Search

This article contends that The Sunday Times became a champion of the ideas of free market populism after it was purchased by Rupert Murdoch. The driving force for this shift was the editor (1983-1994), Andrew Neil, who argued that free market ideology was a radical set of ideas which was on the side of ordinary people and which was opposed mainly by “elites” and “establishments”. This populist view of markets owes much to the ideas of the American Right and was shared by the newspaper's proprietor, Rupert Murdoch. The market populism of The Sunday Times was allied to a discourse in which opposing left-liberal views were characterised as politically correct “orthodoxies” rather than authentic positions. This article examines the newspaper's challenge to the “orthodoxies” of economic policy, the welfare state and policy on AIDS. It concludes that the popularisation of the market as a vehicle for social betterment was one of the lasting influences of this Murdoch newspaper, rather than simply its support for a particular leader (Thatcher) or party (the Conservatives). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]