The last edition of the British tabloid News of the World was published, closing due to allegations that it hacked the voicemails of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, victims of the 7/7 attacks and relatives of deceased British soldiers.

Tabloid journalism is a popular style of largely sensationalist journalism, which takes its name from the tabloid newspaper format: a small-sized newspaper also known as a half broadsheet. The size became associated with sensationalism, and tabloid journalism replaced the earlier label of yellow journalism and scandal sheets. Not all newspapers associated with tabloid journalism are tabloid size, and not all tabloid-size newspapers engage in tabloid journalism; since around the year 2000, many broadsheet newspapers converted to the more compact tabloid format.

The News of the World was a weekly national "red top" tabloid newspaper published every Sunday in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the world's highest-selling English-language newspaper, and at closure still had one of the highest English-language circulations. It was originally established as a broadsheet by John Browne Bell, who identified crime, sensation and vice as the themes that would sell most copies. The Bells sold to Henry Lascelles Carr in 1891; in 1969, it was bought from the Carrs by Rupert Murdoch's media firm News Limited. In 1984, as News Limited reorganised into News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation, the newspaper transformed into a tabloid and became the Sunday sister paper of The Sun.

Beginning in the 1990s, and going as far until its shutdown in 2011, employees of the now-defunct newspaper News of the World engaged in phone hacking, police bribery, and exercising improper influence in the pursuit of stories.

On 21 March 2002, Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old English schoolgirl went missing from Walton-on-Thames in Surrey, England. She was last seen walking home from school along Station Avenue. Following an extensive search, her remains were discovered in Yateley Heath Woods in Yateley, Hampshire, on 18 September.