Was it ‘The Sun wot won it’ in 2015?

 

Ahead of last May’s ‘too close to call’ election it seems the right-wing press pulled out all the stops in an attempt to prevent a Labour government (or worse a Labour-SNP coalition) from forming. So can the Conservatives’ unexpected majority be attributed to the press?

The Sun famously claimed in 1992 that it was them ‘wot won it’ for John Major and research conducted by the Media Standards Trust found that shockingly in 2015 95% of the leader columns were judged anti-Labour compared to just 79% in 1992. The sun was one of the 57.5% of UK daily newspapers who backed the Tories in 2015, with just 11.7% supporting Labour. 

Headlines from the Sun claimed Miliband would make a ‘pigs ear’ of our economy, the Telegraph front page depicted a ‘nightmare on downing street’ and the Daily Mail appealed for readers not to ‘destroy our very nation.’ So was it no surprise that the Tories came out on top?

Many would argue no. Other factors including the surge of nationalism in Scotland, the failure of Labour to convince voters they could manage the economy and Miliband’s struggle to connect with voters all contributed to Labour’s worst performance in almost 3 decades.

Alastair Campbell  commented: “Is the press as powerful as once it was? The answer is no. Is social media more important? The answer is yes. But are either the deciding factors? No.”

However, as Dr Stephen Cushion, Senior Lecturer at the Cardiff University School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, who conducted an analysis of the campaign, said: “With many undecided voters ahead of election day, it could be that the character assassination of Ed Miliband’s leadership in the days prior to the election could have influenced people intending to vote Labour.” He also pointed to the “general perception, gained over five years from a variety of media that Ed Miliband did not convince as a potential Prime Minister and lacked a credible economic plan” as a possible factor influencing voters.

It concerns me that as Britain’s most read newspapers, these displays of partisanship could be having a real affect on the outcome of our supposedly democratic elections. I was shocked to discover that since 1979 the Sun has urged its readers to support every election winner.

 

But what concerns me most is the motivation behind these displays of partisanship. When Rupert Murdoch personally instructed The Sun to turn up the heat against Ed Miliband was he doing it because he genuinely believed the conservatives were the party most capable of safeguarding the economic and social security of our nation? Maybe. But more likely he was motivated by the fact that Labour was the only major party which included in its manifesto a promise to protect media plurality and implement the Leveson Inquiry’s recommendations for independent press regulation.  Labour’s promise to end the Nom-Dom status of people such as Lord Rothermere, the chairman and main shareholder of the Daily Mail, could also have inspired their campaign against him.

Not only, therefore, are our elections being influenced by a one-sided media, but it is a one-sided media motivated by their own agenda, not the interests of the public. I fear that the influence of such campaigns might prevent issues such as press regulation being included in the manifestos of the major parties for fear the resulting media backlash.

So was it ‘The Sun wot won it’ in 2015? Probably not. The electorate are influenced by more than flashy headlines and whether their potential leaders look good eating bacon sandwiches, but that’s not the point. The point is that a small group of influential people are influencing the public perception of politicians and their policies, shaping the agenda and potentially affecting the outcome of our elections.