Is it any surprise that Jeremy Corbyn fares badly in the polls, with so much media bias against him?
![Jeremy Corbyn has faced a hostile reception from the press [Image: Getty Images].](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/160904-Jeremy-Corbyn-Getty-1024x768.jpg)
Jeremy Corbyn has faced a hostile reception from the press, that seems to be rubbing off on the general public [Image: Getty Images].
A majority of us believe that media reports about Jeremy Corbyn are deliberately biased against him – and in fact a Newsnight report a couple of weeks ago confirmed that pejorative language was used about him in BBC reports where this was not necessary to the story:
A majority of the British public believe the media is deliberately biased against Jeremy Corbyn and seeking to portray him in a negative light.
Just 29 per cent of British adults disagreed that the “mainstream media as a whole has been deliberately biasing coverage to portray Jeremy Corbyn in a negative manner” when asked by pollsters YouGov.
51 per cent of people agreed that coverage had been deliberately biased while 21 per cent said they were not sure.
But it seems we are all also quite happy to be guided by these media reports when forming our opinions. Look at this:
Theresa May is 64 points more popular than Jeremy Corbyn. Yes, you read that correctly. The Prime Minister’s net favourability amongst the country is +33.6, while the Labour leader’s is -30.7. Even taking into the usual caveats that the Prime Minister is new to the job and the Labour leader is currently in a somewhat precarious position within his party, this result is fairly astonishing.
This poll really does highlight the gap between the two – a large contributor to which is the enormous unpopularity of the Labour leader. Consensus in the Polling Digest office is that this poll probably has the worst numbers we’ve ever seen for a party leader.
Source: May vs Corbyn: Survation — Polling Digest
Of course, most people do not know either Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn personally and have to rely on mainstream media reports in order to form a judgement.
With a majority in one survey saying that Mr Corbyn is being maligned by a hostile media, and a majority in the other saying they don’t like him, there has to be a certain amount of overlap, right? Otherwise, we should all admit that these surveys are pointless except as propaganda for whoever commissioned them.
It would be very interesting to see the raw data for these polls, to discover how far they were tweaked by the companies running them.
The overall message we get from these polls is this:
When the media lie to us, we believe them.
How unhealthy.
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“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” ― Mark Twain
If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.” ― Mark Twain
It will get a whole lot worse in the run up to the next general election.
When you think about it, journalists and newspapers are always rated low and untrustworthy but people, not just the quarter who believe everything they read, are so happy to parrot the garbage?
We should be careful to call people brainwashed, while I’ve met some who are hopeless,the media offers people an opportunity to feel better than someone else so they’re happy to swallow the bigoted carrot even though they know full well it’s bulls**t. It’s a clear active choice to hate.
The Establishment relies on The Gatekeeping Middle Class to stop undesirables from entering certain positions, (Hence the “Moderate” Gollumites of the Labour Civil War) The Gatekeepers are consumed with their own fragile sense of status so hate everyone else, Working Class people with wealth and good jobs like to be smug about it (they’ve transcended to Gatekeeping Middle Class), Working Class people with miserable jobs hate the Unemployed and Immigrants, the Unemployed hate the Immigrants and Working Immigrants hate the Unemployed.
In a nutshell, Divide and Conquer tactics. It works because what people really desire is superiority; even stability and wealth are secondary concerns.
Maybe that’s why Jeremy Corbyn is failing, people are happy to be miserable as long as they have someone to kick. In the US plenty of white people are happy to live in never ending shameful poverty as long as black people get it worse.
Here, maybe we need to fight against both Racism and Classism within society before we can affect change politically at Westminster?
(It doesn’t help that Establishment/ Middle Class White Feminism acts like Theresa May is the 6th member of the Spice Girls. Girl power, it seems, is happy to throw marginalized women under a bus.)
Who told you Jeremy Corbyn is failing?
The Media is sick and all of it run by the tories including to bbc there can never be true Democracy as long as it is left in tory hands
How true,one only has to look at what is printed about people on benefits and public attitudes about this.