READERS STILL willing to pay for newspapers and magazines may have noticed that news-stands in supermarkets are laying the papers and mags flat for their displays.

Child Eyes UK, a campaign group started by a South London mother worried about what her four-year-old might see and read, has been making rapid progress in suppressing front pages.

Tesco has complied, as the picture, above, of its Morning Lane, Homerton E9 6ND store  shows. Apart from puzzle magazines and a local paper known for its headlines about violent crime, everything is laid flat.

Child Eyes UK, started by mother-of-four Kathy McGuinness in January 2013, has been insisting that shops conceal the front pages of all UK newspapers. It objects to papers’ showing female flesh on front pages and to lead headlines with nasty words.

Morrisons and the Co-Op’s 4,000 stores are also said by a suburban newspaper to have complied with the campaign and the BBC has reported that Waitrose is to change its displays to remove some front pages from children’s lines of vision.

Janice Turner, a columnist in The Times, said it was the “prissy ‘not in front of the children’ tone that irks”, although “lad mags” should be on the top shelf and The Sun should stop running girly pictures because they insulted women.

The Guardian media writer Roy Greenslade said that editors were to blame for the “cover-ups” because since the mid-1980s, when a soft-porn Sunday paper first appeared, they had made their front pages increasingly salacious.

Hamish Scott 291114

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