The English Press: Into the Future
‘People may become too lazy to read and news will be laid on to house or office, just as gas and water are now. The occupiers will listen to an account of the news of the day, read to them by much improved phonographs while sitting in the garden.’
Robert Donald, editor of the Daily Chronicle and Lloyd’s Weekly News, was forward-looking when addressing the Institute of Journalists in 1913 on the future of wireless (radio) news. Yet, alongside longstanding reports of the demise of the press, reports that have markedly gathered pace over the last decade, newspapers continue to have influence, or to be used as if they do. In 2009, after the Sun switched its allegiance to the Conservatives, Gordon Brown, the Labour Prime Minister, called Rupert Murdoch and, according to the latter, declared war on the company, a charge Brown denied. Moreover, senior political or ex-political figures were willing to write for the press, as in the Evening Standard on 3 March 2016 when Nick Clegg wrote at length on the editorial page about the need for more progress in tackling mental health issues. They could also be eager to be interviewed, as when Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, gave a lengthy interview to the Evening Standard on 21 September 2018 which provided the basis for an editorial presenting her as a contender to be the next Prime Minister.
The government also briefed senior newspaper figures on the evening of 5 July 2018, the day before an apparently vital Cabinet meeting on Brexit, Tony Gallagher, editor of the Sun, was seen heading into No 10. His counterpart, Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail, who had declared that Brexit was in the DNA of the paper and its readers, had had dinner there with Theresa May, the Prime Minister, the previous evening. In November 2017, she had attended a banquet to celebrate 25 years of Dacre as editor.
The results of the Cabinet meeting, in turn, were overturned, due to a political rift within the Conservative Party in which the dissidents drew strongly on the strong and continuing support of the Daily Telegraph which was willing to use charges of treason to attack ministers whom it thought insufficiently firm over Brexit. The paper was unremittingly hostile to the Prime Minister, suggesting in its cartoon on 30 August 2018, with reference to the violent dispute between British and French scallop fishermen in the English Channel, that she lacked the Nelson touch. This criticism looked back to the longstanding problem that Conservative modernisers found in winning press support, but also served to raise the stock of Boris Johnson in which the Daily Telegraph had heavily invested.
Dacre’s replacement as editor also became a news item focused on the question of whether his successor, Geordie Greig, would be so strongly for Brexit. As editor of the Mail on Sunday, Greig had taken a REMAIN stance in 2016. The Observer reported on 16 September 2018 ‘The Mail leopard has changed its spots on Brexit’.
In July 2018, the principal news item during President Donald Trump’s brief visit to Britain arose from his interview with the Sun, and his subsequent claim that he had been misreported in what he declared was ‘fake news’. The Sun denied this and had a recording to prove their point. Theresa May, however, brushed the episode off as a characteristic piece of press coverage, which offered a classic instance of guilt by association. Trump’s choice of the Sun was instructive as a reading of the British press and of populism in British politics, and as a consequence of Murdoch’s media interest in the United States.
The idea that the press provided ‘fake news’ robbed it of its distinctiveness. Moreover, an EU report indicated that the UK population had a particularly low level of trust in its newspapers, a process encouraged by, but not due to, the bad publicity linked to the Leveson Inquiry. This approach extended into the field of journalism. In the Harry Potter books, Rita Skeeter offered the example of a fictional journalist, a reporter for the Daily Prophet, who lacked scruples, is nasty, and appeared shifty.
Separately, the Leveson Inquiry reflected the challenges posed to the press by the assertiveness of the judiciary and of an interventionist concept of the law. Ironically, the figure of the over-mighty judge was deplored after 1688-9 as an aspect of the Stuart legacy. There were also issues about trust in advertisements. In 2018, the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph carried a notice that, while they took ‘reasonable steps to check our advertisers are bona fide, readers should carry out their own checks before entering into any contract or agreement’.
Criticism, however, did not really affect the tone of the press. Thus, the Times ended its leader on 12 May 2017 in a way that would have been familiar a century earlier: ‘Britain has a time-honoured role as a defender of world peace. This is no time to relinquish that role, but the prime minister must insist on more realism as to how it will be funded’. The Times could still offer measured and realistic leaders, as on 3 October 2016 on Brexit. So also with informed essays, as in other newspapers. For example, in City A.M. on 21 August 2018, Ryan Bourne provided a carefully considered piece on the mistake of assuming that Germany was an appropriate economic model. The principal problem therein was not the tone of newspapers, but rather that the flow of politics was, by then, very different in its character.
Possible scenarios for the press are advanced, in part, by different timetables. Alongside longer-range discussion, both of the impact of technological development and of changes in consumption, came more specific issues, and this will continue to be the case. Again, these specific issues were partly to do with technological development, but there was also the problems posed by the likely end to the historically long run of low interest rates, and the related consequences for cash-flow, return on capital ratios, and profitability. There were also questions about how changes would affect both particular titles and models of press activity at the international, national, and local levels. Given the significance of international investment in the English press, by Canadian, Australian and Russian entrepreneurs after the Second World War, there was also the issue of the likely impact of greater regulation, both of the press and of capital flows, under a Labour government. Such regulation might well affect investment that would otherwise be encouraged by the fall of sterling that such a government was likely to bring. The sensitivity to foreign intervention in national politics that was seen in the mid-2010s might well spread from the ownership of digital to those of print formats. The Guardian, in turn, declared in its appeal for funds ‘our journalism is free from the influence of billionaire owners or politicians. No one edits our editor. No one steers our opinion’.
At the back of everything came the bigger questions as to whether, why and with what consequences print media as a whole was in decline, and also concerning the future distinctiveness of newspapers. In February 2018, the government announced a review into the future of the newspaper industry. In particular, it warned that the closure of regional papers was fueling the rise of ‘fake news’ and was ‘dangerous for democracy’. From 2005 till then, over 200 local newspapers had closed in the United Kingdom, while the number of regional journalists had halved to about 6,500. Similar processes were seen elsewhere, notably in the United States. The change in England was part of a shift away from the local and the regional that was also seen in football teams, retail outlets, banks and services.
Moreover, there were claims of a ‘democracy deficit’ in towns without local newspapers, not least because of more limited community contention. So also with questions of the scrutiny of local officials and politicians. With the demise of local newspapers, there appeared to be far fewer means of calling power to account, a development that clashed with attempts in other spheres to develop local democracy, such as the election of Crime Commissioners. For example, in 2009, the Port Talbot Guardian closed after 85 years, and by 2013 all the planning stories, carried locally by television and radio, were from Council press releases. This was important to a community experiencing massive socio-economic change. In Exeter, the Express and Echo went from being a daily to a biweekly. In Kensington, the local newspaper became a freesheet written by a single person in Dorset. Linked to the latter process, newspapers ceased to have offices on urban high streets.
In contrast, the Bristol Post, a daily, maintained a campaigning stance and local coverage. Thus, on 12 August 2015, the newspaper focused on a ‘six-hour wait before dying of meningitis’, both the leading news item and the topic of the editorial. The issue was one of local news and local concern. The Sheffield Telegraph provided good coverage in 2018 of the controversy about the city council removing many trees. The Bristol Post drew on reader contributions, as in the ‘Your Say’ section. So also with newspapers, such as the Western Morning Post, which very actively encouraged reader contributions by 2018. In ‘The Khan Audit’ from 3 to 7 September 2018, the Evening Standard produced a series of pieces examining the record of the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, with, for example, on 6 September, a piece on air pollution. Newspapers had tried to adapt by becoming tabloids, as the Reading Chronicle did in 2009.
As with other newspapers, the Bristol Post provided an opportunity to query content: ‘Our policy is to provide a news and information service that is fair, balanced and accurate. We adhere to the Independent Press Standards Organisation’s code of practice. Our policy is to correct mistakes and apologise where appropriate. If you are unhappy about any matter concerning this newspaper, write to Mike Norton, Editor, The Bristol Post’, whose address was provided.
In 2018, Peter Luff, a former Worcestershire MP, observed:
‘Local papers still have a role, but it is diminishing fast, overtaken by local blogs and other social media. The challenge now is how to communicate with local voters… Nowadays people know the very local (their village, street etc) and have some awareness of their wider region, but often don’t know what is going on in the neighbouring town. We have become simultaneously better informed about the world and less well-informed about our near communities.’
The current wisdom from party political experts is that local papers have little impact on voters. Fewer people read them, and young people probably hardly at all. Content is increasingly poor for two reasons. First, much of it is cut and pasted from indifferent web versions such as www.devonlive.com and, secondly, there is a lack of journalists. Some attempts have been made to redress this by funding reporters, under the national Local Democracy Scheme established in 2017. This is designed to produce a network of journalists funded by the Licence Fee, working for the entire local news sector in the UK and following, in their shared data and local television and radio material, a single set of standards. The intention was to produce 150 ‘impartial reporters out there working for the common good’. As of 2017, the distribution of reporters funded accordingly came to 144 for Britain, with 63 for Trinity Mirror, 37 for Newsquest, 30.5 for Johnston Press, 4 for DC Thomson, 2 for KM Media Group, 2 for Stonebow/Media (the Lincolnshire Reporter), 2 for Archant Community Media, 1 for Citizen News and Media (the Hackney Citizen), and 1 for the London Evening Standard. It is unclear how well this system is working.
Many of the stories in local papers are only of interest to people affected by them. The Hampshire Chronicle, an impressive Newsquest-owned weekly, provided not only details on local planning issues, but also ‘Your Say,’ which on 13 September 2018 was on banning energy drinks for under-16 year olds, a campaign pressed by the Winchester MP. The same issue provided an article and editorial on the need to campaign that children receive dental care (which is free). Reader contributions are sought, as in ‘Got a Sports Story? Write to Chronicle Sport…’.
Most of this information in these newspapers, however, can be obtained elsewhere, through the internet and local radio, with the range of opinion offered by the former being endless. Local papers typically carry ‘What’s On’ sections, with a mix of paid-for and free events information. The old ‘social’ pages of photographs of locals squeezed into suits or frocks drinking with fixed smiles are now provided by illustrated magazines, such as Exeter Living, that are available free and funded by advertising. That denies the newspapers a self-regarding readership.
Company results created a regular and repeated sense of crisis. This was compounded because it was the case for all types of newspaper. The popular national tabloids were especially hard hit in the late 2010s, and this was a particular problem because they were more dependent on circulation than ‘quality newspapers’ that had greater advertising revenue. In the first half of 2018, the overall UK national tabloid newspaper market declined by 9.3%. That was also the fall for the Daily Express, while the circulation of the Sunday People fell by 16.4%, the Sunday Mirror by 14.8%, the Daily Mirror by 13.9%, the Daily Star by 12.1%, the Star by 9.2% and the Sunday Express by 8.3%. As a result, there was a half-year pre-tax loss of £113.5 million for Reach, formerly Trinity Mirror, which faced particular problems for its regional titles. These were nationwide and included the Birmingham Mail, the Bristol Post, the Express and Echo [Exeter], the Liverpool Echo, the Manchester Evening News and the Western Morning News. Indeed, in 2018, Reach wrote down the value of its local papers by £150 million because of a ‘more challenging outlook for our regional businesses’. That write-down entailed a compromising of the results of past investment. In effect, this process looked back to the late-Victorian period, when the origins of this investment were made. Large-scale capitalism replaced the smaller-scale version that had been important hitherto, albeit with a continuation into the period of the larger scale, and this replacement was linked to a significant restructuring. However, the earlier context was that of substantial growth.
Reach’s results were more serious because it was the country’s biggest news publisher as a result, in February 2018 of taking over, for £122 million, the Northern and Shell group, including the Express and Star titles. That group had been chaired by Richard Desmond. This was a good price for the titles. Whereas Reach’s group revenue in the six months to 1 July 2018 rose by 10.6% to £353.8 million, reflecting this acquisition, it fell by 7.2% on a like-for-like basis. Whereas, the first-night print of the Daily Star in November 1978, 1,400,000 copies, had sold out, by November 2017 the circulation was down to 402,000. At the same time, the group opened a digital title in Leeds where it has no print titles. It requires growth in digital revenues to offset the continued decline from its print products, and that is a particular problem for popular tabloids. A 9.3% decline in print revenue outweighed a 6.6% increase in digital publishing revenue. Print advertising revenue dropped by 16.6% on a like-by-like basis, despite a rise in national advertisements by bookmakers during the 2018 World Cup, as well as the strength in supermarket advertising that reflected bitter competition in that sector. The advertising revenue was hit hard by a fall in classified advertising in regional titles, especially in recruitment and property. The Reach group also increased, to £70.5 million, its provision for settling civil claims after the phone-hacking scandal. More positively, there were cost savings of £9 million and, stripping out the costs, underlying profit rose by 5.5%. Yet, rising newsprint costs and the weaker outlook for the regional titles ensured that, in the first seven months of 2018, shares in Reach fell by 14.25%. Furthermore, ‘cost savings’, which cut both current salaries and (crucially) future pensions, meant fewer jobs.
These poor results were not unique. Johnston Press, whose group includes the i, the Yorkshire Post, and the Scotsman, produced a half-year report for the first half of 2018 that, although there was a strong performance from the i, there was a broader decline in revenues. Adjusted advertising revenues from continuing operations fell by 15%, with revenue from classified advertising showing a decline of 28.5% compared to the same period in 2017. This was consistent with pressures across the industry as a whole, and notably for regional and local newspapers. Digital audiences grew to a record 27.3 million average users per month, but total digital advertising revenues fell by 7.4%. Algorithm and newsfeed changes by Google and Facebook contributed to this. Newspaper sales overall fell by 1.7%, but price rises broadly offset the impact of circulation declines. Total revenue at £93 million was down 10%, while adjusted net debt, which owed much to pension obligations, at 30 June 2018 was £203.2 million, compared to £195.9 million six months earlier. The operating profit was £7.4 million, up from £4.9 million. There was pressure for an equity-for-debt exchange which would hit existing shareholders.
The Johnston Press’s print newspapers were hit by the increase in newsprint costs. The issue of I of 15-16 September 2018, the weekend issue, explained the increase in its cost of £1, or 47p for subscribers (compared to the Monday to Friday edition continuing at 60p), because the cost of new materials, notably newsprint, rose by 8% in January and a further 8% in July.
As general elements, rising digital subscriptions are not making up for the shortfall in the circulation of printed copies. Moreover, it is not proving possible to monetise interest in local news. The digital press itself has particular values. It is possible to allow for in-depth journalism and to maximise advertising revenue, without having to juggle space any more. However, that does not in itself bring profit. Although almost free to distribute, digital editions have added to production costs, as they are produced alongside the printed versions. With a change of editor and some investment, some newspapers, such as the Daily Telegraph, could bounce back. But it takes a curious beast who wants to invest in newspapers these days for financial as opposed to political reasons.
The newspaper industry is characterised by a high level of operational gearing in Britain, usually referred to as operating leverage in the United States, with profits being highly sensitive to a change in sales. Fixed costs – premises, equipment, staff, and distribution system – are high, the variable costs – newsprint – relatively low. This has been particularly the case because of the fall in the price of newsprint in recent years. As a result, if sales rise, the profits rise considerably. This, however, goes into reverse should sales drop, which is the recent situation, and notably so for local papers.
After Reach, the second largest publisher of regional and local newspapers is the Newsquest Media Group which has 165 newspapers and 40 magazines. In 2016, it reached 28 million people a month online and 6.5 million readers a week in print. Newsquest is the product of investment in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was founded in 1995 as a £210 million management buy-out of the Reed Regional Newspapers group financed by an American private equity partnership. After that it expanded, notably by buying the Westminster Press local newspapers group in 1996. In 1999, the American Gannett media group bought the company, and crucially its debt, for £922 million, and it subsequently expanded Newsquest’s holdings, especially with the Southampton-based News Communications and Media’s newspapers in 2000. Such a pattern of investment has not been seen in the 2010s.
The circulation of the press, both individual and total, had fallen significantly. Whereas, in 1967, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express had a combined sale of over eight million, today it is under a million, and the population meanwhile has grown substantially. Four million in 1949, the circulation of the Daily Express fell to less than three million in 1975 and to less than two million in 1984 and in November 2017 was only 365,000. The Daily Mail, the supposed voice of ‘middle England’, or at least a dyspepsic and frightened image of same, in June 2018 had daily sales of 1.3 million. Moreover, many references to the importance of the press were backward looking, as when Sajid Javid, who became Home Secretary in 2018, declared that, growing up in a rough part of Bristol, he had developed an early interest in capitalism thanks to reading the Financial Times in the local library.
Age structures were a key element in the future of the press, with social media appealing more to the young, while print newspapers did so for their older counterparts, and both in news and advertisements. In 2017, the percentage of the Daily Mail’s readers over 55 was 63. For the Daily Express it was 64. This contrast in ageing has been linked to a crisis, not only of circulation, but also of content and, even more, editorial tone. The differences in views over Brexit may be linked to this element.
Demise, however, was not the sole issue. There were those also posed by the change of character, as some newspapers become essentially free advertising periodicals, in the sense that they were free to readers and financed by advertising. That was the case with the established titles, such as the Evening Standard, and with many new local periodicals, such as Metro and City A.M. in London. City A.M. could provide carefully considered editorials on political matters, as, on 7 September 2018, with a discussion of Boris Johnson’s political options. Metro is far less absorbed with politics and tends to go for alarmist headlines, as with the issue of 29 August 2018 which led with the head of the Police Federation in London describing attacks on the police as part of a ‘breakdown of society’.
Many advertising periodicals lacked even this level of engagement. Published in Coventry as part of a chain, the West Country Advertiser, in its undated issue 96 [available 7 September 2018], advertised holiday homes over several pages, as well as care homes, home improvements, cafés, ‘a hidden Cornish gem’, fishing on the Tay, pet care, and wedding preparations, with no news provided, unlike these London titles. The following issues began with an item on the Wells Beer Festival that in large part was an advertisement.
Advertisements for houses were a major source of revenue and encouraged news sections accordingly, as in Metro where, in 2018, they were in association with Halifax Home Insurance. Sections included ‘The House Doctors’ in which ‘The Two Lovely, Gays … solve your design dilemmas’. The tone can be gauged by some of the replies, as on 21 August 2018: ‘This week’s obsession is clearly stains! Haha. But it is all good because that is real life.’ The page ended with readers being encouraged to follow them on Instagram for more tips and ideas. The problems affecting the housing market in 2018 – a decline in prices in some areas, notably London, which discouraged owners from selling, and, linked to this, a fall in the volume of sales – badly hit advertising. Housing remains important. Thus, the Reading Chronicle publishes a Property Chronicle twice-weekly. Yet, advertising revenue was hit by internet sites, as was that from professional and managerial jobs. This has changed and constrained the financial model under which newspapers have to operate.
Politics can provide advertisements. In the run-up to the 2017 general election, the Conservative Party paid for four-sided wraparounds using the local paper’s masthead and with a full front page showing a picture of Theresa May. They did this in eight cities, including Exeter, and it meant that her photo sat on newsstands for a whole week. There were complaints that this blurred the lines between advertising and editorial. In Exeter, ‘I and others protested to the editor that this blurred the lines between advertising and editorial and his response was broadly: money talks.’
At the same time, local newspapers dependent on advertisements could engage with news. Gillingham and Shaftesbury News, a free monthly newspaper with 15,000 copies distributed monthly, including free to more than 9,500 homes, as well as being provided free at named shops and post offices, carried on the front page of its September 2018 issue, ‘North Dorset leads calls to take in child refugees’. Whether free or paid for, local newspapers encouraged free material, as with the readiness to take photographs in the Express and Echo of 13 September 2018, an issue that included a column by the local MP, Ben Bradshaw, predicting another referendum.
To refer, more generally, to emasculation or evisceration does not help other than in a rhetorical sense, for such emotive language underplays the continued varying and shifting character of the press. Separately, newspapers are not to blame if other formats, that have profited in market share from their relative decline, fail to match the same public purpose. It is certainly the case that local television in Britain has been unable, and/or unwilling, to match the onetime reporting energy and standards of local newspapers.
Yet to assume that the past should be the model for behaviour, and indeed standards of judgment, is of only limited validity. In particular, the major combination of technological innovations, entrepreneurial activity, and the impact of social change on reader preferences, makes it less likely that the past is a reasonable model. The democratisation of opinion-forming, potentially offered by social media platforms, as well as the interaction of providers and an essentially self-organising phenomenon, can make the press appear redundant.
On the other hand, clearly there are legacy issues, in that established titles command a value, for both sales and advertising, and this value reflects a continuity in product, certainly in terms of market approach and reader response. Format, content and style are all aspects of this equation. Equally, problems are involved in using modern judgments as the basis for establishing models of newspapers behaviour in the past. That has always been true, but is particularly the case now.
At the same time, allowing for significant change now, so that the current character of newspapers is far from static, should not lead to an underplaying of the degree to which that has always been the case. Indeed, the history of the English press has been one of frequent change, notably so from the 1850s. There may well have been decades earlier where innovation was limited, for example the 1820s and (differently) 1830s, but that was not even an accurate account of the period prior to 1850 as a whole. Since then, this is certainly not the case. Given this situation, it is rather surprising to see change in the newspaper world the cause of sometimes almost automatic complaint today. Linked to this, but also separate, there are issues of great concern about the media and society, but that is not new.
In practice, there are quantifiable indices of change that can indeed encourage marked disquiet, notably number of titles, which is an index of the diversity of views, and the number of journalists, which is significant due to the maintenance of talent. However, if the internet is taken into account, both are present in great numbers, although it is very difficult to return the payment that may produce a revenue-stream able to support reporting. This situation is exacerbated by free online BBC news services funded by the license fee. When an editorial in the Times on 13 May 2016 declared ‘The BBC is a broadcaster, not a publisher’, it was implying a contrast that was no longer clearly applicable. More instructive on the international stage was the British habit of regarding the public broadcaster as a guarantor of freedom, an approach that underrated the issues posed by its dominant position. The BBC benefited from an elision that made it appear similar to the NHS. The Leveson Inquiry and the debates surrounding it led to research into the ethics of the press, the training of journalists, and the selection of news. Research suggested that most newspaper news came from information sheets sent to the press and that less than 20% of content was based upon any form of critical investigative journalism.
Yet, the latter was important in exposing scandals, such as those over MPs’ expenses, or the Indian cricket-match fixing that the News of the World reported before it was closed. Moreover, newspapers were ready to report what the BBC would not touch, for example, in 1995, the information on Michael Foot having been a Soviet ‘agent of influence’. Foot won damages from the Sunday Times apparently by not telling the truth.
In certain respects, the run-down in newspaper reporting is a return to the ‘scissors-and-paste’ content of many early papers, albeit in a different context and against a very contrasting background. If many provincial papers today are weeklies, that was also true of the eighteenth century. Rather than being a sign of failure, it was a response to the nature of market opportunities. So also with the prevalence of magazine-type articles, and the rise in celebrity news values. On 4 March 2011, Richard Peppiatt, published in the Guardian his resignation letter from the Daily Star: ‘On the awe-inspiring day millions took to the streets of Egypt to demand freedom, your paper splashed on “Jordan … the movie.”’
Television was, in effect, advertised by the press, both with reviews and schedules, and with discussion of prominent programmes such as The Great British Bake Off and Strictly Come Dancing, as news. For these, newspapers covered contestants and controversies. They also drew more directly on them, as with the Daily Telegraph of 25 August 2018 when Bole’s cartoon, under the title ‘Bake Off Returns’ commented on different attitudes to Brexit. In 2018, there were reports about criticism of Love Island for reinforcing misconceptions about firefighters.
Radio and the press had a symbiotic relationship, with the morning radio (and television) programmes focusing on items covered in the press. Politicians had to heed both. Thus, Denis Healey, describing ‘a typical working day,’ listened to the Today programme on the radio before breakfast and after it ‘red, marked and cut the newspapers’. In 2018, Laura Freeman, a journalist and novelist, referred to the changes in being a public author from that, in 1930 – of ‘Letters to the Times’ and also answering journalists who asked ‘for the information of newspaper readers whether they believe in God or what they eat for breakfast’; to that of today, which included spending much time on social media plus ‘to parse the papers on Sky News and be up in the dark for Today’. By 2018, the number and prominence of female journalists had risen greatly.
As with the relationship between traditional broadcasters and streaming services, synergies were discerned between newspapers and new technology, and not only with newspaper websites. However, the relationship was unstable. Thus, in January 2018, Facebook downgraded the position of news stories in users’ news feeds and prioritised posts from friends and relatives. This hit news outlets. Facebook, however, introduced algorithms that are supposed to keep articles from reliable news sources, prominent. The nature of digital campaigning in the mid-2010s suggested a crisis that had arrived. In July 2018, the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee of the House of Commons, a cross-party body, claimed: ‘We are facing nothing less than a crisis in our democracy.’ Social media advertising was the key issue, as it enabled the micro-targeting of voters. This process, it was claimed, could be manipulated to mislead them, and there was considerable basis for the allegation. The House of Commons’ report was in line with arguments in the Observer earlier in the year and led that paper, in its leader on 29 July 2018, to call for the urgent implementation of the Committee’s recommendations, including the regulation of political spending on social media. While desirable, it is less clear that such a response would work.
Meanwhile, on 23 August 2018, in the Alternative MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival, Jeremy Corbyn, onetime reporter for the still active Newport and Market Drayton Advertiser and later columnist for the Morning Star, backed ‘enforced shareholder dilution’. This would entail equity and seats on boards handed to staff and readers, so as to end the ‘stranglehold of elite power and billionaire domination over large parts of our media’. Corbyn advocated the election of editors by journalists to make them accountable to their staff.
Discussion of the press increased in late 2018 as a result of a prominent BBC1 series, Press, that juxtaposed the Post, a leading right-wing tabloid clearly modelled on the Sun, and the Herald, a left-inclining broadsheet supported by a charitable trust, closest to the Guardian. Interviews linked to the series noted the pessimistic response of journalists to current developments, and also provided some perceptive accounts of newspapers. Thus, Mike Bartlett, the writer, noted of a research visit to the Sun: ‘These people are not brash or stupid. They know exactly what they’re aiming at, what their audience want, and they’re just striking a different balance between entertainment and content. And they’re very proud of that.’
