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 Ideas described as out of date – Economic, social and defence policies floated by Labour are called old-fashioned and a ‘return to the 1980s/70s’, despite their being the roughly the same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.
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Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
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49 Responses to “Five examples of biased press coverage of the Labour party conference”
I'm very cross about this.
The first thing the next Labour government must do is finalise the preparations for the next millennium celebrations. That’s if they’re ready for power again in another 80 odd years and based upon this conference they’ll still be debating in 2095 and won’t have got around to actually convincing the electorate that they can govern. Labour love a good debate.
Cem Polat
There is a grand difference, one is the fact that the article is asking those who have been bias to treat the Tory conference in the same manner, and two is the fact that they’re not pushing propaganda against those who have been bias.
The organization is called Left, what were you expecting, an article about the greatness of Capitalism?
Look at every single news organization current in the mainstream, and you will almost find in every single one a greater amount of hatred or blatant mistruth about Corbyn.
woolfiesmiff
Meanwhile the Guardian writer and Corbyn fan Zoe Williams tells us with a straight face that there is a magic money tree and I quote because the Bank Of England makes all the money. Tell you what lefty nut jobs, rather than worry about the Sun ( by the way less than 10% of the voting population read the Sun, Mail, Telegraph etc, so if I were you I’d worry about the 90%) I would start trying to learn some basics of reality based economics, I’d also suggest you got out more and met some ordinary working people. You might also wonder why the majority of the real working class vehemently disagree with Corbyn’s Labour.
By the way stevie p the BBC ( a left wing organisation) has far far more media clout than ALL the dwindling newspaper readership put together.
woolfiesmiff
Yes it is. Corbyns Labour party and your thugs that attacked a cafe have repeatedly said that they want to end capitalism. Therefore you should be proud of the Sun’s headline as it says EXACTLY what your supporters say they want.
woolfiesmiff
Your deluded belief than ANY newspaper in the 21st century has much sway on voters opinions is truly quaint. Newspaper circulation is dwindling. The most powerful media in the UK is the BBC and thats owned by you ( and me ).
The combined ( thats print AND online ) readership of ALL UK newspapers is 11 million there are more than 48 million registered voters so 78% of voters don’t read a newspaper of any persuasion ( and those figures makes an assumption that no one reads more than one paper/online offer, which is highly unlikely).
This utterly bizarre piece of cognitive dissonance , that right wing papers are biased to the right and left wing papers are biased to the left is laughable. No shit sherlock !!
I guess its never dawned on you ( well it wouldn’t because the reason you are all lefties is precisely because you don’t understand the basics of business ) that papers try to sell to as large a market as possible and the Sun, Express, Mail etc pander to working class right wing voters as there are FAR FAR more of them than lefties. IF Corbyn and the ultra left were even remotely as popular as you wish them to be these papers would soon switch their allegiance , exactly as The Sun did when they perceived that Labour was a very popular option under Blair.
Oh and you obviously missed the monstering that the Sun gave to IDS and Michael “something of the night” Howard when they led the Tory party