Page 78 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

THE POLITICAL MEDIA

are expected to express them. In a pluralist democracy, ideally, those
opinions should reflect the structure of partisanship in the society as
a whole, serving diversity and promoting rational debate, in the
public interest, between distinct viewpoints. Historically, of course,
the great majority of British newspapers have supported one party
– the Conservatives, a pattern of bias which peaked in the early
1990s. Table 4.1 shows the party political affiliations of each
national newspaper at the 1992 general election. Of twenty daily
and Sunday titles, six supported the Labour Party, two declined
to declare a preference, and twelve supported the Conservatives.
The Tory-supporting press accounted for 70 per cent of national
newspaper circulation in total, as compared to Labour’s 27 per
cent. This pro-Conservative bias, consistent with the pattern of
press partisanship throughout the twentieth century, was in sharp
contrast both to the spread of votes in the election (the Tories took
41 per cent of the total votes, compared to Labour’s 37 per cent and
the Liberal Democrats’ 20 per cent) and, in some cases, such as that
of the Daily Star, to the declared party preferences of the readers. 3
Thus the Star, whose readers are predominantly Labour supporters,
took an aggressively anti-Labour editorial stance. For this reason,
the press have been viewed by many as instruments of ideological
indoctrination, in the service of the wealthiest and most powerful
of Britain’s political parties. Chinks in the armour, such as the
Financial Times’ tentative endorsement of the Labour Party in
1992, were viewed as the exceptions which proved the rule. Events
since 1992 have challenged that perception, however. For reasons
which I discuss in more detail elsewhere (McNair, 2000), the ‘Tory
press’, as it was once quite justifiably described, began to shift
its editorial allegiances after 1994. Sleaze (moral and political –
the cash-for-questions scandal mainly concerned Tory MPs)
surrounding the governing party; the emergence of a remodelled
Labour Party with the election of Tony Blair as leader in 1994; and
Labour’s sustained courting of the press in the run-up to the 1997
poll, all contributed to a structure of editorial bias which was
almost the exact reverse of that prevailing in 1992 (see Table 4.2).
This time, only seven daily and Sunday titles urged their readers to
vote for the Conservatives, while eleven backed Labour. The Sun
and the Star in particular, both traditionally Tory ‘cheerleaders’,
came out for Labour.
That the overwhelming majority of the British press have
consistently supported the party of big business is not seriously in
dispute. What has changed since 1992 is the readiness of the still

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