At one point during the three years that I lived in the U.K., I asked someone how long I would have to live in the U.K. before the jokes in Private Eye would begin to make sense. He replied, “Wendell, you have to be born here, and your father has to be born here, and your grandfather has to be born here.”
I don’t think it’s been mentioned that Rupert Murdoch (News Corporation) owns **The Sun **and **The Times ** as well as the Fox network in the US.
Bugger, hopefully as this version of the same clip wasn’t put there by the BBC it should work:
Bit like the Doonesbury strip, you have to have been watching it for years to catch all the allusions.
A lot of it is nods and winks to the in-crowd, not least because of the libel laws here. They still get sued anyway, of course,and have many times had to pay out. The other side of the coin is that they have broken stories that the mainstream media was afraid to touch.
Here are some of Ben Goldacre’s samples of the Mail distorting the facts to make a nonsensical story.
ETA: in fairness there are other papers on his blog, but the Mail does seem to be the worst.
And the Mail has been known to steal outright from blogs. They even stole an article from a policeman’s blog. Oops!
Private Eye is a very good magazine: it targets politicians and the media, pointing out inconsistencies, mistakes and biases in a satirical way. I think the Jon Stewart show is a fairly good comparison: the way he dug up clips of Glenn Beck advising viewers to invest in gold, then dug up Beck’s connections to a company that sells gold for instance; or when he pointed out the fact that Fox News used incorrect footage of a rally; those are exactly the kind of the things Private Eye tries to do to British politicians or the British media.
I don’t think you have to be born here to understand it, in fact I think it’s much more important to follow British politics and the British media - there are lots of British people who wouldn’t have a clue what’s going on in most of Private Eye, half the time I don’t know who the people it targets are: this minister, that political commentator, this advisor, etc, but it doesn’t really matter. If you can follow “Have I Got News For You” then you shouldn’t have too many problems reading Private Eye, and it is very good at holding politicians and the media to account.
For an excellent analysis of what is bad about many British newspapers I recommend this:- Tabloid Watch
Just have a look at the “Blog Archive” to get the full picture.
I have a tendency to mix those up. The Express is the one obsessed with Princess Diana’s death, yeah?
It does have a tendency to get sued for libel, yes.
You shouldn’t have too much trouble, although it takes a while to pick up slang terms like “discussing ugandan affairs”, “tired and emotional”, “refer them to the case of Arkell vs Pressdram” and so forth.
Seconding the love of Top Gear.
Tony Blair, of course, known for his strong adherence to Marxist Leninism.
Depends on your point of view I suppose. I speak as someone extremely left wing.
Do? None. I’ve read the Times and Independent on a regular basis in the past, I don’t waste my money.
That’s right. This is because the owner of the Express (Dirty Desmond) is great mates with Mohamed ‘Al’ Fayed (the Phoney Pharaoh), whose son was killed in the same crash.
Another obsession of the Express is with Madeleine McCann ( the little girl who disappeared in Portugal) The paper printed front-page articles for nearly 100 days running. Most of the “facts” were false and the paper had to shell out substantial libel payments to the girl’s parents and other people involved in the case.
The Irish Mail (sister to the Daily Mail) caught me by surprise. I never realised what it must be like to be on the receiving end of the DM’s diatribes, until the Irish Mail ran a front page on people going to shop up North and had a laugh at the drivers getting stuck in heavy traffic.
The Great Philosopher, I don’t think Jon Stewart is a very good analogy for Private Eye. To understand Private Eye, it isn’t sufficient to understand British politics. It’s also necessary to understand the standard joking ways of referring to various well-known British people and activities in the magazine. That’s not so necessary with Jon Stewart.
This is perhaps the only paper I would never buy, ever, and I mean ever. 
Just so you know, the main newspapers all have sunday versions that have different editors and a slightly different stance. Someone up above mentioned the News of the World - that’s even more celeb-obsessed than the daily Sun. The Observer is the sunday version of the Guardian, and the others just have ‘Sunday’ added to their titles.
The Sport is a weird newspaper. It’s a mixture of sex, bizarre stories (my son was turned into a fishfinger; London bus found on moon; both real stories from the Sport) and the occasional bit of really good reporting.
To get the gist of the Daily Mail’s obsessions, have a look at the Daily Mail headline generator.
And yes, the Sun is known for being right wing. I doubt anyone working there would deny it. Perhaps it’s not right-wing by American standards, but it is by British.
Yup. I have heard that it has a policy of one Diana story every four days; that’s probably apocryphal, but that is about how often they post front page stories about someone who died over a decade ago.
Those free London newspapers are based on paying papers. The Metro is a condensed version of the Mail, and the Lite is (or used to be) a condensed version of the Standard - not sure if it is any more now that the Standard itself is free.
The bottom-right-hand section of the Express’s front page is nicknamed “dead-blond corner” for usually featuring a picture of either Princess Di or Maddie.