Britain's "Abysmal Depths"

Many an American thinks of British newspapers as a logical extension of traditional striped-pants British reserve, formality and respectability. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. Except for the three "quality" dailies--the Times of London, Manchester Guardian, and London's Daily Telegraph (combined circ. 1.4 million)--Britain's six other national papers (combined circ. 14.8 million) extend by degrees to the wildest and most sensational in the world--and the least informative. On the 100th anniversary this year of the birth of British press freedom, the Times took one horrified look at the giant journalistic world around it, and aptly concluded: "[In Britain's popular press] irresponsibility is rife. The tone of voice is a perpetual shriek. So-called brightness is all. [The popular press has descended] to ... abysmal depths of triviality and to the frankly disgusting."

The austere Times, which errs in the other direction by making all news sound like History, was not being excessively stuffy. The abysmal depths are opening even wider. Last week the tabloid Daily Sketch's, circulation topped the 1,000,000 mark, a sensational rise of nearly 400,000 readers in little more than two years, based wholly on the paper's new diet of cheesecake, sex, crime and alarm-ringing political coverage. Last week Fleet Streeters also got the announcement of a new daily, the Sun. Said the Sun's prospectus, leaving no doubt as to what kind of daily it intends to be: "It will be lighthearted . . . We are not, unlike some publishers, trying to sell newspapers to corpses."

Silence & Scream. In Britain, where per capita daily newspaper buying is the highest in the world (615 papers sold daily for every 1,000 population), readers have a choice ranging from the no headlines of the uncompromising Times to the screaming headlines of the irrepressible Laborite Daily Mirror, biggest daily in the world (circ. 4,725,122). The well-written Manchester Guardian (circ. 156,154) and the Daily Telegraph (circ. 1,048,776) are slowly picking up readers, but the force of their voices is muffled by the nation's popular dailies, which provide the bulk of the news that Britain reads.*

Outside the quality press there is very little real news in most British newspapers. How did British popular dailies get so bad? Many a Fleet Streeter blames it all on the late great Lord Northcliffe, father of British popular journalism. But the source is broader. When Northcliffe started the popular Daily Mail in 1896, British newspapers were thoroughly stuffy, aimed at a tiny educated class. Northcliffe created the "penny press" for a mass audience that had grown literate as a byproduct of the Industrial Revolution.

Lord Beaverbrook, Britain's present undisputed No. 1 press lord ("My political belief is a simple one: I believe in Britain's glory"), improved Northcliffe's formula by aggressive, enterprising coverage, and brisk, clever editing. (He still bars cheesecake and leering sex from his papers.) The Beaver's standing order: "Ban the word 'exclusive' from the Express. Our aim is to make everything exclusive."

"Trash & Trivia." But the formula got out of hand. The biggest spur was economic. With little newsprint available, the popular press used what space it had to the best advantage, i.e., to lure readers. Since advertisers had to wait in line to get into the tightly rationed dailies, editors knew that the only way to boost revenue was to boost circulation.

Crime stories began to make even the most crime-hungry U.S. daily look sober by comparison. Recently, when a British sergeant was convicted of murdering another soldier with the help of his halfbrother, two British weeklies got articles from 1) the murderer (I THOUGHT I HAD GOT AWAY WITH IT), 2) the half-brother (WHY I GAVE MY BROTHER'S MURDER SECRET AWAY), 3) the murdered man's sister (WHY I KNEW MY BROTHER DID NOT KILL HIMSELF), and 4) the soldier's wife (I AM TO BLAME).

On weekends the News of the World (circ. 7,971,000) and its weekly rivals are filled with lurid accounts of court reports of crimes, engulfing such thoughtful, first-rate weekly newspapers as the Sunday Times or Observer, which together have a circulation of only slightly over a million. Observed New York Herald Tribune Columnist Roscoe Drummond, visiting in London last week: "We Americans often think the British press neglects America . . . Most British mass circulation newspapers neglect what is important about Britain [in] a sensational, restless hodgepodge of trash and trivia . . ."

A new flamboyant journalism became sensational not only about sex ("LAW CAN'T TOUCH ME"--BABY'S FATHER) and crime (MOTHER SLAYS BABE IN WOODS TO MAKE WAY FOR LOVER), but about the most important national and international news as well. For example, more in the interest of slam-bang headlines than from political conviction, Britain's popular dailies outdid each other the minute the U.S. made the announcement in March 1954 of the destructive powers of the hydrogen bomb. HELL BOMB, HORROR BOMB, and other black-scare headlines filled every Page One, along with such articles as "The H-Bomb and You."

Face & No Face. Why do British popular newspapers run so out of character with the country in which they are published? While most Americans still think of the typical Briton as an educated, devoted, clucking reader of the Times, only 4% of Britain's adult population have attended school until they were 18 or older. (Only since 1947 has Britain had a compulsory education law requiring school attendance up to the age of 15.) As a result, Britain's new and fast-growing middle-educated class has still not developed a press in its own image. Until it does, Britain will be badly served.

Explains one U.S. newsman, a longtime London correspondent: "In Britain there are still two classes: the educated and the uneducated. The educated present Britain's face to the world as a nation of people who are readers of the Times, Telegraph and Guardian. The uneducated present no face to the world because their faces are buried in the Mirror, Sketch, Herald, and all the other popular papers."

* Many a community in Britain where the national papers are read also has its own "provincial" daily, e.g., the Yorkshire Evening Post, Liverpool Echo, etc. They are not only much smaller than the national popular dailies but usually much quieter and less sensational as well.

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