It’s a pretty bleak political landscape out there in the UK and USA, but here’s a couple of spots of good news.
The Sun slips below 2m daily sale for the first time in 43 years
The Sun slipped below the 2m sales mark in October, with an average daily sale of 1,978,324 copies. The last time it sold fewer than 2m was 43 years ago, in early 1971. It does qualify as something of a landmark moment but it’s important to put it in perspective. …
The piece goes on to set out some of the reasons why the decline might not be as significant as it looks (e.g. online readers). But others take an even stronger view:
A BBC editor declares the end of the tabloid media, which is now going into meltdown
A BBC editor has declared the end of the tabloid media as a power-broker in British politics. And said media is now essentially proving his point, by going into meltdown.
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As the election results suggest, these gutter rags no longer have the same sway they had over voters in previous elections. People are waking up to their naked corporate bias and highly evident hypocrisy. And as a result, their previous role as power-brokers in British politics is fading away. That can only be a good thing for our democracy. …
The Sun and Mail tried to crush Corbyn. But their power over politics is broken
It’s the Sun wot didn’t win it. And despite the Mail’s pages and pages of frenzied warnings about how electing communist terrorists would be the end of the world, the Mail didn’t do it for their woman either.
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The Mail sells its world of pain based on fear. The attack it tried to sustain over a panicked 13 pages just looked hyperbolic. Instead, the warnings about Labour became ignorable rages. With May refusing to engage, unable to be spontaneous, Corbyn often just appeared pleasant and bemused. Having destroyed Ed Miliband, the tabloids took it for granted it could be done again with a few key words. Tax. Extremist. Terrorist.The world has moved on. This is not only the end of austerity, it is surely the end of the hankering for Thatcherism that is still the lifeblood of the men who run these papers.
It matters significantly now that they are out of touch. It matters that their relentless negativity did not chime. In this one moment they are cut down to size: not fixers of government, not the high priests of the electorate but strange angry blokes selling seven varieties of hate while ranting to themselves. …
Meanwhile in America:
As Trump’s Problems Mount, Breitbart’s Numbers Are Cratering
With its former chairman Steve Bannon as White House chief strategist and plans for an ambitious international expansion, Breitbart was supposed to be on its way to becoming a media behemoth in the Trump era, one with unparalleled access and a passionate audience.
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Just a few months later, the numbers have a different story to tell. As of May 26, 2017, according to Alexa.com—the same web-ranking analytics company that Breitbart drew its numbers from in January—Fox News is the 64th most-trafficked site in the country. Huffington Post is at 60. Buzzfeed is at 50. The Washington Post, on the strength of a series of eye-popping scoops, is at 41. Breitbart is in 281st place.
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Measuring web traffic is an inexact art, but other web-analytics companies reflect a similar, unusually steep decline in Breitbart’s traffic. ComScore estimated that Breitbart had nearly 23 million unique visitors during the month of November 2016, but only drew 10.7 million in April 2017, a 53 percent drop. Last month, the site had fewer visitors than it did in April 2016, when 12.3 million people visited the site. …
It would be great to see these hate mongers slip further into irrelevance. Unfortunately there will always be some forum or other to take their place.
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