First, a confession: I once worked at the Sun in London. I lasted two-and-a-half weeks. I walked out in the middle of a shift, down a back-stairs that doubled as a fire escape, and walked away the Wapping newspaper factory from any chance of a career at the mass circulation tabloid newspaper.
That was in the summer of 1994.
The editor was the infamous Kelvin McKenzie, who swanned around the newsroom that was as big as an aircraft hangar — it had to be that big to contain his considerable ego and boorishness. Piers Morgan, since of the Mirror, CNN and a host of other banal reality television shows, was a struggling Page Six columnist.
Every story, no matter who filed it, was taken apart and rewritten — “torqued” was the terminology used by us lowly sub-editors at the time — and made sure it fit the Sun’s unique tabloid bent.
At the time, it was selling four million copies a day. John Major was the United Kingdom Prime Minister at the time, and the Irish Republican Army was active in London. Being Irish — holding a Canadian passport didn’t matter — it was an uncomfortable place to work. I can handle any ribbing but I couldn’t handle the manner it twisted even the most basic news story.
There was a circulation war among the British national newspapers at the time, and the Sun had slashed its cover price to just 10 pence. When you rewrote every story, you had to include words to the effect that, for example, “Your 10p Sun says John Major blah blah blah”, or “Police told your 10p Sun the victim died instantly.”
So why the confession and anecdotes? Well, it’s just a small indication and insight into how the world of billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch works. Murdoch is the owner of the parent company, News Corp that published the Sun as well as the Times and the new defunct News of the World — the Sunday sister paper to the Monday to Saturday Sun.
Publication of the News of the World ceased in 2010. No, it wasn’t a victim of poor sales — it was booming. Murdoch had his sights set then on buying the UK-based Sky satellite network. He shut down the title to make his company look more palatable to government regulators who had to approve the proposed £8 billion (Dh37.39 billion) after News of the World journalists and editors illegally hacked the phones of victims of crime and celebrities to obtain gossip and news stories. He still wants to buy it now, and has launched an £11.1 billion bid for the little over 60 per cent of the company he doesn’t already own.
The purchase has been reviewed by Ofcom, the UK’s media regulator, and it has sent a recommendation on either allowing or prohibiting the sale to Karen Bradley, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Part of the Ofcom brief was to assess whether Murdoch and his family are “fit and proper” to hold UK broadcasting licences. If Bradley wants to play for more time — she could refer the sale to another governmental regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, for more study and in-depth review and consideration. If Bradley allows the sale to go ahead, she will be rewarding a bigoted and hateful right-wing press for festers racist and anti-Islamic views.
Here’s one reason why: The Sun is vitriolic in its hate of all things Islam and all things Muslim.
In the wake of the terror attacks in Manchester and at London Bridge and Borough Market, the Sun ran a column saying that the UK could do with “less Islam”. It reasoned: “Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have very little Islam and very little Islamic terror. By contrast, France has a great amount of Islam and a great amount of Islamic terror. To most people, it would seem obvious — in the words of Donatella Versace — that ‘more is more. Because although many communities are capable of producing extremists, only Islamic communities produce Islamic extremists.”
It’s this type of populist pap that inspired the likes of Darren Osborne outside Finsbury Park mosque early last Monday morning. The 47-year-old man is being held in custody on suspicion of terror offences, including attempted murder. He is alleged to have expressed increasingly antagonistic views towards Muslims in the weeks since the London Bridge atrocity. After ploughing down a group of men as they left Ramadan prayers, he is alleged to have rammed his hired van into bollards before jumping out and shouting: “I’m going to kill all Muslims — I did my bit”.
The Sun did its bit as well.
After the Finsbury Park attack, the Sun’s coverage included these apologist words: “Osborne’s sister Nicola, 50, who was celebrating her birthday on the day of the alleged attack, said he had no interest in politics and was no racist. She added: ‘He wouldn’t even know who the Prime Minister is. I’ve never heard him say anything about Muslims or anything racist. My own son is mixed race and Darren loves him to bits’.”
The Sun has a way of twisting things — applying “torque” — to sensationalise news stories, mixing pixie dust with facts to make fairy tales. Just ask the people of Liverpool, who have been at the poisoned end of the Sun’s ink. Days after the Hillsboro tragedy of April 1989, McKenzie’s tabloid accused Liverpool football fans of urinating on the bodies of dying fans as they waited for medical attention on the field after a stadium crush, and it claimed the corpses were robbed. It was all lies.
Yes, McKenzie’s paper said sorry, but he is a vilified man in Liverpool. The mayor of the city reported the Sun to police for spreading hate over a column the former editor wrote this spring, comparing Everton football star Ross Barkley to a gorilla. Barkley is part-Nigerian.
Last Wednesday, the Queen’s speech drafted by Prime Minster Theresa May to lay out its policies for the new UK government, included a provision to set up an anti-extremism commission to review and prosecute those who propagate extremist views. The Sun should be required reading from Day One.
