There’s an increasingly good case for saying that newspaper editorial endorsements, pro- or anti-Brexit, don’t matter so much these days – for reckoning that columnists bearing particular torches or front pages booming away carry more clout with readers than what “the composite editor” in his ex cathedra pronouncement slot has to say. But never forget that these leader lines are also a useful internal way of telling your staff, your columnists, your headline writers, where the paper stands – what particular cause they’re responding to this week.
Much of that, to be sure, is predictable, and heavily conditioned by what your readers expect. Thus the Times, still trailing distant clouds of its “top people” memories, sees two-thirds of its readers backing Remain. Guess who’ll get the eventual thumbprint there – while the Bun, two-thirds Leave, is pretty predictable too.
But what, pray, about the Daily Mail (which sometimes these days seems guest-edited by Matthew Elliott, co-founder of the Taxpayers’ Alliance and current chief of Vote Leave)? And what of the Mail on Sunday, one floor away in the Kensington atrium, but growing ever more likely to plump for Remain as editorial unease turns to front page blasts over far-right infiltration of the Leave campaign?
In theory, if titles means anything, Paul Dacre, editor-in-chief of both papers, should be in the running for a Nobel peace and harmony prize. But, actually, this seems more a case of writs failing to run. George Greig at the MoS has a proprietorial licence to roam. Jonathan and Claudia Rothermere watch his back. Which is rather brave, because the profile of Mail daily and Sunday readers isn’t so very different: and the millions of them who treat both as their bibles must wrestle with total confusion, not total control.
■ Here’s a very fine line. If, like BuzzFeed US, you’ve got $1.3m in space reserved for Republican campaign ads but (like Jonah Peretti, the Big Buzz) you think Donald Trump is “as much a health hazard as smoking”, would you tell the GOP where to go with its tainted cash? Good for Peretti, he did. But the ethical problem for an American media scene short of money but long on libertarian values is which foot to start hopping on thereafter. Is advertising freedom a part of media freedom? BuzzFeed exists on native ads (which duck under ad-blockers because it’s sponsored editorial). But do you ever want political propaganda that looks like proper journalism? Much buzzing in the metaphorical marsh. It almost makes Brexitprop seem simple.
