Will triggering Article 50 change how newspapers cover Brexit?

Now Article 50 has been triggered, the really interesting question is what will happen to newspaper coverage of the issue after the fateful letter has been delivered in Brussels, writes Raymond Snoddy

On Brexit Day who won the battle of the front pages? No gold medals can be awarded because on the whole they are not an outstanding crop given the time they had to think about the arrival of the historic moment.

The Sun’s Dover & Out, which they also projected onto the white cliffs of Dover gets a few place points, but a second cliff-top projection was unfortunately ambiguous: See EU Later.

Really?

A weak effort from the Daily Express – Dear EU, We’re Leaving You, while the Daily Mail’s FREEDOM! Wins first prize for predictability although the paper probably had to do it to incorporate their successful campaign to reduce the sentence of Marine A.

The Guardian was much more imaginative with its European jigsaw with the words: “Today Britain steps into the unknown”, filling in the missing piece where the UK should be.

First prize goes to The Times for not just spotting, but making the most of, the fact that Prime Minister Theresa May performed the act, presumably deliberately, under the gaze of the portrait of Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first Prime Minister.

The headline – The Eyes of History Are Watching- and a reminder of the famous Walpole strategy to keep Britain out of continental wars, which could at a stretch be embraced by both Remainers and Brexiteers if you accept the peacekeeping role of the EU.

“Madam, there are 50,000 men slain in Europe this year, and not one Englishman,” he told George II’s wife Caroline.

The Brexit-supporting nationals had the benefit of the relatively neutral advance briefing on May’s speech promising her fierce determination to get the right deal “for every single person in this country.”

[advert position=”left”]

It gave the Daily Telegraph its splash headline Unite behind Brexit, says May.

As the woman in the newsagents in Ballygally remarked of the papers – “they’re all so different, it’s scary really.”

Scary indeed.

The really interesting question is what happens to newspaper coverage of the issue after the fateful letter has been delivered in Brussels.

As the pull-out quote from former deputy Prime Minister Lord Heseltine put in on the front page of the Guardian – “This is the moment the undeliverable promises will be replaced by hard reality.”

Will the hard campaigning Brexit cheerleaders, the Sun, Express, Mail and Telegraph continue on their merry way denouncing the gloomy Remoaners and turning a Nelsonian eye to any bad news?

The signs are not good. This week Mail Online carried an unusual poll suggesting for the first time that Britons were becoming increasingly pessimistic about the long-term effects of Brexit on the economy.

IHS Markit found that even the older generation and the poorest households who had been initially the most optimistic about Brexit, were changing their minds.

Pessimism has now spread to all age groups and income brackets, according to Chris Williamson, chief business economist at HIS Markit.

One poll of course, although interesting and possibly significant, but there was no room to cover it in my edition of the Daily Mail.

If fake news and alternative facts were the words to reach for in January and February for the next two years “gloomy” is going to get a lot of traction.

And there is already a lot of “gloomy” to go round.

In Belfast the collapse of the power-sharing Stormont administration dominates the Newsletter’s front page but inside there is gloom about one of Northern Ireland’s most important industries – the agri-food sector.

World Trade Organisation rules – more than a possibility May concedes – would mean tariffs of up to 60 per cent on some dairy product exports to the Irish Republic.

There is more gloom inside The Times as hard Brexit MPs walk out of the Commons Brexit Committee because a planned report on the effects leaving the EU without a trade deal were too gloomy.

If the Prime Minister can call for the entire country to unite in order to get the best deal for every single person in the UK – a superhuman challenge in itself – then it is time for the media to unite in doing their job by digging out the reality and the facts of that journey towards OUT.

The time for opinions, prevarications, propaganda, half-truths and outright lies is over and if ever there was a time for facts this is it.

Whichever side newspapers supported during the referendum campaign it is now time to deal in facts – so far as facts can be ascertained.

Of course there is a serious problem with the concept of facts and what exactly constitutes a fact, and then there is the problem of context and the weight given to different facts and the unfortunate reality of the missing facts that go largely unreported – such as this week’s gloomy public opinion poll.

At the very least trying to dig out any inconvenient facts should be a respectable target to aim for, and is it too ambitious to ask that all national newspapers renew themselves to the task of informing their readers of the reality of the unfolding Brexit as the negotiations develop?

Probably that’s hopelessly idealistic in the case of those papers who argue for “freedom” or “taking control” almost whatever the cost to the poorest and most vulnerable of their readers.

Inconvenient facts and gloomy news is likely to be coming thick and fast. It already is, such as the research from Public Policy Research that a number of UK industries could be in trouble if the Government restricts the number of unskilled workers coming to the country.

The problem is, according to PPR, more than a quarter of jobs in food manufacturing, 42 per cent of packers, bottlers, canners and fillers and 39 per cent of “food and drink operatives” are EU nationals from outside the UK.

All newspapers whatever their pre-dispositions surely owe it to their readers to give them an accurate view of how Theresa May and her ministers is managing to deliver her promise of the best deal for “every single person” by February 2019 – however gloomy the reality turns out to be.