We have all encountered tabloid media throughout our lives, having been reeled in by their scandalous headlines and entertaining stories at one point or another. When we think about tabloids, it’s not so much their hard hitting, trustworthy news stories that come to mind but rather their often controversial reports.

The term, coming from the name of a compressed medicine merging the words tablet and alkaline, has been linked to sensationalist journalism since the early 1900s. Tabloids’ popularity can be attributed to their appeal to such a broad audience by tapping into human interests and emotions. Their use of accessible language, eye-catching visuals and sensational stories attract masses, because the average consumer tends to be interested in celebrities’ lives and gravitates towards shocking stories.

One of the earliest publications of what we would consider to be a tabloid was allegedly born from Joseph Pulitzer’s invitation to Alfred Harmsworth, founder of the Daily Mail in London, to edit Pulitzer’s paper The New York World for one day. Harmsworth’s imaginative version of the paper was published on the 1st of January 1901, and was heralded as the “newspaper of the 20th century”.
The first modern tabloid, The Daily Mirror established in 1903, was also created by Harmsworth presenting crime stories, human tragedies, celebrity gossip, sports and puzzles. By 1909, this daily was selling a million copies a day.
In the late 20th and early 21st century, the British press in particular was dominated by tabloids with multiple dailies and Sundays in circulation. By the beginning of the new millennium, they slowly broke their way into television and the online sphere as well.

Print newspapers may be on the decline by today, however, the format itself is not necessarily going out of fashion as many periodicals have successfully transitioned to online platforms where users can obtain information within moments.
This model doesn’t come without its controversies, however. Over the decades, a number of publications have been the centre of libel suits, scandals and the endless questioning of their credibility.

One major example of this is The Sun’s Hillsborough lies scandal that officially came to light over two decades after the horrifying incident that occurred during the Liverpool FC – Nottingham Forest FC FA Cup Semi Final in April 1989. Only days after the tragedy that shook a nation, The Sun published a front-page article with the headline “The Truth”. The piece described the events as a bunch of unruly football fans crushing each other to death, pickpocketing the deceased and urinating on the police as they were trying to aid the situation. The article was disproven however, and in 2012 it was confirmed that the story was planted by the attending authorities in an attempt to cover up their inadequacy. The Sun got dragged through the mud for their biased and inaccurate reporting, resulting in their journalists being banned entirely from covering Liverpool matches.

Regardless of the negative connotations tied to tabloids, we can’t deny that they have had a considerable impact on popular culture. Whether they have shaped modern society in a mostly positive or negative way is up for debate, with the majority leaning towards the latter. No matter how unreliable they are however, mankind’s hunger for the gossip and the drama will keep a form of it afloat for a very long time.