Who is David Dinsmore? The former Sun editor given top comms job by Starmer
David Dinsmore was editor of the tabloid newspaper between 2013 and 2015. He will now act as a senior civil servant responsible for overseeing and improving government communications.
Whitehall sources indicate Mr Dinsmore's role, permanent secretary for communications, had been newly-created by the prime minister. He was personally selected by Sir Keir after the PM was impressed with his understanding of modern media challenges, The Telegraph reports.
Mr Dinsmore began his career in journalism at the Scottish Sun in 1990, and rose to become its editor in 2006. He edited The Sun between 2013 and 2015, after which he was promoted to chief operating officer of News UK.
The journalist was again promoted in 2022 to News UK's Executive Vice President, whilst retaining the COO role. He has earned plaudits for his media career, ranking 27th in the 2014 Media Guardian 100 and 67th in GQ magazine's 2015 'Most Connected Men in Britain' list.
While parts of The Sun online went behind a paywall during Mr Dinsmore's tenure, he is credited with growing the paper's online subscriber base from an initial 117,000 to almost double, at 225,000.
But the appointment is likely to prove controversial among some Labour MPs, especially representing from Liverpool, where there remains a concerted boycott of The Sun over its reporting of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.
Campaigners have also pointed to several controversies which took place during Mr Dinsmore's time at the tabloid newspaper.
In 2016, the former Sun editor was convicted of breaching the Sexual Offences Act after the tabloid printed a photo of a teenage victim of a sexual offence in 2013, which did not conceal the victim's identity, and which happened during his tenure.
The teenager was victim of footballer Adam Johnson, a former England player who was found guilty of sexual activity with the 15-year-old girl in 2016.
Judge Howard Riddle said he was 'satisfied' Mr Dinsmore did not realise he was committing an offence. He was ordered to pay £1,300 costs and £1,000 in compensation to the victim.
Shortly before Mr Dinsmore left the editor post, The Sun dropped its page 3 featuring topless models following prolonged outcry from campaigners.
However, he was branded 'sexist of the year' in 2014 by campaign group End Violence Against Women, after initially resisting the move. In 2013, Mr Dinsmore said in an interview it was a 'good way of selling newspapers.'
The former newspaper editor was also criticised for platforming Katie Hopkins during his tenure, during which time she held a weekly column promoting her as 'Britain's most controversial columnist.'
Both Ms Hopkins and Mr Dinsmore were reported to the Metropolitan Police in 2015 for incitement to racial hatred over a column that appeared in The Sun.
The piece saw Ms Hopkins describe asylum seekers looking to reach Britain as 'cockroaches' and suggested the government deploy 'gunships' to stop them landing on shore.
Filing his report, barrister Peter Herbert, chair of the Society of Black Lawyers, said the column contained 'some of the most offensive, xenophobic and racist comments I have read in a British newspaper for some years.'
While Ms Hopkins was questioned over the comments by police, the Met confirmed neither she nor Mr Dinsmore would be charged.
Mr Dinsmore's appointment to Sir Keir's top team has been strongly criticised by campaign group Hacked Off, established in 2011 in response to the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.
Launching a petition against his appoint, the group said accused Mr Dinsmore of overseeing 'endless and false denials that The Sun was involved in the phone hacking scandal; eventually exposed in January 2025, when The Sun was forced to apologise.'
'Appointing a former Sun editor to a publicly funded role is an insult to the taxpayer, and in particular to all those who were affected by the Hillsborough disaster and were smeared with despicable and false attacks by The Sun newspaper,' it adds.
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TUAM, Ireland (AP) — This story begins with a forbidden fruit. It was the 1970s in this small town in the west of Ireland when an orchard owner chased off two boys stealing his apples. The youngsters avoided being caught by clambering over the stone wall of the derelict Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home. When they landed, they discovered a dark secret that has grown to haunt Ireland . One of the boys, Franny Hopkins, remembers the hollow sound as his feet hit the ground. He and Barry Sweeney pushed back some briars to reveal a concrete slab they pried open. 'There was just a jumble of bones,' Hopkins said. 'We didn't know if we'd found a treasure or a nightmare.' Hopkins didn't realize they'd found a mass unmarked baby grave in a former septic tank — in a town whose name is derived from the Irish word meaning burial place. 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She wondered if the nuns had used the tank as a convenient burial place after it went out of service in 1937, hidden behind the home's 10-foot-high walls. 'It saved them admitting that so, so many babies were dying,' she said. 'Nobody knew what they were doing.' A sensational story When she published her article in the Journal of the Old Tuam Society in 2012, she braced for outrage. Instead, she heard almost nothing. That changed, though, after Corrigan, who had been busy pursuing records and contacting officials from the prime minister to the police, found Corless. Corrigan connected her with journalist Alison O'Reilly and the international media took notice after her May 25, 2014, article on the Sunday front page of the Irish Mail with the headline: 'A Mass Grave of 800 Babies.' The article caused a firestorm, followed by some blowback. 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'We were afraid to open our mouths, you know, we were told to mind our own business,' Mulryan said. 'It's a disgrace. This church and the state had so much power, they could do what they liked and there was nobody to question them.' Then-Prime Minister Enda Kenny said the children were treated as an 'inferior subspecies' as he announced an investigation into mother and baby homes. When a test excavation confirmed in 2017 that skeletons of babies and toddlers were in the old septic tank, Kenny dubbed it a 'chamber of horrors.' Pope Francis acknowledged the scandal during his 2018 visit to Ireland when he apologized for church 'crimes' that included child abuse and forcing unmarried mothers to give up their children. It took five years before the government probe primarily blamed the children's fathers and women's families in its expansive 2021 report. The state and churches played a supporting role in the harsh treatment, but it noted the institutions, despite their failings, provided a refuge when families would not. Some survivors saw the report as a damning vindication while others branded it a whitewash. Prime Minister Micheál Martin apologized, saying mothers and children paid a terrible price for the nation's 'perverse religious morality.' 'The shame was not theirs — it was ours,' Martin said. The Bon Secours sisters offered a profound apology and acknowledged children were disrespectfully buried. 'We failed to respect the inherent dignity of the women and children,' Sister Eileen O'Connor said. 'We failed to offer them the compassion that they so badly needed.' The dig When a crew including forensic scientists and archaeologists began digging at the site two weeks ago, Corless was 'on a different planet,' amazed the work was underway after so many years. It is expected to take two years to collect bones, many of which are commingled, sort them and use DNA to try to identify them with relatives like Corrigan. Dig director Daniel MacSweeney, who previously worked for the International Committee of Red Cross to identify missing persons in conflict zones in Afghanistan and Lebanon, said it is a uniquely difficult undertaking. 'We cannot underestimate the complexity of the task before us, the challenging nature of the site as you will see, the age of the remains, the location of the burials, the dearth of information about these children and their lives,' MacSweeney said. Nearly 100 people, some from the U.S., Britain, Australia, and Canada, have either provided DNA or contacted them about doing so. Some people in town believe the remains should be left undisturbed. Patrick McDonagh, who grew up in the neighborhood, said a priest had blessed the ground after Hopkins' discovery and Masses were held there regularly. 'It should be left as it is,' McDonagh said. 'It was always a graveyard.' A week before ground was broken, a bus delivered a group of the home's aging survivors and relatives of mothers who toiled there to the neighborhood of rowhouses that ring the playground and memorial garden. A passageway between two homes led them through a gate in metal fencing erected to hide the site that has taken on an industrial look. Beyond grass where children once played — and beneath which children may be buried — were storage containers, a dumpster and an excavator poised for digging. It would be their last chance to see it before it's torn up and — maybe — the bones of their kin recovered so they can be properly buried. Corrigan, who likes to say that justice delayed Irish-style is 'delay, deny 'til we all go home and die,' hopes each child is found. 'They were denied dignity in life, and they were denied dignity and respect in death,' she said. 'So we're hoping that today maybe will be the start of hearing them because I think they've been crying for an awful long time to be heard.' ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
