What the Papers Say

Do Readers believe what the Editors want them to?

Ever since Burke characterised the Press as a Fourth Estate more important than the Three Estates in Parliament, the power of the Press, and especially its political power, has been debated. From the Zinoviev Letter of 1924 to the Sun Wot Won It in 1992, newspapers have been accused of having swung the results of elections - and they have not always repudiated the allegations. But does the Press today really have the power to swing the public mood? How closely do the views of readers coincide with the editorial lines pushed by their newspapers? And is it possible to tell whether such coincidence, when it occurs, is because the papers have influence over their readers or simply that members of the public tend to prefer to read the newspapers with which they find themselves most in agreement?

To understand the potential power of the Press, we must first be aware of the readership figures which measure the reach of their influence. As many as 35% of the public read no national daily title regularly, and 43% no Sunday title. Of those who do read regularly, a small number of titles are very dominant: on weekdays, more read the Sun than all of the broadsheets combined, and on Sundays the same is the case for the News of the World. The overlap between these two groups is small - only 3% read both a popular and a quality daily regularly, and a similar figure read both on Sundays. Over the last few years, readership of the tabloids has declined slightly, although the broadsheets have just about held their own (achieved especially by the increased readership of The Times on the back of a period of price-cutting).

It is also possible to question how much attention readers pay to coverage of politics or public affairs in their newspapers. A 1996 MORI study for the City University Graduate School of Journalism asked a representative sample of the British public what they thought they were "very interested" in reading in the national daily newspapers. Overall, the category (from a list of 59) selected by most respondents was "TV and radio listings" (42%). However, there were very distinct gender differences - the single most popular category among men was football reporting (50% of men but only 12% of women), while women were more likely to be interested in medical/health news, food & recipes and the letters page. But reporting of parliamentary news, analysis of current affairs and (sadly) opinion polls scored poorly with both men and women.

In general terms, it is true that the party political inclinations of readers tend to match those of their newspapers - the Tory papers have the highest Tory support, and the consistently Labour papers the highest support for Labour. The Sun occupies a median position.

160	Con	Lab	LDem	Other	C lead
160	%	%	%	%	%
Daily Telegraph	66	19	13	2	+47
Daily Mail	53	31	13	3	+22
Daily Express	45	34	17	4	+11
The Times	39	39	16	6	0
The Sun	29	54	11	6	-25
No daily paper	26	52	18	4	-26
Daily Star	18	66	12	4	-48
The Independent	15	58	24	3	-43
Daily Mirror	12	72	12	4	-60
The Guardian	9	71	14	6	-62
Daily Record	7	64	5	24	-57
160
Sunday Telegraph	64	23	11	2	+41
Mail on Sunday	51	32	13	4	+19
Sunday Express	47	32	18	3	+15
Sunday Times	38	37	18	7	+1
News of the World	27	56	10	7	-29
No Sunday paper	27	51	17	5	-24
Sunday People	21	68	9	2	-47
Sunday Post	18	54	9	19	-36
Sunday Mirror	16	70	11	3	-54
Sunday Mail	13	59	6	22	-46
The Observer	8	67	17	8	-59
Ind'p't on Sunday	7	56	32	5	-49

Source: MORI Aggregate Base: 11,664 GB adults aged 18+, April-June 2000

More striking are the differences in "don't knows" across the various titles, with the Sun and Daily Star standing out from the rest of the press, and very close in their profile to those who read no paper regularly; but while each of these groups has a slightly higher proportion of undecided readers than the other papers, the gap is more substantial on the number who say they will not vote at all: 19% of Daily Star readers, 15% of Sun readers and 17% of those reading no paper regularly, compared with 8% of Daily Telegraph, Guardian and Times readers and only 5% of Express readers.

If a paper is really able to influence its readership, however, it is perhaps more useful to consider changes over time rather than a snapshot of readers' opinions. We found some sharp swings in opinions between 1992 and 1997, and again between the 1997 election and our most recent figures, but there is no obvious explanation for the pattern of these changes in alterations of newspaper editorial stance. Perhaps the most obvious case study is the Express, a Conservative paper in 1997 but now owned by Lord Hollick and pursuing a Labour line. It is true that the Express readership swung to Labour between 1997 and 2000 more than did the adult population as a whole, but it also swung more to Labour than average between 1992 and 1997 and the slope of the divergence was greater in the earlier period than the later one. In comparative terms therefore, Express readers' move towards Labour decelerated after Rosie Boycott took over the editorship. Little sign here of editorial opinion being able to swing readers.

Comparison of readers' spontaneous choices of the most important issue facing the country suggest a similarly limited influence, even though this is a measure that is, overall, notoriously media-driven in the sense that the issues dominating the news agenda tend to be those selected by respondents. Our survey on 17-21 August was at the height of the controversy over the News of the World campaign on naming and shaming of paedophiles, yet crime/law and order issues were fractionally less likely to be named by News of the World readers than by Mail on Sunday readers. The most notable figure was the small prominence given to Europe as an issue by readers of the Daily Mirror (only 5% named it); but as those who read no title regularly - essentially our control sample - were as likely to name Europe (13%) as were Sun readers, the implication seems that, rather than concern about Europe being generated by a Euro-sceptic press as Keith Vaz recently suggested, this is simply caused by those less interested in Europe as an issue preferring to read a title (the Mirror) which gives stories about it less prominence. In fact the pro-anti split among Mirror readers on the Euro is very close to that of those who read no paper, and only fractionally less Eurosceptic than the public as a whole.

Q If there were a referendum tomorrow on whether Britain should be part of a single European currency, how would you vote?

TOTALS	For	Against	Don't know
160	%	%	%
Daily Star	20	73	7
Daily Mail	21	69	10
The Sun	18	68	14
Daily Telegraph	30	62	8
Daily Express	28	59	13
All adults	28	57	16
No daily paper	28	53	19
Daily Mirror	30	53	17
Daily Record	31	52	18
The Times	38	49	13
Financial Times	50	44	6
The Independent	55	37	8
The Guardian	66	24	10
160
Mail on Sunday	21	71	9
News of the World	20	67	13
People	18	66	16
Sunday Telegraph	30	63	8
Sunday Post	24	61	14
Sunday Express	26	60	14
All	28	57	16
Sunday Mirror	27	55	18
None of these	28	53	18
Sunday Mail	27	53	20
Sunday Times	40	50	10
Ind'p't on Sunday	52	33	15
Observer	65	27	8

Source: MORI Financial Services/Schroder Salomon Smith Barney Base: c. 8,000 British adults aged 16+, January-July 2000

However, by contrast, one case study shows clearer evidence of the influence a paper may have over its readers. The News of the World launched its "Naming and Shaming" campaign immediately after a MORI poll had found that 84% of the public agreed that "Convicted paedophiles should be publicly named". Four weeks later, after a wave of vigilante attacks and other civil disorder had been blamed on the newspaper's campaign, a repeat of the same question found that only 58% now agreed with the proposition. But a second question, on whether the News of the World had been right or wrong to pursue its campaign found sharply differing answers among News of the World readers and the rest of the public: 64% of regular readers of the paper thought it had been right and only 24% wrong; but of those who did not regularly read the News of the World, 60% thought it had been wrong and only 30% right. Was this readers simply feeling loyal to "their" newspaper, or the fact that the News of the World had had the chance to explain its case to its own readers, while the rest of the press was almost unanimous its condemnation? At any rate, being over such a short time-scale it is not a finding that can be attributed simply to readers to choosing to read a paper whose views they believe - a bare month before there had little distinction in views on the issue between readers of any papers.

In general, then, there seems little evidence at the moment that editors are influencing the views of their readers, although of course the argument is a purely negative one. But if it is true that the influence of the Press has been overstated, this should not necessarily be surprising. Poll after poll has shown in recent years that journalists are among the least trusted of professions (ranking with or often below politicians). At the 1997 election, the vast majority of regular readers were able to correctly characterise the party politics of their paper, giving them the potential to see through editorial spin and to discount it. (Even a few years ago, this was not always true). At the same time, the vast majority of the public believe the political reporting of the BBC and ITV to be neutral and fair. Perhaps as a result, by comparison with radio and television, the newspapers score very poorly on trust - much worse than in most of the rest of the EU, as demonstrated in the European Commission's Eurobarometer survey in 1999.

Q For each of the following institutions, please tell me whether you tend to trust it or tend not to trust it.

% "tend to trust"	All EU	UK
160	%	%
The press	49	24
Radio	66	66
Television	67	71

Source: Eurobarometer 51.0, March-April 1999

Baldwin's famous accusation (or, rather, Kipling's) was that that the press barons were seeking "power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages". Is the moral, perhaps, that when the harlot's charms begin to fade, so the power slips away?