It high time we dealt with the British press and their dominance of the narrative around politics, the problem is rooted in their ownership and loyalties to parties and ideals, rather than being a neutral free press we have wound up with highly biased reporting, fabricated stories and sometimes utter nonsense being spouted by so called “news” papers like the Telegraph and The Mirror, also by online television stations like GB New and Talk TV, LBC are in the mix too, but they seem to swing both ways.
Twisting the Truth to Control the Narrative.
Here is a typical headline from yesterday’s Daily Mirror, designed specifically to stir up nationalist and anti-government sentiment, when in fact it is nothing more than a common sense motoring law.
So the article itself is pretty accurate in that an incorrectly secured flag can get you a £300 roadside fine from the police, but this makes total sense after all an incorrectly secured flag on a vehicle could come loose and wind up across the windscreen of a following vehicle, but look at the narrative and the imaging, the narratives leads with “England Flags” incurring hefty fines, not any flags, the images show are all of St. Georges cross flags and union jacks again making it appear that only these flags are a problem, and even in the article itself we have “Football fans who display St George’s flags on their cars in support of the Three Lions this week could find themselves facing arrest and a hefty fine.” which again insinuates this is some kind of punishment aimed at England football supporters, when it is just common sense motoring law.
And if you look in the comments section it proves that they have hit the spot and achieved their target with comments like.
So the Mirror have hit the mark and managed to turn a bit of common motoring law into a hate piece, designed to cause upset in a key demographic, driving up anti-government sentiment and the anti-woke cause, and in essence promoting Conservative and Reforms case.
It may just look at first glance to be drivel written only to fill the pages of a gutter press rag, but the effects of the daily bombardment of these sentiments and this type of journalism, if you can call it that, is what has led to the upsurge of support for the far right and parties like Reform UK.
More Anit-European Brexit Lies.
And if your in any doubt that the above is a one off then you only have to look at the press during the recent election campaign, or the Brexit campaign, or the constant attacks on Angela Rayner in the run up to the election.
The daily bombardment from The Telegraph, Express, Mirror etc goes totally unchecked, and it needs to stop, we need grown up journalism, and we need grown up laws to deal with the so called press, and their gutter journalism.
And its not just the press, political commentators and politicians themselves are just as bad, but in reality its a combination of all of them together that do the real damage, during the election the Tory party kept going with one big like the £2000 tax rise from labour, even when instructed by their own advisors not to use the made up figure they still went with it, and then double and tripled down on it. And political commentators and there gutter press were only too happy to echo it from the high towers, and anyone that happened to only catch that snippet would be easily convinced to vote Tory or Reform rather than Labour.
It really should be a punishable offence for a person in high office to lie or mislead the general public, but for some strange reason it isn’t, remember Boris Johnsons lies about Kier Starmer and Jimmy Saville, a simply lie designed to discredit and demonise the leader of the opposition, and the press were only too happy to echo it out because it suited their narrative.
So Where does all of this stem from.
What you really need to do here is look at who owns these gutter rags and other outlets to see where the narratives come from.
90% of the UK-wide print media is owned and controlled by just three companies, Reach plc (formerly Trinity Mirror), News UK and DMG Media.
The Sun and the Times plus their Sunday equivalents are owned by US-Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, he also Fox News, Sky News and The Wall Street Journal.
Reach Plc has over 120 national and regional brands, across both print and online including The Mirror, The Star, The Express and The Telegraph and of course Reach Plc’s chairman Nicholas Prettejohn is also a member of the board of the BBC (if you ever wanted to believe The BBC was independent).
And then DMG Media who publish the Daily Mail, Mail of Sunday and the Metro amongst others, which is wholly owned by Viscount Rothermere via RCL Ltd and holds Non-Dom tax status in the UK whilst apparently living in France,
So in essence almost the entire British media is own by 3 people, an Australian, a Non-Dom elite British aristocrat and Nicholas Prettejohn an ex city banker and friend of the Tory party. Now you start to see where the right wing leaning of the British press stems from.
So what’s the answer?
There were murmurs recently of a move to ban foreign ownership of the British press but this amounted to nothing, however this really is something we should consider, we should also look at breaking up the groups and lifting the strangle hold of the big three on our press. But above all else we need much better press regulation, look at the ongoing Rupert Murdochs / News International phone hacking trials, a regulator should have stepped in and sorted this out years ago, without the need for individuals effected to go to court years after the event.
Whatever shape or form it takes it is down to this new Labour government to finally sort this mess out once and for all and to put a stop to the lies and disinformation that is spread on a daily basis by the gutter rags, and if they don’t then it will be a continued kick in the teeth for real democracy in the UK.
One other element that needs to be addressed in the UK is our draconian Libel laws, which essentially mean that you need to have absolute proof before you call someone a liar, whilst the liar themselves needs to show no evidence into to drag you into court for libel, this imbalance means that it favours those with power and money over those trying to call them out, allowing someone with the money to pay for lawyers and court time to bankrupt the little guy that is trying to call them out, and to do it with no evidence at all. And likewise the inability of the little guy to go after the big guy in court due to the costs of doing so. So essentially giving those with power and money impunity to say anything they like.
