A couple of weeks ago the Financial Times reported that the Sun newspaper, bastion of working class conservatism for nigh on half a century, had been marked down by Rupert Murdoch as a “worthless asset”.
The tabloid, which in the ’90s claimed it alone could sway general elections, had been so denuded by falling sales, legal costs related to the phone hacking scandal, and damages paid to civil claimants, that it made a pre-tax loss of £201 million in 2019-20 and had “zero carrying value”. The management of Murdoch’s News UK expected it “would not return to positive growth”.
Those who lament the Sun’s baleful influence on this country’s political and ethical culture – from smearing dead football fans as hooligans, to hounding gay celebrities, to, with certain Blairite lapses (if lapses they can be called), cheerleading for Thatcher – might indulge in a fully justified bout of schadenfreude.
But if there is such a thing as ‘pyrrhic crowing’ this is it. For, despite its financial woes, the right-wing media is as strong as ever in Britain.
There was a brief period of optimism around the time of the 2017 General Election when it seemed like shoestring news sites like Evolve and the Canary, and even single person blogs (not this one) could go under the radar of the mainstream media and reach millions. But that window was abruptly slammed shut, as traditional media organisations upped their social media game (News UK claims the print version of the Sun and its website reach a total of 36.5 million people), and a Facebook algorithm change meant that alternative sources of news found their ‘shares’ drastically reduced.
One little appreciated reason for the Conservative victory in 2019 – beyond Brexit and Corbyn’s sullied reputation that is – was the diminished influence of alternative media and the restored power of the mainstream press.
The huge decline in newspaper sales in Britain is not an illusion – they have dropped by two-thirds in 20 years according to one estimate – but the influence of the press, and the mainstream media more generally, is felt far beyond the number of sales or subscriptions.
As shown by the Hancock surveillance (and the absence of any need to explain how it occurred), the Sun still has wields huge influence and, even if it is a financial dead weight, will not be permitted to go under.
Notwithstanding diminished sales, the right-wing press still commands a palpable physical presence and is basically assured that its leading stories will be amplified by broadcasters or least relayed through regular paper reviews.
In Bad News for Labour: Antisemitism, the Party and Public Belief (the first chapter of which is an eye-opening account of how an invented narrative pushed by the right-wing and liberal media can become firmly lodged in the public mind), one participant who doesn’t read newspapers explains how he came to his belief that 20% of Labour members had been accused of antisemitism:
Headlines I see. I work in Tesco’s. As I walk into the shopping mall I read the headlines every day …. Most of my perception was based on – as I say I don’t read newspapers – my perception was based on the number of headlines and how long it was in the papers. [participant 4 nods in agreement]
And in an era of all-pervasive social media reach, and permanent smartphone connection to the Internet on the part of most of the population, the reach of the press – quite apart from actual newspaper sales – is greater than ever. Web portals, search engines, Facebook and Twitter will all place the output of the mainstream media in front of users so even if you consciously don’t read a newspaper, you will find it hard to avoid knowing what they are saying.
This is reminiscent of Noam Chomsky’s and Edward Herman’s concept of “big news” in 1988’s Manufacturing Consent, except that these “sustained news campaigns” are even more potent than they were three decades ago.
We are reaching a state where news and advertising are converging. This is not necessarily because news is becoming the slave of advertising, though that does occur, but because news is taking on the qualities of advertising. Advertising works through endless repetition so that even if it is incredibly annoying (or perhaps because it is) the brand name becomes ingrained in the observer’s brain and they may choose it if they ever buy that product.
News now – amplified through multiple platforms – works on the same principle. Deliberate censorship is unnecessary because in our information-saturated society unwelcome news can be guaranteed to reach only a small minority if it does not receive the blessing of escalation by powerful interests.
There are many important and validated news stories – for example, the purging of Labour party members by Keir Starmer, falling life expectancy, or the ongoing atrocity of the UK ‘welfare state’ – that fail to make even a ripple on public consciousness because they are not amplified.
In a compulsively busy society such as this one, the attention of most consumers of news is necessarily slight with most relying on snatches of news to form a picture of what is going in on the world. There is, as others have said, “a crying need” for the Left to invest in its own media because a social media presence, however strong, cannot compete with a uniformly hostile mainstream media. But even if new investments are made and TV stations created, the gatekeepers will still do their utmost to ensure the vast majority remain unblissfully unaware.
