ABSTRACT
Many people in the UK read no national daily newspaper regularly, and the demographic structure of readership has changed. This chapter looks at these changes in the British public's national newspaper reading habits compared with twenty-five years ago, drawing on data from MORI's founding year, 1969, and comparing readership then to 1993 aggregate data of over 30000 respondents. It examines the attitudes of the British public to its newspapers, their role in society and public support for restrictions on the press, showing that while the public still buys the tabloids in the millions and approves of breaches of individuals' privacy to uncover criminal conduct or personal hypocrisy, it does not approve of press intrusion into the royal family. Newspaper readership is a surrogate for the class composition of the population, reflecting as it does such a clear division across the middle-class/working-class division that exists in this country, as shown by the class profile of the various newspapers' readers.
