A study by Loughborough University has shown that British newspapers are praising the Tories but trashing Labour during the General Election campaign.
The academic report by the University’s Centre for Research in Communication and Culture analysed television and print media reporting of the General Election between 7th and 13th November.
It found that Channel 4 News, Channel 5 News, BBC1 News, ITV1 News and Sky News were fairly balanced in their coverage of the Conservatives and Labour and their two respective leaders.
But it found that the print media it analysed – The Guardian, The I, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Financial Times, The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The Mirror, The Sun and The Star – provided more positive than negative coverage for the Conservative Party. And they provided overwhelmingly negative coverage of Labour.
When their circulations are combined, these newspapers are read by more than 4.5 million people every day.
The increase in positive Conservative evaluation reflected the strong editorial support provided by the newspapers with the largest circulation (The Daily Mail and The Sun).
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In contrast, Labour had a substantial deficit of positive to negative news reports in the first formal week of the campaign.
The study also found that The Conservatives and Labour are the clear and only major parties in media terms. Leaders Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn were the two most prominent campaigners overall, the Prime Minister achieving a particularly high profile on television.
The Brexit party was the third most prominently featured party in the press (8 percent of all appearances). Nigel Farage accounted for most of these appearances.
Ex-Labour politicians received more press coverage than ex-Conservative politicians (5 percent to 1 percent). And Conservative party sources gained greatest prominence in TV and press coverage in terms of the frequency of their appearances.
