Do you think on-line growth means the tabloid press will have less influence in this election than previously?

Facebook and Twitter are already stealing the thunder of the papers, people can hear what is really going on from real people without the publishing laws being abused for their own use.

I am not so sure the press have had such influence for a very long time. In 1992 Murdoch claimed it was "The Sun What Won It", but I doubt it did. Newspapers don't endorse someone and then persuade the public. They gauge the public mood first, and back what appeals to their readership, and then claim the credit if they happened to have backed the winner. Lookig at that 1992 election, how could the Sun have radically affected the outcome, when it had a circulation of about 4 million, but there were more than 33.5 million votes cast? There is no way all of that 33.5 million read the Sun, or acted on its endorsement of Major, and no way that every voter who read the Sun agreed with it. To suggest papers are all that important says the public cannot think for themselves and need journalists to tell us how to vote.

If they ever were important, they certainly are not now that we have internet, blogging, Twitter, rolling news, etc. But one thing they can do very successfully is target a politician for some severe attacks, but even that does not always work. The public doesn't like to see someone victimised until they decide for themselves that they have had enough of them.

the press and media avoid

telling the truth

I stand corrected one paper stood up

for the public concerning expenses

thank you Daily Telegraph

but like the paper backing the lib dems

will they be impartial when the true number

of bogus votes are caught out

the one who I exposed about 3 years ago is back and with full backing from clegg the fraud!!

You now have the "tabloid press" on TV and online (you call it "analysis"? lol)