Slapdown: Emily Maitlis drew criticism from BBC watchdogs for pointing out Tory double-standards during Covid-19 lockdown.
This is a follow-up to the claim by Emily Maitlis that the Conservative government has an inside man on the BBC board, there to ensure that the broadcaster never criticises the Tories.
It seems that, rather than discuss the matter in a serious way, or indeed discuss more important subjects like the effect of the energy price cap increase, the mass media are attacking Maitlis for having told her truth as she saw it.
Watch:
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All white: look at the police faces behind Boris Johnson at this speech he made in 2019 – not one of them is from an ethnic minority.
Remember when the Tory government released a report claiming that the UK is an “exemplar” of racial equality in all its institutions?
Now members of one of those institutions – the police – are having to apologise for “racism, discrimination and bias”. Bit of a contradiction there, don’t you think?
In a new race plan, to be launched next week, the National Police Chiefs Council and College of Policing will state:
“Many people believe policing to still be institutionally racist and have grounds for this view.
“We accept that policing still contains racism, discrimination and bias. We are ashamed of those truths, we apologise for them and we are determined to change them.
“[The] need for change is evident. Policing lags behind almost every part of the public service as an employer of choice for Black people. Confidence levels are much lower, and our powers are disproportionately applied to Black people. In some crimes, victimisation rates are higher.”
The plan avoids admitting institutional racism but declares that police chiefs are “ashamed” about racism remaining in law enforcement.
One chief constable who supports accepting policing is institutionally racist said: “All the figures show it still is.”
There will be a consultation on the plan, so it may change.
I wonder if the Tories will try to remove the admissions of racism from it, to conform with their Big Lie?
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Boris Johnson’s Conservative government put its man Robbie Gibb on the board of the BBC as a non-executive director and he has tried to block the appointment of a news boss on political grounds.
The irony is that non-executive directors are responsible for “upholding and protecting” the BBC’s independence – not to make demands on the behalf of their political leaders.
Gibb used to be Theresa May’s communications director when she was prime minister. Before that, he was a BBC journalist and he started his career as a Tory aide – so it seems likely that his politics has coloured much of his work.
The BBC has often been criticised as the propaganda wing of the Tory Party and this intervention will only strengthen that impression among members of the public. It proves that attempts to rig decisions of organisations like the BBC by stuffing their ruling bodies with Tories can only backfire.
What did he do?
He sent a message to the Corporation’s director of news and current affairs, Fran Unsworth, warning her not to appoint Jess Brammar to a new post of BBC executive news editor, saying it would shatter the relationship between the BBC and the Tory government.
It is clearly a political intervention. Brammar’s career is now being trashed by other Tory propaganda mouthpieces:
In case you were wondering how long it would take the Government explicitly to attack independent media outlets… pic.twitter.com/zldv6Eg5Av
What could this “borderline fake news lefty clickbait website” be? It seems an odd way to describe HuffPost UK, and This Writer looks forward to seeing that organisation’s reaction to the smear.
Previously, Brammar had been deputy editor of Newsnight.
According to the Financial Times, Gibb’s message to Unsworth said she “cannot make this appointment” and the government’s “fragile trust in the BBC will be shattered” if she went ahead. One of his cronies has apparently denied the claim.
The recruitment process has now stalled. Gibb’s message was allegedly sent on June 22 and the post has yet to be filled.
Apparently the Corporation is going through Brammar’s past statements, in public and on the social media. To see if it can find some dirt on her that would invalidate her application?
It’s alleged that Gibb would want her defence of HuffPost journalist Nadine White to count against her – but if so, natural justice would demand that he be disappointed.
White was attacked by Tory minister Kemi Badenoch, who claimed she was “creepy and bizarre” in asking questions about a Covid-19 vaccines video that Badenoch branded unnecessary.
In response, Brammar filed a former complaint to the Cabinet Office, stating that “this characterisation of a journalist asking questions as somehow undermining a public health message or fostering misinformation should alarm anyone working in journalism or anyone who believes its job is to hold power to account.”
Realistically, the vetting process is unlikely to provide any reason to reject Brammar because Gibb’s intervention has forced the BBC’s hand.
Turning her away would indicate that the Corporation is vulnerable to political pressure – the kiss of death for an organisation that has long had to defend itself against such accusations.
And there is another possible reason for Gibb to have intervened now.
Awkward
The BBC is currently negotiating a five-year financial settlement with Boris Johnson’s Tory government.
Still-newly-appointed director general Tim Davie – himself a dyed-in-the-wool Tory – has spent a lot of time, and used up a considerable amount of his own credibility, steadying relations with the government in the midst of aggressive (some would say unreasonable) criticism.
Doesn’t it seem likely that Gibb’s claim about Brammar may be just the excuse Johnson needs to cut BBC funding further than previous Tory governments already have?
Whatever happens, the public response has been a PR disaster for the Tories:
— leftworks #WeAreCorbyn #IStandWithJeremyCorbyn (@leftworks1) July 11, 2021
Appalling. Brammar is a studiously objective journalist who has stood up for her reporters against ministerial pressure. There could be few better recommendations for the job. Gibb is trying to turn the BBC into a government press office. https://t.co/a1ewnp0UhG
If this story as reported is true then Robbie Gibb should resign. It is a cardinal rule that when you join the BBC,whether as a junior reporter or a board member, you leave your politics at the door.// BBC director sought to block senior editorial https://t.co/Xc5WDhefy2
For the BBC to protect its 'alleged' political impartiality Gibb has to go. https://t.co/OTZui7AqDb
— bigrobbutnocape @bigrobnocape (@bigrobbutnocape) July 10, 2021
This is explosive. Very influential Tory and prominent Brexiteer Robbie Gibb trying to stop a senior BBC news appointment that Downing St doesn't like. Huge test of BBC ability to resist political interference. pic.twitter.com/lNfNfMZmMn
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Police at one of the Easter Saturday ‘Kill the Bill’ demonstrations: who do you think is being more violent here?
Dozens of demonstrations against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill took place across the UK on Saturday (April 3).
I held off reporting on them because I wanted to see how the national media covered the protests first.
Remember my article on how the media try to turn the public against ordinary people by slanting their stories, from a few weeks ago? Here’s a reminder:
First the press [respond] … by reporting it in ‘passive voice’. Reports stated ‘clashes occurred…’ or ‘clashes between protesters and police’. Words carefully chosen to not indicate who had started the clashes (the police) and who had been on the receiving end of the majority of the violence (those attending…)
They will report on any police injuries ‘six police received medical attention due to the protest’ they might say… It is very rare that figures are collected for how many protesters were injured, and the assumption may be that this means that number is zero, and the police were thus on the receiving end of more violence than they dished out.
Many news outlets chose to term everyone present as ‘protesters’.
Politicians… chime in condemning the ‘violence’ caused by ‘protesters’.
Now let’s have a look at some reports from the police and the mainstream media.
At least one officer has been injured after clashes between police and demonstrators at a "Kill the Bill" protest in central London.
Today’s policing operation is still ongoing and arrest numbers may rise, but at this time, 26 people have been arrested for a variety of offences. Ten police officers received injuries during the operation; none of these are believed to be serious.
— Metropolitan Police Events (@MetPoliceEvents) April 3, 2021
Two police officers were sent to hospital in Bristol after a protest against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. https://t.co/k2XBJix758
— Twitter Moments UK & Ireland (@UKMoments) March 22, 2021
How many members of the public were injured?
Manchester Kill the Bill march ends in disorder as fight breaks out amongst crowd and police swarm on protesters sat on tram trackshttps://t.co/OGsFMdegHz
Agents provocateurs? Police plants? We’ve seen evidence of those in recent demonstrations.
Members of the public saw matters from a different angle – such as the following, showing a policeman very clearly kneeling on the neck of a member of the public. Shades of George Floyd?
A slightly clearer angle of this incident, sent to me by someone else, that appears to show a police officer with his knee on the neck of a #KillTheBill protester in Parliament Square. pic.twitter.com/wCeCSMj4gU
The best that could be suggested is that the Met’s spokespeople may have been accidentally looking at a different incident in which somebody was indeed kneeling on a person’s back. Of course, this would imply that they make a habit of attacking members of the public in this way. Not a good look!
And their images of protests around the UK were similarly divergent from the impression being pushed by the police and the press:
— The Churchill Project (@WinstonCProject) April 3, 2021
The ‘Kill the Bill’ protests (which are about terminating the Police Bill, not the ‘Old Bill’ which is a colloquial name for the police themselves) have been supported by opposition MPs like Jeremy Corbyn…
Mr Corbyn said the bill would prevent protest without police approval.
Speaking in Parliament Square in central London, Mr Corbyn invoked figures such as the suffragettes and Nelson Mandela as he urged the crowd to oppose the bill.
“Stand up for the right to protest, stand up for the right to have your voice heard,” he said.
“I want a society where it is safe to walk the streets, where you can speak out, you can demonstrate and you don’t have to seek the permission from the police or the home secretary to do so,” he said.
… and Zarah Sultana:
Our rights were won through protest, from the right to vote to anti-discrimination laws.
The Tories know there’s power on the streets. That’s why they’re attacking the right to protest.
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It’s hard to tell which was the worst disgrace – the way the Bristol protest against an unjust piece of legislation was perverted into a riot or the way the media manipulated the story to blame the protesters.
I touched on this in my article about those events, much of which was based on what I saw on the social media. But it seems I was at least mostly right.
This means it is possible to reverse-engineer the ‘toolkit’ used by the mass media to convince us that these events were the opposite of what we have seen.
I’m grateful that I don’t even have to do much work on it – somebody has already done it.
(By the way, the author of the article is an anarchist. This means he’s someone who believes we should all take control of our own political lives and not hand that control over to members of political parties who are likely to be corrupt – and not someone who wants to reduce the nation to lawlessness, as certain media elements would like you to think. See how this works?)
So how do the media gaslight you into believing the police are the victims of a riot they have instigated? Let’s see…
First the press [respond] to the attack … by reporting it in ‘passive voice’. Reports stated ‘clashes occurred…’ or ‘clashes between protesters and police’. Words carefully chosen to not indicate who had started the clashes (the police) and who had been on the receiving end of the majority of the violence (those attending…) Whilst not technically a lie, the intention here is to avoid blaming the police, or to imply that the protesters were at fault. Of course had the protesters actually instigated the violence, the early reports would say exactly that, ‘crowds attack police’.
The article notes that reports use emotive language to describe members of the crowd, no matter what the event may be. So attendees at the vigil for Sarah Everard on Clapham Common were “protesters”:
People attending a vigil don’t sound very threatening or unlawful. Vigil invokes images of flowers, grief stricken speeches, candles, sadness. An accurate description of what had taken place on Clapham Common, but not the most useful if you want to paint the police positively. So many news outlets chose to term everyone present as ‘protesters’. Politicians, such as home secretary Priti Patel were quick to chime in condemning the ‘violence’ caused by ‘protesters’ at an ‘unlawful gathering’, and the press dutifully repeated these claims, often uncritically.
You’ve seen it; you know it’s what they do.
Next are the comments:
First they will report on any police injuries ‘six police received medical attention due to the protest’ they might say.
In the case of the Bristol protest, it was 20. I even commented on it in a tweet:
It's been reported that 20 police were injured, and there were seven arrests. How many protesters were injured by the police? It's alleged that they charged out of the Bridewell and used their truncheons to attack people who were SITTING DOWN. #PoliticsLive
Were they knocked out by an enraged protester with a bat… or did they feel faint from dehydration, trip over and crack a rib on a shield, catch their hand in a car door or break a finger bashing someone over the head?
Two more elements to take from the tweet: we were told that there had been arrests, and this immediately implies crime – or at the very least, the suspicion of crime.
And then there’s the fact that we never get statistics showing injuries among the crowd:
It is very rare that figures are collected for how many protesters were injured, and the assumption may be that this means that number is zero, and the police were thus on the receiving end of more violence than they dished out.
Another element is the othering of the crowd:
They’ll agree most of the thousands of people present were peaceful, support the cause, and shouldn’t have been attacked by the police. Then they will, in hushed tones, point out that there were a minority of THOSE PEOPLE present.
THOSE PEOPLE are, of course, the bogeypeople of the day: Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, ‘hardcore feminists’.
Labelling these people means they are othered – they aren’t us, they’re them – and this means they can be demonised:
They weren’t people like you and me, people rightly concerned about violence against women, and about police over reach. They were…
… well, they were whoever the media (and their political masters) want us to believe is “the enemy” of the day.
You will also see attempts to blame the victims of police violence:
They will talk about how the protesters stared shouting when police marched in.
Clapham Common and Bristol.
How there were swear words on placards.
“ACAB” – meaning “All Cops Are Bastards”. So, not even swear words on placards – just an acronym of which a swear word is a part. Politicians attacked protesters who used these at Westminster (protesting against what happened on Clapham Common) and Bristol.
“#KillTheBill” could be seen as brutally provocative – suggesting that we should murder police officers, perhaps?
How the event was an ‘unlawful gathering’.
Clapham Common and Bristol, again.
They will under no circumstances admit that the police may have escalated a calm situation or otherwise acted to make things worse.
After that, the article states, we get the opinion pieces that throw away the ambiguous language and push the narrative on us wholeheartedly. I’m waiting for the headline Feminazis hijacked protest to castrate cops.
(That is one of the claims about Bristol, by the way:)
Dogs were repeatedly [deployed] throughout the night [despite] how dangerous that is for the protesters, for the dogs, and even for the police, at least one of whom very nearly got castrated by his charge.
Of course, it’s all very well for me (or a member of the Anarchist Federation) to say this happens. Can we see actual evidence of it?
Yes. Yes, we can:
'Kill the bill' protest in Bristol condemned as 'thuggery and disorder' https://t.co/m6EjKeT2vT
The headline is Demonstrators against policing bill class with officers in Bristol. Almost exactly “clashes between protesters and police”, wouldn’t you say?
The BBC report on which I based my previous article is riddled with examples of the techniques listed above. Passive voice:
Protesters clashed with officers
Arrests and police injuries:
Eight people have already been arrested after 21 officers were injured.
(Clearly the report has been updated with an extra arrest.)
Othering:
Home Secretary Priti Patel accused some protesters of “thuggery”
Avon and Somerset Police Chief Constable Andy Marsh said the protest had been “hijacked by extremists”
Victim-blaming:
demonstrators scaled the station, threw fireworks into the crowd and daubed graffiti on the walls.
At times there were as few as 50 police officers, facing 100 or more violent protesters.
Denial that the police escalated an otherwise calm situation:
Horses and dogs were used to great effect, but their numbers have been cut in the last decade.
Let’s just remind ourselves of what happened, from eyewitness accounts:
Police had a choice, line up defensively by their station perhaps, even pull back a little, or escalate and create a dangerous and increasingly violent situation. They chose the latter, and sent in the dogs, literally in the case of the canine units who would soon deploy, and metaphorically in the case of the human officers who baton charged the crowd, striking at the heads of those standing, kicking folks on the floor, and even hitting a young woman sat on the floor hands raised telling them this was a peaceful protest. [Afed article]
During the chaos someone let off a few fireworks in the crowd. Potentially dangerous, but less dangerous than those police dogs who did get taken away at this point, spooked by the loud noises (its unclear if this was deliberate). [Afed again]
They horse charged people who were sitting down peacefully and then there was a w***er with a baton randomly hitting people and things escalated from there. I was watching the live feed for most of the event. [Annabella, Vox Political commenter]
You see how it works?
Well, now you know how it works, and you’ll be able to identify it when they do it again.
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She thinks it’s all great fun: but whoever put the horns on this image of Priti Patel knew the truth of the matter.
We know the Home Secretary is a full-on, flat-out racist – she deports foreigners, she would deport UK citizens if the Windrush scandal had not happened, and now she has been caught stirring up racial hatred against travellers.
It’s very odd behaviour for a person whose own parents were immigrants into the UK
But here it is: she has been caught fabricating details of a police officer’s death in order to make travellers seem inherently criminal, as an ethnic group.
And she did it in a Zoom meeting with Jewish leaders – hosted by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which is itself notorious for its zealousness in defending their own ethnic group from claims that it has any inherently unsavoury traits.
Good morning John. I wonder if you’ve been following the comments around @pritipatel ‘s words about Travellers. She spoke on Sept 15 at an online meeting hosted by the @BoardofDeputies Will you be commenting on this? @LordJohnMann
determined to stamp out the “criminality that takes place and that has happened through Traveller communities and unauthorised encampments”.
More than 80 leading academics, race equality organisations, and politicians have signed a letter to Patel, urging her to retract her “hate speech”.
One has to ask how she would describe herself – the daughter of refugees who came to the UK after facing persecution in Uganda.
Ah, but that would probably be too close to home.
She seems a perfect candidate for “unconscious bias” training.
Except, of course, she’s probably one of the 40 Conservative MPs who have refused it out of hand. It seems she – and they – have some kind of bias against it…
She is the secretary of state for the Home Department.
She is a racist, to our certain knowledge.
She may also be prejudiced against any number of other traits.
So the question you have to ask yourself, in a country where the Home Secretary is lining people up to be her targets, is:
When will she send people for me?
POSTSCRIPT: Mrs Mike was disgusted to hear about Patel’s behaviour, and asked a very reasonable question: why do we put up with this unacceptable behaviour, these unacceptable viewpoints, from people who are supposed to be our political leaders?
Mrs Mike thinks Priti Patel should be pulled out of Parliament by the ear and slung onto the street.
She cannot understand why nobody has actually used legally-enforcible means to do this.
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Tim Davie: will this new broom sweep the BBC clean?
New BBC Director General Tim Davie is set to tell staff it is now a condition of their employment to be politically impartial.
It seems he has realised the Corporation’s credibility has suffered after years of kowtowing to the Tory administrations of the last 10 years.
And there’s academic information showing an “Establishment” bias during Labour administrations that made it hard for that party to get a fair hearing on the UK’s most-used TV and radio news outlet.
Fine words.
But will they cut any ice with entrenched right-wingers like Laura Kuenssberg and Andrew Neil, or the Tory-riddent BBC newsroom?
We’ll know soon enough.
Here’s the gist of the story:
The incoming director general of the BBC is expected to tell journalists that those who cannot leave their politics at the door are no longer welcome in a drive to repair the broadcaster’s reputation for impartiality, it has been reported.
Tim Davie will set out his plans for the corporation from its Glasgow offices on Thursday having taken on the role from Lord Hall, who stepped down from the top job last week to serve chair of the board for the National Gallery.
And the new director general is expected to make combatting accusations of partisan bias a focus of his tenure, The Sunday Times reported, by using his opening address to staff to tell those who cannot leave their politics at the door that they have no place at one of the world’s most trusted news brands.
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Bosom buddies: Boris Johnson with Russian industrialist Alexander Temerko. All perfectly innocent?
Now we can all see why Boris Johnson did not want the so-called ‘Russia Report’ released before the general election last year.
The report – released today (July 21) by Parliament’s new Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) – shows that successive Conservative governments have welcomed Russian oligarchs “with open arms”, giving them access to political figures “at the highest levels” – and made absolutely no attempt to investigate Russian interference in referendums and elections; in fact, the Tories “actively avoided” doing so.
This has led, the report states, to the growth of an industry of “enablers” who are “de facto agents of the Russian state”. The report does not explicitly state that these enablers include Conservative government politicians, but its assertion that Russia had access to “the highest levels” of political figures certainly suggests that this is the case.
And the fact that Russia has influence “at the highest levels” seems to have made it almost impossible to organise a response.
The report refers to the defence of UK democratic processes as a “hot potato” over which no government organisation wanted to take the lead in conducting an assessment of Russian interference.
In its response to the report today, the Tory government has said it has seen no evidence of interference in (this is the example it gives) the Brexit referendum. It seems clear that there is a good reason for that: nobody was looking. The government has said it sees no reason to conduct a retrospective investigation into such interference, which looks like a tacit admission of guilt in the light of the report. Committee member Stewart Hosie said, “That is meaningless if they haven’t looked for it.”
The ISC states that “social media companies must take action and remove covert hostile state material. Government must ‘name and shame’ those who fail to act”. The latter demand seems unlikely to happen as it seems clear that the Tory government does not want to do anything.
One reason for that may be the fact that the Tories have been delighted to welcome Russian money and the oligarchs who owned it, “providing them with a means of recycling illicit finance through the London ‘laundromat’.”
It is unlikely that Russia actually interfered in the mechanics of voting in general elections or the Brexit referendum; the UK’s paper-based voting system “makes actual interference with the mechanism difficult” – but “we should not be complacent about other forms of interference”.
The report states that Russian influence seems to have been exerted prominently in the social media, whose bosses had no interest in preventing it.
It states: “There have been widespread allegations that Russia sought to influence voters in the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU: studies have pointed to the preponderance of pro-Brexit or anti-EU stories on RT and Sputnik, and the use of ‘bots’ and ‘trolls’, as evidence.
“The actual impact of such attempts on the result itself would be difficult – if not impossible – to prove. However what is clear is that the Government was slow to recognise the existence of the threat – only understanding it after the ‘hack and leak’ operation against the Democratic National Committee, when it should have been seen as early as 2014.
“As a result the Government did not take action to protect the UK’s process in 2016. The Committee has not been provided with any post-referendum assessment – in stark contrast to the US response to reports of interference in the 2016 presidential election. In our view there must be an analogous assessment of Russian interference in the EU referendum.”
In their statement, the Tories have made it clear that they will not conduct a retrospective investigation: “The Intelligence and Security Agencies produce and contribute to regular assessments of the threat posed by Hostile State Activity, including around potential interference in UK democratic processes.
“We keep such assessments under review and, where necessary, update them in response to new intelligence, including during democratic events such as elections and referendums.
“Where new information emerges, the Government will always consider the most appropriate use of any intelligence it develops or receives, including whether it is appropriate to make this public. Given this long standing approach, a retrospective assessment of the EU Referendum is not necessary.”
This is hardly encouraging, given that the ISC report makes it clear that the Tory government has deliberately avoided looking for Russian interference.
Labour has delivered the weak-ass response that we have come to expect from Keir Starmer’s sub-Tory party, courtesy of Lisa “I wouldn’t disclose plans to sell off the NHS” Nandy.
“The report is very clear that the Government has underestimated the response required to Russia and it is imperative we learn the lessons from the mistakes that have been made,” she said. “The Labour Party calls on the Government to study the conclusions of the report carefully and take the necessary steps to keep our country safe.”
Fat chance! And she knows it. The people of the UK needed a much more robust response, calling out Prime Minister Boris Johnson over his extremely strong ties with Russians – he plays tennis with them in return for donations to the Tory Party, remember – and demanding a full-strength investigation into connections between Conservative government members past and present and Russians in the UK – both private citizens and representatives of that country’s government.
I’ll say it again, for clarity:
What we need now is a comprehensive and independent investigation by law-enforcement agencies into connections between anybody who has been a member of a Conservative government over the past 10 years (including members of other parties who have allied with the Tories – the DUP and the Liberal Democrats) and Russians in the UK who have been here either as private citizens or as representatives of that countries government. Did – and do – these relationships pose a threat to the UK’s security and to its democracy?
And if so, should those who have created that threat be arrested and charged with treason?
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“Blatantly Backing Conservatives”: and don’t expect better when the new Director General – a former Tory election candidate whose name This Writer can’t even be bothered to remember – takes over.
How two-faced of the Tory Broadcasting Corporation.
Free access to broadband internet connections was an election policy of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn last year.
At that time, the BBC called it “broadband communism”.
But now, with the Conservatives offering it (albeit only for a brief time, through a voucher system), it’s “free internet to help poorer pupils”.
Oh yes, this is an emergency measure because of Covid-19 and the lockdown – but it represents hypocrisy by our state broadcaster nonetheless.
Many thousands of people have stopped paying their TV licence fee because of blatant partisanship by the Tory-run BBC News; this proves they have a point.
And with a newly-appointed Director General who used to be a Conservative election candidate, this situation is only likely to get worse.
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What a travesty – but then, you will be well aware that the UK’s news media have been backing the Conservatives for many years.
There has been at least one other academic study in the last few years, showing that the media – and especially the BBC – predominantly support the Conservative Party in their news coverage.
Now, Loughborough University has analysed newspaper coverage of political parties during the first week of last year’s general election campaign.
It found that the Labour Party was overwhelmingly targeted with negative coverage, while the Tories were showered with praise.
What is your average, non-political person-on-the-street supposed to think?
Look at the state of this:
The study also showed that the most positive coverage of the Tories came from the highest circulation newspapers, with journalists at The Sun and the Daily Mail relied upon to write deferential, pro-government stories.
“The unweighted results show that only the Conservative Party received more positive than negative coverage across all newspapers,” the academics said in a summary of their research.
“In contrast, Labour had a substantial deficit of positive to negative news reports in the first formal week of the campaign.”
To give you an idea of the scale of the imbalance: the study weighted each news item on whether it contained a negative or positive implication for each party, scoring either -1 or +1 respectively, while balanced news items produced a 0.
The result:+4 for the Conservatives, and -91 for Labour.
At a time when the law demands impartial coverage.
The UK badly needs independent news coverage – or at least a restoration of the balance.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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