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Papers and politics

S

simeon

No fixed engagements
I make no secret of the fact that I am a Labour supporter and that my political sympathies are, maybe, more leftish than New Labour was. As such I voted for Ed Milliband in the leadership election and supported his attempt to move the party back, a little way at least, to the left.

I believe strongly that politics should be something more than the practice of pragmatism and following the lead of the electorate. I think the role of politics is to prosecute an ideology, create a debate about political choices and persuade the electorate to a viewpoint.

What we have seen in the UK over the last few decades in the popular press, in my view, is a stifling of debate, an unwillingness to consider any merit of a different viewpoint and the monstering of any leader who even hints at a left-wing agenda.

This is bad for democracy and bad for the country. A free press is not just about the freedom to print what they will, it should be should be about a fair exchange and debate of ideas, not an automatic, hysterical gainsaying of anything coming from even a slightly socialist viewpoint.

I know I may have made my own somewhat hysterical points about right-wingers here, but this is not a newspaper and I am not a politician.
 
What I did find interesting was the purity of the anti-Labour agenda from the Sun, with the English editions coming out in support of the Tories and the Scottish editions coming out in favour of the SNP. The latter was probably just what they saw as the best pro-Tory strategy for Scotland, however it does look pretty cynical.
 
It was the nature of the personal attacks carried out against Miliband and his family. The DM sending goons to a private funeral to eavesdrop, the photo op "look a Jew eating a bacon sandwich!", the attack piece written by a Conservative Minister's wife focusing on the wife of the Labour leader, with sneering comments about the appearance of their home. The early softening up with "the man who hated Britain", who in fact had been a British world war 2 veteran.

These were tactics widely used in Soviet State controlled media up to the 80s. Publish lies often enough and the public will accept them as fact.
Leveson at least defined it for the public record.
 
It seems incontrovertible that the Murdoch press, and also Lebedev with the Standard and the Independent, and presumably those unpleasant people who own the Torygraph (Barclays?), appear to be using their papers as a stick to hit Labour with, purely to advance their owners' self interests. The press went hysterical at the non-dom tax changes Labour had proposed (surely most people would agree with the general thrust of Labour's plans in this area) but for the press it all boiled down to the oligarchical owners not wishing to pay their fair share of tax, and the tools the press used (eg the characterisation of Milliband as a man who looked silly when eating a bacon sandwich) were almost unbelievable puerile.

Furthermore something that starts as naked self interest over the years gradually changes the focus of national politics. Labour now are centrist, unashamedly. Their being dragged to the right, together with the insipid creep and 'normalisation' of views previously held by those on the right (anti-immigrants/people on benefits are scroungers/it's ok to turn a blind eye to corporate tax dodging) mean that the national agenda has changed, and continues to do so. We now have three main parties in England dancing round a pinhead - this is the extent of the 'allowable' political discussion now.

Consistent polls show that there is a 2/3 majority (surely even the pollsters couldn't be that wrong) for nationalising the railways, the energy companies and halting the privatisation of the NHS. Yet if a political party stood up and said they would do these things they would (paradoxically, and unfortunately, in my opinion) be unelectable. This is how far we have come. I agree with the OP - politics is the worse for it and so I believe, is the country.
 
Alvarado said:
Yes, sorry I'm a bit out of date aren't I? I was describing the position before the election.
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The much deserved decline in the LibDems mean we're really back to 2 party politics in England because the replacement minor parties don't have the support needed to challenge for seats under FPTP and the Greens support is so low that they probably wouldn't do that well under PR or AV either.
 
It doesn't really matter though whether there are two or four parties (ie whether you include the Libdems/UKIP or not). The restriction of political discussion to a centrist/rightist agenda over the years (see above posts on the press and my 'normalisation' comment) resulted in us having a choice of 3 (four with UKIP) pro-austerity/pro-neoliberal parties, offering a similar mix of fiscal and monetary policy, which would progressively tighten over the next (current) parliament. None of them appear to have a plan about the big issues - how are we going to fund public pensions, how are we going to fund the NHS in the long term, how are we going to address future energy needs and what are we going to do about climate change. They're all in the 'too difficult' box and the press is happy with that as long as the debate is focused in a small area of the spectrum. Far easier to frame the debate on 'benefit scroungers' or immigrants from the EU or something else that quite frankly in the big scheme of things is irrelevant.
 
Their circulation is rubbish but the websites are huge. The clicks on the DM online Lolita photo spreads are vast.
The BBC run ' what the papers say' features Both TV and online. A significant number of people still believe the papers print factual material. Miliband eating a ham sandwich- can you trust this man ever again? or "my! This little Lolita is certainly looking leggy".
 
The English think that they have free speech and live in a democracy. They are completely deluded and this is why 37% of them voted Tory.

I have been a journalist, off and on, for decades. I wouldn't dream of working for most of the newspapers now, producing right-wing, racist Tory propaganda to pay the bills.

Jack
 
jackbarron said:
The English think that they have free speech and live in a democracy. They are completely deluded and this is why 37% of them voted Tory.

I have been a journalist, off and on, for decades. I wouldn't dream of working for most of the newspapers now, producing right-wing, racist Tory propaganda to pay the bills.

Jack
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So how do you earn a living to live in Chelsea which is mega expensive.
 
It needs to be banned! Allowing a handful of the mega rich to set the agenda for British politics is so obviously undemocratic and just plain wrong. Obviously nothing will happen though 'cos, as jackbarron says, we do not live in a democracy... more like a country where everything and everyone is for sale to the highest bidder. The oligarchs just bought the government they want...
 
It wasn't beneath the Telegraph either- note the number of references to pork-ham-pig they squeezed in-
...attempt to look normal involved him eating a bacon sarnie at a café in New Covent Garden in London. Unfortunately for the aspiring Prime Minister, this crackling idea for a photo shoot backfired, with his awkward expression jumped on by Twitter's herd of Photoshoppers, who transposed the pictures onto famous scenes from history and culture.
Poor Ed must have felt pigsick when he saw what those swine had done this morning.
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