The tabloids are facing a “potentially mortal blow” from the internet. So in this struggle, they dare not be hobbled in their desperation to hold on – for at least a few years longer – to a business model which depends on flexibility in defining the public interest and the invasion of privacy. This existential anxiety is the main reason for the present dispute between the political parties and the majority of newspapers on the shape of a Royal Charter which will set the framework for a new press regulator.
For a century or more, Britain’s popular newspapers have fought guerrilla skirmishes, pitting popular choice against establishment taste and decency and formal, BBC-type standards of truth and balance. They are bought, in paper form even now, by about 7 million people every day as against the 1.5 million sales of upmarket (tabloid people like to say “unpopular”) papers. The past few years have seen a full-blown war, fought on the field supplied by Leveson and prompted by the tabloids’ own desperation for more intimate content. Ironically, they may, against the initial odds, be about to win this war or at least fight it to a draw. But they are losing the core strength, their hold on the market, and must embark on the uncertain currents of the internet, which will give them a much more modest existence or might even drown them.
