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> > > > H. E. MR. B. Hitchin at Saudi information center in London

H. E. MR. B. Hitchin

at Saudi information center in London

Your Excellency, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Tabloid newspapers are a British national institution.

I should know. I have been editor or two of them. News editor of a third.

New York editor of a fourth. And European editor of a fifth. The fifth being the top selling tabloid of all time - the National Enquirer.

In fact my son, who is following in my footsteps in tabloid journalism on the Daily Star, jokes that this makes me some sort of white haired national institution myself!

What is it then, about the term “tabloid newspaper” which sends academics into frenzied huddles, mounting years of re-search. Politicians, Prime Ministers and Presidents diving for cover. And crooks hiding their faces under blankets?

There is a mystery and a magic about newspapers. Something that is missing from other branches of journalism.

Elitists might scoff, but the truth remains that tabloids are the most sophisticated and powerful examples of the printed word.

And politicians in particular ignore them at their peril. Twewi Million Permi Bot Them every Mon !

Make no mistake, tabloids have been responsible for some of the most original journalism in history.

They have thrilled and entertained millions.

And occasionally got it wrong. But not enough to eclipse the force for good that they have created.

Actually the word “tabloid” doesn't come from newspapers at all.

It was coined in 1884 by Henry Welcome of the world famous drug company. He saw it as a combination of the worlds “tablet” and “alkaloid”.

It came to him at 4.50 one morning and he immediately sent for his secretary to dictate a memo for the name to be patented. Spare a thought for his long suffering secretary. Mr. Welcome was either extremely talented of extremely boring to be lying awake at 4.30 in the morning dreaming about tablets.

So when you hear the phrase “keep taking the tabloids” - like “keep taking the tablets” - it has more than a ring of authenticity.

The tabloid format has been growing increasingly. Now it has spread to the heavier newspapers like the Guardian and Independent, which have tabloid inserts.

Abroad, we have Liberation and Le Monde in France and the Los Angeles Times in the United States. Heavier papers which don't quite match the popular image or indeed the magic.

I like to make the distinction between the “populars” and the “unpopulars”. The scoffed-at popular press is that section that outsells the unpopular press by at least six to one.

And it is the popular press - the big sellers, the mass market, the big money-makers-that I intend to concentrate upon tonight.

What are the main characteristics of a popular tabloid newspaper?

Well, apart from the shape of course. It is easy to read. With irresistible hooks for the eye. That means big headlines. Short words. Short paragraphs.

Big pictures, boldly used, are one of the main features of a tabloid newspaper. Partly because when used big, a good picture becomes a great picture.

Then there are what we call “WOBS” (that white on black headlines) and Wots (White on tone).

With the advent of colour, there are even “WORs” (white on reds) and “Yobs” - yellow on black. As well.

Every trick in the book is used by the page make-up artists to snare the eye of the reader and to lead them page by page through the newspaper.

Over scores, ragouts, starbursts, banners and screamers. It is tabloid language all of its own. And good graphic artists are worth their weight in gold to a tabloid newspaper.

But it is in language that a tabloid really sets itself apart.

Telling it simply, clearly and well. In that very limited space.

And this calls for real discipline, training and invention. Consider how difficult it would be to think of the words you use every day. And then find smaller ones. How easy it is for a journalist on the Daily Telegraph or the Times to cover a space mission or a complicated new medical operation and get two columns for his report.

The Telegraph or Times journalist can use his normal vocabulary to explain what happened. A tabloid journalists has to squeeze it all into seven inches - and still tell the story without missing anything out. Because he is probably writing for people whose vocabulary is much more limited than his own.

They say a good tabloid journalist could work on a broadsheet. But broadsheet journalists would find it hard to master the tabloids.

This is absolutely true. I would have no difficulty in editing the Telegraph, but, without any disrespect intended towards the editor of that excellent newspaper, he would have a pretty tough time understanding the needs of tabloid readers.

This was demonstrated a few years ago when Guardian journalists set about producing their own version of the Sun. It was terrible.

Which perhaps helps to explain why tabloid journalists, as a rule, tend to be much better paid than their friends on broadsheets.

It always amused me when visitors to the Daily Star asked, in rather pompous tones, whether the journalists we employed were university graduates. And it amused me even more to watch their faces when I introduced them to the man who covered the rock and roll scene and casually mention that he had a doctorate in nuclear physics. The fact that he was covering pop music was not entirely unrelated to the fact that not only was he an excellent journalist but happened to be earning about twice that which he would expect to make from nuclear physics.

So, apart from the size and shape, what sets the tabloids apart?

- Sales for a start up to 4 and 5 million of a single issue. In Scotland, one tabloid, the Sunday Post, is ready by a staggering 72 per cent of the entire Scottish population.

- Massive, attention grabbing headlines.

- Stunning pictures.

- The ability to sway millions of readers by with hard-hitting campaigns.

- And high entertainment value.

I was involved in getting the final picture in his coffin of Elvis Presley for the National Enquirer. It proved the biggest selling issue of any paper in history. The circulation jumped that week from five and a half million to seven and a half million.

That's a two million copy increase. From Florida to New York and Texas our presses rolled until they ran out of paper. Supermarkets in Kentucky and Alabama were robbed at gunpoint. Not for the contents of the cash register but for the piles of National.

Enquirers at the check-outs. Nowadays copies of that edition are collector's items changing hands for 200$ apiece.

- But, above all, the tabloids are read.

Perhaps the biggest thing about them is their power of persuasion.

There is the power of persuasion to actually read the paper.

The power of persuasion over politicians and the opinion makers who take much more notice of the tabloid press than many of them are willing to admit.

Let me tell you, it is a great feeling, as an editor, to realize that the Government has taken action on an issue because of something your newspaper has written.

It was the Daily Star which campaigned the hardest for the Dangerous Dogs act. How long, we argued, must we hear stories about children having their faces ripped off by Pit Bull terriers or giant mastiffs which had no place in the homes of ordinary people?

It was tabloid newspapers which were responsible for the tightening of Britain's immigration laws. Though I believe that there is still a long way to go before the public will be satisfied that the torrent of migrants to this country has slowed to a trickle.

Home Office figures in that area are notoriously inaccurate and, on occasions, deliberately fraudulent. And that was something else which was proved by the tabloid press.

It was the Sunday Express which exposed the racket in nursing home payments for elderly people and again persuaded the Government to change the law.

Having said that, I would not wish to convey the idea that we were constantly at odds with the government. I am proud of my newspapers' support for John Major and for Margaret Thatcher.

And let me say that I am particularly proud of our Gulf War coverage. I believe that the tabloid's support for our Saudi Arabian allies and for the troops of Operation Desert Storm helped focus British public opinion. It also helped to get a fast, decisive and just victory..

There were many acts of bravery during those dark days when the Allies lined up against the evil regime of Saddam Husseim. But there were also light-hearted moments which still bring a smile to those who slugged it out in the desert.

I remember having a bright idea about Christmas cakes. Would it not be wonderful, I told Daily Star readers, if each of them baked a cake or a batch of traditional mince pies for our fighting men and women in the Gulf. Something that would let them know that we had not forgotten them and appreciated the sacrifices they were willing to make.

Daily Star readers are not rich people. But they have big, warm hearts. And they baked cakes and pies in their ten of thousands. But where were they to send them.

When we asked the Ministry of Defense for a mailing address in the Gulf, the unimaginative clerks, safe in their offices from Iraqi shot and shell, refused to tell us. It was as if we were after some sort of Official Secret.

So I told our readers to mail their cakes and pies to the one man I knew would make sure the fighting men got their Christmas sweetmeats - General Sir Peter de la Billiere.

Laughing over it all later, Sir Peter sent a special video message of thanks to all our readers. He said: “Every mail drop brought thousands of packages. Parcels filled with cakes and mince pies were stacked shoulder high in the corridors. And every time I toured our forward positions, I loaded our tanks and trucks and armored personnel carriers with them. Thank you, Daily Star. It was a great morale booster and everyone involved felt a little closer to their homes and loved ones”.

There are fact three types of tabloids.

First, the “heavy” tabloid or tabloid in insert which I have described. This is a broadsheet paper, effectively in a more convenient format - though the Guardian's Section 2 has introduced some popular features such as the “Pass Notes” column and Questions and Answers which other newspapers have copied.

One wonders whether The Guardian will go the whole hog and become Britain's first “heavy” tabloid. But I won't hold my breath.

Second: There is the Mid-Market tabloid. Or, as Lord Rothermere of the Daily Mail rather coyly calls it, the “Compact”. I rather like his word for it. But then I am and avid fan of Lord Rothermere who has an unfailing understanding of newspapers and of the journalists who work on them.

Historically, the mid-market broadsheets historically, one by one, have turned tabloid.

The Sunday Express, of which I was first deputy editor and then editor, is of this genre.

Typically, a mid-market tabloid is family oriented, Conservative in its opinions and targeted at the loyal middle classes.

My Sunday Express was particularly read by Conservative politicians, professional people, farmers, church folk, ex-servicemen and women - the kind of people who make up the Backbone of Great Britain.

I was proud of the campaigns we ran against penal rates of Taxation; the extra burden on the elderly who had saved hard all their lives only to watch their hard-earned cash swallowed-up in nursing home charges in the autumn of their days.

We enlisted the help of the Prime Minister, Mr. John Major, on that one and the laws have since been changed.

We highlighted the terrible plight of war widows struggling to make ends meet. And we got the pensions decision reversed. But sadly, to the day I retired we were still fighting for a better compensation payout from the Japanese government for the men who suffered so cruelly in Japanese Prisoner of War camps and on the infamous Burma Railway.

I fear that no British government has the will to demand a better deal from the Japanese. They are too worried about offending Japanese investors in this country and shamefully, they know that every year, there are less of the survivors alive to plead for the justice and the compensation they so rightfully deserve.

But we did triumph in the case of Private Lee Clegg, the British Paratrooper who was jailed for doing his duty in Northern Ireland. I believe that Clegg should never have been charged with murder and that he became a political pawn in the process of appeasement with the scum of the IRA.

Like you, I am a vehement opponent of terrorism and am pleased to say that Private Clegg was released on license from prison and went back to his Regiment shortly after we organized a petition to free him and took a million signatures to Number 10 Downing Street.

I was also proud of the brilliant special editions produced by my hard-working staff at the Sunday Express, particularly those for VE and VJ Day, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the end of the war.

Finally, there's the third type of tabloid newspaper, the type I was closely associated with during my seven years as editor of the Daily Star.

This is what is known as a Red-Top tabloid. So called because of the red oblong title which we call “the Masthead” in the top left hand corner of Page One.

So enmeshed, in fact, has the colour red become in the minds of working class readers who make up the millions who buy these newspapers, that when the Daily Mirror changed the colour to Royal Purple to celebrate the 1977 Queen's Silver Jubilee, they lost many thousands of copies to the Sun. Because the Sun had the sense to retain its red top title.

Those lost readers failed to recognize their paper on the news-stands without its familiar and much loved Red Top.

Red Top daily tabloids, the Sun, the Mirror and the Daily Star are known for their forthright approach.

And for their competitions and prizes. Win and Free are the two words you are most likely to see on the front pages.

There are big headlines that rise from the page to hit you between the eyes.

The amazing use of pictures (Where else would you see the England soccer manager turned into a turnip).

We call them poster front pages, often supporting one political party or a point of view.

It's a form of journalism which at times can be shocking. And that is the intention. Love it hate it, Agree or violently disagree with the sentiments. You cannot ignore it.

But equally it can be caring and compassionate. You see, tabloid journalists are not all hard-bitten hacks. Though life's cruelties some of them have seen would be enough to turn men's minds. That is why they often share a gallows humor which allows them to laugh at the darkest moments, though inside their hearts may be breaking.

Which is one of the main reasons I would never allow a television or radio crew, or indeed strangers, to sit on my morning and evening news conferences. Outsiders would never understand the way we are and the impression gained would be wholly wrong.

One of my proudest moments each year, as Editor of the Daily Star, were the annual Gold Star Awards.

These were awards for courage and bravery beyond measure - by men woman and, in particular, children. And sometimes simply for caring for a fellow human being.

Theirs were stories of endurance, courage and personal selflessness that were often almost beyond belief. And many was the time I saw journalists turn away as the stories unfolded. So that their colleagues could not see the tears brimming in their eyes.

I remember the story of the little boy, orphaned by the IRA who personally led the saddest of funeral processions while ten thousand people lined the Falls Road in Belfast to pay tribute. A little boy who refused to cry. Even though the scum of the IRA had wiped out his entire family. We gave him a Gold Star. For courage.

And the story of a mother who had to make a terrible decision. Whether to let her little boy die from cancer within a year. Or have his eyes removed so that he could live. But in a world of darkness. She chose to have his eyes removed. And she held his hands in the operating theatre so that, just before he lost consciousness, the last thing he would ever see was her face.

He was a lovely, bubbly little chap. And we awarded both of them a Gold Star for their enormous courage. The Prime Minister made the presentations each year and on three occasions invited all the Gold Star Award winners to Downing Street for a personal tour.

When Margaret Thatcher was making the presentations, after ten years in office at Downing Street, we surprised her by putting a Gold Star around her neck. In appreciation of her having put the Great back into Great Britain. For handing us back our pride as a nation. And the Iron Lady burst into tears.

In the car back to Downing Street, she dried her eyes and scolded her legendary Press Secretary, Bernard Ingham, for not telling her she was receiving an award. “The public should not see me cry”.

And Bernard Ingham told her, as only he could: “You are wrong Prime Minister. They saw you as a human being. And that is the way they should see you more often”.

Many of you will remember the tragic story of little Laura Davies, the desperately sick child who, if she had any chance to live at all, needed treatment which was only available in the United States.

Her parents were not well of and, despite the best efforts of friends and relatives, they could not afford the medical fees in Miami.

King Fahd heard of her plight and gave instructions for a massive cheque to be written to cover all medical charges and enabling her parents to go with her to the United States.

Sadly, some months later, despite the best medical attention possible, little Laura died. But, because of King Fahd's kindness and compassion, she was able to be with her parents for many precious months longer than they could ever have hoped.

For caring so very much, we presented King Fahd with a Gold Star which his Majesty graciously accepted and which was received on his behalf at the Awards ceremony by Dr. Algosaibi.

Most people think tabloid newspapers are a recent phenomenon in Britain.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, they date back nearly ninety years!

A thriving popular press in Britain had its roots in political pamphlets but exploded onto the scene with the abolition of stamp duty in 1865.

By the early 1900s, papers were so profitable that two thirds of the market was controlled by three powerful press barons, Pearson, Cadbury and Northcliffe.

The first tabloid paper was started in Manchester in 1908 by Edward Hulton, of picture library fame. Three years later is transferred to London. That paper was the Daily Sketch.

Any similarity to the tabloids of today were confined to the use of a good many pictures. But these were very much society pictures such as Lord Kitchener's Garden Party”. Hardly the stuff that fill today's red-Tops.

The Daily Sketch went through several changes of ownership before finally being taken on by Vere Harmsworth who, in 1971, merged it with the Daily Mail.

Interestingly, on merging, the Daily Mail went tabloid in the charge of the Daily Sketch's then editor, David now Sir David, English the legendary newspaperman who has taken the Daily Mail to greatness.

The first “true” tabloid however was launched during the First World War in 1915. It was the Sunday Pictorial, which later became the Sunday Mirror.

It was put together in just eight days by Lord Rothermere in order to beat Sir Edward Hulton's Illustrated Sunday Herald.

Using powerful front page pictures and no-holds barred anti-German propaganda, the paper became an instant best seller, reaching a circulation of one million within weeks.

Leading figures of the day were engaged as columnists including the then famous actor Sir Herbert Tree - pre-dating the later tabloids obsession with show business - and soon afterwards Winston Churchill.

German's sinking of the liner Lusitania off the coast of Ireland just as issue nine was about to go to press gave the paper its first major news story.

It was an amazing precursor to the Sun's front page headline “Gotcha” on the sinking of the Argentine warship General Belgrano during the Falkland's conflict.

And just as the Sun and “Gotcha” did with the Belgrano, it captured the mood of the nation.

The longer you are in newspapers, the more you become aware that there is nothing really new. The same stories repeat themselves over the years. Only the names and the places change.

By 1925 sales of the Pictorial were 2,416,981. But 12 years later that had fallen to 1.3 million.

It was then that a young man called Hugh Cudlipp - later to become a legendary figure in newspapers and at the Daily Mirror in particular - took over the editorship. He was just 24 years old.

Within months, the sales were up to 1.7 million and the Sunday Mirror eventually rose to a circulation of more than 5 million in the 1970s.

But it wasn't the Sunday Mirror but the Daily Mirror which became the tabloid of the 1940s, 1950s. I know because I worked there from 1960 for fourteen years. And in those days it was an amazing newspaper.

It was charged with energy and employed only the very best journalists. Those who did not cut the mustard were out in a week. Competition with other newspapers was fierce and savage. But there was never anything offensive in the Daily Mirror. You could lay it proudly on any kitchen table in the land. Which is more than can be said for some of today's newspapers.

But it was in wartime when the Daily Mirror became the voice of the British soldier. On the first day of the Second World War, the Mirror ran a poster front page which screamed: “Wanted for Murder. Adolph Hiter”. And inside it carried a forthright examination of the German national character.

By the end of the war, circulation was 3,742,000, and a front page exhortation to Vote Labour was credited for Churchill's defeat in the General Election of 1945.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the paper was riding the crest of a wave. Bold, brash and undoubtedly the market leader. By cleverly going up-market, with the first inserted colour magazine and a thoughtful section called Mirrorscope, it had captured the market not only in bricklayers and other manual workers but their sons who were, by then, computer programmers and often doctors and lawyers.

Showing just how much coverage of the Royal family can unite a nation and cement loyalty to the monarch, the Mirror swamped its readers with its coverage of the Queen's Coronation in 1953. A far cry from the constant sniping of today.

On that day 46 years ago, the Daily Mirror sold an incredible seven million copies. The biggest sale in history by a British daily newspaper.

But in May, 1968 there appeared in the Daily Mirror a signed article by its Chairman Cecil King. It was headlined “Enough is Enough” and called for the resignation of Harold Wilson, the Labour leader the Daily Mirror had loyally supported.

Wilson remained but. But Cecil King was out. He had made the cardinal error of using the propaganda power of the Daily Mirror without its attendant all-important responsibility.

In 1964 Hugh Cudlipp had turned another of the Mirror's stalemates. The Daily Herald, from an old pro-Labour broadsheet, into a Liberal slanted Sun. The broadsheet size remained and the Sun, which had a wishy-washy orange masthead, became a wishy washy newspaper. It had a less than amazing sales slogan “the only paper born in the age we live in”. There were mutterings that whoever thought up the slogan should have been hanged.

It was a terrible flop. And when the Australian newspaper publisher Rupert Murdoch craftily bought the paper in 1969 for a knockdown 50,000 down payment and a promised 2,5001 per week, the Mirror management failed to spot that he had decided to take on the Mirror. Head-on.

Larry Lamb, the new editor of Murdoch's Sun, had long been a senior Mirror journalist. He knew the recipe for success and he hired the Mirror journalistic “cooks” to make it work for him.

He outdid the Mirror in every department from headlines to crosswords and page. Three girls which the Sun introduced - totally by accident - in 1970. The reason was that a story had fallen down and there would have been a large white space.

Somebody found a picture of a pretty girl with not many clothes on and that was it. The reader reaction next morning was rapturous and Page Three Girls became a fact of life. He also introduced the concept of value for money.

In two years, by 1971, the circulation was above 2.5 million and by 1978 the Sun had overtaken the Daily Mirror.

In 1981 came an even more irreverent editor, Kelvin Mackenzie who did not give a fig for the Daily Mirror or any other paper. In his own way, he was a genius and in Mackenzie, Rupert Murdoch whom I suspect is not overly fond of the Royal Family, Britain or our traditions, found a willing accomplice.

Together they took the Sun to great circulation heights. But I believe that Rupert Murdoch did more to discredit Britain's tabloid press than any other single newspaper owner.

While the two Red-Top giants, the Mirror and the Sun were slugging it out with multimillion pound television advertising campaigns, my own Red-Top, the Daily Star was permanently caught in the cross-fire.

The Daily Star became a newspaper with a fiercely loyal readership. I have already mentioned our Gold Star Awards but it also became a compassionate, caring paper that did not set out to destroy people's lives.

The Daily Star was always ready to speak out against injustice in any of its forms. To campaign for justice and for law and order. To stand up against terrorism and aggression. To take on the darkest of enemies, to loyally support friends like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. And to be fiercely patriotic.

Patriotism in tabloid newspapers is scorned and scoffed at by the left-leaning intellectuals who spend much time writing for the amusement of each other on some of the smaller circulation broadsheets.

In times of conflict, when Red-Tops are united against a common enemy, the elitists in the threadbare, faded drawing rooms of Islington and the less fashionable parts of Fulham, talk of jingoism and whipping up the masses.

Oh that they were as in touch with the masses as those editing the tabloids. If they were, they would know that one man's Jingoism is another mans patriotism. And they are foolish to scoff. For the only ones to snugger with them are fools like themselves.

There is nothing wrong with loving ones country. And there is nothing wrong with having the gusts to say so. In my office at Daily Star and latterly at the Sunday Express was a flagstaff from which proudly hung the Union Flag. It stood there as a symbol of intent. A symbol which told anybody who cared to question that those newspapers, like their readers, were fiercely patriotic. And that anyone who did not march to that drum had no place on the newspapers.

There was of course in the Daily Star a fun side too. It is a newspaper with a high entertainment value. After all, was it not the Daily Star which first introduced Bingo to British newspapers.

Just as it introduced coloured Racing Sections on Saturday, Sports Pull Outs on Mondays and Fantasy Football and cricket leagues. Now, all of them have been copied by other national daily newspapers. But not, I fancy, with the same style.

A word about newspaper ethics. The 1980s saw the reputation of the tabloids take a nose dive because of a minority of excesses.

These were mainly from the Murdoch stable: the fabricated interview by the Sun with Mrs. Maria Mackay, widow of Sgt. Mackay the Falklands hero who died with Col. H. Jones.

Then there were a number of intrusive pictures of members of the Royal Family.

There were examples of covert tape recordings and bugging. The establishment in particular was outraged. Obviously things were wrong. But to hear the great and the good screech at the tabloid press, one would have thought that bugging was a cottage industry. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I have only come across three incidents of bugging in my entire career. Yet suddenly we were all being tarred with the same brush.

It became clear that if we were to escape statutory legislation, Fleet Street would have to put its own house in order. Which is why in 1990 I gladly accepted an invitation to join the Press Complaints Commission, a new body under the chairman of Lord Macgregor which replaced the old and discredited Press Council.

The press had little liking for the old Press Council which was regarded by working journalists as a Star Chamber largely peopled by anti-press representatives working to their own agenda.

The Press Complaints Commission was altogether different and I am pleased to say the responsibility and restraint shown as a result by large sections of the tabloid press has obviated the need for statutory legislation.

Because we need a tabloid press. But it must be a responsible tabloid press.

As a means to inform and entertain, Britain's tabloids are without equal in the printed word.

So what is the magic that is needed to edit a tabloid. It is really quite simple and it should apply to all newspapers. Passion. A newspaper must have a heart. An editor must believe passionately in his newspaper and passionately in his readers.

A good tabloid editor reflects and understands their hopes and dreams. And you also have to understand their fears. They're trust in you is based on your sincerity.

These people are not stupid. If they think you are writing one thing and thinking another, then they will leave you in droves. And you will never get them back. Because readers are the hardest people to win. And the easiest people to lose.

I hope I have not bored you this evening. Thank you for listing so patiently and so courteously.