The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as The New Observer. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK (formerly News International), which is owned by News Corp. Times Newspapers also publishes The Times. The two papers, founded separately and independently, have been under the same ownership since 1966. They were bought by News International in 1981.
For other uses, see The Sunday Times (disambiguation).Type
Sunday newspaper
Henry White
Ben Taylor[1]
18 February 1821 (as The New Observer)
The News Building, 1 London Bridge Place, London, SE1 9GF
647,622 (as of March 2020)[3]
In March 2020, The Sunday Times had a circulation of 647,622, exceeding that of its main rivals, The Sunday Telegraph and The Observer, combined.[4][5] While some other national newspapers moved to a tabloid format in the early 2000s, The Sunday Times retained the larger broadsheet format and has said that it intends to continue to do so. As of December 2019, it sold 75% more copies than its sister paper, The Times, which is published from Monday to Saturday.[6]
The paper publishes The Sunday Times Rich List and The Sunday Times Fast Track 100.
Related publications[edit]
The Sunday Times Travel Magazine[edit]
This 164-page monthly magazine was sold separately from the newspaper and was Britain's best-selling travel magazine.[28] The first issue of The Sunday Times Travel Magazine was in 2003,[29][30] and it included news, features and insider guides.
Some of the more notable or controversial stories published in The Sunday Times include:[31]
Controversies[edit]
Phone hacking scandal[edit]
In July 2011, The Sunday Times was implicated in the wider News International phone hacking scandal, which primarily involved the News of the World, a Murdoch tabloid newspaper published in the UK from 1843 to 2011. Former British prime minister Gordon Brown accused The Sunday Times of employing "known criminals" to impersonate him and obtain his private financial records.[57][58] Brown's bank reported that an investigator employed by The Sunday Times repeatedly impersonated Brown to gain access to his bank account records.[59] The Sunday Times vigorously denied these accusations and said that the story was in the public interest and that it had followed the Press Complaints Commission code on using subterfuge.
Errors[edit]
Over two years in the early 1990s, The Sunday Times published a series of articles rejecting the role of HIV in causing AIDS, calling the African AIDS epidemic a myth. In response, the scientific journal Nature described the paper's coverage of HIV/AIDS as "seriously mistaken, and probably disastrous".[60] Nature argued that the newspaper had "so consistently misrepresented the role of HIV in the causation of AIDS that Nature plans to monitor its future treatment of the issue."[61]
In January 2010, The Sunday Times published an article by Jonathan Leake, alleging that a figure in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report was based on an "unsubstantiated claim". The story attracted worldwide attention. However, a scientist quoted in the same article later stated that the newspaper story was wrong and that quotes of him had been used in a misleading way.[62] Following an official complaint to the Press Complaints Commission,[62] The Sunday Times retracted the story and apologised.[63][64]
In September 2012, Jonathan Leake published an article in The Sunday Times under the headline "Only 100 adult cod in North Sea".[65] This figure was later shown by a BBC article to be wildly incorrect.[66] The newspaper published a correction, apologising for an over simplification in the headline, which had referred to a fall in the number of fully mature cod over the age of 13, thereby indicating this is the breeding age of cod. In fact, as the newspaper subsequently pointed out, cod can start breeding between the ages of four and six, in which case there are many more mature cod in the North Sea.[67]
Allegations of antisemitism[edit]
In 1992, the paper agreed to pay David Irving, an author widely criticised for Holocaust denial, the sum of £75,000 to authenticate the Goebbels diaries and edit them for serialisation.[68] The deal was quickly cancelled after drawing strong international criticism.
In January 2013, The Sunday Times published a Gerald Scarfe caricature depicting Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cementing a wall with blood and Palestinians trapped between the bricks. The cartoon sparked an outcry, compounded by the fact that its publication coincided with International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and was condemned by the Anti-Defamation League.[69] After Rupert Murdoch tweeted that he considered it a "grotesque, offensive cartoon" and that Scarfe had "never reflected the opinions of The Sunday Times"[70] the newspaper issued an apology.[71] Journalist Ian Burrell, writing in The Independent, described the apology as an "indication of the power of the Israel lobby in challenging critical media coverage of its politicians" and one that questions Rupert Murdoch's assertion that he does not "interfere in the editorial content of his papers".[72]
In July 2017, Kevin Myers wrote a column in The Sunday Times saying "I note that two of the best-paid women presenters in the BBC – Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Felt, with whose, no doubt, sterling work I am tragically unacquainted – are Jewish. Good for them". He continued "Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity. I wonder, who are their agents? If they’re the same ones that negotiated the pay for the women on the lower scales, then maybe the latter have found their true value in the marketplace".[73][74] After the column The Sunday Times fired Myers.[74] The Campaign Against Antisemitism criticized The Sunday Times for allowing Myers to write the column despite his past comments about Jews.[73]
Other editions[edit]
Irish edition[edit]
The Republic of Ireland edition of The Sunday Times was launched on a small scale in 1993 with just two staff: Alan Ruddock and John Burns (who started as financial correspondent for the newspaper and is at present acting associate editor). It used the slogan "The English just don't get it".[75] It is now the third biggest-selling newspaper in Ireland measured in terms of full-price cover sales (Source: ABC January–June 2012). Circulation had grown steadily to over 127,000 in the two decades before 2012, but has declined since and currently stands at 60,352 (January to June 2018).[76][77]
The paper is heavily editionalised, with extensive Irish coverage of politics, general news, business, personal finance, sport, culture and lifestyle. The office employs 25 people. The paper also has a number of well-known freelance columnists including Brenda Power, Liam Fay, Matt Cooper, Damien Kiberd, Jill Kerby and Stephen Price. However, it ended collaboration with Kevin Myers after he had published a controversial column.[78] The Irish edition has had four editors since it was set up: Alan Ruddock from 1993 until 1996, Rory Godson from 1996 until 2000,[79] Fiona McHugh[80] from 2000 to 2005, and from 2005 until 2020 Frank Fitzgibbon.[81] John Burns has been acting editor of the Irish edition from 2020.
Scottish edition[edit]
For more than 20 years the paper has published a separate Scottish edition, which has been edited since January 2012 by Jason Allardyce. While most of the articles that run in the English edition appear in the Scottish edition, its staff also produces about a dozen Scottish news stories, including a front-page article, most weeks.[82] The edition also contains a weekly "Scottish Focus" feature and Scottish commentary, and covers Scottish sport in addition to providing Scottish television schedules. The Scottish issue is the biggest-selling 'quality newspaper' in the market, outselling both Scotland on Sunday and the Sunday Herald.
