Every morning on the BBC’s agenda-setting Today programme, broadcasters operating under strict impartiality regulations give their listeners a flavour of the headlines from that morning’s newspapers. It’s a familiar routine that accompanies the drinking of millions of cups of tea and coffee and provides a taste of the feisty print culture that, apparently, millions of people might otherwise be unaware of.
The trouble is that reading out selected headlines is a long way away from staying “impartial” simply because of the in-built bias towards the Conservatives in the daily press. In the 2015 general election, the share of press support for the Tories (measured by circulation) was 71 per cent compared to 15 per cent for Labour and 5 per cent for the Liberal Democrats. If anything, the press has moved further to the right since then, as reflected by the recent appointment of George Osborne (former Conservative MP and chancellor) to the role of editor-in-chief of the Evening Standard.
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