On one of my rare shifts on the counter I enquired why a regular buyer of the Daily Telegraph had after decades, switched to the Sydney Morning Herald. His response was that he had a ‘gutfull’ of biased reporting. Later when I made enquires of the counter staff it seems that we lost at least one, perhaps two subscription sales for the same reason. Both it seems were thought to be solid labour supporters.
This is what a newsagent recently commented to other newsagents. My experience is that Iam more likely to get a negative comment on a cover story on a News Limited newspaper than a Fairfax newspaper. News has less news and more attack for the sake of attack in its lead stories.
An older customer a few months ago explained that he only bought the Herald Sun every so often to find out what Rupert thought – other than that, it’s not news he said.
Rupert’s papers are a big part of the reason people are not confident with the state of the economy, which is why people are not spending. I get sick of people on 100000+ saying how hard it is to live, the truth is they have never had it so good.
Depends where you live. In the country I would regularly have people pouring scorn on the left wing bias of the Age.
Right wing propoganda wins in this area, too.
I think the Age can only be said to have left-wing bias when comparing it to its News Ltd equivalent. When comparing it to the broader media it’s called balanced reporting 🙂