Newspapers central to healthy political debate News UK CEO tells Press Gazette conference

A new survey suggests that newspapers played a greater role in determining how people voted in the Scottish Independence referendum last month than either social media or the campaigns themselves.

The research conducted by YouGov for News UK revealed that 60% of voters said they relied on newspapers (and their websites) for the majority of their information on the independence debate.

This compared to 54% who said they obtained their information from social media and 44% from the ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ camps directly.

The research results were unveiled by Mike Darcey, CEO of News UK, at Press Gazette’s third annual “News on the Move” conference today.

In the wake of the research he said:

Just think about that for a minute. In the recent Scottish referendum, held at a time when the digital revolution was in full flow, newspapers played a more significant role than either social media or the political campaigns themselves. Newspapers remain central to healthy political debate and the Scottish referendum just proved it.

Mr Darcey highlighted the Sunday Times YouGov survey published on 7^th September 2014 as a key moment in the debate.

He said:

It was the Sunday Times poll, showing the ‘yes’ camp ahead, that threw the ‘no’ campaign into turmoil and sparked an entirely new debate about the sort of powers that would be devolved if Scotland voted to retain the Union.

The latest ABC figures show that people also turned strongly towards The Times, as the paper of record, for politics during the week of the vote. An extra 70,000 copies were sold across the UK including 10,000 extra copies of the Scottish edition between Wednesday and Saturday.  At the weekend following the vote, The Sunday Times also sold an additional 20,000 copies.

With the general election just months away Mike Darcey used his speech to stress the importance of professional journalism to political debate and the democratic process.