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 Herald Sun front page 12 December 2005, reporting on the2005 Cronulla riots | |
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Tabloid |
| Owner(s) | The Herald and Weekly Times (News Corp Australia) |
| Editor | Sam Weir |
| Founded | The Port Phillip Herald (3 January 1840) The Melbourne Morning Herald (1 January 1849) The Melbourne Herald (1 January 1855) The Herald (8 September 1855) The Sun News-Pictorial (11 September 1922) TheHerald Sun (8 October 1990) |
| Political alignment | Right-wing (Coalition (federal),Victorian Liberal Party andVictorian National Party)[1] |
| Headquarters | The Herald and Weekly Times Tower, 40 City Road, Southbank,Victoria, Australia(formerly The Herald and Weekly Times Building, 44-74Flinders Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia from 1990 to 1995) |
| Website | Official website (Note: Some services may only be available via pre-billed subscription[2] |
| This article is part ofa series on |
| Conservatism in Australia |
|---|
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Principles |
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TheHerald Sun is aconservative daily tabloid newspaper based inMelbourne, Australia, published byThe Herald and Weekly Times, a subsidiary ofNews Corp Australia, itself a subsidiary of the AmericanMurdoch ownedNews Corp. TheHerald Sun primarily serves Melbourne and the state ofVictoria and shares many articles with other News Corporation daily newspapers, especially those from Australia.
It is also available for purchase inTasmania, theAustralian Capital Territory and border regions ofSouth Australia and southernNew South Wales such as theRiverina and theSouth Coast, and is available digitally through its website and apps. In 2017, the paper had a daily circulation of 350,000 from Monday to Friday.[3]
TheHerald Sun newspaper is the product of amerger in 1990 of two newspapers owned by The Herald and Weekly Times Limited: the morningtabloid paperThe Sun News-Pictorial and the afternoonbroadsheet paperThe Herald. It was first published on 8 October 1990 as theHerald-Sun.
The Herald was founded on 3 January 1840 by George Cavenagh as thePort Phillip Herald. In 1849, it becameTheMelbourne Morning Herald. At the beginning of 1855, it becameTheMelbourne Herald before settling onThe Herald from 8 September 1855 - the name it would hold for the next 135 years. From 1869, it was an evening newspaper. ColonelWilliam Thomas Reay was sometime literary editor and later associate editor, before becoming managing editor in 1904. WhenThe Argus newspaper closed in 1957, The Herald and Weekly Times bought out and continued various Argus media assets.[4] In 1986,The Herald's Saturday edition,The Weekend Herald (which had adopted atabloid format, in order to distinguish it from the Monday to Friday editions'broadsheet format) was closed.
The Sun News-Pictorial was founded on 11 September 1922, and bought by The Herald and Weekly Times in 1925.[5]
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 morningSun.[citation needed]
With the only alternative option being to closeThe 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, theSunday Herald and theSunday Sun, were also merged to form theSunday Herald Sun. The resulting newspaper had both the size and style ofThe Sun News-Pictorial.Bruce Baskett, the last Editor ofThe Herald, was the first Editor of theHerald-Sun.[citation needed]
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 fromThe Herald andThe Sun News-Pictorial had either been discontinued or subsumed completely in new sections.[6]
After a progressive decline in circulation the afternoon edition was cancelled, the last edition being published on 21 December 2001.[7] The News Corp Australia-producedmX had filled part of that gap, being freely distributed in the afternoon from stands throughout the Melbourne CBD until its closure on 12 June 2015, though it was generally not available outside that area.[8][9]
Recent editors includePeter Blunden, Simon Pristel, Phil Gardner and Bruce Guthrie.[10]
In 2017, theHerald Sun wasthe highest-circulating daily newspaper in Australia, with a weekday circulation of 350 thousand[3] and claimed readership of 1.26 million.[11]
According to third-partyweb analytics providersAlexa andSimilarWeb, Herald Sun's website is the 74th and 125th most visited in Australia respectively, as of August 2015.[12][13] In 2015, SimilarWeb rated the site as the 15th most visited news website in Australia, attracting almost 6.6 million visitors per month.[13][14]
The below is a list of the Herald Sun's current journalists.[15]
 |
| Name | Role | Other roles | Start year at Herald Sun / NewsCorp |
|---|---|---|---|
| Genevieve Alison | Chief of Staff | Court reporter | |
| Ashley Argoon | Court reporter | ||
| Laura Armitage | Senior News Reporter | ||
| Dan Batten | Digital Sports Reporter | ||
| Ed Bourke | Sports reporter | ||
| Liam Beatty | Journalist | ||
| Mark Buttler | Police reporter | ||
| Andrew Bolt | Columnist | ||
| Kara Monssen | Food and wine editor | Victorian editor of the annual delicious.100 restaurant guide | |
| James Campbell | National weekend political editor | ||
| Alesha Capone | Real Estate journalist | ||
| Patrick Carlyon | Columnist | ||
| Alice Coster | Page 13 editor and columnist | ||
| John Dagge | Workplace reporter | ||
| Shannon Deery | State Politics Editor | ||
| Craig Dunlop | Chief of Staff (Weekend) |
| Election | Endorsement | |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Coalition | |
| 2013 | Coalition | |
| 2016 | Coalition | |
| 2019 | Coalition | |
| 2022 | Coalition | |
On 9 June 2021, Sydney University researcher Alexandra Garcia published a corpus linguistics analysis of reporting aboutLGBTI Australians by theHerald Sun and affiliated Newscorp mastheads theDaily Telegraph andThe Australian.[16] Following an analysis of more than one million published words, Garcia concluded that theHerald 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 theAustralian 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.
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 publicationsDaily Telegraph,Herald Sun, andThe 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.[17]
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.[18] 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".[19]
Shortly before the2004 election, theHerald Sun published an article entitled "Greens back illegal drugs" (Herald Sun, 31 August 2004) written byGerard McManus which made a number of claims about theAustralian Greens based on their harm minimisation and decriminalisation policies posted on their website at the time. The Greens complained to theAustralian 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.[20]
In June 2007, twoHerald Sun journalists, Michael Harvey andGerard 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 theHerald 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.[21]
Following fighting at the 2016Moomba Festival in Melbourne, the paper embarked on a 32-month campaign employing racialised language attacking supposedAfrican gangs in the city.[22][23] Civic and state leaders, community members and the police denied that any such gangs existed, but the paper published 130 articles over a two year period featuring the words "Sudanese" and "gang",[23] and 173 (including 37 editorials) mentioning "Apex" a supposed gang for which little evidence existed.[22] The racialising and criminalising coverage ofAfrican Australians increased racism against this group and created many problems for the community.[24][25] The Herald Sun's intense focus on criminality in theSudanese Australian community, out of all proportion from its real scale, has been described by academics as playing a key role in fomenting amoral panic.[25][24][23][22]
FollowingSerena Williams' claim of sexist behaviour by umpireCarlos Ramos at the 2018 U.S. Open women's final, theHerald Sun's cartoonistMark Knight 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 andWashington Post columnistMichael Cavna, to illustrations popular during theJim Crow era in the United States.[26] Knight is also accused of making Williams' Japanese opponent,Naomi Osaka, appear as a "white woman". Following this, there was significant condemnation of both theHerald Sun and Knight for the use of this image by the authorJ. K. Rowling andJesse Jackson amongst others.[27] TheHerald 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."[28]
Over the years, theHerald 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:
