While most Irish papers are backing a Yes vote, British-owned titles are promoting a No vote
READERS OF the Irish Sunwho may have struggled to decipher its attitude to the Lisbon Treaty will have felt somewhat enlightened yesterday morning.
Under the front-page headline "FROG OFF" was the face of French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner superimposed on to a stout-bodied amphibian. The story began: "A French government minister was told to hop it last night after he tried to THREATEN Irish voters into supporting the Lisbon Treaty."
In coverage reminiscent of its British parent paper's "Up yours, Delors" headline of November 1990, when it told its "patriotic family of readers to tell the feelthy French to FROG OFF", page four was given over to the meddling "Frenchie" alongside the heading "Oui all say Non".
The Irish Sunis in a small minority, with most newspapers - even without in all cases having formally declared as much - clearly in favour of a Yes vote. But in the company of the other Irish editions of British-owned papers, the Sun's opposition to Lisbon is unmistakably consonant.
Last weekend, the Sunday Timesencouraged its readers to vote No. Noting in its leader column that it, "almost alone among the media, has promoted the case for a No vote", the paper called on readers to "Be positive, vote No" and supported its case by pointing to concerns over the loss of a permanent commissioner and Ireland's voting weight.
On the same day, the Irish Mail on Sundaygave its readers the same advice. It editorialised that few could argue that being in the EU had not served Ireland well. But where was the clause that would bring more jobs, it asked rhetorically, or the provision that "establishes low taxation and adventurous capitalism as the bedrock of the union?"
The British papers also reflect the other side of the argument, of course, with the Guardianand the London Independentamong those publishing pro-Lisbon editorials. But neither prints an Irish edition, and their sales are small compared with their editionalised rivals. Figures from the Joint National Readership Survey in March show the Irish Sunhad the second-highest readership among the daily tabloids, with an average 309,000 daily readers in 2007. The Irish Mail on Sundaywas read by 252,000 people, while the Sunday Timeshad 363,000 readers, making it the fourth most popular of the Sunday papers.
According to Michael Foley of the School of Media at DIT, the editorial stance adopted by Irish arms of British papers closely corresponds with the line taken by their parent papers, and the rhetoric of British euroscepticism has been deployed more regularly in Irish debates since British papers began to invest heavily here in the mid-1990s.
"They take a much more eurosceptical view of the world than Irish papers do generally, not just in the context of the Lisbon Treaty," he says. Sometimes, as with the Sun's frog headline, that rhetoric is rooted in the argot of British tabloid prejudice and may mean very little to Irish readers.
Measuring the effect of opinion journalism on public attitudes is difficult. According to a survey carried out by Millward Brown IMS for researchers at UCD after the Nice II referendum in 2002, newspaper articles were the only mass media factor that affected the direction of voting - to the benefit of the Yes side - but no distinction was offered between comment and news. What is clear, says Foley, is all editors believe they have an impact. Was it not the Sun"wot won" the 1992 general election for the Tories?
"If they write these editorials and if they have opinion pieces, it must be because all papers believe they have some sort of effect."
