Revenge of the tabloids

November 22, 2016 7:28 PM

Rocked by the phone-hacking scandal and haemorrhaging readers, the rightwing tabloids seemed to be yesterday’s news. But now, in Theresa May’s Brexit Britain, they look more powerful than ever, Andy Beckett, The Guardian
posted by the man of twists and turns (17 comments total)

One thing that has changed, is that newspaper articles can have a trolling impact that stretches far beyond their readership. A few years ago, if one wanted to read The Sun's view then it would be necessary to buy it - or perhaps watch a "what the papers say" show which was aimed at a specialist audience interested in the media itself. These days the papers have the chance of disseminating their ideas both by click-bait but also by having them amplified by discussion on social media - as well as by a larger part of the mainstream media who have discovered "what the papers say" as cheap content. True, sales may be falling, but the owners of the titles are wealthy enough to not be too worried.

Exactly the same effect applies to broadsheet titles like The Guardian, of course - so there is no point in them being all aloof about it!
posted by rongorongo at 10:48 PM on November 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

Exactly the same effect applies to broadsheet titles like The Guardian, of course

Well, other than the fact they're useless at it.
Oh, I mean "above that sort of thing".

Wrestling with pigs will get you dirty, but sometimes they're fascist pigs and wrestling may be required.
posted by fullerine at 11:51 PM on November 22, 2016 [6 favorites]

I would guess lot of the people with the worst jobs are still getting their news from tabloids because they don't sit at desks connected to the internet all day like the people who read The Guardian, and don't want to use their data allowance on their phones for news sites. A tabloid is 20p, easily shared, and you can have a nice sit down with it when you get a moment. Then you can quietly go ultra right wing.
posted by Coda Tronca at 12:00 AM on November 23, 2016 [10 favorites]

Sincere question: Didn't I hear somewhere that Facebook is no longer "cool"? I.e., isn't it getting little if any use by the 20-somethings and under?
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 2:34 AM on November 23, 2016

Point taken winterhill, but I was thinking of the labourers, social care workers and moped delivery gig workers I see with tabloids, doing jobs that don't even provide a break room.
posted by Coda Tronca at 3:12 AM on November 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

I really wish I knew the solution to this problem.
I mean Leveson Part 2 would be a start, but you need to be really careful not to slip over into censorship.
I think we're a long way from that right now of course, but I've seen tweets about people moving or binning the Daily Mail getting responses about "lefties only allowing free speech if it's speech they like" and... yeah rhetorically they've got a point.

The stuff they printed is such a gross distortion and really shouldn't be called journalism, but a government law approving what newspapers can print?

Of course whilst I'm over hear wringing my hands about what the most correct course of action is the government is busy banning all porn unless it's two white het people politely and quietly doing it missionary style, and then singing the national anthem afterwards.
So, maybe it's just time to do something, anything to start things in what I consider the right direction and to hell with perfect utilitarian ethics.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 3:56 AM on November 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

Didn't I hear somewhere that Facebook is no longer "cool"? I.e., isn't it getting little if any use by the 20-somethings and under?

Yeah, I think to the teenage crowd, Facebook is now the place where you're likely to bump into your relatives, and your older family are all sharing baby photos and news articles. Not a cool place to hang out, or somewhere you can chat with your friends without the olds seeing. I mean, you could theoretically set up your profile so that your parents can't see your chats with your friends, but why bother when you can just go somewhere else (and we all know how reliable Facebook privacy is). Not really sure where they've all gone, I know Snapchat is big but not sure what else is popular (since I'm also an old).
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:07 AM on November 23, 2016

Reach of leading social media and networking sites used by teenagers and young adults in the United States as of February 2016: Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram lead the pack.
posted by rory at 4:14 AM on November 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

this is 2016 and most people have either an unlimited data plan or don't know/care what a megabyte is.

Most people have an unlimited data plan? I don't think that's likely true.
posted by amtho at 6:16 AM on November 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Not unlimited (though many people will have that), but typically several gigabytes of data on a small-ish monthly contract, enough not to think about it. In the UK, which is where Winterhill was replying from, to Coda Tronca, who is also in the UK.
posted by reynir at 2:08 PM on November 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Not unlimited (though many people will have that), but typically several gigabytes of data on a small-ish monthly contract, enough not to think about it. In the UK, which is where Winterhill was replying from, to Coda Tronca, who is also in the UK

This. As an illustration, my (sim-only) data plan is unlimited, and costs £15 per month. Phone plans are just much cheaper in the Uk. I was horrified when I checked out US and Canadian prices. We don't pay for texts either.
posted by tinkletown at 2:13 PM on November 23, 2016

As a person who worked for a mobile company I can tell you that the average usage of people between 18-35 is around 2.8GB/month. Older folks in the 35-50 range use around 750MB/Month and those over 50 use on average less than 250MB/month. Kids under 18 blitz their data and it's not uncommon to see usage of 15GB and upwards as they all watch youtube/listen to music on the bus to school in the morning. Kids, eh?

Twitter is very popular amongst my 17 year old and his friends. Almost none of them use FB as it's for old folk and, even worse, family. Snapchat seems to me to be for folks who care about image, Twitter for those about commentary, nowhere seems to exist for actual content (although he does know about my MeFi account so I have to be reasonably well behaved on here.


Ha, as if - Hi Dylan :)
posted by longbaugh at 1:50 AM on November 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

We just got back from the U.K. Every gate at Edinburgh and Heathrow had complimentary copies of The Sun for passengers, and I was shocked when nearly everyone took one--including the members of the flight crew. I saw few copies of The Economist and even fewer Guardians, but reams and reams of tabloids. It made me ill.
posted by infinitewindow at 3:56 PM on November 24, 2016

In the shop this morning the Daily Mail slot was full. The others all empty.
I'd like to think that's because people decided that their coverage was vile and didn't buy it, but I very much doubt that.

I was in a hurry so I just put a few copies of Le Monde over the top and went away.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 6:09 AM on November 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

We just got back from the U.K. Every gate at Edinburgh and Heathrow had complimentary copies of The Sun for passengers, and I was shocked when nearly everyone took one--including the members of the flight crew. I saw few copies of The Economist and even fewer Guardians, but reams and reams of tabloids. It made me ill.

It artificially boosts circulation numbers, and helps reinforce Murdoch's malign political influence. He has been pulling the same trick for years here in Australia, the most Murdochised country on earth. The airports are flooded with free copies of Murdoch papers, despite heavily bleeding readers and money on most of them.

Probably regards it an excellent propaganda investment at twice the price. And it is hard to argue that he is wrong. :(
posted by Pouteria at 7:38 AM on November 25, 2016

Come on 2016. Take Murdoch on Christmas Day. Do it for me.
posted by longbaugh at 3:47 PM on November 27, 2016

I want to [+] that so much. And...kinda think it really would make the world a better place...
but I'm trying so hard on political consistency, and I'd be all cross about seeing people saying similar things about people "on my side".

Disapproving of the sentiment though, that's the hardest yet.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:41 PM on November 27, 2016