NORTHERN PLANNER

One’s thing for sure, the days of Piers Morgan are well and truly over. A while back he tried to make the Mirror a more serious paper and cover issues in depth. Sales plummeted.

No wonder then that the front page is devoted to Leona from the X Factor. Most of the paper is devoted to the gossipy lifestyle stuff we saw in the Mail, in fact the only real difference is that The Mirror is clearly pitched at a lower income bracket. The sport is virtually all football hyperbole with some racing thrown in.

Interesting on page two, which is like a longform contents page with a precis of what will be covered – basically sport, showbiz and opinion. The news bit is a couple of snapshots not covered elsewhere.

This is where The Mirror first reveals it’s loyalties. ‘Blair to make his personal plane journeys carbon neutral’ and ‘a massive 95% cut in government websites will be launched today …to slash red tape…and give a better service to the public’. That’s it.

Two news pages. One devoted to the US air strikes at the Al Qaeda tatgets in Somalia. The title, ‘PAYBACK’. Interestingly, the other page is scathing article on the home office. Sounds like they’re not so loyla after all, except a caption reads ‘Mr Reid has demanded a majot probe’. ‘A probe is already underway to discover how he was left in the dark’. In other words, it’s not the government’s fault and they’ll sort it out. Neat.

As for Kevin Maguire, with the only ‘news opinion’ in the paper, he has a pop at Cameron glossing over his priveledged background and manages to turn the Ruth kelly private school affair into a pop at the Tories as well, as ‘the small band defending (her)splurging of £15,000 to buy private tuition….is dominated by Tories’. ‘do not underestimate (Gordon Brown’s) fury over the row she triggered. Very clever.

So the is perfectly pitched to it’s audience. Lots of interest and lifestyle. Nothing wrong with that, it’s what sells, but what little real news there is little more than thinly veiled propaganda. The only reason I prefer it to The Mail is that it doesn’t use limited, bent facts to prove it’s argument.