Paul Dacre

Paul Michael Dacre (born 14 November 1948) is an English journalist and former editor of the British newspaper the Daily Mail. He became editor-in-chief of DMG Media in November 2021.

Quotes

1960s

• The time has come to offer our thanks to one of the best Presidents this Union has had for a long time. The enormous amount of work he has done, the countless committees he has headed, the energy he has contributed to the general running of the Union have all undoubtedly improved the welfare of the Leeds student.
  • Editorial in Leeds Student, signed by Dacre (late-1960s) praising Leeds University Union president Jack Straw, later a Labour Foreign Secretary, cited in "After Daily Mail attack on young Ralph Miliband, here's what a teen Paul Dacre thought about the world" Press Gazette (3 October 2013)

2004–2005

• [I]ts patronising, right-on, sanctimonious political correctness gets me so angry it would give me the energy and the willpower to get off that island
  • Dacre's explanation for choosing The Guardian as his luxury on Desert Island Discs in 2004. Cited in Lewis, Helen (13 June 2018). "Paul Dacre’s departure from the Daily Mail will trigger a sea-change in the British media". New Statesman. 

• Make them laugh, make them cry, or make them angry.
  • Dacre's description of the best way to write for readers "My Life in [the] Media: Des Kelly". The Independent. 12 December 2005. 

2007–2008

• Today’s Tories are obsessed by the BBC. They saw what its attack dogs did to Hague, Duncan-Smith and Howard.
  Cameron’s cuddly blend of eco-politics and work-life balance, his embrace of Polly Toynbee – a columnist who loathes everything Conservatism stands for but is a totemic figure to the BBC – his sidelining of Thatcherism and his banishing of all talk of lower taxes, lower immigration and Euro scepticism, are all part of the Tories’ blood sacrifice to the BBC God.
  Now, I’m not really worried about this. The Conservatives can look after themselves. What really disturbs me is that the BBC is, in every corpuscle of its corporate body, against the values of conservatism, with a small "c", which, I would argue, just happen to be the values held by millions of Britons. Thus it exercises a kind of "cultural Marxism" in which it tries to undermine that conservative society by turning all its values on their heads.
  Of course, there is the odd dissenting voice, but by and large BBC journalism starts from the premise of leftwing ideology: it is hostile to conservatism and the traditional Right, Britain’s past and British values, America, Ulster Unionism, Euro-scepticism, capitalism and big business, the countryside, Christianity, and family values.
  Conversely it is sympathetic to Labour, European Federalism, the State and State spending, mass immigration, minority rights, multiculturalism, alternative lifestyles, abortion and progressiveness in the education and the justice systems.
  • Hugh Cudlipp Lecture as reproduced on The Guardian website (22 January 2007) pp. 9–10

• The real enemy, if you like, is within. For the regrettable truth is that, increasingly, considerable sections of Britain’s media conspire to undermine mass-circulation newspapers.
  So tonight I would like to pose the question: why is the British newspaper industry so full of self-loathing?
  I have commented before on of what I have dubbed the "subsidariat" – those media outlets who cannot connect with enough readers to be commercially viable, and whose views and journalism are only sustained by huge cross-subsidy from profitable parts of their owners’ empires or by tax payers’ money.
  Fair enough. There is a case for subsidy though the longer I live the more I come round to the view that – in most cases - it ultimately perverts everything it touches. In the media, it produces a distorting prism, actually incentivising its recipients to operate in splendid isolationism, far removed from the real world that the great majority of readers and listeners have to live in.
  But my question is why does not a day go by that the subsidariat papers – blissfully oblivious of their own pocket-sized shapes and circulations – don’t carry the obligatory sneer at the tabloid press?
  Why does not half an hour go by that the high priests of the subsidariat, the BBC, can’t resist a snide reference to the popular press, again blissfully oblivious that all too often they are following agendas set by those very popular newspapers whose readers pay their salaries.
  Why does not a week go by that the media supplements and their columnists do not denigrate our industry as a whole?
  • Extracted from "Society of Editors: Paul Dacre's Speech in Full" Press Gazette (9 November 2008)

2010s

• Let it be said loud and clear that the Mail, unlike News International, did NOT hack people's phones or pay the police for stories. I have sworn that on oath.
  No, our crime is more heinous than that.
  It is that the Mail constantly dares to stand up to the liberal-left consensus that dominates so many areas of British life and instead represents the views of the ordinary people who are our readers and who don't have a voice in today's political landscape and are too often ignored by today's ruling elite. ...
  The truth is that there is an unpleasant intellectual snobbery about the Mail in leftish circles, for whom the word 'suburban' is an obscenity. They simply cannot comprehend how a paper that opposes the mindset they hold dear can be so successful and so loved by its millions of readers.
  Well, I'm proud that the Mail stands up for those readers.
  • "Why is the left obsessed by the Daily Mail?" The Guardian (12 October 2013). The Daily Mail had published a contentious article about Ralph Miliband, the father of the then leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband.

• [W]hat moves me most are the countless messages from readers worried about whether the Mail will continue its support for EU withdrawal. My answer to them — and others — is unequivocal. Support for Brexit is in the DNA of both the Daily Mail and, more pertinently, its readers. Any move to reverse this would be editorial and commercial suicide.
  • "Paul Dacre’s diary: the Daily Mail will commit editorial suicide if it turns against Brexit" The Spectator (13 June 2018). Published shortly after it was announced Dacre was ending his tenure as editor in November and Geordie Greig was to succeed him as editor of the Daily Mail. It was speculated Greig would change the title's political outlook.

• It is nearly three years since the Mail‍'‍s headline "Enemies of the people" detonated a national debate over whether judges were hijacking political powers. Written five minutes before deadline, this somewhat clunky reference to an Ibsen play was meant to capture Brexit ministers’ rage at the court’s ‘undemocratic’ decision to insist parliament must vote on triggering Article 50. Interestingly, the Telegraph’s front page that day, "The judges versus the people", was almost identical, but it was the Mail, the chatterati’s favourite bogeyman, that was criticised. Was this fair? ...
  That "Enemies" front page, which reflected the view of ministers and a great many Britons, was excoriated by the same liberals. So do I regret it? Hell no! Newspapers are meant to be provocative, outrageous even. Striking the right balance between the law and politics is never going to be easy. If that front page helped raise consciousness about this vital debate, then I can face my maker with equanimity.
  • "Do I regret the 'Enemies of the people' front page? Hell no!" The Spectator (5 October 2019)

• For my part, I plead guilty to having tweaked, in my time, the Remainer nose of the otherwise admirable FT but your writer’s ludicrous caricature of the Mail, before I stepped aside at 70 after 26 years in the chair, is unrecognisable from the paper that in those years increased its circulation by nearly a million in a contracting market and made billions in profits. ...
  It also — with the selfless efforts of the magnificent team of journalists Lord Rothermere allowed me to put together — won an unprecedented number of awards for the quality of its journalism and its countless great campaigns whether launching the war on plastic, cleaning up Britain, Alzheimer’s awareness, dignity for the elderly or justice for [the murdered teenager] Stephen Lawrence. ...
  As for Mr Greig, I congratulate him for making a solid start as editor and continuing so many of those campaigns but I’m sure he’ll forgive me for suggesting that he (or his PR) defers his next lunch with the FT until he has notched up a small fraction of those journalists' achievements.
  • Letter to the Financial Times as quoted in the newspaper's article "Mail’s Paul Dacre delivers biting riposte to Geordie Greig" (11 October 2019)

About Dacre

2005–2008

• I was particularly pleased to learn recently that Paul Dacre, the finest and most successful newspaper editor in this country, earns in excess of a million pounds a year.
• What I like about Dacre is that each day he arrives at work determined to crush the life out of his rivals.
• Back in the business of journalism, there are no short cuts to producing a great newspaper. You need one vital ingredient: a great editor. If you've got one, you will succeed; if not, you will fail. That's why Paul Dacre is worth considerably more than a million pounds a year.
  • Kelvin Mackenzie "Why Dacre's worth his million" British Journalism Review Vol. 16, No. 1 (2005) pp. 70-74

• Dacre, the nation's bully-in-chief is, like all bullies, a coward: he refused to go on the Today programme yesterday to argue his case. He never dares face his critics, happy to fry alive all and sundry, never apologising, never explaining. There is a good reason for this: the stance his paper takes on just about everything is so internally contradictory and inconsistent that he could never survive even minimal scrutiny. The Mail‍'‍s mishmash of lurid scandal, bitching about women and random moralising zigzags all over the place, dishing out pain and praise often according to who it has succeeded in buying with its limitless chequebook, or who has infuriated it by selling their wares to another bidder.
  • Polly Toynbee "Judge Dacre dispenses little justice from his bully pulpit" The Guardian (11 November 2008). Toynbee was responding to Dacre's Society of Editors speech quoted above.

2012

• I was really shocked by the statement of Mr Dacre the other day, that his editorial policy is driven by commercial interests. I think that is about the most unethical thing I've read for a long time and, what's more, from the most surprising source, as I have great respect for his abilities. Indeed, many years ago when he was editor of the Evening Standard, he agreed to leave then and come and edit the Times and I was extremely pleased and Associated quickly made him editor of the Daily Mail, I have no doubt at a vastly increased salary, where some friends of mine may disagree with this strongly, but I think he's been a great success. But I was shocked when he said that his policies now, the editorial policy of the Mail is driven by commercial interests. That's on a record here somewhere.
  • Rupert Murdoch at the Leveson Inquiry Transcript (Morning Hearing on 26 April 2012)