It accounted for 15 percent of the traffic to the Washington Post, 20 percent to the New York Post and an astonishing 30 percent to the Daily Mail.

FORBES: Matt Drudge Is More Powerful Than Facebook or Twitter

The top news site by Facebook interactions is the Huffington Post, the study says, followed by London's Daily Mail, Yahoo and the BBC, before you get to the New York Times, the Guardian and CNN.com.

CNN: Why consumers are fleeing the media

During a stop in Blackburn, Straw summoned up his Beatles trivia to tell Rice that Lennon -- who was murdered in New York by a deranged fan in 1980 -- penned those words after reading a story in the Daily Mail newspaper.

CNN: Musical mystery solved on tour

With 40m unique visitors, according to comScore, the website of the Daily Mail, another British tabloid, is the world's second biggest newspaper website after the New York Times.

ECONOMIST: Life in the global gutter