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The enduring power of newspapers to set the political agenda

The enduring power of newspapers to set the political agenda

Raymond Snoddy assesses the modern-day influence of the British press following its universal outrage at the Prime Minister’s recent behaviour.

Radio 4’s Today programme presenter, the brisk if not outright brusque, Amol Rajan, expressed surprise this week at the continuing political influence of the national newspapers despite the continuing decline in sales of paper copies.

He was talking in this instance about the impact of the near universal negative coverage of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s absence from the “sleeze debate” in the House of Commons.

This, combined with Johnson’s failure to wear a mask during much of his visit to a hospital in Northumberland and his failure, in front of the cameras, to apologise for trying to overturn the Commons Standards system.

For Rajan there was a rather quaint explanation for this lingering influence. 

Those in the House of Commons are of a certain age, relics of the once widespread newspaper reading classes, as opposed to the young who have long since drifted off to the internet or news on mobile phones, and can therefore be unduly influenced by front-page headlines.

In a narrow sense Rajan is right. For the next few years, the fate of Johnson depends on the perceptions and mood of around 360 Conservative MPs rather than the electorate, and the newspapers can indeed create poisonous perceptions around toxic sleaze or outright corruption.

It is still a rather surprising argument to come from the former media editor of the BBC, who considerably underestimates the reach and power of newsbrands if he talks only of declining paper sales.

As News Works likes to remind the advertising community, news brands reach more than 46 million people a month.

Yet, this week’s front pages were still remarkable in that the attacks on Johnson’s behaviour were not just pointed and sustained, but crossed the political divide to an unusual degree.

With the almost sole exception of the ever-loyal Daily Telegraph, which averted its gaze by choosing other stories to cover – although it did highlight his lack of a hospital mask – the entire forces of the newspaper industry lined up to reflect their disgust and distaste at Johnson’s behaviour. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Daily Mirror had the sharpest front- page headline- “No apology, no shame, no respect & no mask.”

But the usually almost ludicrously pro-Johnson Daily Express moved in a week from hailing Johnson ‘The Gladiator’ in his battle with the EU to: “Just Say Sorry For the Mess, Prime Minister” complete with the mask-less hospital picture.

More alarmingly for Johnson, it was the archetypical Tory Middle England newspaper, the Daily Mail, that gave the Prime Minister both barrels and then reloaded, several times. 

The headlines ranged from: “Shameless MPs Sink Back Into Sleaze” to ask: “Is Anybody In Charge at Number 10?”

The Mail only relented on Tuesday to the extent of opening up a new front in the battle – exposing the fact that “top MP” Sir Geoffrey Cox QC has been earning up to £1 million working in a Caribbean tax haven and voting remotely.

Meanwhile The Times got stuck in by accusing Sir Geoffrey of breaching Commons rules by appearing to use his Commons office to defend the British Virgin Islands in a corruption case brought by the British Government.

There has been no respite from The Sun either, with the paper’s senior political commentator Trevor Kavanagh warning Johnson that if he thinks “this sleazy disaster” is bad, just wait until the cost of the living crisis kicks in. 

No comfort either for Johnson the journalist if he chose to read the more measured Times.

There was the acerbic attack by former Tory MP Matthew Parris who observed that every time Johnson engaged with real human beings somebody emerges broken. Former Minister Owen Paterson was merely the last example.

“There will be many more, until someone in the Conservative party calls his bluff,” Parris argued.

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The paper also emphasised the growing anger among Conservative MPs that Johnson had failed to apologise for attempting to block the Paterson suspension or turn-up for the emergency Commons debate.

Does any of this matter? After all, Johnson has managed to shrug off streams of misjudgements, misjudgements and unseemly U-turns before and the public dials have scarcely moved.

This time might be different because of the concentrated focus of all the media on Johnson and his ever more erratic behaviour and a narrative that does eventually cut through with the public, the taint of sleaze and corruption that sticks.

The sleaze story was the lead across the television news bulletins including the first edition of the new one hour-long Channel 5 News at 5pm, presented by the splendid Sian Williams.

And yes the papers do still have perhaps a disproportionate influence on politics by helping to set the media agenda and over time, creating the public mood.

This happens partly by having their efforts magnified by broadcasters, most explicitly in the host of paper reviews on both television and radio.

Then there is the most instant, and perhaps the most powerful media magnifier of all – Twitter where an instant storm can blow-up out of the clearest of blue skies.

For someone like Boris Johnson, there is now no hiding place and when the Daily Mail gets its teeth into a target, it rarely lets go.

Despite lockdown and a challenging financial environment, it’s a great time to be a journalist- if you have managed to hold onto your job. There is no end of stories to investigate and no shortage of stones to turn over to see what crawls out.

There is even some markedly better financial news with a number of newspaper groups with very different operating models starting to recover from the worst effects of Covid.

The largely advertising-based Reach, publishers of the Mirror and Express had an encouraging first half with digital delivering increased revenues of more than £68 million, although print still accounted for most of the revenue at £232 million.

The largely subscription based News Corp, publishers of The Times and the Wall Street Journal, has just had its best quarter since 2013 with an 18% rise in revenues to $2.5 billion and a 53% rise in profits.

As The Independent celebrated its 35th anniversary it was also marking its fourth consecutive year of profit since going digital-only and plans to hire another 30 journalists over the next 12 months.

The more journalists, the merrier to expose sleazy politicians, fake news  and the biggest story of all our lives – tackling climate change.

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