Is The Sun (owner: Rupert Murdoch) indulging in a campaign of partisan reporting designed to damage Facebook, one of the main rivals to MySpace (owner: Rupert Murdoch)?
That’s a question that has been raised a few times on blogs (such as towards the end of this posting [Update – or here on Liberal Conspiracy]), so I thought I would take a look at The Sun’s website and compare the coverage on there of Facebook versus MySpace.
To be fair to The Sun, I asked the site’s own search engine to give me the top fifteen headlines for stories including the word “MySpace” and then the same for “Facebook”. These aren’t my choices or someone else’s search engine at work. This is what The Sun says, as it were.
Let’s take Facebook first:
Negative stories about Facebook or what people have done via Facebook
- Hit in the Facebook
- Facebook party turns violent
- ‘Shank’ website is aimed at the kids who carry knives
- Facebook left users ‘at risk’
- Lily and her ex Ed split … again (Although the headline may sound neutral, the story went on to say things such as “It baffles me why anyone, let alone a celeb, would see fit to announce that on Faceache.”)
- Facebook party is a washout
- £22k ‘Facebook’ damages win
- Rapebook: Broadmoor beast lures girls online
- Man sues pal over Facebook
- Georgina’s sad Facebook find
- ‘Knife pal’ net game scrapped
- Facebook pics put on sex site
- ‘Hooker’ caught in internet hoax
Positive stories about Facebook or stories that are neutral about the site but promote traffic to it
- McCanns back Facebook
- Facelift for Facebook
That’s 13-2 against Facebook. So how about MySpace?
Negative stories about MySpace:
- My guy fancies someone else
Err, that’s it. I think you can guess what therefore comes next …
Positive stories about MySpace:
- MySpace justice for crash victim
- MTV and MySpace launch show
- Lily Allen’s latest Ed-ition on web
- Manda has come of age
- MySpace squares up to iTunes
- Networking sites ban kid pervs (This also gives Facebook a positive mention.)
- Find the new stars up in Space
- I become friend 240,000,001
- Cactus abducts pregnant girl (Yes, really.)
- DJ Sam defends little Lohan sis
- Celeb girls hit the decks
- MySpace profile is ‘new CV’
- Page 3 girl’s MySpace joy
- The Sun gets its apps out
So, that would be 14 positive stories about MySpace compared to 1 negative. A bit different from the 2 positive against 13 negative stories about Facebook.
So is the The Sun consistently biased in favour of the company owned by The Sun’s owner at the expense of a commercial rival? There certainly are some questions to be answered as this imbalance is completely out of kilter with their relative traffic levels or with the scope for wrong-doing on either system (all the nasty things reported about Facebook can also happen on MySpace).
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19 Comments
Perhaps I should do a search on Lib Dem Voice for positive and negative stories about Lib Dems and Conservatives. Of course he’s going to big up his own company! Why is this a story?
Quite. It is no more than a re-worked I-$KY column from Private Eye.
And still worth pointing out.
Also, a flaw in Tom’s analogy is that the Sun describes itself as ‘the best for news’, not ‘the best for Murdoch-friendly news’, whereas there is something of a clue in the name Lib Dem Voice. 🙂
This is a serious story because questions of attribution and accuracy are being played off in the public sphere between public opinion and commercial interest and is an area covered by copyright and libel laws.
Ultimately there reaches a tipping point for any private media outlet where the reputation it has built reflects upon whether it is damaging to wider society and thence its own ability to survive in a commercial environment. In return this plays into BBC license fee debates and how to manage and maintain balance of output in the media.
An interesting comparison is how many Iranian newspapers require official backing to survive financially because they regularly step over the line which divides news from propaganda and discourage the general sales which would enable them to exist independently and provide reliable, trustworthy and useful information to their readership.
So it is a sensitive area of political concern which can become highly controversial, especially if whispers of mooted reforms of the BBC charter or libel and copyright laws come closer to fruition – which is inevitably the case in the run-up to every general election as sides are taken by those who wish to invest in trying to influence the debate.
We have an odd media n this country where the television stations are meant to be biased, whilst the newspapers can be as outrageous as they like.
For now I am not proposing the government do anything about it. However I do think that businesses are constanty using underhand methods to create demand for their products, and our education system should teach people about the kind of dirty tricks they get up to.
Facebook seems to be blamed for potential public disorder. In the case of a recent charity clubbing event in Taunton, a group emerged on facebook which was one of the main reasons why the local police cancelled it. I’m not sure I want to live in a society where:
1. Events can be cancelled due to what happenes on facebook,
2. The police take so much notice of a social networking site,
3. An event can be cancelled on the basis that public disorder may occur.
Facebook is getting such an horrendous press in this country it’s quite shocking. So many good things come out of it and yet you wouldn’t think so from the news. These groups don’t often get mentioned.
It is hardly worth pointing out. It is a total non-story from someone who usually does far better.
I thought it was quite interesting, actually.
Spanny: I’m not aware of anyone having done a systematic comparison of coverage before (although there have been some good posts highlighting individual examples of Facebook bashing).
As to whether the overall point is a story? Well, I think the fact that quite a few others have reported invidivual incidents previously suggests so, and not surprisingly given that we’re talking about whether a newspaper owner is having the news edited (whether via direct orders, or indirectly via the company culture) to suit his other commercial interests.
To give an analogy: if Channel 4 were to decide that it would only run movie reviews for films in which it had a financial interest, would that be ok and not worthy of comment? And what if instead, they decided they would run movie reviews of other films, but always said those films were awful? Would that be ok and not worthy of comment? I think you can see where this goes…
Good post Mark, very interesting to see how blatent it is. Mind you the number of Facebook users who read The Sun must be tiny…
Private Eye have been running similar stories for years, showing how Murdoch plugs his own businesses and ventures in his papers.
Of course he has the news edited to suit his agenda. Look at the News Int’l line on China for instance.
I am surprised that anyone, but ANYONE, would be surprised at this.
As Blogs go this was weak (which was surprising as I like your blogs usually). What is your next stunning revelation, Bears **** in the woods.
Personally, I’m grateful Mark did the analyis as I actually discussed the story and the stats in the pub last night as there was a customer worried about his kids using Facebook due to the story.
Yes, I knew that the Sun plugs MySpace and denigrates its rival due to ownership, but a) I don’t have access to all the knowledge and b) this is clear evidence of bias (of course the headline shanking story in and of itself was pathetic and easily knocked down).
A lot of our MPs and activists have invested a lot of time into using social networking and social media sites such as Facebook, when elements of the media run scare stories it can make us look bad by association—as Jo has said the media overreaction to minor stuff on Fb combined with the authorities being stupid over some stuff is worrying and I find it very problematic.
That Torbay police were trying to shut down the whole of Torbay’s evening entertainment sector over a single event suggested in the area in July was ludicrous—tourist area tries to ban fun wouldn’ve been my headline as a journalist, all because the internet highlights that there are some stupid people out there.
Good story Mark, well researched, nice comparison. Spanny, that Private eye (readership: tiny, including me) runs this sort of story doesn’t mean that the average Sun reading parent is aware of the bias. Thus it’s worthy of highlighting when there’s a definite bias issue, and it does effect our campaigns and reputation.
Some of the anti-Pack commments in this thread are bizarre.
Sure, the post’s revelations may not be ‘shocking’ but it is interesting to see more evidence, produced concisely, of Murdoch influence over his media outlets.
A lot of people, some of whom work in Fleet Street, still refuse to accept that Murdoch influences the sentiments expressed in his media at all.
Well said Mark.
The problem with Murdoch’s press is that it is aless about telling us the news, more about making him money, and anyone who gails Sky or Fox news ought to realise that.
The only reason Sky news is not as biased as Fox is because it has a rival in BBC News.
MatGB, the Private Eye readership may be tiny in your view but I am sure it is far more than this blog. I wonder how many Sun readers are intelligent enough to read this forum ?
The issue for News Int’l as I see it is denigrating a rival in a similar industry has a knock on effect on ones own product.
I do not think people here are “Anti-pack” as is claimed, but it is valid to call into question this piece without being against Mark’s other blogs. We are about free speech after all.
But the crossover is likely to be small—and given the bandwidth issues the site sometimes faces, I suspect the readership of this site is more than you think. Regardless…
Irrelevent. What matters is that activists like, for example, me, faced with a “isn’t Facebook that evil site that supports knifing” comment from a potential voter can turn around armed with the facts. And also that a large number of senior journalists and editors/producers are known to read this site, thus while the readership might be small, the impact is, like Private Eye, bigger than it might be.
Mark posts a variety of different posts on a variety of subject on this and other blogs (a blog is the site, not an individual post). They appeal to a wide variety of different readers and suit many different purposes.
I have stated, specifically, why this specific bit of research was useful to me, as an activist, within the last 48 hours. Thus the post has been useful and is relevent—I’d prefer to see this sort of thing than the opposition watch stuff that others both enjoy and find useful. What matters isn’t what gets posted, but how much in proportion gets posted. There are a large number of other posts on the frontpage, so we’re good.
If the whole of the frontpage was facebook and web campaigning geekery, then I think you’d have a stronger point, as it is I don’t genuinely understand your objection to the post being here—not to your taste, perhaps, but definitely on topic given the amount of time Nick Clegg and others are putting into various types of online campaigning, including both MySpace and FaceBook.
hmm… all criticism is good, some is more helpful than others.
Let’s give the Sun the benefit of the doubt (not that they need it) for a moment: perhaps they aren’t consciously aware of any overt bias in their spiralling self-perpetuation of their own interests at the expense of others – so why would any readers even care about how the influence of any editorialising may have the effect of manipulating them to their own detriment?
Take football transfer non-stories, for example – how many of these are planted by agents to manipulate the market for primarily commercial ends? Does the on-off saga of a Gareth Barry or Cristiano Ronaldo make much material difference to the sporting output of any of those teams – or is the volume of hype necessary to build a market audience for the mother-company’s other products? Does the average season-ticket holding Sun reader enjoy paying extortionate above-inflationary annual increases in order to pay for the continued competitiveness of their club, are changes in quality noticable?
Or: does David Beckham retain his place in the England football team on merit, or because the FA can’t sell out stadiums without him, the Sun sells more copies when he is on the back pages and bothe recieve higher levels of sponsorship because his visibility makes him more marketable?
I’m pretty sure most Sun-readers have an opinion on these subjects of debate and that they know they can’t take anything written in their tabloid-of-choice as gospel, but there are always the others who benefit from exposure to contrasting viewpoints when making their own minds up.
It is similarly advisable to take stock market gossip in broadsheets with a large pinch of salt (if we’re being scrupulously fair we ought to watch for unattribured pro-Murdoch company bias in the WSJ for example).
Whatever you may think about whether facebook is a particular victim of rampant commercial bias, it helps nobody to take anything for granted when considering the politics of the matter.
This could be in breach of the new Unfair Trading Regulations. Schedule 1 (practices which are always unfair), section 11 states:
11. Using editorial content in the media to promote a product where a trader has paid for the promotion without making that clear in the content or by images or sounds clearly identifiable by the consumer (advertorial).
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2008/uksi_20081277_en_5#sch1
It’s not clear this would count as paying for the promotion, and it might be hard to prove that it amounts to advertising, but other than those hurdles it is a strict liability criminal offence to use an unfair practice.