The Sun, Daily Mail And Mirror Newspapers = Brain Melters

On May 7, 2014 by Tim Newman

Maybe I’m a bit late to the game here, but I found something out today that made me feel sick, tired and sad. I knew that The Sun, Daily Mail and Mirror newspapers were a national embarrassment and I also knew that they were unfeasibly popular. But I must admit I had no idea quite how popular they are.

Did you know that as far as sales are concerned, The Sun, Daily Mail and Mirror are the most popular papers in the entire country? By a depressingly long way, too.

The distribution figures for the top newspapers in the UK in 2014 are as follows:

The Sun: 2,213,659

Daily Mail: 1,780,565

Daily Mirror: 992,256

……

Guardian: 207,958

The Independent: 66,576

So, The Sun outsells the Guardian by a factor of 10. Now, I know the Guardian isn’t perfect, nothing in this world is perfect. But The Sun is so crushingly imperfect that the mind truly boggles. The Sun is in fact the 6th most popular newspaper in the entire world would you believe? Just FYI, number one is Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun with nearly 10 million readers, although apparently Japanese newspapers use tactics to make their figures artificially bigger, so the gap probably isn’t as big as it seems.

Now, I’m not saying that the average IQ of the readers of these newspapers is low, but I am saying that reading them guarantees to slowly lower your IQ over time. It’s also highly likely to make you mildly racist, jokingly sexist and blinkered to the wider world.

In an attempt to remind people how backwards, brash and sinister the unholy trinity of English rags are, I thought I’d compile a short list of ridiculous headlines and covers.

If you know anyone who buys these horrific oily rags, please share this article with them. If these consumers tell you that they buy it purely for the sports section, ask them if they’ve heard of the internet or Match magazine, or CEFAX, or any other newspapers in the world. Don’t let them get away with that. They’re still funding it even if they only look at the kick-ball results and the smut on the third page.

Below, I’ve collated a few newspaper front pages. Some are probably factually incorrect, some are jumped up, others are dumb and other still are miraculously banal. Many are simply not news at all and some just pander to people’s misguided hatred and spawn further distrust and baseless animosity. Each cover on its own won’t do much harm, but over days, weeks, years and decades, it certainly will…

I know I haven’t picked out the best of the best so please send any better ones to me direct if you don’t mind…