UK · Bias: Right-populist
DMGT (Rothermere family)
Britain's highest-circulation print newspaper, and MailOnline is one of the most-visited English-language news sites on Earth, pulling well over 100 million visits some months. That reach comes from a formula perfected over a century: sensational headlines, a legendary celebrity/gossip "sidebar of shame," and outrage engineered to travel. The paper's history has an uglier chapter worth knowing: in January 1934, under the headline "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!", owner Viscount Rothermere used the paper to openly cheerlead Oswald Mosley's British fascist movement, having also praised Hitler and Mussolini in print elsewhere. The Rothermere family still owns the Daily Mail today.
On November 4, 2016, three British High Court judges ruled that Parliament, not the government alone, had to approve triggering Brexit. The Daily Mail's front page response: photographs of all three judges under the headline "ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE," accusing them of trying to block the referendum result. The intent was pure populist outrage — give Brexit voters a villain. It worked as clickbait and backfired as journalism: legal experts, politicians, and even some conservative commentators accused the Mail of attacking the fundamental independence of the judiciary using language historically associated with authoritarian regimes like Stalin's Soviet Union. The government's own justice secretary was criticized for not immediately defending the judges from the paper that many said had crossed a genuine democratic line.