Your chosen example was the Daily Mail.
If you were looking for a paper whose editorial stance was not obvious, I think you could have made a better choice…
I think that’s sort of the point.
A newspaper is expected to reflect the editor’s views. If the editor is hired by raving right-wing/left-wing loonies, you’d expect the editorial policy to reflect that.
You know that if you buy the Daily Mail, the problems of the day will be house prices, the state of the NHS, etc. and the answer to those problems will be getting rid of all the foreigners and the unemployed.
If it’s The Guardian, you know the problems will be the much the same and the answer will be “why don’t we all try to get along and not be complete bastards all the time”.
Whether you agree with those views or not, they are at least reasonably internally consistent and you can evaluate the paper’s content based on those observed biases. Those biases may well be based on the financial interest of the paper’s owners but they are generally longer term and at a further remove.
If editors are shilling their editorial policy to the highest bidder, then you can’t make any realistically useful assessment of the paper since it’s views might change at any time depending on whether Uber or Tfl forked over more money this week.
If the shilling is open and blatant, then again fine, everyone knows that the Standard shills for Uber so you can treat it as Uber’s paid mouthpiece and have done. It’s when the paper pretends to have an agenda separate from the money but pushes the ads as editorial content that the problem arises.
