In its early years
Truth was left-leaning, and painted itself as the voice of the working class. Before 1945 it had a style of journalism that was high pitched, sensational and melodramatic. The newspaper from its earliest days was based on scandal, particularly based on the records of the divorce courts, which were not subject to restrictions on reporting.
Truth broke stories involving
Agent Orange and
Vietnam veterans, as well as the whole story of what happened at
Maralinga with the A-bomb tests. In 1967, Richard L'Estrange broke the scandal surrounding the
Melbourne-Voyager collision. Evan Whitton's report on police protection of abortion care providers led to an inquiry into the
abortion protection racket of the 1960s, and the jailing of several officers. In December 1958,
Ezra Norton and the other shareholders of its holding company,
Truth and Sportsman Ltd, sold their shares to the
Fairfax group, which sold it on to
Rupert Murdoch's
News Ltd. The late Owen Thomson and Mark Day were the final owners of the paper before it folded. It is said that
Dame Elisabeth Murdoch (Rupert's mother) took a dim view of the scandal sheet, which was later passed on to Thomson and Day. In its final years, the newspaper was noted for its eclectic coverage, which combined photos of women with bare breasts on page 3 (recycled from
The Sun (United Kingdom) newspaper), and tongue-in-cheek humour with hard-edged reporting, as well as the racing liftout form guide, Truform. It also had a Dorothy Dix segment page called,
Heart Balm. It was last published on the 15th of May 1993. ==Sensationalist headlines==