Newspaper Endorsements.

Manic Moran

Daft question, but I don't recall ever seeing this sort of thing in an Irish paper. I never paid that much attention to print media during election season though, so may have missed it.

We all know that various media sources tend to have a bit of bias one way or the other when covering news. But in the US, when it comes to election time, newspapers will actually print out a 'voting guide' along the lines of "These are all the things you can vote on and people you can vote for, and we recommend you vote the following way for the various propositions and persons"

Sometimes people will take their newspaper to the voting booth, in case they forget something.

Maybe I'm an idealist, but I see this as totally abandoning even the precept of reporting the news in a fair and factual manner, even if it is in the editorial section. If someone comes right out and says 'I favour the following', how can everything else that is said by that person come out untainted?

Given the recent elections in Ireland, were there any newspapers that did this? Or if not to the extent of publishing a voting guide, at least openly expressing a preference?

NTM

lostexpectation

Manic Moran wrote:

We all know that various media sources tend to have a bit of bias one way or the other when covering news. But in the US, when it comes to election time, newspapers will actually print out a 'voting guide' along the lines of "These are all the things you can vote on and people you can vote for, and we recommend you vote the following way for the various propositions and persons"

Sometimes people will take their newspaper to the voting booth, in case they forget something.

! we're more subtle here, and you have all those propositions to remember don't you rather then one or at most two questions/elections at the same time

Rock Climber

Iirc the sunday times Irish version openly endorsed the rainbow this time and the last time.

Voipjunkie

Rock Climber wrote:

Iirc the sunday times Irish version openly endorsed the rainbow this time and the last time.

No the rainbow this time the last election they backed the PDs as an attempt to stop FF getting the OM and the 97 they backed the rainbow

Victor

The Irish Times took an anti-FF line.

The Indo took an anti-FF line, and then flip-flopped when Biffo 'had tea' with O'Reilly.

Phoenix Magazine slagged everyone. However, some of their cartoonists now fear for their jobs as they won't have enough material to slag off the PDs with.

Given the short slate in most constituencies, options were limited to roughly:
1. FF-PD or PD-FF.
2. FG-Lab-Green or Lab-FG-Green.
3. Green, then maybe someone else.
4. SF, then maybe someone else.
5. ABFF1, ABFF2, ABFF3, ABFF4.

Certainly thats what I saw when doing tallies in Dublin North East.

Collie D

Victor wrote:

Given the short slate in most constituencies, options were limited to roughly:
1. FF-PD or PD-FF.
2. FG-Lab-Green or Lab-FG-Green.
3. Green, then maybe someone else.
4. SF, then maybe someone else.
5. ABFF1, ABFF2, ABFF3, ABFF4.



Certainly thats what I saw when doing tallies in Dublin North East.

Haha, really? That's my constituency, I went along the lines of 4 then 5.

Back on topic (slightly). It's not only newspapers. The CEO of a very large public listed company I used to work for sttod up at our AGM urgin shareholders to vote for the Nice Treaty and later folllowed it up by emailing the company to do likewise. He has since been let go for viewing "exotic" websites