Today (UK Newspaper) - Controversies

Controversies

One of the newspaper's early controversial front page photographs was in 1988, when it portrayed Nigel Lawson as a terminator, accompanied by the headline Nigel the Great Tax Terminator in reference to his tax cuts in that year's budget.

In the early 1990s the newspaper printed a column attacking the city of Liverpool and its inhabitants which was accompanied by a photograph showing a large rubbish tip directly behind the city's iconic Liver Buildings. In fact, no such rubbish tip existed anywhere in the vicinity of the Liver Buildings; it subsequently emerged that the photograph was a fake created from a composite of images of the buildings and a rubbish tip not in Liverpool, although the photograph's caption implied that the image illustrated the supposed poor upkeep of the city. Despite these revelations, the newspaper did not inform its readers of the deception or print a correction.

In the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing the paper showed a fireman carrying the body of a young girl under the headline "IN THE NAME OF ALLAH", which proved embarrassing when it was found that the bombing had been perpetrated by American survivalists, not Muslim militants.

In 1996 Hugh Grant won damages from News (UK) Ltd over what his lawyers called a "highly defamatory" article in January 1995. The newspaper had falsely claimed that Grant verbally abused a young extra with a "foul-mouthed tongue lashing" on the set of The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain.