The British Tabloid Culture

oh I thought you were being witty not literal!

Momentarily writing an essay about some articles in "The Imperial & Colonial Magazine" 1908/1914 has driven away all wittyness, especially, since we had 35°C all the day and now a heavy thunderstorm, 'cooling' down to 28°C.

Will have finished soon ... :wink:

mmm us too - but we've got a thunderstorm and rain now and it is much fresher and pleasanter... maybe it's heading your way?

We hope so

The daily mirror is an interesting anomaly - a left-wing tabloid! I've never heard of any other ...

All the other gossip-sex-scandal-focused 'papers for the masses' - everywhere i know of, in any case - are either wholly a-political or rabidly right-wing. (Though, in fairness, with the emphasis more on rabid than on right-wing. <grins>).

The daily mirror, on the other hand, is the one tabloid rag that consistently feeds its mass readership with news against the war, against bush, against the tories, et cetera. And they're the third-most read newspaper in Britain, after The Sun and the Daily Mail. Their readership's been dropping, though, and their opposition to the war doesnt seem to have done their sales figures much good, either (same with The Independent in the broadsheet market).

Still, it wasnt just the Mirror that looked upon Blair's DC speech unkindly. The most neutral of the three main tabloids, the Mail, headlined (big fat bold): ""Blair moves the goalposts", and commented: "Tony Blair insisted last night that he was right to go to war with Iraq, even if no weapons of mass destruction are found. His claim... was an astonishing attempt to have it both ways." On the other hand, "quality" conservative newspaper The Daily Telegraph swooned: "Most nations would rightly give their eye teeth to be so close to such a benevolent superpower." <rolls eyes>

I hate the British tabloids. I think when they latch onto a story, the way they cover it is disgusting.

Point #1, that's what you get with freedom of the press/speech

Point #2, no one is forced to read these so called newspapers

Point #3 those that do read 'em are mainly stoopid trash

Point #4 it's all the product of what we call democracy.

"I Was Abducted by Aliens, on 9/11, and Now My Baby Has Been Taken Away by Homeland Security! ! !

Set, our hearts bleed, where was Mrs H Clinton when ths stuff was hitting the fan

"Hilliary Caught in Sexy Pecadillo with Gigolo ! ! !"

Former Secret Service Agent Saving for Sex Change Operation Puts It Out on the Street ! ! ! "

Hmmm ... bottom line I agree with you, of course. But. Hypothetically, you could defend the distribution of Mein Kampf and the Protocols of Zion with these 4 statements, too. Or any anti-semitic or racist hate-speech. Yet in many countries those are forbidden. With some reason. So these 4 rules of thumb are not necessarily the end of the story.

Now The Sun is no Mein Kampf, obviously, and I dont think anyone is suggesting forbidding these papers. But I wouldnt mind more effective ways of redress. Right now, the Press Complaints Commission is a toothless watchdog. They hardly ever intervene, on whatever kind. No matter how blatantly racist, for example, tabloid reporting is.

Perhaps they dont because of the underlying assumption that, yeh, "those that do read 'em are mainly stoopid trash", anyway. But that means theres a LOT of stoopid trash in Britain. The three papers with the highest circulation are all tabloids. All the broadsheets follow at a humiliating distance:

The Sun (tabloid) 3,508,950
Daily Mail (tabloid) 2,305,596
Daily Mirror (tabloid) 1,948,870
Daily Star (tabloid) 869,795
Daily Telegraph 900,646
Daily Express (tabloid) 889,014
The Times 594,464
Daily Record (tabloid) 503,338
Financial Times 431,823
The Guardian 371,632
The Independent 182,668

I think you're confused a bit with the National Enquirer in the US, perhaps. I was just comparing the two - papers like that and the European tabloid-style papers - with Anastasia the other night. What they have in common is all the showbizz gossip stuff. Today's headline in the Daily Express: "DIANA - Fury over shocking new book about the night she died". Stuff like that. But I think theres not such a lot of bizarre/alien urban myth stuff that housewives then are supposed to believe. There is a lot of politics, on the other hand, in the tabloids, unlike (I think?) in the Enquirer. And it can be pretty hateful - the Sun from the right, the Mirror from the left. See above for examples.

nimh ======= yes there is much validity in what you say. the law of libel is often invoked against the tabloids & yes they could be less sensational headlines and perhaps stop using lo-level celebrities such as the Beckhams, RobbieWilliams et al as sales points.

Tabloids sell about 10 million copies a day, in a population of 60 million.

British popular culture, ie soap operas, quiz shows are reflected in the tabloids. It's a lo-end jigsaw puzzle that holds no interest for me.

To read the broadsheets you have to have a brain that can understand good english and the deeper meanings of politics, industry and so on.

My prefered reading is The Telegraph or The Times
Democracy is a 2 edged sword. Most people stay within it's bounds

In our tabloids, Harry Potter would have decided to try being straight, knock up Madonna and she would have given birth to a two-headed green baby with antennas.

You always assume too much, especially if you see an opportunity to be didactic.

I was just havin' some fun, and asked no one's permission to do so . . .

Light wiz,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, I think your american tabloids are of the same ilk as hollywood. Make 'em Laugh, make em laugh, make em laugh, as Donald O'Connor once sang. Fantasy is fun, Reality is Reality


Set ,,,,, how you see it is how you tell it & black can very often be white

"Able to know", hon. Is what this forum's about. Thread's about British tabloids, you were havin' some fun about National Enquirer-style American papers. (Funny enuff in itself). Just picking up on that to point out the difference. Happened to be something Stasia and I were talking about. (And yeh, I'm fascinated by the cultural differences, is what makes a bi-cultural relationship interesting).

<shrugs>

My friend Rachel is working on Tabloid Culture in 1960s Britain at U. of Az. She periodically sends me photocpies of headlines she has found on microfilm. I will have to scan some of them and post them!

good idea, those headlines, no matter whose tabloid, or what style, usually crack me up . . .