ABSTRACT
Recent years have seen much academic and popular discussion about a perceived ‘crisis of democracy’ that is shaped by media coverage that entertains and trivialises and promotes a cynical and negative ‘all politicians are crooks’ style of journalism.2 This can sometimes include a narrative of declining standards from a time when the media played a more positive role in fostering informed debate, a knowledgeable public and a healthy democratic system. Popular complaints about a depoliticised contemporary popular press obsessed with trivia and entertainment contrast this with a past era of highly politicised, crusading tabloid journalism. This is supported by perhaps the most important and influential press historian of recent years, James Curran, who suggests that the post-war history of the press in Britain is characterised by ‘deradicalisation’ and ‘depoliticisation’.3 Leaving aside for a moment the first trend (discussed below, pp. 155-8), the second rests precariously on an apparent politicised high-point during the Second World War for a popular press that consisted of just eight-to-ten pages. The example often used to illustrate wartime politicisation, the Daily Mirror, is as Chapter 1 notes, a questionable one. More generally the evidence for depoliticisation remains inconclusive and ignores other trends. Arguably the key change predated 1945 and came with the very birth of the popular press, as overt political coverage became relegated in importance as the press became independent from political parties for the first time. Certainly attacks on a society ‘levelled down’ by press trivia have existed even before Northcliffe invented what Conservative minister Lord Derby disdainfully dismissed as one paper for those who could read but not think and another for those that could see but not read.4
