PRESS FLAK Czechmate for right-wing attack on leftie leader

Guardian included 1 of Corbyn's popular (with younger aud) online vids

Jeremy Corbyn was accused by right-wing papers of being a Soviet spy - an absurd story that was quickly proved false, but led to massive TV and radio coverage. Remember this if exploring the proposition that circulation decline means the loss of press power over politics and public opinion; listeners and viewers who never pick up a newspaper are exposed to their agenda as the broadcast media routinely take their news agenda from the papers.

The story very clearly showed up the current binary approach between Labour (left) and Tory (right) parties:

[Corbyn accused] rightwing papers of being controlled by billionaire tax exiles, with the party repeating that it planned to hold a media ownership review if it got into power, and sending a lawyer’s letter to a Tory MP over an ill-judged tweet.The Conservatives, meanwhile, have sought to stoke the row in an attempt to get it picked up by broadcasters – while at the same time trying to pretend they are above the fray by arguing, none too subtly, that it is the party that supports the press and the existing structure of independent regulation. [Guardian 'spying row' article]

Clause 1 of the Editors Code (Accuracy) appears to have taken a typical battering, free of consequence or censure from the regulator, with the right-wing press' combined attempted assault on Opposition leader Corbyn. Branded a traitor and a spy, his response has been to go on the attack, promise Leveson part 2 (the PM has taken the opposite stance), and action to tackle the lack of diversity of ownership, characterised as 'billionaire tax exiles'.

Labour and Corbyn are calculating that by using social media they will win this battle and thwart the attempted character assassination, with only older voters significantly influenced by the press. A bold volte face for a party which slavishly sought press favour under Blair's, who notoriously flew to Australia before becoming PM for a meeting with Murdoch.

Corbyn's 2018 Labour are calculating that the declining press industry is losing its grip on public opinion and are using social media to distribute short videos, quotes etc to engage with a primarily youth audience to counter the mainstream media discourse and flak that he faces.

They did, though, also turn to the law - a legal letter forced a Tory MP to delete a libellous anti-Corbyn tweet, apologise and make a charitable donation.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown wooed the press, long maintaining personal relationships with Rupert Murdoch and Paul Dacre respectively, while in No 10. But personal attacks on Corbyn motivate the party’s supporters, particularly younger voters, who don’t read the Sun, Mail or Telegraph, and who don’t necessarily remember the cold war.Ed Miliband broke with the Murdoch press in 2011 following the phone-hacking scandal, promising to break up the Sun and Times empire if he was elected. A controversial attack on his Marxist father Ralph, described by the Daily Mail as “the man who hates Britain” led to a furious row with Dacre’s newspaper in 2013. But if both moves were popular at the time, he nevertheless was badly beaten in the 2015 election.

The PM (May) used the story in PMQs, and later pontificated on the free press

“A free press is one of the foundations on which our democracy is built,” in an attempt to claim a moral high ground.Labour ... repeat[ed] that the party wanted to carry out the second part of the Leveson inquiry into press regulation and insisting that its media review would aim to boost diversity in British media, without specifying any details as to how.In doing so, it risked entrenching an already adversarial relationship with the rightwing press – but the Labour calculus is that, except possibly with older voters, in the social media era that does not matter.

Guardian: Spying row: how Corbyn seized chance to take on the Sun.

Canary on BBC anti-left-wing bias

The BBC routinely gets attacked by left and right for bias against them - this lengthy article provides you with a detailed analysis from a left-wing perspective, using a range of very specific examples, not least the rather extraordinary treatment and coverage of Jeremy Corbyn, but also Israel and much more.

There has been considerable research now published into how the wider media have covered Corbyn - finding he is rarely directly quoted in mostly hostile articles and features.

Article.

Press power in EU referendum, history of Mail might

Great article that provides some historical context for the current, overwhelming right-wing bias of the UK press, which seemingly proved decisive in the 2016 Brexit vote. Here's a short sample - spot the Curran and Seaton book title in there ...:

There’s another consistent and important thread in the Mail’s long political story too. The Mail is a newspaper that wants power. The Mail is a player not an observer, today as in the past. It was the campaign against Stanley Baldwin’s leadership of the Tory party by Lord Rothermere’s Mail and Lord Beaverbrook’s Express in 1931 that triggered Baldwin’s famous onslaught about the proprietors aiming at power – “and power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”. These are words that could echo through the Mail’s coverage of the EU debate without a single change, as do Baldwin’s less often quoted comments that the press were “engines of propaganda” whose methods were “falsehood, misrepresentation, half-truths [and] … suppression”. 

I looked up Baldwin’s great speech this week when the Mail, unlike almost every other newspaper, put nothing whatever about the Orlando gay club massacre on its front page on Monday. By any standards this brutal attack was the main story of the day. Every other newspaper led with it. Meanwhile what was the Mail’s front-page headline? It was “Fury over plot to let 1.5m Turks in Britain”. The Orlando story wasn’t on pages two or three either. These were political priorities, not journalistic ones.

Just as with film, we need to be careful in assuming influence from a biased press - media effects is a tricky area! This is, to be fair, less contentious: when the bulk of the UK public have been exposed to decades of hyperbole and frequently made-up anti-EU stories, Euroscepticism is hardly surprising. Its that long-term impact of bias that is crucial, just as its the months and years of anti-Labour/left-wing coverage that makes it hard for the likes of Jeremy Corbyn to prosper - NOT the final editorials.

The EU referendum is a battle of the press versus democracy.

IPSO Editors Code changes hailed and condemned

It won't help ease suspicions when Mail editor-in-chief Paul Dacre leads the back-slapping over the announcement of changes to the Editor's Code, to begin on January 1st 2016.

Hacked Off attacked the announcement, claiming not only that the changes ignored some of Leveson's specific proposals but also that there 8 ways in which the Code was actually watered down.

The two additions concern coverage of suicides and gender discrimination (I wonder if that will eventually require updating to specifically include transgender discrimination, on which the Press have an abysmal record?).

It is significant too that headlines are now included in the most-abused clause, Clause One on accuracy. The Code's preamble also specifies that complaints need to be addressed swiftly through IPSO. The press remains split on regulation, with several papers still refusing to sign up to IPSO (or rivals), but the body it funds, PressBOf, is making a concerted push here to shore up the image and acceptance of IPSO as the sole legitimate press regulator.

A continuing Conservative governemnt will have no appetite to upset a largely supportive press; a future Corbyn-led Labour government presumably would ... but if the mainly right-wing press get their way and their incessant anti-Corbyn flak (also noticeable in the supposedly left-wing Guardian) sees him replaced by a Blairite right-winger their path, remarkably, looks clear once more.

The Press just keep supping in that last chance saloon...

Editors' code revised to prevent gender bias and wayward headlines.

Canada readers revolt against right-wing press

Could this be a sign of a future issue for the British press? The left-wing (relatively!) opposition have just won an election despite the Press overwhelmingly urging support for the right-wing incumbents. It's been clear that this direction has been ordered by the owners.

The public outpouring of anger and disillusionment on social media does not augur well for the prospects of the printed press.

First past the post may frustrate the prospects of Corbyn's more socialist Labour and potential allies such as the Greens who (like UKIP, and the Lib Dems to a degree) gained millions of votes but minimal seats, but there certainly seems a surge of radicalism amongst the young at least - a readership that the press are failing to attract.

Whether we see anything like this in the UK or not, the article is an interesting, clear summary of how another major press (mal)functions.

Election deals blow to Canada’s dominant press group.

IPSO Tele guilty of Clause 1 Accuracy Corbyn slur

The right-wing press haven't held back from a fierce bombardment of flak aimed at new Labour (not New Labour!) Jeremy Corbyn, seeking to sink his counter-hegemonic arguments before they can achieve any foothold. It must be said that the supposedly left-wing press has acted similarly, much to the outrage of their readers - the Guardian's readers ombudsman acknowledged as much.

So, it is perhaps heartening in the context if historically pitifully weak press self-regulation to see IPSO apparently make a rare stand on Clause One of the Editors' Code: Accuracy.

While our broadcast media are fiercely regulated through the statutory body of OfCom, with the government  free to dramatically undermine the BBC's much trumpeted independence through the purse strings (and successfully agitating for the BBC to do less and get smaller), press self-regulation has often verged on the farcical.

Let's not forget that the PCC abolished itself (albeit bowing to the inevitable and strategically acting to see off any government action) for failing in its job.

So, the IPSO ruling over the Telegraph's blatant smear job has to be welcomed ... but is it enough to declare IPSO a real break from past practices, a shiny success?

No.

Greenslade takes up the specific point on IPSO accepting without challenge the Telegraph's contention that a headline must be considered in context of the full article, a weasel logic indeed, as for many the headline will be all they read (or retain).

What about the wider point of our press' practice of filtering the news through an ideological prism to fit pre-ordained positions? Is it really a credible position that this one story stands alone as the sole example of our national press trampling over the most basic and fundamental clause in its fervour to bury Corbyn and the views he represents?

Corbyn anti-Semite claim: Ipso needs to think again about newspaper headlines.

OWNERSHIP Russia limits foreign ownership to 20%

In very stark contrast to British (de)regulation and laissez faire media market, dominated by foreign ownership and with the one major British success story (the Beeb) under intense threat, Russia has introduced strict ownership limits.

Jeremy Corbyn has hinted at a policy of forcing media conglomerates to break up, divest subsidiaries (with Murdoch's empire thought to be a key target) - one reason why he faces such incessant flak (yes, Chomsky's concept, filter, once more) from a hostile press.

Vladimir Putin had responded to his own dislike of media criticism by effectively forcing a series of high profile, influential western media outlets to be sold to Russian companies, reducing the likelihood of media scrutiny.

In the land of the free (market) this has not gone down well, but, although its limits have been steadily diluted, the US's main federal regulator, the FCC, also enforces limits on non-US ownership of media. Murdoch took on US citizenship to be able to expand his American holdings. He faced no such issues in the UK when buying the Sun and Times newspapers, nor when buying out BSkyB shares ... at least until the phone-hacking scandal saw public outrage trump the complicity of a friendly free market government.

Axel Springer sells off Russian media assets to comply with new law.

FUTURE Could Corbyn reintroduce ownership limits?

It is abundantly clear that a right-wing government able to rely on generally favourable coverage from a UK press which is also largely right-wing, and which has undermined the BBC's finances so radically, will have no desire to regulate on media ownership.

Quite the opposite: should we expect Murdoch to resurrect the buyout of the 60% of BSkyB shares his conglomerate doesn't own - so inconveniently halted by public outrage over his paper's phone hacking of Milly Dowler? Probably, yes; despite the protests of the Culture Select Committee and others, the Tory Culture Secretary was set to wave it through pre-Leveson.

Now we have a left-wing Labour leader, will there be a sharp end to the consensus over free market, laissez faire media regulation? Again, probably.

Corbyn has said little on this yet, but his one utterance directly attacked concentration of ownership and many perceive Murdoch's empire as a target.

Let's not forget that Tom Watson, who doggedly pursued News International and the phone hacking story even when directly threatened by the Murdoch press, and at the cost of his marriage, is now deputy leader.

The Blairite right-wing Labour MPs will doubtless argue that Labour needs to court the likes of the Mail and the S*n - after all, Tony himself flew out to Australia to genuflect before the great man in advance if the 1997 election.

Such arguments will surely now be rejected, and we can expect to see a sustained, vicious barrage of flak to shoot down this counter-hegemonic force.

The largely hostile coverage in the Guardian suggests that there might be friendly fire too, even if Greenslade thinks the paper will be neutral.

Greenslade also states that Corbyn has to become PM to change media policy, but that isn't necessarily so. We saw under the coalition government that the backbench Select Committee undertook the scrutiny that the responsible government minister, Jeremy Hunt, appeared reluctant to, including Watson famously describing James Murdoch as a Mafia boss.

With some cross-bench support (ie, Labour, Tory and others) its recommendations could still be enacted, though whether it will put forward any radical changes, other than eviscerating the BBC, does seem unlikely.

We have also seen plenty of examples of backbench bills getting close enough to passing to force government to act.

Whatever now happens, the cosy consensus and hegemony of deregulation will at least be up for debate, marking a distinct shift in 36 years of both major parties cutting media regulation.

Jeremy Corbyn versus the media - will he take on Murdoch? 

The current Tory Culture Secretary could face charges for leaking anti-BBC briefings to the Sunday Times: John Whittingdale accused of misleading parliament over BBC story in Sunday Times.