UK · Bias: Right-populist
DMGT (Rothermere family)
The Daily Mail is one of Britain's biggest-selling newspapers, and MailOnline is one of the most-visited English-language news sites in the world. The formula has barely changed in decades: loud headlines, a famous celebrity "sidebar of shame," and front pages built to get a reaction. 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. OWNERSHIP AS OF SEPTEMBER 2026 Short answer to "who owns the Daily Mail": the Harmsworth family, through Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT). The 4th Viscount Rothermere, Jonathan Harmsworth, is chairman. In December 2021 his family's holding company, Rothermere Continuation Limited, bought out the remaining outside shareholders for about £885 million and took DMGT private, so there are no public shareholders left to answer to. The day-to-day business got a new name this summer. On 18 June 2026, DMGT renamed its news division from DMG Media to simply "Daily Mail," and made Vere Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere's son, its executive chairman. Danny Groom stays on as publisher and chief executive, and Rich Caccappolo as vice chairman (Press Gazette, 18 June 2026). Tim Collier is chief executive of the parent company, DMGT. The deal that didn't happen: in November 2025 DMGT agreed to buy the Telegraph for £500 million, which would have put the Mail and the Telegraph under one roof. The plan was held up by government public-interest and competition reviews, and in March 2026 Germany's Axel Springer outbid it with £575 million in cash (Press Gazette, March 2026). Axel Springer moved to complete that takeover at the end of June 2026 (RTÉ, 30 June 2026). So the Mail's owner does not own the Telegraph. IS THE DAILY MAIL LEFT OR RIGHT? Our reading: right-wing and populist, and it doesn’t pretend otherwise. But on our beat the more useful question is how it gets there. What we catch the Mail doing is rarely inventing a fact. It is picking a word, or a number, that does the arguing for it, while the calmer facts sit further down the same article. Seven dated examples from our archive: On 16 September 2026, a rapper lost his slot on Ed Sheeran's stadium tour after shouting "Free Palestine" on stage. The Mail's headline said it was Sheeran who "faces cancellation," after losing Instagram followers. Fair to the Mail: it printed the rapper's full statement word for word. On 11 September 2026, the Mail's headline put "LAUGHING" in capital letters over a photo of New York's mayor and a congresswoman at the 9/11 memorial reading. What they laughed about, it didn't say. On 8 September 2026, the British government called what is happening to Palestinians in the West Bank "ethnic cleansing." That phrase was missing from the Mail's headline, and in its second paragraph the Foreign Secretary "lashed out." On 7 September 2026, the Mail's headline on a party-funding story led with Nigel Farage saying Reform "would have paid back" a £500,000 donation. No refund had happened. The article underneath, in our view, was solid. On 1 September 2026, the Mail said Prime Minister Andy Burnham "finally" faced MPs, six weeks into the job. The Mail's own seventh paragraph explained why: Parliament had been on summer holiday. On 22 August 2026, a judge ordered Prince Harry and other claimants to pay an interim £9.54 million toward the Mail publisher's legal costs. The Mail's headline said they faced paying "up to £34.5m." On 29 July 2026, the Mail's front page called a bursary for families on benefits a "bribe," in quote marks. The front page didn't say who had said it. IS THE DAILY MAIL RELIABLE? CAN YOU CITE IT? Use it with care, and check the headline against the body. That advice isn't just ours. The Mail is regulated by IPSO, the UK press regulator, and IPSO has upheld complaints against it. In one ruling, published in June 2025, IPSO found that a front-page headline, "LABOUR'S £400 TAX HIT TO YOUR FAMILY HOLIDAY," was misleading. The article underneath had the right numbers; the headline did not, and the Mail had to publish a correction (IPSO ruling 06628-24). In a 2026 ruling IPSO partly upheld a complaint about a Net Zero column and required a correction on one point (IPSO ruling 03754-25). IPSO also rejects plenty of complaints about the Mail, so rulings cut both ways. Worth knowing too: in February 2017, English Wikipedia's editors voted to treat the Daily Mail as a generally unreliable source. That was a decision by volunteer editors, not a regulator, but it comes up almost every time someone asks whether the Mail can be cited. To be straight about our own standing: everything here is our reading, not a scientific score. We do not rate outlets on a scale. We read one story at a time and show our working. WHAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY ASK Who owns the Daily Mail? The Harmsworth family, led by Lord Rothermere, through the privately held Daily Mail and General Trust. Is the Daily Mail owned by Rupert Murdoch? No. Murdoch's News UK owns The Sun and The Times. The Mail is a rival, owned by the Rothermere family. Is the Daily Mail left or right? Right-wing, in our reading, with a populist tabloid style. It has traditionally backed the Conservatives at general elections. Is the Daily Mail reliable? The facts inside its articles are often usable. The headlines are where the trouble tends to be, as IPSO's "£400 tax hit" ruling shows. Read the whole piece and check it against a second source. Is the Daily Mail a tabloid? Yes. It's a tabloid-size paper with a tabloid voice, though it is usually described as middle-market rather than a red-top like The Sun. WHAT CHANGED Last reviewed 23 September 2026: rewrote the ownership section (the June 2026 rename of DMG Media to "Daily Mail," Vere Harmsworth's new role, and the Telegraph deal DMGT lost to Axel Springer), added IPSO rulings, reader questions, and seven dated examples from our archive.
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. In our reading, it was populist outrage aimed at giving 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.