Comments on: The Sun Won’t Win it

By: Will the Last Newspaper Proprietor to Back a Party in the General Election Please Turn Out the Lights « PR and the Social Web

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:16:51 +0000

[...] Election Please Turn Out the Lights 23 04 2010 I posted a few months ago saying that The Sun can’t win elections any more or even influence them in the same way they once [...]

By: Will 2010 Be the Year of the Political Tweet? | AppealPR Blog

Will 2010 Be the Year of the Political Tweet? | AppealPR Blog — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:47:46 +0000

[...] a la Obama, could prove crucial in the UK too. For example, the recent announcement by The Sun that it would be supporting the Conservative Party was greeted with generalindifference – the [...]

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:11:50 +0000

I wrote my MA dissertation on how the media affects major political events. Fair enough, I was talking about the media of 1659/1660, but it’s a period with some interesting parallels to the here and now, and I think the conclusion I came to holds good for today’s media, too….

..they don’t influence events, at least not over the medium to long term. Media can make the running and set the agenda short term, but over months and years people make up their own minds.

You’re absolutely right that The Sun can be accused of bandwagon-jumping, because jump on a bandwagon is exactly what it’s done. In fact, it’s what it’s done in every election since 1979.

Papers give their readers what their readers want; ergo, they follow trends rather than taking risks by trying to set them.