The brilliant TV series Yes Prime Minister ran for just two years, from 1986 to 1987, yet still feels incredibly accurate and relevant to today’s politics. The quality of its writing means that everything ‘rings true’, that the hapless Prime Minister Jim Hacker is an exaggerated version of the real thing. One of my favourite sketches from the show was when Hacker explained to top civil servants Sir Humphrey Appleby and Bernard Woolley how newspapers work:
Hacker: Don’t tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don’t care who runs the country, as long as she’s got big tits.
Back in the 1980s, newspapers were big business. In 1987, for example, The Sun sold almost four million copies a day, the Mirror over three million, the Daily Mail 1.7 million and even the Telegraph sold 1.1 million. Today, newspaper circulations have collapsed and some papers don’t even reveal their sales, although it is believed that The Sun sells around 630,000, around 10,000 less than the Mail, which does publish its figures. The Mirror is now under 200,000 and the Telegraph, another circulation sharing refusenik, is estimated to sell a mere 170,000, about the same as The Times. The increasingly unhinged Guardian, still for now my online paper of choice, is estimated to sell around 75,000 a day and its former Sunday sister paper The Observer is down to a mere 55,000. But whether your paper is the 640,000 selling Mail, the 630,000 Sun or the 75,000 Guardian, these are tiny figures. Let’s put this in context:
The population of the UK is 68.3 million. This means that 67.7 million do not read Britain’s top selling daily newspaper, the Daily Mail. In general, the print media exists for a tiny minority of people. Yet why are printed newspapers so influential?
Jim Hacker’s explanation remains accurate in so many ways, but now we can add another aspect. Only old people buy newspapers. According to Offcom, 33% of 65-74 year olds and 47% of over 75s get their news from an old fashioned newspaper, compared with 10% of 16-24 year olds, a figure I find astonishingly high given that I have not seen a young person buying a newspaper since, well, I was a teenager. But as well as a small minority of the population, the over-65s, there are two other groups who read them: broadcasters and a group referred to as the political class. The latter amplify the agenda created by the tiny circulation newspapers, across the established TV news organisations the BBC, ITN and Sky, ultimately into Westminster. Even though hardly anyone is buying newspapers, newspaper reviews/tomorrow’s headlines/what the papers are saying/the (insert newspaper title of choice) reports today that (insert story headline) and suddenly a newspaper with a tiny circulation is setting the agenda and wielding huge influence.
Given the level of media coverage by other outlets, you might be forgiven for thinking that, say, the Mail was read by every person in the land and that its gobshite columnists like disgraced former PM Boris Johnson, Florida-dwelling patriot Richard Littlejohn and the self-proclaimed Westminster WAG Sarah Vine were read by everyone in the land. Yet hardly anyone reads their polemic bar a relative handful of elderly pensioners. The influence these hacks wield is in inverse proportion to their actual importance in the grand scheme of things.
Soon, newspapers will die. Some will move online, perhaps behind a paywall, but the days of mass circulation newspapers are over. In fact, it was over many years ago and even in its glory days, many more people didn’t buy newspapers compared to those who did.
Yet the news organisations are terrified of what the newspapers are saying, especially our state broadcaster the BBC which continues to lurch inexorably rightwards in order, it seems, to pacify the fallen giants of Fleet Street. It is a classic case of cap-doffing to an influential yet tiny upper order, which somehow sets the news agenda, somehow convincing TV news organisations and the political class that their views cannot be ignored. It’s ruinous to our democracy, especially when weak politicians are kowtowing to their every demand.
Just think about the influence of the press when you watch TV news and listen to it on the radio. Most of the papers are owned by rich individuals and corporations with a political axe to grind who make no attempt to report accurately or fairly and represent anything but a so called free press.
Newspapers in Britain are old and right wing, just like most of their readers. And they regard accurate reporting rather in the same way that Goebbels did in Nazi Germany. Granted today’s newspapers don’t actively support an actual fascist like Hitler, as the Mail did before World War Two, although many seem to adore Reform UK Ltd owner Nigel Farage who is, of course, a thoroughly modern (Oswald) Mosley.
Hopefully, broadcasters and politicians will come to learn that actually the written press is nothing more than a small minority interest group and as such their views should be listened to but not automatically acted upon, as they are today. There are three million anglers, 180,000 members of the Women’s Institute and 160,000 model railway enthusiasts so maybe the TV news organisations and politicians should be casting their nets a little wider? I’ll bet they’re all far nicer than today’s so called journalists who seem to have nothing but poison to spread.
As Jim Hacker didn’t say, I know exactly who reads the papers: a few hundred thousand pensioners. It’s about time they lost their powerful hold over our lives and got back to telling us the news and not creating it. And we can do our bit by not encouraging them by paying for their product. We have more power than we realise if only we want to exercise it.
