Why the reluctance to reveal the numbers? Three weeks ago today the country’s most accurate pollster when judged against real elections, ICM, was completing its August political poll for the Guardian – something that it has been doing each month for almost a quarter of a century. The numbers showing the very small change on a month earlier are in the chart, CON 37: LAB 36: LD 17, are broadly consistent with what we are used to from the phone…
Is the paper embarrassed by what its pollster is finding? After yesterday’s article looking at what happened the last time pollsters were tested against real election results a PB regular contacted me to say that the latest ICM poll was not covered in the print edition of the Guardian. I found that hard to believe so I’ve just popped into my local public library to go through this week’s print editions of the paper. I might have missed it and…
The Sun – May 6th 2010 Henry G Manson ponders about the post-scandal media world On Sunday, Damian Thompson, Editor of the Telegraph Blogs launched a striking attack on David Cameron and the News International phonehacking affair. He concluded, “It will be difficult to vote Tory at the next election.” This caught me by surprise and set me thinking if it was at all conceivable that the Telegraph could actually withdraw its support for the Conservatives under David Cameron? What…
Mark Gill puts it in an international perspective The phone hacking scandal is unlikely to make a huge difference to the public’s view of the press. The chart below shows the proportion of people who “tend not to†trust the press, from across a range of European countries. This survey was conducted in November 2010 and clearly shows that well before the present media scandal, the UK public stood out for being by far the most sceptical about their newspapers….
What are we to make of tonight’s rumours? There’s a mass of rumours going the rounds tonight about “something major” involving Rupert Murdoch’s main remaining UK newspaper titles – the Sun, Sunday Times and the Times. One version has it that the three papers will be put on sale with Murdoch effectively getting out of the UK newspaper business. The effect, of course, would be to deal at one stroke with what was the main objection to the BSkyB take-over…
Is the hacking scandal really Britain’s Watergate? As Twitter followers will know the Indy’s @JohnRentoul has created a whole niche on the net with his QTWTAIN – questions to which the answer is no. Every time these are brought to his attention he seems to produce disapproving tweet and I think I hold the record for being singled out. So what does he think tomorrow’s Independent front page. We await his Tweet. Mike Smithson
Guardian 20 Jan 2011 Have the politics of phone hacking changed? The Speccie’s James Forsyth has got a good take on the hacking affair on the Coffee House blog following the revelations about the Milly Dowler case. He writes:“The politics of the phone hacking saga have changed dramatically in the last 24 hours. Up to now, it has been a scandal that has been of huge interest in political and media circles but hasn’t cut through to the public. But…
… and what the Sundays are saying We’re now halfway through the year, so this might be a good time to take stock of the betting “profit and loss†for the year. Are you up, down, or flat? And what has been your rate of return for 2011 to date, if you calculate it? I’m probably in the second tier of PB punters– it tends to be a few hundred here and there, rather than thousands. So, in terms of…