“You can crush a man with journalism”

Of course the real reason the Neoliberal Tory-lite Blairites of the Parliamentary Labour Party have it in for Jeremy Corbyn is that they don’t represent their constituents or Party members and are therefore (correcttly) worried that his support of Party democracy will, justly, deprive them of their phony baloney jobs that they feel entitled to because…

Well, why exactly? It seems to me the primary job of a politician is either to represent their voters without filter or, if particularly daring, lead them to a new understanding of what their interests are.

Anything else is simply sucking at the public tit and lining their pockets with graft.

Complicit in this sense of egotistical arrogance are the Media sycophants we call Villagers here in the colonies. It is a proven fact (London School of Economics, hardly a hotbed of Trotskyite Revolutionaries) that the government run, supposedly neutral BBC was overwhelmingly anti-Corbyn during the recent contest for leadership of the Labour Party.

Even sources considered reliably Liberal like The Guardian, Independent, New Statesman were a near constant drumbeat of the most ridiculous and false accusations (coverage in The Telegraph, a .

The why is obvious. As with our own Village Media the “independent”, “neutral”, “objective” so-called journalists are incestuously close to the political power brokers they allow to feed them their stories like trained transcription monkeys because they are simply too lazy to do any real work and substitute their Rolodexes for reporting.

Let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works.

The President makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home.

Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction!

Now the ostensible reason for the PLP’s Quisling coup was that Corbyn was insufficiently supportive of Remain during the Brexit debate. This despite numerous polls showing it was in fact erosion of Conservative backing that caused the defeat (more Democrats voted for W than everyone that voted for Nader too and please, explain 2004 to me).

Nope, the actual cause was quite different-

Now we have evidence, everyone can see the real reason it looks like Corbyn didn’t back Remain
by James Wright, The Canary
October 10th, 2016

Now we have hard evidence of mainstream media bias during the EU referendum, a light has been shone on Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘Remain’ campaign.

From late June, a Labour coup was ostensibly carried out because the party’s leader had apparently not campaigned for continued EU membership rigorously enough. Within hours of the vote, Labour MPs were accusing Corbyn’s team of “sabotaging” the Remain campaign.

But The New Statesman has conducted analysis for a review commissioned by the BBC Trust (the BBC’s regulatory body) into coverage of the EU referendum.

The main evening bulletins on Channel 5 (5pm), Channel 4 (7pm), the BBC, ITV, and Sky News (10pm) were analysed. The findings showed that, while Remain and Brexit voices were balanced, a huge 71.2% of political sources were from the Conservative Party, compared to just 18.4% from Labour.
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Contrary to claims from anti-Corbyn Labour plotters, it appears it was the mainstream media which sabotaged the ‘left-wing’ Remain campaign, not Corbyn.

When it comes to our public service broadcaster, these latest findings chime with multiple earlier investigations into the BBC.

A report published earlier this month by the London School of Economics and Political Science found strong media bias against Corbyn, claiming the press had turned into an “attack dog” against the opposition leader. According to the report, 56% of the Corbyn-related articles analysed did not give the Labour leader a voice at all.

At the same time, a major content analysis from Cardiff University revealed that the BBC is pro-business and Conservative-leaning in its coverage, contrary to George Osborne’s claims that the BBC has an ‘anti-business’ slant.
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The outlet also found that facts are not respected across British broadcasters. Out of 517 statistical claims made over the ten-week campaign, only just over one in five were challenged by journalists. Independent sources with expert knowledge were also marginalised by partisan pitches from politicians and journalists.

Now we know. Considering Conservative supporters were much more likely to back Brexit, the mainstream media’s right-wing bias may well have lost the Remain campaign the referendum. Progressive arguments to stay in the EU were absent from the debate.

But the seemingly endless conveyor belt of political pundits and establishment MPs continued to bark the same tired old line: Let’s blame Jeremy Corbyn.

Turns out, that was probably just an excuse to try and topple his leadership.

Well duh, and remind you of anybody? Bueller? Bueller?

Broadcasters were biased during the EU referendum campaign – but not in the way you think
By Stephen Cushion and Justin Lewis, New Statesman
7 October 2016

We examined the main evening bulletins over ten weeks of the EU referendum campaign on Channel 5 (5pm), Channel 4 (7pm), the BBC, ITV and Sky News (10pm). Paradoxically, we found that coverage was both balanced and yet skewed, with a tendency to generate more heat than light when reporting the campaigns. So what does that mean in practice?
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Following our analysis for a BBC Trust commissioned review of statistics in news reporting, we systematically examined every statistical claim made during the ten week campaign – 517 in total – and identified just over one in five were challenged either by a journalist, campaigner or other source. Most of this questioning – 65.2 per cent – was by rival politicians, with 17.6 per cent of statistical claims challenged by journalists. This left little space for more independent sources with expert knowledge to verify claims, or put statistics in context.

In relying so heavily on campaigners without journalistic arbitration or seeking expert opinion, viewers were often left with little more than a statistical tit-for-tat between rival camps.

As a consequence, broadcasters found it hard to address the democratic deficit of British knowledge of the EU. It is notable that voters complained about the lack of hard information even at a late stage in the campaign. They largely focused instead on the activities of the campaigns, with close to half of the 571 news items we examined primarily about the process of campaigning, such as staged walkabouts, Remain and Leave strategies, or internal party political squabbles.
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(A)n imbalance emerges when we look at the party affiliation of campaigners, since 71.2 per cent of political sources were from the Conservative party compared to 18.4 per cent from Labour. This cannot be blamed on Jeremy Corbyn’s alleged reluctance to participate in the campaign. Alan Johnson – who led Labour’s Remain campaign – and many other senior Labour figures tirelessly toured the country. Yet they barely featured in the evening bulletins. Ukip made up 7.6 per cent of sources, leaving just 2.8 per cent for other parties, such as the SNP.

The decision to portray David Cameron and George Osborne as the principle flagbearers for the Remain side meant a focus on the issues closer to Conservative hearts – principally the importance of free trade to the British economy. In marginalising Labour and the SNP, pro-EU membership issues such as safeguarding employment rights fell down the agenda.

This interpretation of “due impartiality” was, in this sense, both even-handed and one-sided. The Leave and Remain camps received equal time, but we ended up with an argument that privileged Conservative arguments on both sides. This did not reflect the spirit of, for example, the BBC’s specific EU guidelines, which encouraged journalists to find a “‘broad balance’ of arguments and not necessarily between the designated Campaign Groups”).

This imbalance was particularly acute on the Remain side, since most parties on the centre – left – Labour, the SNP, Plaid and the Greens – were pro-Remain. Their comparative absence from the broadcast coverage was a significant handicap in Remain’s ability to appeal to traditional Labour areas.

It is easy to be critical in hindsight. Broadcasters, after all, made efforts to be impartial in a way much of the press coverage did not. But there are lessons to be learned here for the months of Brexit negotiations ahead: we need more analysis and less tit-for tat, and we need a fairer a more wide-ranging debate with right and left more evenly represented.

Hmm…