During the election campaign, most mornings, the first site I looked at was the Press Display to see what the front pages were like. Obviously they were mostly awful. But for future reference and for your edification here are the front pages of The Daily Telegraph, Courier Mail, Herald Sun, Advertiser, The Oz and Sunday Version thereof of every day of the campaign when the front page had a story about the election.
Press daily didn’t used to show the front pages of Fairfax pages until a couple weeks ago, so I only have the pages of The SMH and The Age for the last two weeks.
First The Daily Tele:
I make it 10 pro LNP stories, 11 anti-ALP stories, and 1 sort of pro-ALP (the ALP launch which still had a kicker for Rudd in the headline about Abbot “surging)
The Herald Sun had a lot less coverage. Mostly this is because there were less critical seats in Victoria, and also because Essendon dominated the AFL town. I make it 7 pro-LNP sotries, and 3 anti-ALP.
The Courier Mail is another story. Like the Daily Telegraph and Sydney, there were lots of seat sin the QLD that the Liberal Party wanted to win. And so too it seems did the Courier Mail want them to be won.
I’ll rate the first as neutral. But from then on it’s 12 anti-ALP, and 2 pro-LNP.
The Advertiser, like the Herald Sun was in a state with few seats expected to change hands. So it wasn’t as big an issue. The Tiser was the most balance. It found room for one pro-ALP article (with a slight slap in the headline). Only 2 anti-ALP ones and 5 pro-LNP
The Sunday Papers were pretty one sided:
8 anti-ALP, 3 pro-LNP (not including the ones the day after the election)
The Oz is tougher to score. Multiple headlines, and often good stories below the fold disguised by misleading headlines:
The Age is also tough. The headlines are much less emotive than the news.corp
The SMH is much the same as The Age
So there you go. That was the election 2013 from our unbiased media…
