that</a> “in the race to demonise Mazher Mahmood, don’t forget his ‘victims’ were often rich people, driven by greed to do bad things”.</p>
<p>Ponsford faced a tsunami of critical onslaught which debunked any credit or merit for Mahmood’s investigative journalism. Nevertheless <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/mazher-mahmood-the-baby-for-sale-and-his-use-of-stings-to-target-cocaine-dealing-celebs/">he concluded</a> that “for me, the jury is still out on Mahmood as far as the wider allegations against him go. But I accept that given what we now know about phone-hacking at the News of the World (and elsewhere) it is best to keep an open mind when it comes to historic allegations of tabloid wrongdoing.”</p>
<p>How the mighty has fallen. Mahmood’s 2008 book, Confessions of a Fake Sheik: ‘The King of the Sting’ Reveals All, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Confessions-Fake-Sheik-Sting-Reveals-ebook/dp/0007288093/">can be bought for a penny on Amazon</a>. The “world’s best-known investigative journalist”, a reporter of the year in 1999, is the source of the profession’s self-loathing – Private Eye mocked his fear of reprisals and his efforts to keep his photograph out of the public eye. The Metropolitan police <a href="http://news.met.police.uk/news/two-guilty-of-perverting-the-course-of-justice-189729">released his full facial image on conviction</a>. And The Sun <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1920483/fake-sheik-mazher-mahmood-is-found-guilty-in-the-former-x-factor-judge-tulisa-contostavlos-sting-case/">revealed his face</a> complete with anorak hood and glasses that he wore to and from court.</p>
<p>Mahmood’s career is neither typical, nor is it the mainstay of British investigative journalism. The theatrical sting of performance journalism will always be resented by those who are embarrassed, or have something unpleasant to hide – particularly when it is teased out by the somewhat juvenile stunt of exaggerated temptation. But while subjects stung by this method might appear to condemn themselves, problems inevitably arise if this is then relied on by the state for criminal prosecutions. Mahmood and his team were tabloid journalists – not police detectives or intelligence officers.</p>
<p>Ultimately, however, Mahmood tampered with evidence – and for that he is now to serve time in jail. But it would be wise for the legal system, politicians and public opinion to be wary of throwing bricks in glass houses. They all once delighted and sniggered when concealing their copies of the News of the World inside The Sunday Times or the Observer and other so-called “respectable broadsheets”. Now that the morality of what went on has been judged and found wanting perhaps they should look to their own consciences and measure their condemnation with some sense of proportion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67200/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Crook is chair of the Professional Practices Board of the Chartered Institute of Journalists. </span></em></p>The downfall – and tactics – of investigative reporter Mazher Mahmood are not typical of British journalism.Tim Crook, Professor in Media and Communication (Goldsmiths), Visiting Professor of Broadcast Journalism (Birmingham City University), Chair of Professional Standards Board, CIoJ., Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/608272016-06-16T13:08:14Z2016-06-16T13:08:14ZNo need to talk trash: alternatives to the Jerry Springer talk show model<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126723/original/image-20160615-14016-d6j4du.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Talk show host Jerry Springer enters the stage on a motorbike as co-host of the 2008 Miss Universe contest.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Adrees Latif </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In today’s world we learn about many issues through Facebook, Twitter or the media more generally, rather than by direct or personal experience. As such, social and mass media significantly shape and influence our perceptions. One of the more subtle ways in which this happens is through the depiction of the world as “a war” of words and images. </p>
<p>From Facebook posts to news programmes or reality shows, one side frequently battles it out with another. This is epitomised in a great number of (especially American) daytime or “tabloid” talk shows, where human relations are often portrayed as being inherently conflictual. Extreme examples include the “Jerry Springer Show”, with its lurid trysts, while a subtler one would be the “Tyra Banks Show”. Such programmes often focus on drawing out <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08838159709364388#">interpersonal conflict</a>.</p>
<p>Talk shows can be a space to explore all kinds of topics that are of interest. They’ve been key in offering a platform for controversial or marginalised issues and members of society. Parallels can be drawn to print tabloids and “trash journalism”, where Media Studies Professor Herman Wasserman suggests that the tabloid format is in fact more <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02500167.2013.772217?journalCode=rcsa20">democratic</a>. In a similar vein, talk shows can be seen to represent “the people” more accurately than news analysis or political programmes, though often earning them the less charming title of “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/14/us/killing-poses-hard-questions-about-talk-tv.html">trash TV</a>” for overemphasising conflict.</p>
<h2>Denouncing the ‘other’</h2>
<p>Talk shows exemplify one prevalent way that communication pans out, particularly in the West. Often, two or more camps are formed. Each side presents and defends its position while challenging or even denouncing the “other”. </p>
<p>For example, “stay-at-home moms” are pitted against “working moms”, implying an inherent conflict of interest between “equality” versus “child care”, as an episode of the “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnlCNsxtT_c">Tyra Banks</a>” show once did. This adversarial model of communication is often replicated in other parts of the world, including the <a href="http://www.degruyter.com/dg/viewarticle.fullcontentlink:pdfeventlink/$002fj$002flpp.2013.9.issue-1$002flpp-2013-0006$002flpp-2013-0006.pdf?t:ac=j$002flpp.2013.9.issue-1$002flpp-2013-0006$002flpp-2013-0006.xml">Middle East</a>.</p>
<p>This type of what journalist and scholar Deborah Tannen calls “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/argumentculture.htm">argument culture</a>” became influential with the ascendancy of Western liberal thought. According to her, it has successfully challenged and confronted oppressive, authoritarian systems but may not be entirely unproblematic.</p>
<h2>Addressing full complexity</h2>
<p>Its agonistic emphasis excludes many less aggressive or argumentative voices. It reduces issues into binaries, failing to address their full complexity. It also obscures facets of discussion where common ground often does exist. For example, in many cases talk show guests do agree and game show contestants suddenly cooperate. This became particularly apparent in the first season of <a href="http://www.endemol.co.za/">Endemol</a>’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlNE9s9oGNI&index=1&list=PLn6Y2J9gHGZrOTPhgqNEZKAVvpFdrJOJr">Survivor South Africa</a>”, where contestants took a significantly more collaborative posture towards their tasks than their American counterparts.</p>
<p>It would then be compelling to explore what would happen if we engage in a form of public discourse that deliberately draws out collaboration. What if there were common ground between “stay-at-home moms” and “working moms”? As a mother who spends a lot of quality time with her child and still manages to carve out a meaningful career, I am compelled to investigate the efficacy of such framing.</p>
<p>In many such societies like South Africa, globalisation has involved bringing in Western liberal democratic values and systems. They include discourses on human rights or justice that are at odds with local realities.</p>
<h2>Diverse societies</h2>
<p>So the question becomes what would communication look like if it were to meet the needs of highly diverse and fully interdependent societies?</p>
<p>In the case of South Africa, a collaborative approach already lies at the core of its reconciliatory stance and its transition to democracy – one that could also inform mass-mediated public discourse. The cultural value associated with it is <a href="http://africanhistory.about.com/od/African-History-and-Politics/fl/The-Meaning-of-Ubuntu.htm"><em>ubuntu</em></a>.</p>
<p>Commonly understood as “I am because we are,” <em>ubuntu</em> is collaborative in nature. It has been articulated as one of the <a href="http://www.academia.edu/19802614/An_Assessment_of_the_Public_Interest_and_Ideas_of_the_Public_in_South_Africa_and_the_Adoption_of_Ubuntu_Journalism">key philosophies</a> underpinning South African governance and service delivery. While this does not always successfully translate into practice, probably because it has been forged within and <a href="http://bahai-library.com/pokorny_karlberg_culture_contest">subordinated</a> to an adversarial (Western) cultural context, where a conflictual view of the world is naturalised, it has still prevailed in shaping a <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/37984/pdf">reconciliatory South Africa</a>.</p>
<p>As such, <em>ubuntu</em> is relevant for exploring a collaborative model of public discourse. What would a talk show model based on a harmonious, cohesive understanding of power look like? </p>
<h2>Sexy enough?</h2>
<p>Would it be sexy enough to capture the imagination of an audience that has developed a taste for adversarial spectacle through an advertising-financed media that deliberately cultivates a taste for <a href="http://projectcensored.org/media-democracy-in-action-the-importance-of-including-truth-emergency-inside-the-progressive-media-reform-movement/">“junk food” media</a>? Can we (also) cultivate what may be termed “deliberation culture”?</p>
<p>While these questions remain to be explored more fully, elements of such an alternative approach can already be found throughout the media landscape. It characterised a large portion of the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s “<a href="http://www.channel24.co.za/TV/News/Noeleen-speaks-to-us-about-the-end-of-3Talk-20150217">3 Talk with Noeleen</a>”. Noeleen Maholwana-Sangqu’s guests consisted of a participatory panel that explored a rather open-ended approach to framing (for example, “when is the right time to get married?”). It was telling of significantly alternative cultural sensitivities in South Africa.</p>
<p>Such an alternative model engenders a deeply relational process. It would be inspired by the cohesive attitude of <em>ubuntu</em> and the way traditional African democracy operates in the form of a “deliberation”, where every person gets an equal chance to speak up until some kind of cohesion is reached. Geared for an increasingly distracted television audience, this would entail careful planning. Facilitation by an intelligent host would draw out and develop the presented ideas for arriving at a collective conclusion. As Maholwana-Sangqu showed us, at least in part, this is possible in a 40-minute time frame. </p>
<p>In this age of extreme inter-connectivity, a harmonious, cohesive and relational approach may be better suited to facilitate a successful way to communicate. “3 Talk with Noeleen” played a significant part in opening this conversation. In many of its episodes people from vastly different cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds came together. They explored and contributed – and in the process they empowered audience members to make up their own minds about life’s big questions rather than persuade them of what is right and what is wrong.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60827/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leyla Tavernaro-Haidarian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Daytime television talk shows are known for their confrontational style. But there is a different model: a harmonious, cohesive and relational approach may offer a better way to communicate.Leyla Tavernaro-Haidarian, PhD Candidate of Journalism, Film & Television, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.