Britain's national newspapers are losing their ability to influence politics, argues Canadian media analyst Ken Goldstein in an openDemocracy essay.
He begins by charting the circulation declines of the papers from the 1950s onwards, which British readers can take as read. (If you want the numbers, go here for pdf).
Note first that sales have gone down as households (and the population) has increased, which means that 20% of national paper circulation is now equivalent to less than 8% of households.
Having set the scene with such data, Goldstein then gets to the heart of his argument: "The debate about media ownership, media 'slant' and media 'influence' seems to go on as if it has a life of its own, unrelated to the facts about the actual or relative size of a particular medium."
He moves on to deride the "deterministic" view of analysts who argue that ownership is automatically linked to "bias" in their newspapers, calling it both "simplistic" and, "increasingly out of touch with the reality of circulation trends."
It is more useful, he writes, to view media in an "environmental" context: "Traditional media are an important ingredient in public opinion, but they share the public opinion space with many other influences, including a variety of new media, and also including home, work, school, community activities and places of worship."
In pursuing this argument, he cites an article I wrote prior to the general election last year, What influence do newspapers have over voters?
In that piece, I questioned the assumption that voters act as newspapers tell them. And Goldstein says "similar disconnects between newspaper editorial support and election outcomes can be found in Canada and the US."
I wrote: "The press is not, and probably never has been, as powerful an agent as politicians seem to believe. On the other hand, it is certainly not as neutral and lacking in influence as proprietors and editors tend to say."
I'll come back to an important final sally by Goldstein in a moment. But I need to take my argument on further because I think I need to make my position crystal clear, lest it be suggested that I deny the continuing, and baleful, influence of Britain's press proprietors and editors.
I agree with Goldstein about the the importance of setting press influence on the political process within the context of other influences. We do not live - as journalists and politicians tend to do - in a newspaper bubble.
However, and this is particularly true of the British experience, we (he) should not underestimate the way in which the national press - despite falling sales - retains an influence over the totality of the media agenda.
Broadcasters and bloggers tend to respond to the stimulus of a news and comment schedule that originates in newspapers.
The material that appears most often in the main current affairs programmes on TV and radio, plus radio phone-in shows, is almost always based on follow-ups to stories in the national press. In such a way, papers still command the nation's central political narrative.
This activity is hugely influential in the periods between elections, and much more important than the immediate pre-election calls for people to vote one way or another.
For example, in the years leading up to the 1992 election, the Labour party's leader, Neil Kinnock, suffered from vitriolic negative coverage. The final assault on his character, which cost him a poll victory, was the culmination of that process.
Similarly, Gordon Brown's defeat was assured by highly critical press coverage well before he ever called last year's election.
The newspapers' daily drip-drip-drip of stories and commentaries - whether positive or negative - do influence the electorate, including those people who never read the papers. The repetition, and the influence over other media, are the key to creating a broad consensus.
So I depart from Goldstein markedly, despite his having cited my remarks. But let's go back to his conclusion:
"Let me also suggest that we may come to view the current debates about 'plurality' and 'concentration' as wasteful diversions from a far more fundamental issue for media and democracy – fragmentation of audiences.
New technology may have conquered the scarcity of channels, but that is increasingly yielding fragmented audiences based on far more choices and more narrowly-defined interests."
I am sure David Elstein, who happens to chair openDemocracy, would find much to appreciate in this argument (see here and here). And he may well agree with Goldstein's final comment about fragmentation:
"That could raise the most important issue of all: how will a modern democracy function if we all have less in common?"
I do take seriously the business about new media's threat to what we might call "the national conversation". But we are some way from that yet, if at all.
Source: openDemocracy