The Staggers: The Sun

Trevor Kavanagh's article in today's Sun is notable for its hyperbolic attack on the police investigation (Kavanagh casually dismisses alleged bribery as "standard procedure") and for its coded critique of News Corp management.

Referring to "a sensitive domestic issue within the News International 'family'", Kavanagh, one of Murdoch's longest-serving lieutenants, writes that while it is important for News Corp to protect its reputation in the US, ... read more

The Sun has managed to find some space in today's newspaper to report on the Milly Dowler allegations, after practically ignoring the story yesterday. It begins the article boldly:

FORMER News of the World Editor Rebekah Brooks yesterday said she was "sickened" by allegations that a private eye hired by the paper hacked tragic Milly Dowler's phone.

The story neglects to mention that Brooks used to edit ... read more

A private investigator working for the News of the World is alleged to have hacked into murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's voicemail while police were searching for her. He is alleged to have deleted messages and, in doing so, hindered the police investigation, as well as giving Dowler's parents false hope that their daughter was still alive.

The Guardian, Independent and Telegraph had the story on their front page, while the Daily ... read more

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When Tony Woodley tore up a copy of the Sun at the 2009 Labour party conference and Harriet Harman mocked the paper's "news in briefs", it seemed as if the relationship between Labour and the tabloid was at an end. But Ed Miliband's decision to write an op-ed piece for the ... read more

News that Elton John and David Furnish have become parents has been greeted in fairly sober fashion by most tabloid newspapers. The Sun, for example, goes with the simple "Baby joy for Elton and David" (relegated to the right-hand panel on today's front page):

But five years ago to the month, the same paper couldn't resist this unsubtle play on words when the same pair had their civil partnership:

In the intervening ... read more

Richard Desmond has caused a bit of a stir this morning by turning up on the Today programme and announcing that he'd like to buy the Sun.

Asked by the interviewer, Nick Cosgrove, if he would like to buy the tabloid, the proprietor of the Daily Express and the Daily Star replied: "Work it out for yourself." Pressed on whether he had discussed a deal with ... read more

David Laws's resignation prompted many thoughtful pieces on why, in this more tolerant age, a respected politician felt the need to conceal his sexuality. But today's Sun has no time for such liberal hand-wringing. Instead, the red-top runs a poll asking: "Should gay people be cabinet ministers?"

It isn't the fear that some Sun editors believe that gays should be ... read more

Since defecting to the Conservatives last September, the Sun has become the party's most full-throated supporter on Fleet Street. Today the tabloid publishes an absurd "investigation" which, it claims, unearths evidence of an "alarming" BBC bias against the Tories.

Here's the charge sheet in full:

BBC News gave disproportionate coverage to the row over Tory donor Lord Ashcroft's tax status.

Labour panellists were given more time to speak on flagship political show ... read more

Is the Sun going soft? Today's leader on the Lisbon Treaty is uncharacteristically pragmatic. Far from attacking David Cameron's decision to abandon his "cast-iron guarantee" of a referendum, it resignedly accepts the treaty as a "fact of life" and bizarrely declares that the Tory leader "stuck by his original pledge".

The red-top does not even adopt the position taken by David Davis, who today calls for a wider ... read more

Dominic Mohan is reported to be the frontrunner to fill the vacant editor's chair at the Sun in today's Guardian but one angle the paper doesn't explore is the remarkably fast route to the top that the tabloid's gossip column Bizarre appears to offer.

Mohan, who edited Bizarre until 2003 and is now deputy editor, would be the third Bizarre alumnus (following Piers Morgan and Andy Coulson) to become ... read more