The election campaign for the British parliament (and more importantly Prime Minister) kicked off this week. If you really want to get a feel for politics not-so-refined English-style go no further than the opinionated British newspapers.
With any attempt at “Fair and Balanced” cast to the wind, the papers wear their allegiance right on the front pages, with incumbent Labour party PM Gordon Brown getting the worst of it.
“Brown’s a Clown” screams The Sun’s front page today. “Brown at War with (business) Bosses” chides the Telegraph. While the Daily Mail decries “Labour’s Betrayal of British Workers.”
For his part, Conservative and favored PM challenger David Cameron gets roughed up a bit by left-leaning papers like The Guardian and The Independent but not with quite the gusto.
“It does have an effect,” London School of Economics political science professor Patrick Dunleavy told Fox News, “It sets the agenda.”
Still Dunleavy goes on to note that most of the newspapers are simply “reinforcing the prejudices” of their readers and with circulations slipping do not effect the outcome of elections here as much as they used to.
Besides he notes, “People read The Sun for the sports, not the politics.”
Gaining in importance this election, the internet, blogs, social network sites and for the first time, televised debates. Still, all the main TV networks, like clockwork every night, haul out the next day’s papers and go through the front pages as if they are the journalist’s bible.
That way even if you don’t buy a paper you can find out that PM Brown is “Illiterate when it comes to Business” as yet another headline screamed today.
Let the slinging match begin!