The Daily Mail now dominates the UK market in print and globally online. Rubbished by the prime minister of the day after it launched in 1896 as a “a newspaper produced by office boys for office boys,” it became hugely popular and by the end of the Boer Wars in 1902 it had a circulation of over a million, a world record. Right-wing, imperialist and patriotic, it also set out to entertain and was the first to recognize the potential market of the female reader. Alongside its commercial success went critical brickbats with one commentator remarking: “ by confusing gewgaws with pearls, by selecting the paltry at the expense of the significant, by confirming atavistic prejudices, by oversimplifying the complex, by dramatizing the humdrum, by presenting stories as entertainment and by blurring the difference between news and views, Northcliffe (the owner) titillated, if he did not debouch, the public mind; he polluted, if he did not poison, the wells of knowledge.”
Northcliffe’s brother Lord Rothermere took over when he died and was a friend of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. The paper’s support ended after violence at a BUF rally in 1934 though the paper editorially continued to oppose the arrival of Jewish refugees escaping Germany.
The MailOnline had a soft launch in May 2004, well after other papers, the internet having been written off by the DM powers-that-be as a passing fantasy that wouldn’t work. It is now the most visited English language newspaper in the world.
The paper was launched on 4 May 1896 with a Taurus Sun opposition Saturn and Uranus in Scorpio – tenacious, materialistic, conventional, autocratic. Significantly it has the Neptune Pluto in Gemini of its day which is astro-associated with scandal and megalomaniac ambitions; and that squares Mars in Pisces. Mars square Pluto is ruthless; Mars square Neptune keen on publicity, glamour and showbusiness.
It hardly looks likely that it will be toppled off its pedestal though not everything looks plain sailing ahead. Tr Uranus will conjunct the Sun and oppose the Saturn through from mid this year into 2022 with tr Saturn in square to the Sun and Saturn – it will be tossed around perhaps by economic stress as well as other factors. There will be a major setback in eighteen months when the Solar Arc Saturn is conjunct Mars and square the Neptune. With much heightened emotion (and financial pressures) from tr Pluto square the Venus in Aries in 2021/22.
The MailOnline, without an accurate start date, was kicked off around May 14th 2004 with again a stubborn, materialistic and enduring Taurus Sun square Neptune inconjunct Pluto. It has been accused of failing to uphold the integrity of its journalism and criticised for its accuracy. That fits with a stressed Pluto quincunx Sun – not knowing where to draw the line between forceful and dominating.
The relationship chart between Prince Harry and the Mail is resentful and chained-together. But it is the connection between Meghan and the DM that is really hostile with a composite Mars square Pluto. There will be continuing and discouraging pressure this year between them with tr Pluto square the composite Saturn; with jolts, jangles and outbursts from this July and worsening through 2022 as tr Uranus and then tr Saturn collide with the composite Mars Pluto; and sagging badly in 2023/24 with tr Neptune square the composite Sun. So the unholy battle of wills will drag on.