The political spectrum in UK newspapers

The other day I was wondering about which newspapers in the UK were left wing, right wing and which occupy the centre ground. This blogpost attempts to definitively investigate and plot which papers occupy which areas of the political spectrum.

It was last week when Tom Watson off of twitter was saying that the News of the World phone hacking scandal had reached a new low, with Sara Payne's phone being hacked. Sure it was a new low, but it wasn't much lower than the previous lowest low, I asked on twitter whether it was some kind of competition, @flashboy replied that it more like a plateau of shit. Phone hacking was a low for right wing newspapers, and for left wing newspapers their low was the Johann Hari plagarism scandal. But then if The Mirror is getting embroiled in phonehacking too, then that'll be a new low for left wing papers.

But which newspapers are left, and which are right?

I started with a quick look on the internet. Yahoo Answers had something a rather comprehensive list as the top answer, but the second answer caught my eye for it's wrong-cockedness:-

Left wing - The Guardian, The Mirror (sort of)
Middle - The Independent
Right Wing - The Sun, News Of the World, The Times, The Telegraph, The Star
Extreme Right Wing - Daily Mail, Daily Express

edit: Sheetwow and Rikstir [other yahoo answerers] - there are no extreme right wing papers in this country? In recent months, the Daily Mail has alleged links between Ed Miliband and Stalin and claimed that "liberalism" is caused by a faulty gene. Meanwhile, the Daily Express has run a poll asking its readers if they think our schools are being ruined by foreign children. In what way do you regard these things as "centre" anything?

How can there be extreme right wing papers without corresponding extreme left wing papers? Besides, The Independent is quite left wing, so I guess everything else does seem right to the left. Its all about perspective.

So I thought some original research would be necessary. For this I used the AllOurIdeas survey/suggestions website, I fed in a list of the top ten best selling national newspapers according to wikipedia's page on circulation (and The Metro), asked the question "which of these two newspapersis more right wing?", then pinged the link round twitter and Google+.

After about ten respondants the newspapers had been sorted into the following sequence, from left to right

The Guardian
The Independent
The Mirror
The Metro
Financial Times
The Times
Daily Telegraph
The Sun
Daily Mail
Daily Star
Daily Express

They're broadly in the order I expected, except for anomaly of The Metro, which of course is a free newspaper, so folk don't have to make an economic choice to buy it so shouldn't be in the list, however, it is published by Associated Newspapers, part of the Daily Mail and General Trust, I expected them to have a similar editorial line to The Daily Mail, but it seems it is perceived as being far more left wing than its brethren.

Anyhoo, based on just this sequence, The Times is a centre ground newspaper, The Daily Express is a far right paper and The Guardian is a far left paper.
Still that's not an appropriate resolution of the issue. Instead of the centre being the median point where half the newspaper titles are left of it and half the newspaper titles are to right, it should be about readership.

So if we include circulation figures (from wikipedia)

The Guardian - 279,308
The Independent - 185,035
Daily Mirror - 1,194,097
Financial Times - 383,067
The Times - 457,250
Daily Telegraph - 651,184
The Sun - 3,001,822
Daily Mail - 2,133,568
Daily Star - 734,311
Daily Express - 639,875

The total number of newspaper readers is around 9.5 million. The halfway point is around 5 million. It follows then that someone in the dead centre of the political spectrum, where half of all newspaper readers are on the left of him and half of newspaper readers are on the right, would be a reader of The Sun. That's what the centre ground looks like.

Say you break down the entire newspaper readership into three thirds representing the leftwing, the centreground and the rightwing, then still The Sun represents the entire cohort of the centre ground. The trio of the Daily Mail, Daily Star and Daily Express represent the entire rightwing. The leftwing of newspaper readership includes, as expected The Guardian, Independent and Daily Mirror and, somewhat counter to expectations, The Financial Times, The Times and The Daily Telegraph. Although that last three are rightwing compared to the Guardian and Independent, they are left of centre compared to the centre.

Left wing
The Guardian - 279,308
The Independent - 185,035
Daily Mirror - 1,194,097
Financial Times - 383,067
The Times - 457,250
Daily Telegraph - 651,184 

Centre
The Sun - 3,001,822
Right wing
Daily Mail - 2,133,568
Daily Star - 734,311
Daily Express - 639,875

Now, back to that barmy wrongcock from Yahoo Answers, accusing the Daily Mail of being extreme right wing, I bet he feels stupid now, in reading my methodology and research, cos look, its just right of centre, not extreme right wing, it can't possibly be any closer to being on the centre ground.

Just because a dreadful newspaper is dreadful, doesn't mean it is far-right, it just means you're a snob who hates people and thinks they're too stupid to be trusted to make their own decisions.