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A lot of money is invested by newspaper owners on the assumption that newspapers influence the opinions of their readers.

In the early 1970’s every British national newspaper bar one came out in support of European integration, against a background of public hostility. 62 percent of the public were against entry to the European Economic Community according to a 1971 Harris opinion poll, but four years later 67 percent of Britons fell in line with the press and voted in favour of continued membership.

More recently a European Commission report cited the growth of British newspapers in Ireland as instrumental in shifting public opinion towards rejecting the Lisbon Treaty. UK titles accounted for 41 percent of newspaper sales in Ireland by 2007, with papers like the Irish Sun and the Irish Daily Mail taking a “campaigning Europhobic stance”.

Irish titles have becoming increasingly dependent on UK papers for their European news. The Irish Independent no longer has its own Brussels correspondent and gets its European political news from the Eurosceptic Daily Telegraph whilst the Times was rumoured to be refusing pro-European stories from staff

As Ireland’s press moved from being broadly pro-European to being more Eurosceptic so did the Irish. Newspapers both form and reflect public opinion, but there can be little doubt that Irish Euroscepticism owes a debt to the British press.

The Sun claims to have the power to decide an election

The sceptics have had all of the most memorable stories about Europe, even if they did make them up.

The EU were to ban straight bananas, in fact measurements were only taken for categorisation. Firemen were to be banned from sliding down polls and truck drivers were to have their fry ups replaced with Muesli, but according to the European Commission both of these stories were based on health and safety guidelines not legislation.

David Seymour, Chief Leader Writer and Group Political Editor of the Mirror, accused the Sun of inventing anti-European stories, he said: “Trevor Kavanagh and George Pascoe Watson go around looking for things that they can write an anti euro story about and then they’ll do a leader and then they’ll write a comment piece off the back of it. They’re masters of it – they ought to get an honorary degree for completely made up stories.”

The negative framing of European stories is hammered home by the use of xenophobic language in many tabloids, which is tacitly accepted, and even celebrated, by readers. The Sun repeatedly refers to the French as Frogs and to Germans as Krauts without adversely affecting their circulation.

The Sun’s “Up Yours Delors” headline of 1 November 1990, a rebuff to the ecu, became infamous. A Labour M.E.P called for the paper to be prosecuted for its “Xenophobic racist attack”, while Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary, Bernard Ingham, took heart, he said: “It is expressing the prejudices and feelings of the average Brit.”

And newspaper circulation figures suggest he’s right.

According to the March 2009 ABC figures the Eurosceptic British daily press is more than three and a half times the size of the Europhile press. The Europhile press consists of the Guardian (340,952), the Independent (205,308.) , the Daily Mirror (1,340,131) and the Financial Times (431,900), and has a combined circulation of 2,318,291, compared with the Euroscpetic press, the Sun (3,068,035), the Daily Mail (2,162,462), the Daily Express (725,841), the Daily Star (819880), the Times (600,210) and the Telegraph (824,883), with a combined circulation of 8,261,311.

If newspapers do influence public opinion then it doesn’t take a genius to work out why Britons are so often Eurosceptic.

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An Englishman a Frenchman and a Greek woman discuss civil disobedience in the wake of French and Greek riots and strikes. Are we going to be seeing a re-emergence of political extremism?

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An Englishman an Irish woman and an Italian discuss the economic crisis from the perspective of two of the more troubled European economies.

Last week German newspaper the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, quoted a confidential letter sent by the director of the European commission’s security services to its head of human resources.

The leaked memo warned that “the threat of espionage is increasing day by day”.

Long Legged Trainee

“A number of countries, information seekers, lobbyists, journalists, private agencies and other third parties are continuing to seek sensitive and classified information,” the memo said.

Commission officials have since strongly denied targeting journalists in particular.

“We are not only pointing the finger at journalists. It could be the pretty trainee with the long legs and the blonde hair,” a commission spokeswoman said.

To impugn journalists for doing their job and trying to expose wrongdoing is dangerous, of course our elected representatives must submit to public scrutiny and be held accountable for their actions. The commission’s response to the backlash from journalists was bizarre and sexist, drawing on a cold-war cliche to suggest that attractive blonde women are likely spies.

It is the commission’s responsibility to look after its sensitive information and to be able to tell the difference between a spy and a journalist. Bluring the boundaries works to the detriment of everyone.

What did the “pretty trainees with long legs and blonde hair” ever do to that commission spokeswoman? Perhaps this is a personal vendetta?

In times of economic stress nations, like people, look after themselves. The individual saves rather than spending. It seems rational, but the effect is to shrink the economy to the detriment of everybody.

On Wednesday Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek criticised Nicolas Sarkozy’s bail-out plan for the French car industry on the grounds that it forced companies to keep production in France.

According to The International Herald Tribune, Topolanek said, “If politicians interfere more than necessary through their protectionism they might protract the crisis.”

Europeans care little for Europe-wide economic growth so national leaders will come under pressure to enact protectionist policies that only make sense at their level of governance.

The current crisis will be an acid test for the union. Belonging to a 27 nation economic block with a population of over 500 million has never been more important for our economic stability, and cooperation has never been more difficult. 

We have to realise that our national interests and those of the union are interlinked, or narrow self-interest will divide us and a deep depression may conquers us.