Saturday 9 June 2018

Fit To Print

If print newspapers are dead, then the political positions that they adopt from beyond the grave seem to be considered enormously important by the supposedly all-conquering websites.

After the Daily Mail moves into the Remain column, then so will The Sun. And then Brexit supporters will just have to start reading the Morning Star. Although watch this space as to other possibilities in the near future. But even so.

Is that odd, considering that 17,410,742 people voted Leave? Well, it does not make much commercial sense, no. But those interests can bear the loss. Consider at the dearth of Corbyn supporters in their pages. Consider the media silencing of the Unionist majority in Scotland, or of the pro-Union and anti-Brexit majority in Northern Ireland.

Or consider that, while The Guardian has advocated voting Lib Dem at the last five General Elections, it can hardly be said to provide that party with regular coverage. No national newspaper ever endorsed the SDP, and none has been consistently Liberal since well before the News Chronicle was absorbed into the Daily Mail in 1960.

I never quite understood why the Lib Dems, who not very long ago had six Cabinet Ministers, did not set up a national newspaper, or buy one, such as the Express and Star titles, which Trinity Mirror, as it then was, has just bought because no one else even bid for them. The same goes for someone like Arron Banks. But instead, over those titles go, onto one of the most reliable pillars of the Old Labour Right.

Speaking of which, more or less, David Sainsbury could have created or acquired a middle-market tabloid for David Owen's "Continuing" SDP, and distributed it preferentially through his supermarkets. Yet he never did, even though that could just about have delivered a hung Parliament in 1992.

But if print newspapers are dead, then the political positions that they adopt from beyond the grave seem to be considered enormously important by the supposedly all-conquering websites. Watch this space.

2 comments:

  1. The Telegraph and Spectator) are also pro Brexit (the Spectator was even anti Common Market) and there’s no chance of the Sun changing it’s stance.

    Leave voters will just read the Telegraph.

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    Replies
    1. You clearly haven't been reading it for a while. Or, like of its remaining readers (so to speak), you just don't care. It went Blue Blairite some time ago, and it is doing a very good job of softening up its constituency for just never quite leaving the EU.

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