The Sun

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The Sun
The Sun.svg
description English daily newspaper
publishing company News Group Newspapers
First edition September 15, 1964
Frequency of publication Every day
Sold edition 1,277,947 copies
(June 2019)
Range 2.955 million readers
(April 2018 - March 2019)
Editor-in-chief David Dinsmore
Web link thesun.co.uk
ISSN (print) 2047-6493
ISSN (online) 0307-2681

The Sun is a daily British tabloid . Like BILD in Germany, it is one of the country's most influential and widely circulated newspapers. As is customary for a tabloid, the articles mostly consist of concise headlines characterized by puns, bold photos and photo montages and sensationally worded texts, for which the Sun has been heavily criticized in some cases.

Editor of the newspaper , the News Group Newspapers of News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation of media mogul Rupert Murdoch . The newspaper appears in a compact tabloid newspaper format (30 cm × 36.5 cm). The Sun is estimated to make an estimated £ 100 million annually.

Since February 26, 2012, a weekly Sunday edition has also been published.

history

In 1911 the "Daily Herald" was published as a trade union paper for the London printers , distributed a year later as a socialist newspaper and taken over in 1922 by the trade union federation TUC (Trades Union Congress). In 1933 the Daily Herald was the top-selling daily newspaper in the world with a circulation of 2 million copies. However, after the circulation declined in the post-war period, the Mirror Group of Newspapers took over the publishing house Odhams Press from TUC in 1964 . After taking over Odham Press, George Newes and Amalgamated Press (later Fleetway Publications ), the Mirror Group of newspapers changed its name to International Publishing Corporation (IPC).

In 1964, The Sun was launched by IPC as a replacement for the Daily Herald. According to market researchers, the Sun should serve a new readership as a newspaper for the working class who are interested in culture and aspiring. The newspaper's motto was: “A paper born of the age we live in” ( English for “born in the age in which we live”). This readership did not exist, however, and the circulation halved to 850,000 within five years. The new ownership did not bring any improvement in circulation, also because IPC did not want to bring a rival paper to the successful in-house Daily Mirror onto the market, so that the newspaper was sold on to Rupert Murdoch in 1969 for £ 800,000 . Murdoch changed the newspaper format (tabloid) and reintroduced the newspaper, this time as a cheeky, uncompromising tabloid (sex, sport, sensations). The year 1969 is considered to be the actual hour of birth of the Sun in its current form. The newspaper was then printed on weekdays on the printing presses of the Sunday newspaper News of the World , which Murdoch had acquired a year earlier.

In 1970 the circulation rose by 40% to 2.1 million issues within one year, especially since the photo of the Page Three girl on the anniversary 1970 did not show a glamor girl but a pin-up girl. The first pin-up girl on the third page in 1970 was the twenty-year-old British Stephanie Marrian, who at that time was still called Stefanie Khan after her Indian father. Due to the incorrect transmission on the part of an editor, she was named "Stephanie Rahn" in the issue, which has led to the assumption that she is German on various occasions. Samantha Fox presented herself in 1984 at the age of sixteen and is still the best-known “Page Three girl” today. The “Third Page” was not originally a section of the newspaper. In 1978 the circulation of the Sun surpassed that of its former sister paper The Daily Mirror at the International Publishing Corporation (IPC), not least because of an aggressive advertising campaign by actor Christopher Timothy on the ITV television station . The Sun has been using Bingo as a marketing tool since 1981 to further increase circulation.

Despite the employment relationships in the 1970s, the so-called Spanish Practices (German: naturalized, lax and unofficial working methods) of the publishing unions , the Sun was very profitable , which allowed Murdoch to expand into the United States from 1973 . In 1986 Murdoch closed the Sun and News of the World buildings on London's Bouverie Street (a side street off Fleet Street ), laid off about 5,000 striking printers and moved to new premises in the Wapping complex, part of the Tower Hamlets district of London in Docklands . In the new production facilities, the newspapers were printed using offset instead of linotype , which was decisive for the large number of layoffs. The two newspapers were produced for a short time by a rump workforce. The economic success of the two newspapers made it possible for Murdoch to put the British Sky Broadcasting satellite TV channels into operation and, from 1993, to start a price war ( predatory pricing ) by The Times , which has been in-house since 1981 , especially with the rival paper The Independent .

During the weekend of February 11-12, 2012, five senior Sun editors were arrested on suspicion of bribing police officers and officials. Among others, the picture editor, the chief foreign correspondent and the chief reporter of the paper are affected. Rupert Murdoch gave a guarantee for the continued existence of the newspaper.

In 2014, the circulation fell below the 2 million mark for the first time since 1971.

Political position

The former trade union newspaper, initially loyal to the Labor Party , is one of the most influential newspapers in the country with around four million readers every day. In the 1970s, the newspaper found the “skilled working class” (social grade C2, skilled workers and workers) as a new target group and served them with populist and sensational articles.

When the Labor government exposed political weaknesses and lost popularity in the 1970s , the newspaper changed its political stance and sympathized with the Conservatives. In the two British general elections in 1974 , the paper's attitude to the Labor Party was “skeptical” (Roy Greenslade in Press Gang, 2003). Larry Lamb , editorial director of the Sun and News of the Week, was inclined to Labor, the editor-in-chief Anthony Shrimsley of the Conservative Party , Murdoch decided to support the Conservatives.

In the 1979 general election , the conservative opposition lead candidate Margaret Thatcher asked the Sun for support. After the Conservative victory, Thatcher raised the then editor-in-chief Larry Lamb to the nobility .

In the run-up to the general election in 1992, the Sun warned against the election of Labor candidate Neil Kinnock with the headline "if Kinnocks wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn off the lights?" (" If Kinnock wins today, the last one to leave the UK, please turn off the lights!" ). The newspaper depicted Neil Kinnock's head in a glowing lightbulb . After Conservative candidate John Major won the election against Kinnock, the newspaper boasted the headline "It's The Sun wot won it." ( "It was the Sun that won the election" (wot: a slang of what) ).

In 1997 the Sun surprisingly supported Tony Blair and New Labor (see Labor Party ) in the elections ( "The Sun backs Blair! "). In 2001 and 2005 the newspaper also spoke out in favor of Blair.

As a result, the Sun moved back into the right-conservative area of ​​the political spectrum and took a clearly negative attitude towards the EU.

In the spring of 2016, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford carried out a study in which the positions of the most important British daily newspaper on the upcoming Brexit referendum were examined. The study found that behind the Daily Mail , Daily Express and Daily Star , the Sun had published the most "pro-leave" articles. In addition, the paper claimed that Queen Elizabeth II would support Brexit, which was denied by the royal family. After the "pro-Leave" campaign narrowly won the referendum in June 2016, the newspaper celebrated the success with the headline "See EU later!" ("See you later!" Stands for "see you soon!" In English, whereby in this case you has been replaced by the phonetically similar "EU").

On March 29, 2017, the then Prime Minister Theresa May submitted the application to leave the EU, whereupon the Sun published the aforementioned headlines "See EU later!" plus "Dover and Out!" (an allusion to the radio message "Over and Out! ") projected onto the chalk cliffs near the southern English port city of Dover .

On a front page in early June 2017, the newspaper shouted with the headline "Don't chuck Britain in the Cor-Bin!" (analogous to the pun: "Don't throw Great Britain in the Corbyn garbage can!") not to vote for the Labor Party and its chairman, Jeremy Corbyn , in the upcoming election . Corbyn was referred to among other things as a " terrorists' friend ", "extremist Marxist" (" Marxist extremist ") and job destroyer (" destroyer of jobs ").

In addition, in the years since the referendum, the Sun attracted attention through sharp, sometimes insulting attacks against the EU and important European politicians and against so-called retainers, British citizens and politicians who refuse to leave the EU. For example, an article in September 2018 spoke of "EU dirty rats" and "mobsters" ("bandits"), with French President Emmanuel Macron and Donald Tusk , President of the European Council, in the style portrayed by mafia godparents with machine guns in their hands. Another article referred to Remainer as "rancid" ("rancid") and insinuated that they were lying ( "Remainers' lies" ).

Critics of the paper criticize the tendency of the newspaper to reflect the conservative political views of Rupert Murdoch.

More infamous headlines and reports

  • "Gotcha" (May 4, 1982)

The Sun's most famous headline to date was "Gotcha" ( English for caught ) when the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano was sunk during the Falklands War in 1982 (323 dead). The editor Kelvin MacKenzie, who had the headline printed, changed it at short notice to “DID 1,200 ARGIES DROWN?”, But the issue still reached a few readers. The headline was picked up by other newspapers to show the Sun's thirst for blood.

  • "Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster" (March 13, 1986)

Freddie Starr was a very popular comedian in Great Britain. The headline “Freddie Star ate my hamster” was put into perspective in the article as a claim by a young woman. The set is now a UK household word to express something improbable.

  • "Up Yours, Delors" (November 1, 1990)

In 1990 Prime Minister Thatcher gave an aggressive speech to the British House of Commons against the ECU and the European Commission's attempt to lead Britain through the “back door into EMU (European Monetary Union)”. Following the speech, the EC Commission President Jacques Delors was shown "the finger" by the Sun. The day after the article, Britain's Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe resigned. About a fortnight later, Howe delivered his famous speech on Thatcher's European policy, widely regarded as the beginning of the downfall of the Thatcher's government.

  • "Our Boys"

The support of the struggling British army, called Our Boys ( English for Our guys ), is unequivocal. The newspaper fully supported the Iraq war .

  • "The Truth", "Some fans picked pockets of victims"; "Some fans urinated on the brave cops"; "Some fans beat up PC giving kiss of life" (April 19, 1989)

The Sun was publicly criticized for its coverage of the Hillsborough disaster (96 dead, 730 injured) at Sheffielder Football Stadium in 1989, in which it had condemned Liverpool FC fans (e.g. pickpockets from victims, urination on police officers and corpses) . Several other newspapers made the same allegations, but also based on false testimony from a single police officer. In contrast to the other newspapers, the Sun earned special disgrace for the oversized headline "The Truth" ( English for the truth ). The newspaper was then boycotted in Liverpool . It was not until July 7, 2004, 15 years after the catastrophe, that the Sun printed a full-page “apology” that many described as selfish. The apology also came about after Liverpool -born Wayne Rooney , who played for Liverpool club Everton FC and had sold his biography to the Sun, but criticized the newspaper. The Sun's attempt to make up ground in Liverpool with Rooney's biography failed, and Rooney was eventually exposed by the Sun as a brothel-goer.

  • "Are we being run by a gay mafia?" (November 9, 1989)

The alleged heterosexism of the paper is also viewed as controversial . This began when, in the 1980s, the Greater London Council (predecessor of the Greater London Authority ), under the leadership of Ken Livingstone , began to financially support homosexual organizations with small amounts. A few days after the Labor MP Peter Mandelson of Mattew Paris, a gay politicians and journalists, on the television program Newsnight as homosexual in October 1989 outed has asked the newspaper whether Britain of a "Gay Mafia" ( English for gay mafia was governed) . A list of gay MPs was revised by the newspaper the next day due to the high level of publicity. For example, Chris Smith, Nick Brown and Mandelson were in no way related.

  • "Queen Seeks Damages From Paper Over a Speech" (February 3, 1993)

Queen Elizabeth II is suing the English tabloid The Sun for compensation for the premature printing of her Christmas speech. The British Crown accepted the tabloid's concession for the payment of £ 284,000 to the needy and socially disadvantaged. With this, both parties agreed on an out-of-court settlement of the dispute.

  • "Is THIS the most dangerous man in EUROPE?" (November 25, 1998)

The former German finance minister Oskar Lafontaine was questioned as “Europe's most dangerous man” during a campaign against the single European currency. The article said that Lafontaine was the greatest threat to the British way of life since 1945.

  • "Le worm" (February 20, 2003)

Foreign heads of state are often labeled with expressions in an unvarnished manner. Jacques Chirac , the President of France, for example, was ridiculed in the run-up to the Iraq war for his negative attitude towards an invasion with the term "le Worm" ( English for the worm ). In an editorial the next day it continued: “The French President is an unscrupulous, conniving, preening, lying, cheating hypocrite” ( English for The French President is an unscrupulous, scheming, dressed up, lying and deceiving hypocrite ). In Paris a free French special edition was distributed with the headline “Chirac est un ver” ( French for Chirac is a worm ).

  • "From Hitler Youth to Papa Ratzi" (April 20, 2005)

For the election of the 78-year-old German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. In 2005, The Sun headlined “From the Hitler Youth to Papa Ratzi”. 1945 at the end of the Second World War Benedict XVI. 18 years old.

  • "Tyrant's in his Pants" (May 20, 2005)

The Sun, as well as the Rupert Murdochs News Corp. The front page of the New York Post owned a photo about a year old showing Saddam Hussein , who has been imprisoned since December 2003, wearing only white underpants (more photos in the article). The dignity of prisoners of war guaranteed by the third Geneva Convention was thereby violated. According to Sun, the source of the photos is to be found in the US military; the photos are an attempt to demystify Saddam Hussein.

  • "One down ... three to go" (July 23, 2005)

The shooting of the 27-year-old Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes , whom the police mistakenly believed was a suicide bomber.

  • "I'm Big in the Bumdestag" ( Bum, German Po) (April 17, 2006)

The incumbent German Chancellor Angela Merkel was photographed by a paparazzo while she was changing clothes on the Italian island of Ischia . The Sun printed a photo of the Chancellor's bare buttocks. In the article, the newspaper praised the German economy and confirmed a "much improved bottom line" ( English for significantly improved profits - the bottom line of the profit and loss account. "Bottom" also refers to a person's bottom ). The Sun described Merkel as "the cheeky chancellor" ( English for the cheeky chancellor , where "cheeks" also refer to the buttocks) and "the Iron Frau" ( English for the iron woman ). The Chancellor decided not to advertise the article in order not to attract further attention (see Streisand Effect ).

  • "School Wars"

After the rampage in Erfurt in April 2002, the British newspaper The Sun reported that the assassin Robert Steinhäuser had been inspired to run rampage by a slipknot song called School Wars . A supposedly quoted from this text line of the song was "Shoot your naughty teachers with a pump gun" ( English for bang your naughty teacher with a Shotgun off ). However, such a song by the band does not exist.

Editors-in-chief

  • Sidney Jacobsen (1964–1965) (before the name change of the Daily Herald)
  • Dick Dinsdale (1965-1969)
  • Lary Lamb (1969–1972) (Lamb was editor-in-chief of the Sun and the News of the Week)
  • Anthony Shrimsley (1972-1975)
  • Lary Lamb (1975–1980) (Lamb had to take a six-month leave of absence ( sabbatical ) before he was released by Murdoch)
  • Kelvin MacKenzie (1981-1994)
  • Stuart Higgins (1994-1998)
  • David Yelland (1998-2003)
  • Rebekah Wade (2003-2009)
  • Dominic Mohan (2009-2013)
  • David Dinsmore (2013-)

A former editor-in-chief and first woman in this position was Rebekah Wade. On November 3, 2005, Wade was arrested for 8 hours for assaulting her husband, British actor Ross Kemp , and was released without charge. In the previous weeks the newspaper had campaigned against domestic violence .

literature

  • Bruce Page, Elaine Potter: The Murdoch Archipelago. Pocket Books, 2004, ISBN 0-7434-6793-0 , review .
  • P. Chippindale, C. Horrie: Stick it up your punter! The rise and fall of the Sun. Heinemann, London 1990, ISBN 0-434-12624-1 (English).
  • The Dark Side of the Sun, The Sun, Britain's largest newspaper, is 40 years old, but does not feel like partying. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , September 25, 2004, category media, p. 18.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Zainab Pirzada: Circulation. ( pptx , 330 kB) In: newsworks.org.uk. July 22, 2019, accessed on August 16, 2019 .
  2. ^ Zainab Pirzada: Readership. ( pptx , 700 kB) In: newsworks.org.uk. June 14, 2019, p. 12 , accessed on August 16, 2019 (English).
  3. ↑ Polly Toynbee: Sun King of the Dirt Press. In: Friday . February 26, 2012, accessed February 27, 2012 .
  4. ↑ Johannes Leithäuser: Only the naked is true. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . February 12, 2012, accessed February 13, 2012 .
  5. ^ Christoph Scheuermann: London: In the paper business. In: Der Spiegel 1 (2015). December 29, 2014, pp. 56–57 , accessed on August 16, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Sir Larry Lamb . May 19, 2000, ISSN  0307-1235 ( telegraph.co.uk [accessed November 17, 2019]).
  7. ↑ It's the Sun what won it! Retrieved November 17, 2019 .
  8. ↑ The Sun backs Blair! Retrieved November 17, 2019 .
  9. ^ Sun still shines for Blair . March 8, 2001 ( bbc.co.uk [accessed November 17, 2019]).
  10. ↑ Nicholas Watt: The Sun backs Blair . In: The Guardian . April 20, 2005, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed November 17, 2019]).
  11. ↑ UK newspapers' positions on Brexit | University of Oxford. Accessed November 17, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Heather Stewart: Palace complains to watchdog over Sun's 'Queen backs Brexit' claims . In: The Guardian . March 9, 2016, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed November 17, 2019]).
  13. ↑ “See EU Later!”: This is how the English tabloids celebrate Brexit. Retrieved November 18, 2019 .
  14. ↑ “Dover & out” and “See EU later”: So hatefully the Sun celebrates Brexit on the cliffs of Dover. March 29, 2017. Retrieved November 17, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Don't chuck Britain in the Cor-bin - vote Tory unless you want open borders, tax hikes and less security. June 7, 2017. Retrieved November 17, 2019 (UK English).
  16. ↑ The Sun Says we can't wait to free ourselves of the mobsters who run the EU. September 20, 2018. Retrieved November 17, 2019 (UK English).
  17. ↑ Remainer MPs have no motives to 'scrutinise' Boris Johnson's new Brexit deal. October 22, 2019. Retrieved November 17, 2019 (UK English).
  18. ↑ Peter Chippendale: 'Gotcha' she yelled-and a front page was born. Mail on Sunday, September 26, 1999, p. 61.

Web links