PRESS 20 Years of anti-EU baloney

I've blogged on the topic of the UK press's obscenely farcical coverage of the EU, rendered an antichrist all-encompassing evil surpassed only by socialism in the world view pumped out by the majority of the national press.

You may have seen my posts on the supposed EU determination to make all bananas straight for example. Which sounds like a slightly exaggerated satire ... but was actually a front page story.

Now that this sewage tide, alongside massive manipulation of new media through funding that may have broken electoral law, has achieved the improbable goal of Brexit, it's a good opportunity to look back at just how closely the UK press follow Clause One of the Editors' Code ... Accuracy. As 'enforced' by the self-regulators PCC and IPSO...

20 years of fake anti-EU stories (tompride)

Some more links:

C4 News factcheck on press claims.

Guardian: best euromyths.

Official EU list of euromyths.

How Boris Johnson got away with euromyths.

BuffTheBanana.

Daily Express' euromyths.

POLITICAL INFLUENCE MPs slam incessant inaccuracies

Remember that Clause One of the Editors Code concerns accuracy, a rather basic requirement of news media, and a legal requirement for broadcast media (but not the self-regulated press of course).

The unsubtle, untrammeled flak (Chomsky filter...) that has seen MPs labelled traitors over Brexit votes carries a strong whiff of fascism. Death threats were received by those government MPs who dared defy government policy, which of course closely mirrors the editorial policy of the right-wing press, especially the Mail - which historically supported fascism, including Britain's own wannabe Hitler, Oswald Mosley.

The short quote of one Tory MP would be a useful one to learn ("newspapers that seem entirely disinhibited in the inaccuracies they peddle“):
"Some of this was fuelled and orchestrated by newspapers that seem entirely disinhibited in the inaccuracies they peddle and the vitriolic abuse they are prepared to heap on those who do ­anything they consider to be at variance with their version of what Brexit should be. This both obscures the real issues, and encourages an atmosphere of ­crisis and confrontation between binary ­positions that leads directly to the death threats that we have received.”

Anna Soubry, another rebel, said such reports fostered a climate of extremism. “That’s the thing that concerns me about all of this. We’re increasingly having a form of politics in which debate is not based on ideas. It’s based on complete and total misconceptions. It’s whipping up a storm by newspapers. It’s poisoning public life.”

Tory rebels urge Theresa May to form cross-party alliance for soft Brexit https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/dec/17/tory-rebels-urge-theresa-may-to-form-cross-party-alliance-for-soft-brexit?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

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.

Express + inaccuracy

The Express titles are famed for their continuing obsession with the late Princess Diana, managing to publish stories about her every few weeks - she cannot, of course, sue, and fabricated or exaggerated stories are less likely to be challenged.

Fascination with Diana is alive + kicking

Their coverage of Europe, immigrants, 'public sector' workers, to name but 3 issues, has been highlighted as often inaccurate on a number of blogs, and articles by the likes of Roy Greenslade. Here's a classic example, from May 2012:
It hardly needs analysis, but you can find this at http://tabloid-watch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/express-front-page-headline-on.html.


You can find nearly 300 more such examples of such curious claims (imagine of the BBC did this; is the difference down to tighter regulation of TV than the press?) at: http://tabloid-watch.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/express


100s more can be viewed at http://expresswatch.co.uk/ - or on its Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/expresswatch