Some cutting commentary from sitting and former British MPs on their coverage in the press, including:

“The most notable thing is the incapacity of the media, particularly the red tops, to contemplate a woman who is a complex character. She has to be either a mother, or a hard-nosed career girl, or a tart, or a failure, or an emotional mess. You know, she cannot be as complex as men are.” (Vera Baird, MP, in the Guardian)

Of course, wearing multi-coloured striped jumpers does nothing to quell this perception.

Were you wondering, as I was, what a “red top” is?

“In the United Kingdom, newspapers can be classified by distribution as local or national and by page size as tabloids and broadsheets.

There is often an implication that tabloids cater for more vulgar tastes than broadsheets. Within the tabloid category some titles are classed as red-tops because of the design of their front pages. This term is often used deprecatingly by newspapers that consider themselves more serious.

This distinction began to be blurred in October 2003 as two broadsheet newspapers — The Independent and The Times — began to trial tabloid editions in some parts of the U.K. The Independent switched entirely to producing what it prefers to call a compact edition from May 2004 and The Times changed to this format at the beginning of November 2004, despite initial opposition to from its more traditional and conservative readership. The Guardian is expected to switch to the unusual (for the U.K.) “Berliner” format, slightly larger than a traditional tabloid, sometime in 2006.” (Laborlawtalk)