Considering the Sun’s shine

One of the biggest media stories of the week has undoubtedly been the Sun’s withdrawal of its support from the Labour party.

“Labour’s lost it” was Wednesday’s headline, which generated an incredible amount of coverage, and not just about the paper’s political swing. Whether one media outlet – and, more specifically, a newspaper – has sufficient clout as to be able to change the course of politics became a central facet of the debate.

Alistair Campbell played down the incident on his blog on Wednesday, citing the extent to which the media marketplace has changed since 1997, when the Sun backed Blair. No longer do papers have such an impact, he argued, because we have a much more diverse choice of media from which to get our news and information that will go on to form our opinions.

And, as we watch papers’ readership figures falling, almost in front of our eyes, in some cases, surely he has a point? The Sun, once the proud owner of more than 10million daily readers now hovers around 8million (still not a figure to be sniffed at); the daily readership figure of the Independent is a very modest 722,000.

However, were newspapers ever able to dramatically sway the public – and their voting intentions of their readers – as much as one might be led to believe from this week’s coverage?

However much we like to believe otherwise, newspapers’ main raison d’être isn’t to inform, educate or entertain their readers: it’s to make money. They are, first and foremost, commercial entities, with owners and shareholders to please. Why else would there be the ongoing deliberations about free vs. paid-for online content? As such, newspapers are less likely to influence the opinions of their readers than they are to follow them. The Sun’s blow to Labour will only have come after the readers had already begun to drift away from the party.

That being said, it can’t be argued that the change in direction by the Sun is insignificant. Whilst the paper may not have the influence it appears at first glance, the move isn’t unimportant.

The decision has presumably come from higher up than the back bench at the Sun. If that’s the case, all the titles within the News International stable lending their support to, or withdrawing it from, any political party will have an effect. An emphatic piece of bad press is never desirable, whatever the brand, from political parties to pet food. But whilst one day of large headlines about withdrawn support may make unpleasant reading, what’s arguably more damaging is a drip-feed of gentler but consistently negative press.

It might be true that we now have myriad places from which to consume our news. But if the Sun, the Times and News of the World all spend the next eight months collaboratively picking holes in the Labour party’s election campaign, the hyperbole about this week’s headlines might eventually seem to have been prophetic.

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