Will the same papers do this for Tory conference too?
As the country’s right-wing press sharpens its cutlery ahead of Jeremy Corbyn’s speech to Labour conference, it’s worth noticing how coverage of the event already displays bias along political lines – and to keep this handy when the Conservative party conference is covered next week.
Consider this your cut-out-and-keep guide to newspaper bias this conference season.
Here are five general trends to watch out for:
1. Prominence – while the Left-leaning Mirror and Guardian have treated the Labour conference as a national story worthy of their front page, most of the conservative press has kept the conference off page 1 (Times, Daily Mail, Daily Express), or relegated it to second or third story (Telegraph).
This is on the morning after Labour’s shadow chancellor gave a speech laying out the party’s economic policies.
One exception is the Sun, which melds its stablemate paper the Times’s splash about Mars with the conference to attack and ridicule the new Labour administration.
This is not the first time this has happened. Earlier this year the Times kept the Labour party’s general election manifesto off the front page, where the Tory manifesto was featured positively.
Will the same newspapers keep the Tory conference off of page 1 next week?
2. Hostile editorials – while the Sun’s front page story is more an opinion column than news coverage, the dedicated editorial pages of the other newspapers are already pummeling the Labour conference.
The Mail’s columns are perhaps the most robust, though supposedly more serious papers like the Telegraph are not far behind.
As ever, this partisan coverage is written with the general public’s best interest at heart…
Will the same newspapers be as critical of the Tory conference, or will they write as critical supporters of the party?
3. Irreverence and mockery – As the Sun recently proved, mockery of politicians (an important practice) is not something the press applies without prejudice. Political sketches of the Labour conference and newspaper cartoons will similarly ridicule Labour with more gusto – today’s Sun front page being a good example.
Can we expect the same treatment for the Tory conference?
4. Ideas described as out of date – Economic, social and defence policies floated by Labour are called old-fashioned and a ‘return to the 1980s/70s’, despite their being the roughly the same vintage as those of the Tories.
Will the policies of the Conservative party be characterised as a return to the past?
5. Splits and disagreements amplified – There is certainly a big gulf between different tendencies within the Labour party over its direction with Corbyn at the helm.
But as the Tory top brass jostle for position (who was the MP and Oxford contemporary who gave Lord Ashcroft the pig story…?) ahead of their own leadership election before 2020, and as splits over the European Union bubble on, threatening to cripple David Cameron’s EU referendum campaign, their conference will surely yield plenty of comparable material.
Will the papers explore (and revel in) these warring factions within the Tory party?
Now it’s over to the papers. Let’s see how their coverage of the Tory conference resolves these questions.
***
Like this story? Support our work: visit our crowdfunding page here.
Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
Sign up for our weekly email by clicking here.
To reach hundreds of thousands of new readers and to make the biggest impact we can in the next general election, we need to grow our donor base substantially.
That's why in 2024, we are seeking to generate 150 additional regular donors to support Left Foot Forward's work.
We still need another 124 people to donate to hit the target. You can help. Donate today.
49 Responses to “Five examples of biased press coverage of the Labour party conference”
Alex Mason
News just in… Biased website complains bitterly about bias.
stevep
F*** the far right fairy story mongers, especially Murdoch`s comic. They are going to attack Labour and left-wing politics anyway. Business as usual.
They are losing credibility and readers with every utterance. The establishment is losing it`s grip.
Labour should grasp the nettle and face them head on and pledge, at the very least, to implement the Leveson inquiry in full and expand it to include front page redress for wronged victims of their abuse.
Free speech is great, but only if it applies equally to everyone. At least the internet and sites like these offer some redress.
Matthew Blott
Is the article wrong then?
JoeDM
Go and read the Mirror, Indie, Guardian, Morning Star, etc….
Its good to see that we have a diversity of opinion in our newspapers.
Eddy Boyband
The first thing the next labour government must do is get rid of the law that forces people buy these papers so we can be free to read quality papers such as the Sunday people.