The ''Herald Sun'' is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper based in
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
, Australia, published by
The Herald and Weekly Times
The Herald and Weekly Times Pty Ltd (HWT) is a newspaper publishing company based in Melbourne, Australia. It is owned and operated by News Pty Ltd, which as News Ltd, purchased the HWT in 1987.
Newspapers
The HWT's newspaper interests date ba ...
, a subsidiary of
News Corp Australia, itself a subsidiary of the
Murdoch
Murdoch ( , ) is an Irish/Scottish given name, as well as a surname. The name is derived from old Gaelic words ''mur'', meaning "sea" and ''murchadh'', meaning "sea warrior". The following is a list of notable people or entities with the name.
...
owned
News Corp. The ''Herald Sun'' primarily serves Melbourne and the state of
Victoria
Victoria most commonly refers to:
* Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia
* Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada
* Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory
* Victoria, Seychelle ...
and shares many articles with other News Corporation daily newspapers, especially those from Australia.
It is also available for purchase in
Tasmania
)
, nickname =
, image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdi ...
, the
Australian Capital Territory
The Australian Capital Territory (commonly abbreviated as ACT), known as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) until 1938, is a landlocked federal territory of Australia containing the national capital Canberra and some surrounding townships. I ...
and border regions of
South Australia
South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...
and southern
New South Wales
)
, nickname =
, image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, es ...
such as the
Riverina
The Riverina
is an agricultural region of south-western New South Wales, Australia. The Riverina is distinguished from other Australian regions by the combination of flat plains, warm to hot climate and an ample supply of water for irrigation ...
and
New South Wales
)
, nickname =
, image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, es ...
South Coast South Coast is a name often given to coastal areas to the south of a geographical region or major metropolitan area.
Geographical
Australia
*South Coast (New South Wales), the coast of New South Wales, Australia, south of Sydney
* South Coast (Q ...
, and is available digitally through its website and apps. In 2017, the paper had a daily circulation of 350,000 from Monday to Friday.
The ''Herald Sun'' newspaper is the product of a
merger in 1990 of two newspapers owned by The Herald and Weekly Times Limited: the morning
tabloid paper ''
The Sun News-Pictorial
''The Sun News-Pictorial'' (known as ''The Sun'') was a morning daily tabloid newspaper published in Melbourne, Victoria, from 1922 until its merger in 1990 with '' The Herald'' to form the ''Herald-Sun''.
''The Sun News-Pictorial'' was part ...
'' and the afternoon
broadsheet paper ''
The Herald''. It was first published on 8 October 1990 as the ''Herald-Sun''.
History
''The Herald''
![Behind the sun](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Behind_the_sun.jpg)
''The Herald'' was founded on 3 January 1840 by George Cavenagh as the ''Port Phillip Herald''. In 1849, it became ''The'' ''Melbourne Morning Herald''. At the beginning of 1855, it became ''The'' ''Melbourne Herald'' before settling on ''The Herald'' from 8 September 1855 - the name it would hold for the next 135 years. From 1869, it was an evening newspaper. Colonel
William Thomas Reay
Colonel William Thomas Reay CBE VD (10 November 1858 – 11 November 1929) was an Australian journalist, newspaper editor, and politician, as well as a police and army officer.
Early life
The son of an English sailmaker, Edward William Raey a ...
was sometime literary editor and later associate editor, before becoming managing editor in 1904. When ''
The Argus'' newspaper closed in 1957, The Herald and Weekly Times bought out and continued various Argus media assets. In 1986, ''The Herald''
's Saturday edition, ''The Weekend Herald'' (which had adopted a
tabloid format
A tabloid is a newspaper with a compact page size smaller than broadsheet. There is no standard size for this newspaper format.
Etymology
The word ''tabloid'' comes from the name given by the London-based pharmaceutical company Burroughs We ...
, in order to distinguish it from the Monday to Friday editions'
broadsheet format) was closed.
''The Sun News-Pictorial''
''
The Sun News-Pictorial
''The Sun News-Pictorial'' (known as ''The Sun'') was a morning daily tabloid newspaper published in Melbourne, Victoria, from 1922 until its merger in 1990 with '' The Herald'' to form the ''Herald-Sun''.
''The Sun News-Pictorial'' was part ...
'' was founded on 11 September 1922, and bought by The Herald and Weekly Times in 1925.
Merger to form the ''Herald-Sun''
In its prime, ''The Herald'' had a circulation of almost 600,000, but by the time of its 150th anniversary in 1990, with the impact of evening television news and a higher proportion of people using cars to get home from work rather than public transport, ''The Herald''
's circulation had fallen below 200,000. This was much less than that of the morning ''Sun''.
With the only alternative option being to close ''The Herald'', The Herald and Weekly Times decided to merge the two newspapers. ''The Herald'' was published for the last time as a separate newspaper on 5 October 1990. The next day, ''The Sun News-Pictorial'' published its last edition. The Sunday editions of the two newspapers, the ''Sunday Herald'' and the ''Sunday Sun'', were also merged to form the ''Sunday Herald Sun''. The resulting newspaper had both the size and style of ''The Sun News-Pictorial''.
Bruce Baskett
Bruce Baskett is an Australian journalist who was the last editor of '' The Herald'' from 1989 until it was merged with its morning sister paper ''The Sun News-Pictorial'' in 1990. Upon the merger, Baskett was appointed the first editor of the ne ...
, the last Editor of ''The Herald'', was the first Editor of the ''Herald-Sun''.
The hyphen in its title was dropped after 1 May 1993 as part of an effort to drop the overt reminder of the paper's two predecessors that the hyphen implied, and also by the fact that by 1993, most of the columns and features inherited from ''The Herald'' and ''The Sun News-Pictorial'' had either been discontinued or subsumed completely in new sections.
After a progressive decline in circulation the afternoon edition was cancelled, the last edition being published on 21 December 2001. The News Corp Australia-produced ''
mX'' had filled part of that gap, being freely distributed of an afternoon from stands throughout the Melbourne CBD until 12 June 2015, though generally not available outside that area.
Recent editors include
Peter Blunden
Peter Blunden was the Managing Director of ''The Herald and Weekly Times'', publisher of News Limited titles in Victoria, Australia; the ''Herald Sun'', ''Sunday Herald Sun'', ''The Weekly Times'' and '' mX''.
A journalist, he was appointed to ...
, Simon Pristel, Phil Gardner and Bruce Guthrie.
Circulation
In 2017, the ''Herald Sun'' was
the highest-circulating daily newspaper in Australia, with a weekday circulation of 350 thousand
and claimed readership of 1.26 million.
According to third-party
web analytics
Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of web data to understand and optimize web usage. Web analytics is not just a process for measuring web traffic but can be used as a tool for business and market research and ...
providers
Alexa
Alexa may refer to: Technology
*Amazon Alexa, a virtual assistant developed by Amazon
* Alexa Internet, a defunct website ranking and traffic analysis service
* Arri Alexa, a digital motion picture camera
People
* Alexa (name), a given name a ...
and
SimilarWeb, Herald Sun's website is the 74th and 125th most visited in Australia respectively, as of August 2015.
In 2015, SimilarWeb rated the site as the 15th most visited news website in Australia, attracting almost 6.6 million visitors per month.
Ethics and coverage controversies
LGBTI people and issues
On 9 June 2021, Sydney University researcher Dr Alexandra Garcia published a corpus linguistics analysis of reporting about
LGBTI
Intersex people are born with sex characteristics (such as genitals, gonads, and chromosome patterns) that "do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies". They are substantially more likely to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, ...
Australians by the ''Herald Sun'' and affiliated Newscorp mastheads the ''
Daily Telegraph
Daily or The Daily may refer to:
Journalism
* Daily newspaper, newspaper issued on five to seven day of most weeks
* ''The Daily'' (podcast), a podcast by ''The New York Times''
* ''The Daily'' (News Corporation), a defunct US-based iPad new ...
'' and ''
The Australian
''The Australian'', with its Saturday edition, ''The Weekend Australian'', is a broadsheet newspaper published by News Corp Australia since 14 July 1964.Bruns, Axel. "3.1. The active audience: Transforming journalism from gatekeeping to gatew ...
''. Following an analysis of more than one million published words, Dr Garcia concluded that the ''Herald Sun'' and its associated publications covered transgender people and issues substantially more than any other organization, and the coverage was found to be overwhelmingly negative, with more than 90% of articles representing transgender Australians in a strongly negative light. The research found that the publication of Advisory Guidelines by the
Australian Press Council had not improved the standard of reporting, with most reports and columns being characterised by fear-mongering, misrepresentation of medical science, divisive rhetoric, derogatory language, and suppression and under-representation of the voice of transgender people. One commentator suggested that reporting standards amounted to “outright bombardment of harassment” targeted at transgender Australians, with unethical reports also being exploited by extreme right-wing groups to mobilize hate against minorities.
The analysis followed similar work by LGBTI rights watchdog, Rainbow Rights Watch, in 2017, which analysed more than 8 million published words which found that reporting in Australian press publications ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Herald Sun'', and ''The Australian'' were calculated to inflame fear, uncertainty, and confusion about transgender people and issues, and that the Australian Press Council was ineffectual at upholding long term balance and good media ethics.
On 21 January 2021, the Herald Sun published a factual report by journalist Serena Seyfort concerning a woman accused of detonating a molotov cocktail in a Melbourne suburb. The article included prominent and repeated references to the transgender status of the accused in the sub-headline and throughout the body of the article, also describing the woman using her former name without any obvious public interest justification. On 21 July, 2021, the Australian Press Council concluded that the article breached media ethics standards, saying "publishers should exercise great care not to place unwarranted emphasis on characteristics such as race, religion, nationality, country of origin, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, illness or age".
Other controversies
Australian Greens policy on drugs
Shortly before the
2004 election, the ''Herald Sun'' published an article entitled "Greens back illegal drugs" (''Herald Sun'', 31 August 2004) written by
Gerard McManus which made a number of claims about the
Australian Greens based on their harm minimisation and decriminalisation policies posted on their website at the time. The Greens complained to the
Australian Press Council. The text of their adjudication reads:
In the context of an approaching election, the potential damage was considerable. The actual electoral impact cannot be known but readers were seriously misled. ..The claims made in the original article were seriously inaccurate and breached the Council's guiding principles of checking the accuracy of what is reported, taking prompt measures to counter the effects of harmfully inaccurate reporting, ensuring that the facts are not distorted, and being fair and balanced in reports on matters of public concern.
Contempt of court for source protection
In June 2007, two ''Herald Sun'' journalists, Michael Harvey and
Gerard McManus, were found guilty in the Victorian County Court of contempt of court after refusing to disclose the source of a story the pair wrote in the ''Herald Sun'' on Australian Government plans to scale back proposed veterans entitlements. The controversy resulted in agitation to change the law to introduce "shield laws" in Australia to take into consideration the journalists' code of ethics.
Cartoon of Serena Williams
Following
Serena Williams
Serena Jameka Williams (born September 26, 1981) is an American inactive professional tennis player. Considered among the greatest tennis players of all time, she was ranked world No. 1 in singles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for ...
' claim of sexist behaviour by umpire
Carlos Ramos at the 2018 U.S. Open women's final, the ''Herald Sun''
's cartoonist
Mark Knight
Mark Knight (born 1962) is an Australian cartoonist. He is currently the editorial cartoonist for the '' Herald Sun'', a daily tabloid newspaper in Melbourne. Knight was also the last editorial cartoonist for one of the ''Herald Suns joint p ...
drew an illustration of the match which was described as sexist and racist. In the cartoon, Williams is shown to have smashed her racket whilst a baby's dummy lays on the floor. Knight's illustration has been compared by some, including the political cartoonist and ''
Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large na ...
'' columnist
Michael Cavna
Michael Cavna is an American writer, artist and cartoonist. He is creator of the "Comic Riffs" column for ''The Washington Post''.
His column has received more than a dozen national awards from the Society for Features Journalism, in 2013, 2014, ...
, to illustrations popular during the
Jim Crow era
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the So ...
in the United States. Knight is also accused of making Williams' Japanese opponent,
Naomi Osaka
is a Japanese professional tennis player. She has been ranked world No. 1 in singles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) and is the first Asian player to hold the top ranking in singles. Osaka is a four-time Grand Slam singles champio ...
, appear as a "white woman". Following this, there was significant condemnation of both the ''Herald Sun'' and Knight for the use of this image by the author
J. K. Rowling
Joanne Rowling ( "rolling"; born 31 July 1965), also known by her pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British author and philanthropist. She wrote ''Harry Potter'', a seven-volume children's fantasy series published from 1997 to 2007. The ser ...
and
Jesse Jackson amongst others. The ''Herald Sun'' defended its decision to publish the cartoon and two days after its initial publication, the cartoon was reprinted in part along with a series of other illustrations by Knight on its front page under the caption "WELCOME TO PC WORLD."
Depiction of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
''Herald Sun'' columnist
Andrew Bolt
Andrew Bolt (born 26 September 1959) is an Australian right-wing social and political commentator. He has worked at the News Corp-owned newspaper company The Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) for many years, for both '' The Herald'' and its succe ...
published an opinion piece titled 'ABC a propaganda vehicle on public dime' in response to ABC's most recent ''Four Corners'' report. The report argues that Rupert Murdoch's US-based media corporation ''Fox News'' is former President Donald Trump's "most reliable echo chamber - that is a propaganda vehicle to destabilise democracy." In response, Bolt contended that the ABC itself is a propaganda vehicle, operating with tax-payers' money. He therefore believes the ABC is in breach of the relevant law, the ''ABC Act'' of 1983. The Act requires impartiality in the ABC's reporting; in contrast, Bolt believes the ABC to be an echo-chamber for Australia's left-wing party, (the
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also simply known as Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia, one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party forms t ...
, a centre-left party), thus regarding the report as an example of the hypocrisy of the broadcaster.
Collectible items
Over the years, the ''Herald Sun'' has had a range of magazines, pins and memorabilia (usually with an outside partner) that could be obtained by either getting it out of the newspaper, or using a token from the newspaper to collect or purchase the item. Items that have been a part of this scheme include:
*
William Ellis Green
William Ellis Green (12 August 1923 – 29 December 2008), who signed his cartoons "WEG", was an Australian editorial cartoonist and illustrator who drew the Australian Football League premiership posters from 1954 until his death.
Life and ca ...
("WEG") official VFL/AFL Premiership posters (1966–2008; his death); the tradition is continued by ''Herald Sun'' cartoonist
Mark Knight
Mark Knight (born 1962) is an Australian cartoonist. He is currently the editorial cartoonist for the '' Herald Sun'', a daily tabloid newspaper in Melbourne. Knight was also the last editorial cartoonist for one of the ''Herald Suns joint p ...
(2009–)
*
The 2000 Olympic Torch Relay Pin – the collection includes 15 place pins and one State Pin of Victoria (2000)
*
Australian Football League
The Australian Football League (AFL) is the only fully professional competition of Australian rules football. Through the AFL Commission, the AFL also serves as the sport's governing body and is responsible for controlling the laws of the gam ...
trading cards – every year, near the start of the AFL season (2004–present)
* ''
The Simpsons
''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical depiction of American life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer Simpson, Homer, Marge ...
'' pins (2006)
*
Socceroos
The Australia men's national soccer team represents Australia in international men's soccer. Officially nicknamed the Socceroos, the team is controlled by the governing body for soccer in Australia, Football Australia, which is affiliated wit ...
medallions (2006)
* Celebrate 50 Years of TV (2006) – in conjunction with
Nine Network
*
The Ashes
The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between England and Australia. The term originated in a satirical obituary published in a British newspaper, '' The Sporting Times'', immediately after Australia's 1882 victory at The Oval, its first ...
series pins (2006)
* Family Encyclopedia
CD-ROM Collection (2006) – in conjunction with publishing company
Dorling Kindersley
Dorling Kindersley Limited (branded as DK) is a British multinational publishing company specialising in illustrated reference books for adults and children in 63 languages.
It is part of Penguin Random House, a subsidiary of German media co ...
* ''The Greatest'' (2007) – a 14-part magazine series
* ''Amazing Pictures'' (2007) – a 4-part magazine series
* Discovery Atlas DVD Collection (2009)
*
Harry Potter: The Ultimate Collection (2011)
See also
*
List of newspapers in Australia
*
3DB – formerly co-owned with ''The Herald'' and ''The Sun News-Pictorial''
*
HSV-7
HSV is a television station in Melbourne, Australia. It is part of the Seven Network, one of the three main commercial television networks in Australia, its first and oldest station. It launched in time for the 1956 Summer Olympic Games in Melb ...
– formerly co-owned with ''The Herald'' and ''The Sun News-Pictorial''
*
Herald Sun Player of the Year
References
External links
*
''The Port Phillip Herald'' and ''The Herald'' archive, 1840-1902segment aired 1 May 2006, ABC. "Age vs. Hun: Off-field Biff". Video accessed online 6 June 2006.
{{News Corp Australia
1990 establishments in Australia
News Corp Australia
Newspapers published in Melbourne
Publications established in 1990
Daily newspapers published in Australia