How has the media affected the outcome of UK elections?

The nature of media in the UK has led to a growing focus on party leaders during general election campaigns which in turn encourages people to vote on the basis of leadership, as oppose to class, or valence issues.
For example, in the 2017 election, Theresa May had a bruising interview with Jeremy Paxman which largely contributed to her image of being a wooden, out-of-touch politician. The media also largely damaged her image, by quoting her on a range of platforms, about her scandalous youth running through corn fields. Arguably media therefore played a considerable part in causing the Conservative government to lose seats and form a minority government in 2017, dependent on the Democratic Unionist Party for a working majority in parliament.
Through ensuring that information about party leaders reaches most eyes in the UK, the media plays a considerable role in encouraging people to vote on the basis of party leaders. For example, during the 2019 general election campaign, the media’s display of scandals over Boris Johnson’s islamophobic comments, and Jeremy Corbyn’s terrible interview with Jeremy Paxman, would have undoubtedly impacted a decent proportion of the population.
This has become more significant in recent years, ever since the first televised leader debates in 2010.

The endorsement by a newspaper in support of a certain party or candidate may also affect the voting intentions of their regular readers during an election. Most major newspapers or publications in the UK have their own agenda or perspective from which their articles are written; for example, the Guardian is regarded as left-wing, while the Telegraph is regarded as on the right.
One major example of a UK publication influencing public opinion and voting intentions is the Sun switching their support to Tony Blair in 1997, which many claim contributed to his landslide victory in the election of that year, one headline even reading “It was the Sun wot won it”.
Another example is the headline “Crisis? What crisis?”, ran in the Sun in response to James Callaghan’s comments about the Winter of Discontent.
Although Callaghan did not actually say the sentence, the Sun fashioned his words into the headline, which is regarded as ‘the three words that took down the Labour government in 1979”.
Outward partisanship from news publications can therefore affect the voting intentions of their readers in response to their take on a particular candidate.

A final way in which the media shapes public opinion and voting intentions is through their coverage of political scandal (and in some cases uncovering that scandal eg 2009 expenses), which in turn could test party loyalties and influence swing voters.
In the aftermath of the Iraq War and Blair’s premiership, the coverage of Tony Blair as a liar prompting the nickname “Bliar” contributed to Labour losses in the 2005 general election and the overall defeat in 2010, the first election after Blair resigned from his position, as trust in the Labour Party was lost. Another example of this is the expenses scandal of 2009, in which The Daily Telegraph published leaked documents over MPs abusing their expenses privileges.
This scandal has had a huge influence on British politics to this day, contributing to the overall populist, anti-corruption and anti-‘elites’ rhetoric in today’s politics, as MPs look to regain trust from the electorate after the scandal pushed the view that they were not acting in the interests of the British people.
Media coverage and focus on both of these major events have shaped public opinion on politicians as a whole in this country, with only 14% of the public saying they trust politicians in a 2019 Ipsos-Mori poll.