In short, one small step towards cultivating a healthier relationship between press, politicians and citizens is for a public discussion to develop about the press that is not dominated by the press. Paper Tiger Another small step is to obtain a better understanding of the limits of press influence. The British press has been in decline for a long time. The total circulation of national newspapers has decreased almost continuously ever since 1959. The British press is held in low regard by the public. As mentioned earlier, the British press in 2010 was the least trusted press in Europe. This is consistent with previous Eurobarometer surveys. Numerous domestic surveys also document how little trust the public have placed in the British press during the last twenty years.(21) The British press also faces a new rival in the form of the internet and social media. The internet provides access to alternative sources of information and commentary about public affairs. The internet also enables the press to be scrutinised and rendered more accountable through Twitter and posts. This said, the significance of the web as a separate conduit of information about public affairs in Britain (as distinct from some other countries like South Korea) has tended to be overstated. In Britain, the legion of bloggers did not build a mass audience. In 2008, 79 % of internet users had not read a single blog during the previous three months.(22) This was partly because leading British newspapers and TV organisations established very successful news websites, supported by cross-subsidy, large corporate newsgathering resources, and prominent brand names. In 2010, the ten most visited news websites in Britain were all controlled by leading news organisation from the pre-internet era and content aggregators.(23) The news and comment about public affairs that is given most prominence by aggregators like Google is derived mainly from mainstream news media.(24) It is this that tends to be consumed since most people do not scroll beyond the first page of search results.(25) In fact, the loss of press influence occurred much earlier than the arrival of the internet. The primacy of the press was undermined first by the rise of radio in the 1930s, and then by the rise of television in the 1950s. The majority of British citizens said in 2010 that their main
source of news about Britain, and about the world, though not about their region/locality, came from television, far in excess of those nominating other media.(26) This decline of the British press needs to be understood in the context of what social science investigation, over two generations, reveals about the nature of media influence. People are not blank slates on which the media impose their views. On the contrary, people have opinions, values and sense-making ‘schemata’ formed through early socialisation and the powerful influence of social networks. This gives rise to selective media exposure (Guardian readers tend to be left-wing, Telegraph readers to be right-wing), selective interpretation and retention of media information strongly influenced by prior disposition. Put simply, people are difficult to influence.(27) So why do politicians pay so much attention to the press? Is it because they view the press as a proxy for public opinion? This seems unlikely since empirical evidence reveals a large and recurring mismatch between how people vote and how newspapers vote (measured in terms of circulation) for over half a century.(28) In any case, politicians have had access to more reliable data about public opinion than press comment ever since the 1940s. Perhaps, the only explanation for the enigma of press power is that the press influences the political class more than the public. Press coverage affects the standing of politicians among their peers. The press also influences TV broadcasters who do matter. Television does not dictate what people think but it can influence what people think about, and also influence their framework of understanding about public issues (especially among those with limited interest in politics, low ego investment in holding a particular view, and among those who are cross-pressured).(29) Anti-Monopoly controls But politicians deal with the ‘reality’ of power, as they see it, and are unlikely to change radically their working perceptions. For the dysfunctional relationship between politicians and the press to change, the underlying structure that distorts it - the concentration and centralisation of press power – needs also to change. I support the Enders proposal that no media corporation should be permitted to control more than 15% of the total revenue of the core media industry.(30) This is framed by the