Published with permission of the author but without the knowledge of the original publishers, The Malaysian Insider

By Shannon Teoh

OCT 6 — The past week has seen the UK media in a frenzy over this headline: “The Sun Says: Labour’s lost it.”

After a dozen years of supporting Labour, it withdrew its support for under-siege Prime Minister Gordon Brown ahead of a general election that must be called by June 2010.

Perhaps in Malaysia, where cynicism and indeed, scoffing mockery of print media is ubiquitous, a newspaper making such a proclamation about any political party would be dismissed as mere gimmick.

That is not to say that The Sun, the UK’s bestselling paper at over 3 million copies, is not engaging in gimmick here. But for over two decades, it has not called a single British election wrongly.

So, what does this mean? If you ask The Sun, they would obviously say that it is because they are influential. It ran a front-page headline suggesting that readers “Vote Tory this time” ahead of Margeret Thatcher’s reign that began in 1979.

On April 9, 1992, as the recession-hit UK went to the ballot, every other major media outlet was busy predicting a victory for Labour leader Neil Kinnock but The Sun’s front-page headline was a scathing attack on the Labour leader who was widely expected to triumph over incumbent John Major. It read “If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.”

So convinced that it had won the election for the Conservative party, The Sun came up with the proclamation that “It’s The Sun Wot Won It” for the Tories just a couple of days after the election.

That headline has since entered into the mainstream lexicon of the Brits. In 2004, it was The Guardian “wot lost it” for John Kerry in the US presidential election, after the newspaper started a letter writing campaign to voters in the swing state of Ohio urging them to vote for Kerry but the state eventually went to George W. Bush. In last year’s race for the London mayorship, it was the Evening Standard “wot won it” for Boris Johnson and somewhat comically, The Sun used it self-referentially to headline a debate at the Oxford Union over its infamous Page Three girls claiming “It’s Sun’s girls wot won it.”

Anyway, just to complete the story, The Sun continued to back the Conservative party all the way until about two months before the 1997 polls, when it this time declared that “The Sun Backs Blair” just before Tony Blair won a landslide victory.

So does this mean the UK will have a Tory government next year? And if so, is it simply because The Sun is politically astute, or because it is highly influential?

The former suggests that the withdrawal of their support for Brown is ominous rather than impactful, as The Sun would have you believe. But who can really say if The Sun just reads voters better than anyone else rather than really influence them? Simply put, are its readers following The Sun, or is it following them?

Brown has already been in trouble for some time now with bad press concerning not just his policies, but his appearance and personality, having continued since early 2009. It was his own backbencher and also a Daily Telegraph polled which referred to Brown as a “dead man walking” earlier last month.

Granted, even some Tory MPs acknowledged The Sun’s contribution to their election triumph in 1992. Following The Sun’s abandonment of Labour, Brown lost his cool on television, leading to column inches describing how when Brown is so vehement about saying he doesn’t care about The Sun, he really does.

After all, the depth of anger cannot be disguised after this week’s Labour conference saw trade union Unite’s leader Tony Woodley rip a copy of The Sun on stage. The Guardian has been extensively dissecting The Sun’s decision with various analyses and commentaries. The Times ran yet another “wot” headline stating that “It’s the facts wot lost it for Labour” in which it simultaneously plays down The Sun’s influence while also damning Labour to an impending defeat.

So we know at the very least that even if voters are not influenced by The Sun, many others are and it is plausible that their changed behaviours might eventually sway votes.

There are, however, at least two deeper questions at play here.

Firstly, is it at all proper for media outlets to report on themselves in such self-important tones? The Sun has effectively reported on itself in the third person, denoting how important its own opinion is.

In other words, the newspaper’s own acts are newsworthy events in their own right.

Not that similar things are unheard of in Malaysia. When the New Straits Times was embroiled in a kerfuffle a few years ago after printing a comic strip lampooning the entire Muhammad cartoon incident in Denmark, it ran not one, but two front page editorials back-to-back, first stating that it would not apologise and then that it is in fact, apologising.

Malaysiakini has often times published what were at best, earnest, and at worst, chest-thumpingly self-righteous articles about how it has defied the establishment and managed to set milestone after milestone despite constant oppression. This website has itself run an article on how it was unceremoniously attacked by hackers.

The above reflect differing levels of self-importance — of course, some self-importance is rational since media outlets are important — but at least we can be thankful that we have not descended to the point of the farcical manner in which other UK media took turns to give their tuppence on The Sun’s walkout on Labour. It is as if the UK media were in a world of its own.

The late French post-modernist Jean Baudrillard described modern media culture as “simulacra” that society has become so reliant on, that it has lost touch with the reality that the media is supposed to be based on.

In this context, The Sun has withdrawn its support for Brown. So what? Aren’t voters, not newspapers what matters in a democracy? Well, Baudrillard would say that voters, despite all that is apparent before their physical senses and consciousness, have no idea what to think unless someone tells them.

Which leads us to the second, and more pertinent question. Should the media be an influence on the public? How democratic can that be?

Or perhaps, we should word it the other way around, make the issue more “free market.” Should the public let the media influence them? One argument is that journalists are supposed to be experts in their respective beats and so, should be able to inform our decision-making.

But there is a thin line between informing and shaping.

Despite The Sun’s reputation as a trashy tabloid more famous for its titillating Page 3 girls than its political coverage, it is said that three-quarters of its newsroom is staffed by Oxbridge graduates.

Surely, if you needed to go somewhere for guidance, it should be to some smart people. But that assumes that smart people have the public’s interest, and not self-interest, in mind.

Perhaps The Sun’s own clanging editorial detailing its divorce from Labour provides us the answer:

“Twelve years ago, Britain was crying out for change from a divided, exhausted Government. Today we are there again.

In 1997, “New” Labour, shorn of its destructive hard-Left doctrines and with an energetic and charismatic leader, seemed the answer.

Tony Blair said things could only get better, and few doubted him. But did they get better? Well, you could point to investment in schools and shorter hospital waiting lists and say yes, some things did — a little.”

Obviously, it suits The Sun to be short-sighted and ignore that it had itself backed Blair, meaning just like any other Brit, it too was bamboozled. And if it is as fallible as the public, why then, should the public be swayed by it?

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