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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Maybe Ed Miliband has judged that the Tory press isn’t the
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Maybe Ed Miliband has judged that the Tory press isn’t the force that it was any more
In yesterday’s Indy on Sunday (circulation down from 153,975 in January 2010 to 97,646 last month) John Rentoul was questioning the wisdom of the Miliband brother that he didn’t support for the LAB leadership in 2010 apparently taking on the “Tory press”
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If Ed actually does make it to PM, he might do a much better job than as LOTO, because he won't have so much time to worry about this other stuff...
Not sure I agree with Mike here. The press has less readers than it did, but it sets the agenda. Rotherham, MPs expenses, phone bugging. These stories emerged from our national newspapers.
What may be the case, though, is that people are more worldly when it comes to the press and factor in biases and agendas in a way that may not have happened in the past. A Mail or Sun story dissing Ed, one from the Grauniad or the Mirror doing the same to Dave may not resonate in the way it once might have done because it is only what people expect.
OT bit underwhelmed by the BAFTAS last night - results were fine, but Fry's gratuitous swearing and missing Bob Hoskins, Rik Mayall and Annette Crosbie from the "In Memoriam" segment a poor show.....
1) A lot of its readers are in the US, and don't vote in UK elections.
2) A lot of its traffic will be dipping in to specific article in an area that interests the reader linked from social media, so they may not see the Ed Is Crap message at all unless Conservative Central Office can raise enough money to buy advertising space on Kim Kardashian's arse. This is far cry from the control they have over a traditional newspaper reader, whose attention would be directed at whatever the paper decides to direct it at, as long as their journalists can make it moderately entertaining.
They'll probably have to back the the LDs, no other party would understand their pain so well.
Is there any evidence or statistic to show how many are UK based? I guess a lot of expatriates would go onto the Mail site, probably more than any other because it gives a snapshot of blighty. Some of those will be voters in the UK.
Accepting the fall in printed newspaper circulation point, has any leader won an election by taking on the mainstream media?
As I posted last night, politics is like a super tanker. It can take time for the effects of a ship turning to be seen. The onslaught on Miliband, which is partly of his own making, may yet dent Labour.
Moreover, there are plenty of online alternatives to the press stable that existed 10 years ago.
I suspect that most of the broadsheet readership will have established political views, whether they are behind a paywall or otherwise. The Sun readership poses an interesting conundrum though.
The question we should possibly be asking is whether the pollsters are placing too much emphasis on newspaper readership in their weightings, given the background trend of falling sales.
I do think there's a quadruple-whammy effect going on, though.
Newspaper readership is dwindling. Newspapers are not the force they once were even 5 years ago.
Newspaper readership is also skewing older, so they're far less likely to reach working-age voters who are more likely to consider voting Labour.
Paywalls have significantly reduced the cultural relevance of certain papers, especially The Sun and The Times. This has also increased the relevance of the remaining paywall-free news sources.
The public also has greater access to information thanks to the web. Wider access to news sources makes it harder to push agendas and makes the public more aware of biases. The web also makes it more likely that people search out alternative news sources and views, making it harder for owners to control the media to push their overwhelmingly right-wing agendas.
That being said, BBC News has moved pretty hard to the right over the past 5 years or so, even if it's still not quite the Mail.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/dailymail.co.uk
Also very few expats vote, because even if they still followed British politics, keeping up with registration is a pain in the arse, and in any case after 15 years out of the UK they decide you're too foreign and throw you off the register.
http://www.mailconnected.com/mail-online
https://files.nyu.edu/pba220/public/barbera-polarization-social-media.pdf
...argues that you end up with a lot of people you have fairly weak ties with in your stream, which exposes you to a lot of viewpoints that you wouldn't otherwise have considered.
You probably don't need a lot of diversity to beat what people would have traditionally got with top-down media like newspapers, that deliver a controlled and fairly carefully concocted set of messages day in day out.
He is against big business, international investors, anyone with money that the government can clearly spend so much more wisely, privatisation, cuts, markets and the nasty media who point out how incoherent all this is.
And its working.
Gulp.
On the other hand in a fully liberalized media envirnoment you can get whole communities selecting their media to reinforce the views that the world is 6000 years old, vaccines are poisonous etc. etc.
But the self reinforcing, campaigning blog is an interesting phenomenon in its own right. Something like the 19th hole for the nation at large. It will certainly have an impact on future elections.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/08/charlie-hebdo-buyers-attract-police-interest
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/14/bbc-guardian-most-popular-newspaper
I mean I go to bed listening to Labour posters telling us all that Ed has made an inspired move on tax havens and this is the big fight back and the tories are on the ropes.
This morning I see the HSBC events happened during the last Labour government and Ed Balls is under pressure.
Perfect timing from Ed yet again.
And on this basis you claim the BBC has moved ‘pretty hard right’ over the past 5 years?
Not convinced.
Where did all this madness start?
It alarms me when I hear the older generation's opinions who rely on solely the traditional media, although even then they are often clearly sceptical regarding the media narrative. It is no surprise that the powers that be scare monger and attempt to restrict the internet.
I'd love to see what the circulation figures for the Guardian were outside metropolitan London, Oxbridge and a couple of the other university towns. I expect over half their readership is in those areas.
Quite a telling interview on BBC business this morning. The anchor interviewed the Panorama guy exposing the tax issues surrounding HSBC. Throughout the interview the word "evasion" was used. I presume having completed said investigation that they know the difference so this has stepped up a tad from "avoidance".
The ironic scenario in the interview came when it was stated that the Guardian and the BBC had led the investigation into this over several months and the tax activities of the clients of HSBC had cost hundreds of millions of lost tax revenue. I think now we have tax evasion mentioned we go after these guys and it's good that this was exposed. The bizzare thing was that Panorama and the BBC do not see avoidance as a similar issue when condemning a lot of others for avoidance as they have been under the term "dodged taxes". Perhaps they think it is only a tiny tiny tiny issue for them?
This is of course the same Guardian that bases its tax affairs in the sunny Carribean and the BBC with the special tax efficient type contracts for their top people reported a few months ago.
I love the smell of rank hypocriscsy in the morning.
Frankly, I'm not at all bothered by Labour not wanting to get papers on side but am very seriously bothered by their proposals to limit free speech. The underlying illiberal and authoritarian heart of Labour is probably the key reason why I dislike them so.
http://blogs.channel4.com/michael-crick-on-politics/a-roasting-for-starbucks-but-a-grilling-for-hodge/1915
Stemcor statement: http://www.stemcor.com/Response to further allegations of tax avoidance in the UK press.aspx
One poster said last night ( sorry not sure whom) that ED really should be able to make something out of this HSBC mess as its a gift. I am not sure this is what Ed quite had in mind.
He really is going to be utterly stuffed to find any questions to ask at this weeks PMQs that will avoid / evade / dodge the weekly humiliation that seems to be common for him these days.
The influence of newspapers is surely on the coverage their journalists like Tim Montgomery, Stig Abell, Andrew Pierce, Kevin Maguire and others achieve via Twitter etc.
I do hope a Tory MP mentions Ed's forays into tax avoidance during PMQs on Wednesday. Then again Ed is so thick he probably doesn't realise a Deed of Family Arrangement is tax avoidance and that everyone lives in a different property from partner and child when it comes to declaring main residence to avoid CGT.
Telegraph News (@TelegraphNews)
09/02/2015 07:00
Rotherham abuse lawyer: More evidence will link perpetrators to police telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/cr… pic.twitter.com/U4ejyqx3S4
The belief, and its founded on truth, that 'they' get the gains during the goods times and the bailouts in the bad, never pay their taxes and are immune from the law.
That most of these things were/are the fault of the last Labour government is irrelevant because the 'rich', bankers, big business etc are associated with the Conservative party.
An association helped by the pavlovian support many Conservatives give to the 'rich', bankers, big business etc.
It kicks Cameron until the GE appears and then it starts to worry he'll go.
It was sort for SIndy until it wasn't.
It was pro kipper and then not.
You can see the editorial muddle on it's approach to Page 3.
Ed can safely ignore what it thinks since it's not actually that significant. His attack on Newcorp was more kicking a pensioner when it was down than a principled stand aginst the strong and mighty, but it kept the troops happy.
That was a piece of dreadful innuendo by C4.
We had a temporary secretary in our office last week. She was very pleasant, early 20s, and an avid reader of the "sidebar of shame".
She didn't realise that there was a newspaper called The Daily Mail. To her mailonline.co.uk was just an extension of Hello.
It's why Cameron "de-toxed" on the wrong issue. He should have kicked some wealthy supporters to keep his credibility on "hard-working families" rather than kicking some old crusties of social issues.
The lost votes of aspirational white van man hasn't been made up by trendy metroplitans hence his slump in the polls and a second elections woith no majority.
The Labour Party: hypocrisy is its DNA
This stinks to high heaven!
........and as the owner of 1000 shares in the bank can I be the first to apologize!
It's a legal practice.
If Ms Hodges objects to it, she should change the law.
'Left' tax avoidance good, 'Right' tax avoidance bad.
He'll ignore the hacking issues, the tax issues and the high executive salaries.
He has principles and if you don't like them he's got some other ones.
There's a massive difference between that and charging market rate for intra group IT services.
What you are effectively saying is because axes are legal axe murderers are doing nothing wrong.
On the general point, it's much rarer than it used to be that people raise an issue they've seen in the papers, and more common that they ask about the truth of something they've got off the internet. But I wouldn't say that the level of information is rising - people still ask things like "Is it true that asylum-seekers are paid £200 a week, like this email says?" All you can really say is that many people are less ready to believe whatever they're sent, whether email scams or political messages.
MikeK said:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/11395516/The-fiddling-with-temperature-data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html
They've been coking the books for years.
"The BBC editorials are mist heavily influenced by the Guardian and Independent. Like too many others they sneer at the Mail and its millions of followers."
.....and the Times and the Telegraph. The BBC are a serious news organization which is fast moving. Of course it can't use stories in the Sun and Mail and the Mirror which are almost certainly sensationalized and usually slanted because that's the nature of red tops and tabloids. It is not part of the BBC remit to publish stories just because a large readership newspaper publishes them