That’s it all over then. The Sun has this morning thrown it’s weight behind the Labour Party saying that they’ll give them “one last chance”.
What, I suspect, has actually happened is that Murdoch’s election “experts” have decided that a Labour victory looks inevitable and therefore the paper is backing Blair so they can run more “It Was The Sun Wot Won It” headlines.
I was talking to a former editor of The Sun, who told me that Rupert Murdoch does *not* back a loser. That’s good enough for me. Anyway, what’s wrong with a paper that backs the party that more of its readership wants to win than any of the others? I don’t expect the Guardian to be coming out for the Tories any time soon!
Ian,I agree completely. My point (which could probably have been clearer) was that the Sun will sell this to its readers as “the Sun influences the course of the election because we’re so powerful” when actually all they are doing is holding off backing a party until they are pretty damn certain they know who is going to win and therefore who to back.The process is completely the reverse of the one that the editors would like their readers to believe.
More likely, Murdoch has worked out which party will work out best for him and is now mobilising Sun readers to vote for that party, regardless of whether it’s the best party for them. The lies they’ve told about this election are shocking.
I think that what’s particularly interesting is the research that’s been done in this area as to just how influential newspapers are (or aren’t) in affecting the way that people vote. The same former Sun editor thinks that at best no more that two percentage points of movement could be achieved by that newspaper despite its readership of around nine million people a day. I seem to remember that Max Hastings, the former editor of the Daily Telegraph, wrote in his book Editor that he also felt that newspapers didn’t really affect the way that people voted, or at least that they didn’t pay much attention to his leader columns!