There was a lot of chatter about yesterday to the effect that Murdoch's appearance at the Leveson Inquiry and the storm surrounding Jeremy Hunt came at a very fortunate time for the government, because it diverted attention from the news that GDP estimates put the UK back in recession - the so-called double dip that commentators such as David Blanchflower have been filling column inches with since the coalition came into power.
Hunt's security or otherwise in his cabinet seat is undoubtedly a Westminster Village story. However, there are numerous examples of where an apparently insular political story has dominated national media coverage - evidence, critics say, of the London-centric nature of the media and the skewed view political journalists have of how interesting their beat is to the public at large.
With this in mind, I thought it might be worth taking a look at what the newspaper front pages chose to prioritise. Obviously, that's not a scientific way of measuring media coverage, but papers design their splashes based on what they think their potential readers are most likely to pick up in the newsagents. It would seem that the government isn't going to manage to 'bury the bad news' of the double dip. The Guardian, The Independent and (unsurprisingly) the Financial Times all feature it as their main front page story. The Daily Telegraph has it as the second lead. The Daily Mirror devotes their splash to a photofit of Madeleine McCann. The Sun has a story about Coronation Street and a side column about the double dip. The Daily Mail and The Times are the only ones to devote their entire front pages to the Hunt/Murdoch story.
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