Britain's national newspapers are hardly known for their political reticence. Historically, most of them have been blatantly partisan, propagating the opinions of the party that they support according to the bias of the editor or proprietor.
They did not need to wait until just before an election to tell their readers how they should vote: their daily political agenda was patently obvious. There has been somewhat of a change over the last 20 years – dating from the fall of Margaret Thatcher and the Poll Tax Riots – because almost all papers have tended to proclaim their independence from political parties.
But now as we see the internet and social networking coming into its own this time around, are we beginning to see the decline of power that certain papers have had over their political puppets?
With Facebook and Twitter being used more commonly by the up and coming generation of which I see myself as part of – and of which, where we get our news nowadays instead of the Dead Tree Press, I think that newspapers are going to have to come to terms that the power that they welded, even a decade ago has been eroded irreversibly.
That it has happened so quickly, might be down to people wanting to decide for themselves what is best for them and their families, instead of what Sly Bailey, Rupert Murdoch and Viscount Rothermere tell them to do.
I think on Friday morning, there are going to be some unhappy paper owners.
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