Just wondering really on what side of the fence particular newspapers tend to sit on when it comes to politics? For example in Britain the Telegraph and the Mail are effectively Tory papers while the guardian is labour's mouthpiece. If they are allied to any party in Aus what generally would they be?

I don't think that they are allied to any party.....if so, it's quite covert.

Well the Canberra Times seems to be the mouthpiece of the ALP these days. The Age and Sydney Morning Herald have similar political affiliations. Generally the Fairfax group are considered the left rags. I doubt there is a right rag in Aus at the moment with general media fawning over the latest incumbent muppets in government.

The Australian is right leaning (Liberal Party) although it swayed towards Labour just before the last general election (Murdoch decided to go with the winning horse at the last hurdle).

Courier Mail (Qld) tends to be Labour.

Not sure about the others.

TBA there are not that many daily papers to choose from. Melbourne only has two daily papers, The Herald Sun and The Age - the Age is a broadsheet and much superior paper to the Sun (IMO). It's amazing for a population of around 3.5 million that there are only two papers. There is one paper that covers the whole of Aus which is The Australian but I understand that this is really struggling.

I believe in WA there is only the Western Australian as a daily but this may change as Fairfax appear to be trying to make some inroads over there.

Not sure about Sydney, apart from the Sydney Morning Herald (Fairfax) and of course there will be a Mudoch paper as well.

Brisbane, as I understand it, only has the Brisbane Times but others will be able to answer this.

The Brisbane Times is an online only 'newspaper'. The only print paper is the Courier Mail.....a right pile of old tosh it is too!

Indeed. I think you could only call it a newspaper in the very loosest sense of the word. There's more news in my daughters' weekly school newsletter

The newspapers in Oz are a pale imitation of the major UK papers.

No equivalent of the Sun.....im still gutted after 4 years! will somebody please put some tits on page 3 (and I dont mean any politicians)!

Not many papers to choose from, some states only have 1 paper.

Sometimes I’m convinced I’m living in a communist style country - 1 paper, controlled media, fear of outside competition etc etc.

But the 1 paper thing is probably a good thing as Australian news (paper and TV) only report Australian stories, the outside world doesn’t usually exist. It’s all local news for local people – the less the better!


Mikey

Local news for local people....couldnt help it!

I was surprised at the lack of papers but it doesn't seem to cause a problem in Melbourne. As said there are only 2 main papers with the Leader being the main one for local news (although there are others).

The Age is a broadsheet and the Herald Sun (aka the Hun) is tabloid. Personally I would put them both slightly right of centre although I can believe that they could have swung towars ALP in the last election. I find both to be suitable for their target markets. The Age has good coverage of local, national and international news. (I think some Brits are agrieved that international news in Aus tends towards Asian news rather than European news which leads to the accusation that Aussie newspapers don't do international news.) The Hun is more populist but nowhere near as bad as things like the UK's Mirror and Sun.

There was a time when there was more newspapers. I think the Herald and the Sun were separate news papers once and I think there was an Argus in Melbourne which probably got incorporated into the Age. There's no government plot to control the newspapers it's just that competition has amalgamated the various papers into what we currently have (in the same way that the Evening Standard dominates London's evening news market).

Just out of interest Vanessa, isn't your hubby a bigshot for The Age?

My Aussie g/f couldn't believe there were so many daily, national papers in the UK.

The Herald Scum is populist nonsense - they jump on any bandwagon going and still call football soccer.

The Age is a better read, a little further to the left in its Editorials and calls football football.

I get The Age. And I used to get The Grauniad in the UK.

Don't know where you heard that - he just does the morning deliveries

The Age ain't bad. And I often interchange with the Australian.

Looks like The Times is becoming sort of high brow tabloid which it was acused of doing around the time I left. Full of Top 10 this, Top 10 that with serious looking pictures of columnists to balance it. I think the UK broadsheets have changed this last 10 years but they are quite fun too.

There was an article about a childless single woman swapping lifes with a country women with kids. The country woman had a pool, etc. As someone said, not a typical Englishwoman. In this regard the broadsheets are still targeting a demographic.