I do find it interesting that the Sun is saying vote Tories to stop SNP controlling Westminster . But the Scottish Sun is saying vote SNP .
I actually found a Sun the other day on a train and started reading it but the bias was unbearable and I had to stop .
The Sun is a terrible paper. I used to read it occasionally at work when one of my colleagues left it in the canteen - it's marginally preferable to literally twiddling your thumbs, but only just.
The quality of the journalism was dire. And if the biased article isn't enough to get your blood pressure up about whatever issue they're moaning about, Kandi (aged 19 from Croydon) agrees with the Sun's political view and demonstrates this by taking her top off. Then you've got pages and pages of "news articles", many of which consist of two or maybe even three whole sentences. Occasionally, the article capitalises seemingly RANDOM words clearly intended to cause O U T R A G E.
I think it does get away with it though, largely because it doesn't pretend to be something it isn't. It's cheap, tacky and downmarket. But that's exactly what it's trying to achieve. By contrast, the Mail and Express pretend to be quality newspapers but have certainly no less rubbish in them.
As for their political standpoint, I believe that the Sun simply backs winners and populist candidates in order to maintain newspaper sales. So, for example, the SNP are likely to win in Scotland, so the Sun has backed them as a result to maintain their newspaper's readership. This allows them to publish pro-SNP comments that it feels will appeal to its readership in light of their current political preference. Similarly, in England, there's a large viewpoint that us Scots are marching upon Westminster and taking control, thus a quintessentially English candidate like Cameron (who vows not to work with the SNP) appeals to English voters.
The results of the poll don't surprise me, although I would think that UKIP would be disappointed with their result in the Express, given that the Express is the only major newspaper actively promoting the party. As stated already, people buy newspapers that align most closely with their political viewpoints, so this in no way represents the newspapers projecting their opinions onto voters. In fact, more commonly, people buy papers for other reasons (a good TV mag, the sports section, puzzles), which probably accounts for some of the more bizarre voting intentions (Mail readers voting SNP, for example).
It's worth pointing out that the Sun ain't the only newspaper to offer differing viewpoints. The Express has done this on multiple occasions, too. One more notable occasion saw the Express in England promising readers an extra hour of daylight if we abolished daylight saving time. North of the border, there was an article about how the English are going to "plunge us into darkness" by abolishing DST! The Mail has also been known to censor some of its more bilious anti-Scottish ranting. I picked up a discarded copy once on a Tuesday, hoping to read Richard Littlejohn's latest column (because I don't get enough hate speech in my day to day life). It was conspicuously absent, but if you go online you could read his venomous and racist nonsense about Scots.
I have to say that, on the whole, I'm generally unimpressed by the media in the UK. The quality is generally poor, and the quality newspapers don't circulate anywhere near widely enough to have any real impact. I rarely buy newspapers. If I do, I go for the Glasgow Herald, which remains a good quality paper IMO and has a Scottish focus. If I'm in England, the Independent is my paper of choice - generally left leaning without forcing a political viewpoint down my throat. Overall, most of my news comes from the BBC. It ain't perfect, but it's free and generally gives a balanced (if not entirely unbiased at times) statement of facts.
At least we don't have Fox News though, that really is beyond parody.
Wonder what the figures look like for that title...
Just talking a bit more short term - it seems to be every day. Nice to see that Sun readers aren't quite as malleable as Murdoch would like...
