Daily Express



The Daily Express is a daily national middle market tabloid newspaper in the United Kingdom. It is the flagship title of Express Newspapers, a subsidiary of Northern & Shell (which is wholly owned by Richard Desmond). It was first published as a broadsheet in 1900 by Sir Arthur Pearson. Its sister paper The Sunday Express was launched in 1918. As of December 2016, it had an average daily circulation of 391,626.

The paper was acquired by Richard Desmond in 2000. Hugh Whittow has served as the paper's editor since February of 2011. The paper's editorial stances are often seen as aligned to the UK Independence Party (UKIP).

In addition to its sister paper, Express Newspapers also publishes the red top newspapers the Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday.

History
The Daily Express was founded in 1900 by Sir Arthur Pearson, with the first issue appearing on 24 April 1900. Pearson, who had lost his sight to glaucoma in 1913, sold the title to the future Lord Beaverbrook in 1916. It was one of the first papers to place news instead of advertisements on its front page along with carrying gossip, sports, and women's features. It was also the first newspaper in Britain to have a crossword puzzle.

The Express began printing copies in Manchester in 1927 and in 1931, the publication moved to 120 Fleet Street, a specially commissioned art deco building. Under Beaverbrook, the newspaper achieved a phenomenally high circulation, setting records for newspaper sales several times throughout the 1930s. Its success was partly due to its aggressive marketing campaign and a vigorous circulation war with other populist newspapers. Beaverbrook also discovered and encouraged a gifted editor named Arthur Christiansen who, at an early age, showed talent for writing and production. Christiansen became editor in October 1933. Under his editorial direction sales climbed from two million in 1936 to four million in 1949. He retired in 1957. The paper also featured Alfred Bestall's Rupert Bear cartoon and satirical cartoons by Carl Giles which it began publishing in the 1940s. On 24 March 1933, a front page headline titled "Judea Declares War on Germany" (because of the Anti-Nazi boycott of 1933) was published by the Daily Express. During the late thirties, the paper was a strong advocate of the appeasement policies of the Chamberlain government, due to the direct influence of its owner Lord Beaverbrook. The ruralist author Henry Williamson wrote for the paper on many occasions for half a century, practically the whole of his career. He also wrote for the Sunday Express at the beginning of his career.

In 1938, the publication moved to the Daily Express Building, Manchester (sometimes knicknamed the 'Black Lubyianka') designed by Owen Williams on the same site in Great Ancoats Street. It opened a similar building in Glasgow in 1936 in Albion Street. Glasgow printing ended in 1974 and Manchester in 1989 on the company's own presses. Johnston Press has a five-year deal, begun in March 2015, to print the northern editions of the Daily Express, Daily Star, Sunday Express and the Daily Star Sunday at its Dinnington site in Sheffield. The Scottish edition is printed by facsimile in Glasgow by contract printers, the London editions at Westferry Printers.

In March 1962, Beaverbrook was attacked in the House of Commons for running "a sustained vendetta" against the British Royal Family in the Express titles. In the same month, the Duke of Edinburgh described the Express as "a bloody awful newspaper. It is full of lies, scandal and imagination. It is a vicious paper." At the height of Beaverbrook's time in control in 1948, he told a Royal Commission on the press that he ran his papers "purely for the purpose of making propaganda". The arrival of television, and the public's changing interests, took their toll on circulation, and following Beaverbrook's death in 1964, the paper's circulation declined for several years. During this period, the Express, practically alone among mainstream newspapers, was vehemently opposed to entry into what became the European Economic Community. It also became critical of commercial television, not out of socialist opposition to commercialism but rather out of Beaverbrook's resentment that he had not been allowed an ITV franchise.

Partially as a result of the rejuvenation of the Daily Mail under the editorship of David English and the emergence of The Sun under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch and editorship of Larry Lamb, average daily sales of the Express dropped below four million in 1967, below three million in 1975, and below two million in 1984. The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 (the Mail having done so six years earlier), and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers. In 1982, Trafalgar House spun off its publishing interests into a new company, Fleet Holdings, under the leadership of Lord Matthews, but this succumbed to a hostile takeover by United Newspapers in 1985. Under United's ownership, the Express titles moved from Fleet Street to Blackfriars Road in 1989. As part of a marketing campaign designed to increase circulation, the paper was renamed The Express in 1996 (with the Sunday Express becoming The Express on Sunday). United was chaired by Lord Stevens of Ludgate from 1985 to 2000, during which the Express moved from loss to profit, despite rapidly falling sales.

Express Newspapers was sold to publisher Richard Desmond in 2000, and the names of the newspapers reverted to Daily Express and Sunday Express. In 2004, the newspaper moved to its present location on Lower Thames Street in the City of London.

On 31 October 2005, UK Media Group Entertainment Rights secured majority interest from the Daily Express for Rupert Bear. They paid £6 million for a 66.6% control of the character. The Express Newspaper retains minority interest of one-third plus the right to publish Rupert Bear stories in certain Express publications.

Richard Desmond era
In 2000, Express Newspapers was bought by Richard Desmond, publisher of titles such as the celebrity magazine OK!, for £125 million. At the time of the acquisition, controversy surrounded the deal since Desmond also owned a number of softcore pornography magazines.

As a result of Desmond's purchase of the paper, many staff including the then editor, Rosie Boycott, and columnist Peter Hitchens departed from the company. Hitchens moved on to The Mail on Sunday, saying that working for the new owner was a moral conflict of interest since he had always attacked the pornographic magazines Desmond published at the time. Despite their divergent politics, Boycott respected Hitchens. Stars of old Fleet Street, like the showbiz interviewer and feature writer Paul Callan, were brought in to restore some of the journalistic weight enjoyed by the paper in its peak years.

In 2007, Express Newspapers left the National Publishers Association due to unpaid fees. Since payments made to the NPA fund the Press Complaints Commission, it is possible that the Express and its sister papers could cease being regulated by the PCC. The chairman of the Press Standards Board of Finance, which manages PCC funds, described Express Newspapers as a "rogue publisher".

The Express group lost an unusually large number of high-profile libel cases in 2008–2009; it was forced to pay damages to people involved in the Madeleine McCann case (see below), a member of the Muslim Council of Great Britain, footballer Marco Materazzi, and sports agent Willie McKay. The string of losses led the media commentator Roy Greenslade to conclude that Express Newspapers (which also publishes the Star titles) paid out more in libel damages over that period than any other newspaper group. Although most of the individual amounts paid were not disclosed, the total damages were recorded at £1,570,000. Greenslade characterised Desmond as a "rogue proprietor".

In late 2008, Express Newspapers began a redundancy plan, which involved cutting 80 jobs in an effort to reduce costs by £2.5 million; however, too few staff were willing to take voluntary redundancy. In early 2008, a previous cost-cutting exercise by the group triggered the first 24-hour national press strike in the UK for 18 years. In late August 2009, plans for a further 70 redundancies were announced, affecting journalists across Express Newspapers (including the Daily and Sunday Express, the Daily Star, and the Daily Star Sunday).

In August 2009, the Advertising Standards Authority criticised the company for running advertorials as features alongside adverts for the same products. The ASA noted that the pieces were 'always and uniquely favourable to the product featured in the accompanying ads and contained claims that have been or would be likely to be prohibited in advertisements'

In January 2010, the Daily Express was censured by the Advertising Standards Authority over a front-page promotion for "free" fireworks. This led to comment that the Express has become "the Ryanair of Fleet Street", in that it is a "frequent offender" which pays little heed to the ASA's criticisms.

In May 2010, Desmond announced a commitment of £100 million over the next five years to buy much-needed new equipment for the printing plants, beginning with the immediate purchase of four new presses, amid industry rumours that he was going to establish a new printing plant in the north of London, at Luton.

On 31 December 2010, the Daily Express, along with all the media titles in Desmond's Northern & Shell group, were officially excluded from the Press Complaints Commission after withholding payment. Lord Guy Black, chairman of PressBof, the PCC's parent organisation, called this "a deeply regrettable decision".

According to Press Gazette, as of December 2016, circulation figures showed gross sales of its long-standing rival the Daily Mail are at 1,491,264 compared with 391,626 for the Daily Express.

Along with several other newspapers, the full run of the Daily Express has been digitised and is available at UK Press Online.

In 2016 the impartiality of the Daily Express was undermined by 5 different findings of the Independent Press Complaints Commissioner who on each occasion found that the Daily Express had misreported or misrepresented the true position as regards the EU -UK relationship.

Sunday Express


The Sunday Express was launched in 1918. It is edited by Martin Townsend. Its circulation in December 2016 was 335,271.

John Bodkin Adams
Suspected serial killer Dr John Bodkin Adams was arrested in 1956 suspected of murdering up to 400 of his wealthy patients in Eastbourne, England. The press, egged on by police leaks, unanimously declared Adams guilty, except for Percy Hoskins, chief crime reporter for the Express. Hoskins was adamant that Adams was merely a naive doctor prosecuted by an overzealous detective, Herbert Hannam, whom Hoskins disliked from previous cases. The Express, under Hoskins's direction, was therefore the only major paper to defend Adams, causing Lord Beaverbrook to question Hoskins's stance on the matter frequently. Adams was tried for the murder of Edith Alice Morrell in 1957 and found not guilty (a second count was withdrawn controversially). After the case, a jubilant Beaverbrook phoned Hoskins and said: "Two people were acquitted today", meaning Hoskins as well. The Express then carried an exclusive interview with Adams, who was interviewed by Hoskins for two weeks after the trial in a safe house away from other newspapers. According to archives released in 2003, Adams was thought by police to have killed 163 patients.

Dunblane
On 8 March 2009, the Scottish edition of the Sunday Express published a front page article critical of survivors of the 1996 Dunblane massacre, entitled "Anniversary Shame of Dunblane Survivors". The article criticised the 18-year-old survivors for posting "shocking blogs and photographs of themselves on the internet", revealing that they drank alcohol, made rude gestures and talked about their sex lives. The article provoked several complaints, leading to the printing of a front-page apology a fortnight later, and a subsequent adjudication by the Press Complaints Commission described the article as a "serious error of judgement" and stated, "Although the editor had taken steps to resolve the complaint, and rightly published an apology, the breach of the Code was so serious that no apology could remedy it".

Diana, Princess of Wales
The Daily Express has a reputation for consistently printing conspiracy theories about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales as front page news, earning it the nickname the Daily Ex-Princess; this has been satirised in Private Eye, the newspaper being labelled the Diana Express or the Di'ly Express, and has been attributed to Desmond's close friendship with regular Eye target Mohamed Fayed. For a long period in 2006 and 2007, these front-page stories would consistently appear on Mondays; this trend ceased only when the paper focused instead on the Madeleine McCann story (see below). Even on 7 July 2006, the anniversary of the London bombings (used by most other newspapers to publish commemorations) the front page was given over to Diana. This tendency was also mocked on Have I Got News for You when on 6 November 2006, the day other papers reported the death sentence given to Saddam Hussein on their front pages, the Express led with "SPIES COVER UP DIANA 'MURDER'".

According to The Independent "The Diana stories appear on Mondays because Sunday is often a quiet day." In February and March 2010 the paper returned to featuring Diana stories on the front page on Mondays.

In September 2013, following an allegation raised by the estranged wife of an SAS operative, the Daily Express once again returned to running daily Princess Diana cover stories.

Madeleine McCann
In the second half of 2007 the Daily Express gave a large amount of coverage to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. From 3 August 2007, the Express dedicated at least part of the next 100 front pages to Madeleine in a run that lasted until 10 November 2007. 82 of these 100 front page articles used the headline to feature the details of the disappearance (often stylised by "MADELEINE" in red block capitals, plus a picture of the child).

Though the family initially said that some journalists may have "overstepped their mark" they acknowledged the benefits in keeping the case in the public eye, but argued that the coverage needed to be toned down since daily headlines are not necessarily helpful. However, in March 2008, the McCanns launched a libel suit against the Daily Express and its sister newspaper, the Daily Star, as well as their Sunday equivalents, following the newspapers' coverage of the case. The action concerned more than 100 stories across the four newspapers, which accused the McCanns of causing their daughter's death and covering it up. One immediate consequence of the action was that Express Newspapers pulled all references to Madeleine from its websites.

In a settlement reached at the High Court of Justice, the newspapers agreed to run a front-page apology to the McCanns on 19 March 2008, publish another apology on the front pages of the Sunday editions of 23 March and make a statement of apology at the High Court. The newspapers also agreed to pay costs and substantial damages, which the McCanns said they would use to fund the search for their daughter. Guardian media commentator Roy Greenslade said it was "unprecedented" for four major newspapers to offer front-page apologies, but also said that it was more than warranted given that the papers had committed "a substantial libel" that shamed the entire British press. Craig Silverman of Regret the Error, a blog that reports media errors, argued that given how many of the stories appeared on the front page, anything less than a front page apology would have been "unacceptable."

In its apology, the Express stated that "a number of articles in the newspaper have suggested that the couple caused the death of their missing daughter Madeleine and then covered it up. We acknowledge that there is no evidence whatsoever to support this theory and that Kate and Gerry are completely innocent of any involvement in their daughter's disappearance." This was followed in October by an apology and payout (forwarded to the fund again) to a group who had become known as the "Tapas Seven" in relation to the case.

Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants
In 2013, the paper launched a 'Crusade' against new European Union rules of migrants from Bulgaria and Romania. The frontpage on Thursday 31 October declared 'Britain is full and fed up. Today join your Daily Express Crusade to stop new flood of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants'. The Aberystwyth University Student Union announced a ban on the sale of the paper. Though this ban was overturned in March 2016 after students campaigned for the ban to be overturned UKIP leader Nigel Farage declared that he had signed the petition, and urged other to do the same. Romanian politician Cătălin Ivan expressed 'outrage' at the campaign. 150,000 people signed the petition.

Daily Express

 * Arthur Pearson (April 1900 – 1901)
 * Bertram Fletcher Robinson (July 1900 – May 1904)
 * Robert Maxwell Stiegler (August 1902 – April 1933)
 * R. D. Blumenfeld (1909–1929)
 * Beverley Baxter (1929 – October 1933)
 * Arthur Christiansen (1933 – August 1957)
 * Edward Pickering (1957–1961)
 * Robert Edwards (acting) (November 1961 – February 1962)
 * Roger Wood (1962 – May 1963)
 * Robert Edwards (1963 – July 1965)
 * Derek Marks (1965 – April 1971)
 * Ian McColl (1971 – October 1974)
 * Alastair Burnet (1974 – March 1976)
 * Roy Wright (1976 – August 1977)
 * Derek Jameson (1977 – June 1980)
 * Arthur Firth (1980 – October 1981)
 * Christopher Ward (1981 – April 1983)
 * Sir Larry Lamb (1983 – April 1986)
 * Sir Nicholas Lloyd (1986 – November 1995)
 * Richard Addis (November 1995 – May 1998)
 * Rosie Boycott (May 1998 – January 2001)
 * Chris Williams (January 2001 – December 2003)
 * Peter Hill (December 2003 – February 2011)
 * Hugh Whittow (February 2011–)

Sunday Express

 * 1920: James Douglas
 * 1928: James Douglas and John Gordon
 * 1931: John Gordon
 * 1952: Harold Keeble
 * 1954: John Junor
 * 1986: Robin Esser
 * 1989: Robin Morgan
 * 1991: Eve Pollard
 * 1994: Brian Hitchen
 * 1995: Sue Douglas
 * 1996: Richard Addis
 * 1998: Amanda Platell
 * 1999: Michael Pilgrim
 * 2001: Martin Townsend

Current

 * Jasmine Birtles
 * Vanessa Feltz
 * Frederick Forsyth
 * Adam Helliker
 * Lucy Johnston
 * Leo McKinstry
 * Ross Clark
 * Richard and Judy
 * Ann Widdecombe

Past

 * H.V. Morton, journalist and travel writer
 * J.B. Morton, better known as Beachcomber
 * Sefton Delmer
 * G. E. R. Gedye
 * William Hickey
 * Peter Hitchens
 * Andrew Marr
 * Jenni Murray
 * Charles Gordon McClure (1885–1933), also known as Dyke White, cartoonist
 * Michael Watts ('Inspector Watts')

Political allegiance
With the exception of the 2001 general election, when it backed the Labour Party, the newspaper has declared its support for the Conservative Party at every general election since World War II until 2015 where they began supporting the UK Independence Party.

'Crusade for Freedom'
This was the newspaper's own campaign to give the people of the United Kingdom the opportunity to add their names to a petition addressed to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in favour of Britain's withdrawal from the European Union. Each edition of 8 January 2011 issue had four cut-out vouchers where readers could sign the pledge and send them to the paper's HQ where the petition was being compiled, there were also further editions with the same voucher included. The campaign attracted the support of many celebrities including sportsman/TV personality Sir Ian Botham and Chairman of J D Wetherspoon Tim Martin who both gave interviews for 8 January's special edition of the paper. The first week of the campaign saw a response of around 370,000 signatures being received (just over 50% of daily readership or around 0.6% of the UK population).