Wednesday 28 April 2010

Proof that Murdoch and Dacre help Clegg's cause

An interesting poll finding from LibDemVoice - the right-wing press opposing the Liberal Democrats makes voters more likely to vote for them.


Opposition from the Daily Mail, The Sun and Daily Telegraph to the Liberal Democrats actually makes people more likely to vote for the party.

Asked the impact on their voting intention of those papers opposing Nick Clegg becoming Prime Minister, 15% said it made them more likely to vote Liberal Democrat and only 4% said it made them less likely, making for a net +11% saying they are more likely to vote Liberal Democrat.


What this perhaps underestimates is how the intensity of newspaper attacks have been highly mobilising for younger voters in particular. The strikingly desperate tone of right-wing newspapers who are partisan supporters of David Cameron could undermine the Conservative leaders' claim to represent "change".

But David Cameron is lucky in one respect which is that, while blogging and social networking has led to more scrutiny of the press agenda than in the past, the media remain rather reluctant to discuss the partisan role of the newspapers in this election campaign.

Yes, the theatrical absurdity of James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks bursting into The Independent editor's office got several mentions.

But the claim by the political editor of Britain's biggest-selling newspaper, The Sun, that "It is my job to see that Cameron fucking well gets into Downing Street" has not been thought of as newsworthy by a single newspaper reporter or print commentator.

[UPDATE: With the honourable exception of The Independent, at least. See comments. Google News is not returning any results for the search, but is not exhaustive].

6 comments:

Unknown said...

"But the claim by the political editor of Britain's biggest-selling newspaper, The Sun, that "It is my job to see that Cameron fucking well gets into Downing Street" has not been thought of as newsworthy by a single newspaper reporter or print commentator."

Not true - the Indy covered it today as part of their 'XXXX of the day' pieces.

Sunder Katwala said...

Thanks. I have the Indy and missed it. Was relying loosely on 0 searches on Google News, so should have said that.

Unknown said...

Oh, no worries. For some reason it's not on their site, they seem to have swapped it with something else - but it is in my print edition Indy.

I should probably take a pic of it tomorrow morning and upload it somewhere as proof.

Unknown said...

Here's a (little blurry, but still readable) picture of the piece in question.

http://tinyurl.com/32nvgyk

Sunder Katwala said...

Thanks! though was willing to take it on trust the first time.

Unknown said...

Trust is nice, but sources are better.

And it saved me typing it out. :-P

Besides, I kinda dig that little bit of snark at the end of the piece.