EU referendum: How the papers played their games
The Daily Express’s relentless migrant front pages (picture credit: Liz Gerard @gameoldgirl)
From the pathetic to the predictable, and the surprising to the bizarre – this is how the UK press handled the run-up to Thursday’s EU referendum. By Raymond Snoddy.
Whatever happens in the EU referendum debate Rupert Murdoch is certain to emerge as a winner.
Three different bets have been placed by his papers and all bases have been covered including one that is so creative – not to say bizarre – that no-one managed to think of it in advance.
Three papers, three different stances.
Yet Murdoch divides people almost as much as Brexit itself so this phenomena will attract two incompatible explanations.
One is that Murdoch, the great newspaper puppet master who likes above all else to be a winner, has deliberately orchestrated three different stances which reflect the preferences of readers.
The other is that Murdoch has stepped aside and allowed his editorial teams freedom of choice to Brexit or not Brexit, perhaps in the certain knowledge that they will arrive at conclusions he would be happy with.
So no surprise that The Sun has come out enthusiastically for Brexit given that about 75 per cent of Sun readers want to leave and The Sun has run thousands of anti-EU stories over the years and has never been slow in splashing with anti-migrant stories.
Interestingly The Sun has been far less strident in Scotland and Northern Ireland where there are clear majorities in favour of Remain.
It was a little pathetic, even by Sun standards to reprise the “demon eyes” stunt of years ago: pure prejudice not argument.
This time of course you have to look into a carefully selected picture of the eyes of David Cameron rather than Tony Blair.
Never mind, as Danny Finkelstein argues in The Times, that it is those very Sun readers who would be hardest hit by the economic impact of leaving the EU in the Brexit recession that most economists forecast.
The decision of The Times to come out for Remain, after a long and nuanced review of the arguments, appears mildly surprising but is actually completely explicable.
Polls show that a significant majority of Times readers are in favour of Remain so the paper is not exactly striking out against its commercial interests. It has also been a receptacle for letters which turn into dramatic stories such as 51 FTSE 100 bosses and 13 British Nobel prize winners all backing Remain.
The Leave Vote cast by the Sunday Times is the strangest of all. The paper’s advice is to Vote Leave and then not Leave. Just hang on in there and not implement the formal Leave procedures.
Brilliant. You can have your cake and eat it and maybe if you hang around long enough, just maybe you might bore the EU into giving the UK a better deal despite instability and mayhem in the interim.
The one surprise of a rather predictable newspaper campaign came from the Mail on Sunday.
“For a safer, freer, more prosperous – and, yes, an even Greater Britain: why we urge you to VOTE REMAIN,” the Mail on Sunday said.
Again not such a great surprise because Mail on Sunday editor Geordie Grieg has been splashing with positive Remain stories for weeks, stories such as the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby – in complete contrast to the Daily Mail.
The final edition of the Daily Mail before voting day was a quintessential Mail effort – half the front page devoted to If you believe in Britain vote Leave and the rest to the “BBC’s Hollow Apology To Cliff.”
Again the Viscount Rothermere, whether for commercial reasons hedging his bets or out of principle, has given his editors the freedom to make up their own minds.
As for the rest, things were entirely predictable. Apart from The Sun and Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and Daily Express are for Brexit. And apart from The Times and Mail on Sunday, The Guardian, Financial Times and the Daily Mirror are all in the Remain camp.
Then there is the curious case of Metro. On Tuesday there was a strident cover – Take Back Control – Vote to Leave. Only after a double take do you notice the word “advertisement” barely visible to the naked eye.
Normal service was then resumed with a Remain vote in today’s edition. Nice one, take the advertising and then disagree with it.
The London Evening Standard, in tune with much of the capital, is in favour of Remain.
In the age of the internet and wall-to-wall broadcasting does any of this matter or have any importance? Some even resent what appears to be newspapers trying to tell people what to think.
It’s doubtful if many minds are changed. People tend to chose newspapers that reflect their existing world view and are therefore mostly preaching to the converted.
If the vote is close such leaders might make a small difference at the margins at best.
But there is one more robust effect of newspaper coverage and that is setting the tone over time on a particular issue. One of the key planks of the Brexit campaign is the UK’s inability to control migrants as a result of the EU’s free movement of labour provisions. It is an issue that has resonated powerfully with Out voters, perhaps more than any other.
Liz Gerard, former night editor of Times who writes a blog called SubScribe, has tracked the number of newspaper splashes devoted to migration.
Last year there were 174 such splashes – many but not all negative – including the positive coverage surrounding the picture of the dead boy on the beach, Aylan Kurdi.
This year looks like being a bumper year too, with the Daily Express on 34, the Daily Mail on 31 and The Sun a long way behind on 15, although the Gerard count doesn’t extend to many migrant stories in the inside pages.
She has put together a composite of 24 Daily Express front pages this year on migration, all of them negative, from Migrant Mothers Cost NHS £1.3bn, to You Pay For Roma Gypsy Palaces and Migrants Pay Just £100 to Invade Britain.
As for the impact of Twitter and Facebook, that will need further research, but it is more than a little surprising that a Twitter vote is running more than five to one in favour of Leave, perhaps an explanation for why online polling results turn out so different from telephone opinion polls.
A final word goes to Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, who is one of the 51 FTSE 100.
WPP forecast that a £200 million fall in already challenged advertising spend, following a Brexit vote will fall most heavily on newspapers – though there could be an advertising bounce later in the year if the UK were to vote Remain.
(Raymond Snoddy has already voted by post for Remain)