Daily Star (United Kingdom)

The Daily Star is a British tabloid newspaper that has been published since 2 November 1978. Like the Daily Express, it belongs to Express Newspapers and thus to Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell Group. Circulation in mid-2017 was around 430,000. Its Sunday sister paper is called the Daily Star Sunday and had a circulation of around 248,000 in May 2017.

Coverage focuses in lurid fashion on sports and gossip about stars and starlets from show business, soap operas and reality TV. The political slant is overwhelmingly conservative. Like its rival The Sun with its "Page Three girls", each issue features a photograph of a woman posing nude or topless.

Due to its reporting on the English Defence League, the newspaper was confronted with accusations of reporting uncritically on this far-right organisation. The owner Northern & Shell subsequently distanced itself from "fanaticism and extremism of any kind" in a letter to Searchlight magazine. In a further statement, it rejected the accusation of Islamophobia.

In the case of the missing Madeleine McCann, the paper, along with the other Express Newspapers, was sued by the parents of the missing child for libelous reporting. A settlement was reached in March 2008, with the newspaper group paying £550,000 (around €700,000 at the time) for the Find Madeleine Campaign and all newspapers involved in the campaign printing a front-page apology.

Footnotes

1. ↑ Print ABCs: Metro overtakes Sun in UK weekday distribution, but Murdoch title still Britain's best-selling paper. Press Gazette, 15 June 2017
2. ↑ Has the Daily Star decided to back the English Defence League? Ian Burrell, The Independent, 10 February 2011
3. ↑ Has the Daily Star turned its back on the EDL? Dan Hodges, The New Statesman, 25 March 2011
4. ↑ Thomas Kielinger: Britain: Newspapers apologize to Maddie's parents. In: Die Welt. 20 March 2008.
5. Kate & Gerry McCann: Sorry. In: Daily Star. 21 March 2008.