The Sun

Location
The Sun’s publisher, News UK, has offices in London, while the Irish Sun and Scottish Sun have offices in Dublin and Glasgow respectively. News UK’s parent company, News Corp, is based in New York.
Politics
The Sun is brazenly rightwing. However, its party allegiance has proven fleeting over the years, veering between Britain’s Conservative Party and centrist Labour Party.

Money Matters

News UK, otherwise known as News Corp UK & Ireland Ltd, is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s mass media conglomerate News Corp. The publishing firm was previously called News International, but was rebranded in the wake of a phone hacking scandal that shook Murdoch’s media empire to its core. In addition to the Sun, News UK publishes the Sun on Sunday, the Times, the Sunday Times, and the Times Literary Supplement (TLS). It also owns a range of commercial ventures such as Sun Bingo, Sun Motors, Times Currency Services and Encounters Dating.

News Corp forms part of Murdoch’s media dynasty, shaping the news agenda across the globe. The multinational media conglomerate has offices in New York, but is incorporated in US tax haven Delaware. Its tentacles span the globe, with assets across America, Europe, Australia and Asia.

News Corp reported revenues of $US 8.63 billion and a net loss of $US149 million for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2015. News UK was hit by a 12-month operating loss of £3.5 million (US$ 5.2 million) in 2014, following a profit of £51 million in 2013. Of particular note, was a sharp decline in the Sun’s profitability, where operating profits plunged from £62.1 million in 2013 to £35.6 million in 2014. The tabloid’s revenues also dropped during this period by 5.5 percent to £489 million.

Essentials

The Sun’s publisher describes the tabloid as "more than a newspaper," claiming it "is an instigator, an entertainer, [and] a cultural reference point." The daily paper departs radically from Britain’s quality broadsheets, offering its readers a gauche cocktail of news, celebrity gossip, rightwing opinion pieces, topless women, and polemical analysis. While its proponents argue the paper’s content satisfies the appetite of the masses, critics have accused it of being sensational, sexist, inflammatory, reactionary, racist and inaccurate.

The Sun is the most-read national newspaper in Britain, with an average readership of 4,966,000 Monday through Saturday. Its sister publication, the Sun on Sunday, has an average weekly readership of 4,074,000. Retailing at just 60 pence, the tabloid also has the highest daily circulation of any national newspaper in Britain, holding 27.2 percent of the market share. Following close behind, are the Daily Mail, which holds 24.3 percent and the Daily Mirror with 12.9 percent.

The Sun was first published as a broadsheet in 1964, with its editor Sydney Jacobson vowing it would pursue a "radical" and "independent" agenda. In 1969, it was sold to Rupert Murdoch, who already owned the News of the World at the time, and was keen to increase his foothold on Fleet Street.

Murdoch transformed the Sun from a daily broadsheet into a tabloid, slashing its operating costs, while reportedly telling the paper’s editor Larry Lamb he wanted "a tearaway paper with lots of tits in it." Lamb complied and bare breasted women began to feature in paper from1970 onwards. In an interview with the Guardian in 1969, the media baron justified exerting editorial influence over his papers, saying: "You cannot make money by being just a backroom manager."

The Sun on Sunday was launched in 2012 after its predecessor, the News of the World, collapsed in the wake of a phone hacking scandal that rattled Murdoch’s media empire.

Key People

Rupert
Murdoch

Arguably the most powerful media baron in the world, Rupert Murdoch is Executive Chairman of News Corp, the Sun’s ultimate parent company. Based in New York, the 84-year-old is worth a staggering US$12.6 billion. In 2015, financial magazine Forbes ranked him number 35 on its list of the world’s most powerful people. Rupert Murdoch is a regular attendee of the World Economic Forum and secretive Bilderberg meetings. His media empire includes over 100 newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the Sun and the Times, an expansive cable network, broadcast and satellite television, a multinational book publisher HarperCollins and a world-renowned film studio 20th Century Fox.

The foundations of Murdoch’s empire were laid in the 1950s after he inherited a regional Australian newspaper the News (Adelaide) at the tender age of 21. A son of a journalist, he remembered in a 1989 interview with Gannett Center Journal: "I was brought up in a publishing home, a newspaper man’s home, and was excited by that, I suppose. I saw that life at close range, and after the age of ten or twelve never really considered any other."

In the 1960s, the Oxford-educated businessman had ventured into Britain’s press market. He acquired the now-defunct News of the World in 1968 and bought the Sun the following year. Later conquests in Britain included the Times and its sibling paper the Sunday Times, which he acquired in 1981.

Controversies

News of the World phone hacking scandal

The now-defunct paper imploded after special correspondent for the Guardian Nick Davies revealed it had hired a private investigator to intercept voice messages left on the mobile phone of a murdered schoolgirl in 2002.

In his book ‘Hack Attack: How the Truth caught up with Rupert Murdoch,’ Davies recalls how his five-year probe into phone hacking uncovered the lies of police officers, News International, and Britain’s disgraced Press Complaints Commission (PCC). He also says the criminal practice of phone hacking began in the "fertile soil of the Sun" in 1998.



Davies’ coverage of the phone hacking scandal sparked police inquiries and a string of arrests, including the paper’s former editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson.

It appeared that celebrities, royals, and victims of crime had their phones illegally intercepted by the tabloid, with victims of the 7/7 bombings also targeted.

The News of the World was closed following the scandal with the last edition issued on July 10, 2011.

The scandal led to the famous Leveson Inquiry — a public judicial probe into the culture, practices and ethics of the UK press.

Misreporting on UK Muslims’ views of Islamic State

The Sun faced a caustic backlash in November 2015 after it ran a report claiming nearly 20 percent of British Muslims have some sympathy with those who flee Britain to fight for Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria.

Britain’s press regulator the Independent Press Standards Organization (IPSO) received over 2,000 complaints after the report was published — the highest number since its founding in 2014.

Despite the sensational claims the Sun had made about British Muslims, the survey did not explicitly mention IS. Rather, 5 percent of the poll’s respondents said that they had "a lot of sympathy" for young Muslims who leave Britain to join "fighters in Syria," while 14.5 percent said they had "some sympathy." The mispresentation sparked outcry on social media.





The Sun’s sister title the Times later conceded the poll did not distinguish between those who travel to Syria to fight for IS and those who fight alongside other rebel groups.

Scottish minister Humza Yousaf branded the article "inflammatory" and "flawed," warning it placed Muslims at risk of heightened abuse.



The piece had been published just days after a coordinated series of terror attacks in Paris left 130 dead and hundreds injured.

Accusations of racist rhetoric

The Sun was also denounced in April 2015 for publishing an opinion piece that compared migrants to "cockroaches." The offending article was written by the tabloid’s columnist Katie Hopkins. Hopkins had revealed she was utterly unsympathetic to the plight of migrants who risk their lives to cross the Mediterranean.

"Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I still don’t care," she wrote. "What we need are gunships sending these boats back to their own country."



Hours after the piece was published, a fishing vessel attempting to cross the Mediterranean capsized off Libya’s coast, leading to the loss of 800 lives.

In a scathing intervention, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said that the term "cockroaches" echoed language used by the Nazis and those who were responsible for genocide in Rwanda.

He urged the British government, regulators and media to uphold domestic and international laws on thwarting hateful rhetoric. Al Hussein also noted Hopkins’ column reflected a troubling trend in Britain’s press, where migrants were routinely smeared and attacked.



Hopkins’ article sparked over 400 complaints, which were filed with Britain’s press regulator IPSO. However, none of them were upheld.

Page three ‘publicity stunt’

In January 2015, an article in the Times announced the Sun would no longer print topless models on page three. The feature, which first appeared in the tabloid in 1970, had faced mounting criticism from campaigners who branded it sexist, offensive, and regressive. News of the editorial shift cast a media spotlight on the Sun, prompting politicians and campaigners to express their glee.





However, in an unexpected twist the paper resumed its regular Page 3 feature several days later. Brandishing a picture of a blonde-haired, bare-breasted model winking, the paper coyly ran with the headline ‘Clarifications and Corrections.’



The return of the feature provoked a strong reaction from critics, with campaign group No More Page 3 declaring the fight "back on" and Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff describing the affair as an elaborate publicity stunt. Hinsliff, a former political editor for the Observer, argued the "malicious trick" was about power, not sex.

Mental health scandal

The Sun was accused of entrenching mental health stigmas with an inflammatory front-page headline in 2013, which read "1,200 killed by mental patients." Although the article acknowledged many "high risk patients" who had committed murder since 2003 had been let down by the state, critics slammed the headline as "irresponsible and wrong."

Labour’s health team took to Twitter to vent its disgust, saying the paper’s front page "disgracefully reinforced" an unacceptable stigma. Representatives from a number of leading mental health charities also expressed outrage, telling the Independent those who suffer from mental health problems are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of crime, and the article created a false picture, which would inhibit people with mental health problems from seeking help.



Cash for stories: Operation Elveden

Operation Elveden was a Scotland Yard probe into alleged corrupt payments made by journalists to police and public officials. The £30 million inquiry began after allegations surfaced in 2011 that police received £130,000 in payments from the News of the World.

Although 29 reporters were charged, the only journalist to be convicted by a jury was the Sun’s crime reporter Anthony France.



By contrast, some 26 public officials faced convictions.

France denied any wrongdoing, claiming no one advised him at the paper that speaking to public officials or police officers might be illegal.

Hillsborough disaster misreporting

The Sun’s inaccurate coverage of the Hillsborough football stadium disaster in 1989 proved calamitous for the tabloid, sullying its reputation for decades. Ninety-six Liverpool FC fans had been crushed to death and 766 injured that year as Liverpool FC’s FA Cup semi-final game against Nottingham Forest began. Four days after the catastrophe, the Sun’s misreporting on the tragedy provoked outrage.

Under the front-page headline ‘The Truth’, the tabloid printed an incendiary series of allegations based on unnamed sources which later turned out to be "a senior police officer and a senior local MP." It accused Liverpool fans of attacking "rescue workers as they tried to revive victims" and said police, ambulance staff and firemen were kicked, punched and "urinated upon" by a "hooligan element" of the crowd. The article provoked outrage in Liverpool, where the Sun’s daily sales collapsed after it was published.

In 2004, the Sun formally apologized for its coverage of the disaster.

An official report into the Hillsborough catastrophe in 2012, which had access to previously withheld government documents, exonerated Liverpool fans who had been present at the football match. The report revealed a failure of authorities to protect people at the stadium and strenuous efforts to deflect blame on to the fans.



Following the report’s completion, Prime Minister David Cameron said the Sun’s 1989 story contained "despicable untruths."

Kelvin MacKenzie, editor of the Sun at the time of the Hillsborough disaster, apologized in 2012 for the paper’s coverage of the catastrophe after the report was released.



The Sun also repeatedly apologized, as did James Murdoch, who was then chairman of News International.

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