The full tables for YouGov’s weekly poll for the Sunday Times are now up here. Natually they are mainly dealing with the phone hacking scandal.
Looking first at the regular trackers, David Cameron’s own approval rating is down to minus 13 (from minus 10 last week), which is his lowest since March. Ed Miliband’s approval rating meanwhile has moved the up other way, up to minus 28 (from minus 34 a week ago). Neither are massive changes, but it has reversed what had been a strong negative trend for Miliband, so good news for him.
Moving onto the questions about the phone hacking and views of the press, only 9% of people now think tabloid newspapers’ reporting is fair and accurate, with 71% believing it is not. 78% agree with the statement that “The tabloid press is out of control”.
While 69% agree that it is only a small minority of journalists who are tarnishing the reputation of others, the vast majority (78%) think that the same practices probably went on in other tabloid newspapers too. Only 8% think it was confined to the News of the World alone. People are more non-committal on the broadsheets – 35% think they are generally fair and accurate, 33% do not, 32% are unsure. Broadsheet readers are rather more trusting of broadsheets (59% think they are fair and accurate, 22% disagree), but even people who read tabloids don’t trust them much – 16% of tabloid readers think their reporting is fair and accurate, 60% do not.
Turning to attitudes about using underhand or illegal actions in order to uncover stories, the broad picture seems to be that the public consider such actions unacceptable whatever the story. People disagree with the statement that underhanded tactics are legitimate if they expose wrongdoing are in the public interest by 54% to 37%, and agree that it is never acceptable for journalists to break the law no matter how important the story by 73% to 19%. On the specific allegations of paying police officers for information, only 2% of people thought this was generally acceptable, 92% thought it was not. Even in scenarios such as exposing political corruption only 12% thought paying police officers would be a legitimate thing to do, with 72% thinking it unacceptable in all the circumstances YouGov asked about.
Unsurprisingly there is overwhelming support (86%) for a public inquiry into the allegations of phone hacking, with opinion broadly divided over whether it should begin as soon as possible (48%) or wait for the police investigation to finish (44%). Only 6% of people think the original police investigation was adequate.
On the future of press regulation, 61% support the establishment of a formal authority to regulate newspapers, compared to 25% who think the press should continue to regulate themselves through the PCC.
Turning to issues specific to News International, 56% thought the closure of the News of the World was the right decision, 26% think it was wrong. However, only 6% think it will draw a line under the issue. Amongst people who identified themselves as News of the World readers, 35% think it was the right decision, 53% do not.
Finally, on the BSkyB takeover only 9% of people thought it should be allowed, 70% disagreed, 21% were unsure. Only 24% agreed that it should be decided on purely competition grounds, 54% thought the issue of phone hacking should be taken into account when making the decision.
Given this is a fast moving story, timing is important – the survey went out Thursday to Friday. All responds were after the News of the World closure, but obviously before much of the wider media reaction too it, with the great majority of responses prior to David Cameron’s press conference the day afterwards or the arrest of Andy Coulson. There doesn’t seem to be any polling from other companies on the topic yet, but Populus’s monthly poll for the Times would normally have gone into the field over the weekend, so we may get that tomorrow night.
