Paul Dacre

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Paul Michael Dacre (born November 14, 1948) is a British journalist and current editor of the British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail. He is also editor-in-chief of the Mail group titles, which also includes the London Evening Standard and The Mail on Sunday^[1]. He is also a director of the Daily Mail and General Trust plc and was a member of the Press Complaints Commission from 1999^[2] to 2008. He left in order to become chairman of the PCC's Editors’ Code of Practice Committee from April 2008.^[3]

For the academic and journalist John Lloyd, Dacre is presently the only "British newspaper editor who stamps himself on his newspaper every morning" reflecting "his unique blend of libertarian-authoritarian Conservatism".^[4]

His brother Nigel Dacre was editor of ITVs news programmes from 1995 to 2002.^[5]

[edit] Early life

Dacre's father, Peter Dacre, was a prominent journalist on the Sunday Express whose work included show business features. ^[6][7] Paul Dacre was educated at University College School, a private fee-paying school in Hampstead, on a state scholarship,^[8] and grew up in the London suburb of Arnos Grove^[9] in Enfield. In his school holidays, Dacre worked as a messenger at the Sunday Express, and during his pre-university gap year as a trainee in the Daily Express.^[7] From 1967 he read English at Leeds University ^[10] and during this period met his future wife, Kathleen,^[8] now a drama teacher.^[11][12] Whilst at university, he became involved with the Leeds Student newspaper, rising to the position of editor. At this time he identified with the political left on issues including gay rights and drug use.^[11] "'If you don’t have a left-wing period when you go to university, you should be shot'", he says.^[7] On graduation in 1971 he joined the Daily Express in Manchester for a six month trial;^[8] subsequent to this he was given a full time job on the Express. He once commented that "there was never any desire to do anything other than journalism".^[7]

[edit] Initial career

At the Express, Dacre worked as correspondent in a variety of locations before being sent to Washington in 1976 to cover that year's American presidential election^[7] and later moved to New York. It was at this time that his politics shifted to the right:

After spending several years at the Express bureau, Dacre was head-hunted by David English to be Bureau chief for the Mail in 1980, but was brought back to the UK in 1982 after fifteen months^[8] to be deputy news editor.^[13] The following period saw Dacre work in most of the newspaper's departments as assistant editor.

He became editor of the Evening Standard in March 1991 and replaced Sir David English the following year as editor of the Daily Mail,^[11] after turning down an offer from Rupert Murdoch to edit The Times.^[7] Dacre believed "that he would not accept my desire to edit with freedom".^[14] It was his approach to the job of editor - "hard-working, disciplined, confrontational"^[8] - which had led Murdoch to attempt to hire him. For the Mail Dacre was considered important enough for English to become editor-in-chief,^[8] a job title often seen as a means of sidelining someone considered unsackable. After David English's death in March 1998, Dacre himself became the Mail Group's editor-in-chief the following July, in addition to remaining as editor of the Daily Mail.^[1]

[edit] Editorship of the Daily Mail

[edit] Headline on the Stephen Lawrence case

Dacre's most prominent newspaper campaign was in 1997, against the suspects who were acquitted of the murder in 1993 of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence. According to Nick Davies in Flat Earth News the paper originally intended an attack on the groups arguing for an inquiry into the Lawrence murder, but Hal Austin, the papers "only black reporter"^[15] on interviewing Neville and Doreen Lawrence, realised that Neville had worked years earlier on Dacre's Islington house as a plasterer,^[14] and the news desk instructed Austin to "Do something sympathetic" about the case.^[15] Dacre eventually used the headline "MURDERERS" accusing the suspects of the crime. He repeated this headline in 2006.

On the final day of the inquest held at the coroner’s court, Dacre and other Mail executives had lunch with Sir Paul Condon, then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, "who very eloquently told me they were as guilty as sin"^[7] Four of the five suspects had never provided any alibi for their whereabouts on the night of Stephen Lawrence's murder and they used the "I claim privilege" defence as a means of avoiding self-incrimination. The alibi of the fifth suspect was found unconvincing by the Police. The newspaper on 14 February 1997, under its headline asserted: "The Mail accuses these men of killing. If we are wrong, let them sue us"^[16] No writ was issued - the case would have been expensive, and libel plaintiffs do not receive legal aid in the UK - and the newspaper received significant acclaim and opprobrium as a result.^[7]

On numerous other occasions though, the Mail under Dacre has not behaved well towards ethnic minorities. Nick Davies recounts an anecdote from a former senior news reporter who en route to a murder scene 300 miles away of a woman and her two children was told to return because: "They're black".^[17] Davies comments: "Perhaps I have been unlucky, but I have never come across a reporter from the Daily Mail who did not have some similar story, of black people being excluded from the paper because of their colour".^[17]

[edit] New Labour and the Conservatives

Seen as "highly influential politically"^[18] by the conservative journalist Simon Heffer, Dacre said, in a talk given to students in January 2007, that the Conservative Party cannot be guaranteed the Mail's support at he next election, due in 2009-10, and he also queried whether the party was still conservative.^[18]

Indeed, the Mail under Dacre briefly had positive views of New Labour until the Ecclestone scandal and clashes with the government's Director of Communications Alastair Campbell cooled the relationship thanks to the practice of spin doctoring. Dacre said in 2004:

As recounted by John Lloyd in 2004 though, Tim Allan, Campbell's assistant in Labour's first term, saw "'the government [spend] years trying to be chummy with the Daily Mail... Blair sees himself as the great persuader, able to convince anyone. But they didn't want to like him. The government raised far too much time trying to turn the Mail around'"^[20]

The newspaper also turned against Cherie Blair, the former Prime Minister's wife, when the Blair's lawyers prevented the publication of a former nanny's memoirs;^[21] official regulations prevent press revelations regarding the children of public figures. The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday also came into direct conflict with No10 late in 2002 for their pursuit of Cherie Blair's connection to the conman Peter Foster.^[18] "motivated by personal animosity" to the Blair's. Tony Blair targeted the Mail titles directly denouncing "parts of the media that will take what there is that is true and then turn it round into something that is a total distortion of the real truth". Dacre asserted in response: "The Mail has no agenda apart from good journalism" in the Daily Telegraph.^[18]

The new Prime Minister Gordon Brown though, is reportedly a personal friend of Dacre. In 2002, when Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer, Dacre commented: "I have an awful lot of admiration for Gordon Brown. I feel he is one of the very few politicians of this administration who's touched by the mantle of greatness".^[7] Brown returned the favour to Dacre at an event at the Savoy Hotel celebrating the tenth anniversary of his editorship of the Mail in 2003. In a video presentation, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer said that Dacre "has devised, developed and delivered one of the great newspaper success stories of any generation" and was "someone of great journalistic skill , an editor of great distinction and someone of very great personal warmth".^[22] The Home Secretary David Blunkett was present at the event in person and also praised Dacre.

[edit] Editorial outlook

For his admirers, Dacre has maintained his newspaper's defence of family values and the 'small-c' conservative interests of the suburban middle-classes in the south of England. Dacre once suggested to a new recruit, the sports columnist Des Kelly, that he should "Make them laugh, make them cry, or make them angry".^[23] From the business point of view, Dacre's editorship has been highly successful: "no editor can point to rises in sales that come anywhere near Dacre's in the [first] 10 years that he has been in the job".^[9] If the current trajectory of the Mail's rise in circulation is maintained, currently it sells about 2.4 million each day, it will pass that of The Sun at some point before 2010.^[11]

Dacre's stated objective is:

He has pursued a strategy of appointing star columnists established at other newspapers at significantly raised salaries.^[25] This practice led to a legal entanglement with The Sun when the terms of Richard Littlejohn's contract came in to conflict with his obligations to his former newspaper in 2005. Dacre's appearance in the High Court was only averted by a few days.^[26]

[edit] Criticism

According to Cristina Odone in The Observer, Dacre has a reputation towards underlings of "verbal abuse [and] a drill sergeant's delight in public humiliation"^[27] which also includes swearing at them.^[11] According to Nick Davies in his book Flat Earth News^[28] his staff call him the "Vagina Monologues" because of his habit of calling everybody a "cunt".

Dacre's editorship of the Daily Mail is frequently criticised. For journalist Polly Toynbee the newspaper is a "daily blast of fear and loathing" and Dacre himself is "the most arrogant bully of us all".^[29] Toynbee has also criticised the Mail under Dacre for its traditional attitudes to women (for instance, the newspaper's response to the newly released hostage Faye Turney in April 2007.^[30] According to Simon O' Hagan in The Independent: "As far as Dacre is concerned, women have no right to go out and earn money of their own, let alone rise to positions of power, when they also have a family".^[9])

The London Mayor Ken Livingstone, long in conflict with the London Evening Standard, branded the Mail titles "the most reprehensibly edited" publications in the world^[31] in 2005. The Mail's treatment of asylum seekers and members of other vulnerable groups is a particular bugbear of many critics, not only Livingstone. "Maybe we anti-racists have been naive to think that [the Stephen Lawrence campaign] was anything more than an aberration" suggests Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, adding "wouldn't it be better if this extraordinary editor decided to use his influence to create just a little more understanding of why refugees leave their countries, and what most of them bring to our nation?" ^[32]

Martin Kettle,^[33] a columnist on The Guardian, has questioned whether Dacre's assertion that the Mail represents Conservative voters^[34] can be sustained. Kettle points out that in the 2005 general election 22% of Mail readers voted Labour, 14% for the Liberal Democrats and 7% for other non-Conservative candidates. "In this respect, therefore, the editor who claims to have a hotline to the national mood turns out to have something of a crossed line instead", he writes.^[33]

[edit] Public appearances

Paul Dacre has the reputation for avoiding publicity and rarely gives interviews. He claims that:

Dacre gave the Cudlipp Lecture^[36] at the London College of Communication on 22 January 2007.^[37] For him, Britain is dominated by a "subsidariat", those newspapers whose "journalism and values - invariably liberal, metropolitan and politically correct, and I include the pinkish Times here - don't connect with sufficient readers to be commercially viable" and make a profit.^[38] Dacre also attacked the BBC as a "monolith" pursuing "Cultural Marxism" which has a singular world view and is contemptuous of "ordinary people".^[39] In The Guardian Peter Wilby claimed that Dacre's speech made "many listeners feel they were stuck in the back of a taxi with a particularly boring and opinionated driver".^[40]

[edit] Speculation over Dacre's future

At the end of 2007, the press were unclear as to Paul Dacre's future at the Daily Mail. Dacre is known to have a heart condition. He was off work for three months in mid-2007,^[41] and for three weeks at the end of October and the beginning of November with "gastric flu". His deputy Alistair Sinclair assumed the role of editor during both periods. Stephen Glover, a Mail columnist, urged the parent company DMGT in The Independent on 17 November to make a statement ending the uncertainty,^[42] which it did four days later, reaffirming Dacre's position, when announcing its profit results for the year ending 30 September 2007.^[43]

[edit] Status in his industry

Dacre's salary and other remunerations are frequently cited in the British media. For the financial year ending on 1 October 2006, he was paid in total £1.23million, according to the annual report of the parent company, Daily Mail & General Trust, published on 11 January 2007.^[44] Dacre is the highest paid of the twenty national newspaper editors in the United Kingdom. For Kelvin MacKenzie, the former Editor of The Sun, he is "comfortably Britain’s finest editor" who arrives at work "determined to crush the life out of his rivals".^[45] Publicist Max Clifford has commented that "Paul Dacre is virtually a law [un]to himself".^[46]

A MORI poll in 2005 asked 30 editors from the national and regional press and from the broadcasting industry for the name of the editor they most admired. Dacre won the poll.^[47]

[edit] References