LONDON – Rupert Murdoch bid to grab back the huge audience his News Corp lost when it closed Britain’s best-selling News of the World over a phone-hacking scandal with a new Sunday edition of his Sun tabloid filled with gossip, girls and celebrities.
With a front page splashing on a female TV presenter’s birthing difficulties – ‘My heart stopped for 40 seconds’ – the top-selling daily Sun made its Sunday debut, aiming to win back the 2.7 million people who had read News of the World until its closure in July in Britain’s biggest recent press scandal.News Corp’s British newspaper arm News International closed the Sunday-only tabloid after disclosures it intercepted the voicemails of a murdered schoolgirl in a phone-hacking scandal that turned a spotlight on British news gathering practices and reached to the highest levels of the government.The ensuing furore shattered Murdoch’s once close links to Britain’s political elite as they distanced themselves from the magnate’s tabloid titles and launched a far-reaching inquiry that could impose tough regulations on British newspapers.News International has settled a string of legal claims in recent months over News of the World’s phone hacking of celebrities and politicians, with Welsh singer Charlotte Church the latest to agree damages.London police have arrested more than 30 people in three separate investigations linked to the scandal, including 10 current and former Sun journalists on suspicion of bribing public officials to get stories.Sunday’s Sun, launched at barely a week’s notice and under the supervision of the 80-year-old media tycoon, stuck to its popular formula of quirky stories and reams of sports reporting.In keeping with the family-friendly approach the paper takes on Saturdays, the daily’s bare-breasted ‘Page 3 girl’ was replaced by a singer in a slightly more modest pose, and sexual content was toned down in the agony advice column.The tabloid also lacked any of the ‘kiss’n’tell’ tales of bedroom encounters with soccer players and entertainers – and other exposes of the sexual infidelities of married celebrities – that were a staple of the scandal-loving News of the World.But also missing was the kind of spectacular – and expensive – journalistic ‘sting’ that defined the defunct Sunday paper, which over the years exposed lying politicians, loose-tongued royals and, most recently, match-fixing in international cricket.’It feels very tame,’ Daily Telegraph media writer Neil Midgley told BBC television. – Nampa-Reuters
