One of the tropes of the conversation about the media is that because the press is all right wing then the proper lefty arguments never get an airing. Murdoch and the Mail blindside everyone to the joys of socialism sort of stuff.
However, this does rely on the idea that newspapers attempt to bring their audience around to their way of thinking. What if, in contrast, newspapers reflect, amplify perhaps, the already extant prejudices of their readership? That is, that they’re endeavouring to give people what they want, not to change them?
The Guardian is running a series explaining the various papers topeople and certainly, the Professor of Journalism who is writing it, Peter Cole, seems to take the latter view:
They have always invested heavily in journalism and have understood their audience and its prejudices.The two Mail titles, particularly the Daily, have always reflected
those prejudices rather than the contemporary world, eschewing the
prevailing social, cultural and political values on the basis that
there are many people, Mail readers, who do so too.
Those Mail
views can be characterised thus: for Britain and against Europe;
against welfare (and what it describes as welfare scroungers) and for
standing on your own feet; more concerned with punishment than the
causes of crime; against public ownership and for the private sector;
against liberal values and for traditional values, particularly
marriage and family life. It puts achievement above equality of
opportunity and self-reliance above dependence.
If this is true (and there’s academic research that seems to show the same) then the "right wingness" works the other way around to what is commonly claimed. Rather than the papers making people right wing, the papers are right wing because the people are.
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