Latest editorial
TWENTY thousand spoof copies of the Daily Mail were handed out to unsuspecting commuters this morning as campaigners challenged corporate power over Britain’s press.
Headlines such as “billionaires control our ‘democracy’” and “funding both sides of the war on terror: everyone loses except UK arms companies” were splashed across the front page of the mock newspapers.
The Daily Mail with a difference was distributed across London and Manchester as part of the Real Media campaign, to make people think about who controls the news agenda.
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The once beating heart of British journalism was undone by technological change, union battles and Murdoch’s 1986 Wapping coup – leaving London the only major capital without a press club, says TIM GOPSILL
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As advertising drains away, newsrooms shrink and local papers disappear, MIKE WAYNE argues that the market model for news is broken – and that public-interest alternatives, rooted in democratic accountability, are more necessary than ever
Enduring myths blame print unions for their own destruction – but TONY BURKE argues that the Wapping dispute was a calculated assault by Murdoch on organised labour, which reshaped Britain’s media landscape and casts a long shadow over trade union rights today
On the 40th anniversary of the Wapping dispute, this Morning Star special supplement traces the long-planned conspiracy that led to the mass sackings of printworkers in 1986 – a struggle whose unresolved injustices still demand redress today, writes ANN FIELD