Beyond the headlines

It has been quite a week in British politics. Perhaps, not quite as monumental as some people would have us believe, but a watershed of sorts in any case. The press and broadcast media have been caught up in the ‘coronation’ of “King” Boris, with seemingly little time for anything else, bar the usual British obsession with the weather. To read the headlines you could be forgiven for thinking that the only things happening in the UK are Boris and a heatwave. And, in some ways that is exactly what the media would like you to believe.

Meanwhile, the fact that Tom Watson has been criticised by the Metropolitan Police for giving support to convicted liar Carl Beech has gone pretty much unreported in the British press. Indeed, Lady Brittan, Leon Brittan’s widow labelled him “untruthful” and “disingenuous”, words with which most people on the Labour Left would certainly agree.

In the same week, self-appointed witchfinder general Margaret Hodge found herself the recipient of a complaint of anti-semitism following her attack on Jeremy Corbyn for meeting a Charidi Jew.

Margaret Hodge's tweet which led to a complaint of AS

Her defence was that the Charidi Jews are anti-LGBT, as if anti-semitism was fine so long as you disagreed with the politics of the Jew in question. It should not need me to point out that anti Semitism is about discriminating against Jews as a result of their being Jewish, and has nothing to do with what views that Jewish person holds. I would personally defend Margaret Hodge against being attacked for her Jewishness despite the fact that I disagree with her on almost every issue. That is what fighting anti Semitism means, or at least that is what I thought it meant.

You would have thought that a media obsessed with anti-semitism in the Labour Party would have reported widely that a prominent Jewish MP was themselves accused of being anti-Semitic but of course this was not deemed newsworthy.

Naturally, the media will defend their lack of coverage of both Watson and Hodge on the grounds that they have mentioned it somewhere. To be fair BBC News did cover the Tom Watson story, but it did so from his perspective. Even the headline (and it is worth remembering that many people read only the heading and first paragraph) allowed him an opportunity to declare his innocence. You have to read down a fair way to find that the police have no record of asking him to intercede on their behalf. A more accurate headline would have been:

Police deny Watson claim that he was asked to reassure convicted liar Beech ‘’.

To find a press comment on Hodge being accused of anti-Semitism it is no point in looking at any of the mainstream media, you have to rely on Skwawkbox. A report does appear in the not very widely read Middle East Monitor, but elsewhere it appears as if negative reporting of Dame Hodge are subject to a D-notice. Why this media indifference?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how the media ‘frame’ issues. Essentially, this is the process by which journalists decide not only what is newsworthy but how the news is to be reported.

According to a Washington Post survey around 60% of people read only the headline. It is therefore vitally important that the headline reflects the story. But a headline that is impartial is a rare thing these days. Headline writers are generally sub-editors or copy editors. News reporters rarely, if ever, write their own headlines (sorry if you thought otherwise from watching fictional accounts of newsrooms for whom sub-editors do not exist).

News, however, is never just reported. The only people who believe that are journalists with no self-awareness.


As Tiegreen and Newman (2008) point out: “Journalists must constantly decide which facts to include or emphasize, who to use as sources and what is really at issue.” Clearly this process of deciding includes deciding which stories to cover at all. Forget all you have seen about intrepid journalists tracking down stories from fragments of information, if that ever happened it was and remains a rarity.

The Organisation of News Ombudsmen (ONO), which oversees the Canadian press, printed an article in 2010 which discussed what counted as news and argued: “For most journalists deciding what’s
news is instinctive, rooted in experience and their perceptions of what readers want.” This translates
as pick through the press releases and decide which are worth following up; or, if a political reporter, hang around Westminster (or other Parliamentary building) waiting for “reliable” sources to provide gossip on their rivals.

Cub reporters sniffing out a story?

It is worth thinking about the claim that reporters follow their instincts. This is based on the oft-used cliche that news reporters follow their nose like a well-trained blood hound, and once they are on that trail there is no stopping them until they have that story written. It makes good fiction but is rarely how things happen. Reporters work for organisations, often very large media conglomerates. The idea of the bloodhound sniffing out a story assumes that organisations have no dominant culture
that employees are bound to support.


To treat news organisations as unbiased, fair and accurate is, to say the least, stretching credulity. News organisations are no different from any other hierarchical structure. The dominant ideas within any organisation are transmitted downwards from senior executives to those who do the actual work. The occasional maverick may be permitted but, on the whole, people either conform to the norms imposed upon them or leave.

When a journalist is asked to follow a lead they will know what their organisation expects. If, for example, the organisation is pro-Government, any critique of the government will be conducted within well defined parameters.

At the moment, there is no mainstream news organisation with any enthusiasm for a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Government. Some newspapers, the Telegraph and Mail, are simply ideologically opposed to Labour. Others are occasional friends of the Labour Party (think The Guardian or Mirror) but it is clear that whilst they do not want another Tory Government they do not want Jeremy Corbyn in Number 10 either. So those who have always hated Labour just continue as they always have whilst those who have sometimes championed Labour undermine Jeremy Corbyn in the vain hope that the centrists they have so much in common with, will take back control of the party.

The BBC, which is supposed to be impartial, tends to feed off the print media for its stories. It also seems to have developed an anti-Corbyn editorial stance, but let’s put that to one side for the moment.

Newspapers have no duty of impartiality, so it does not take too much imagination to work out why they choose to print overwhelmingly
negative stories about Corbyn. As The London Economic pointed out in a recent article Jeremy Corbyn is the most smeared politician ever in the UK. As they say: “Ask ten people over thirty what they think of Corbyn and chances are you’ll hear some pretty damning responses. But, interestingly, most of the negative responses merely parrot headlines they’ve read in the Mail, Sun, Express and Telegraph.”

They don’t mention the headlines in the Mirror,
Guardian and Independent, supposedly left-leaning papers. And, remember 60% of readers only read the headlines so even if context is given (often it isn’t) most readers will not see it.

One negative headline will not destroy anbody any more than one positive headline will make a person. It is both the volume, and the repeat effect that allows certain stories to slip into the public consciousness. It is hard to ignore that Theresa May was one of the most incompetent Prime Ministers of all time. Her mistakes were reported, but the news agenda quickly moved on, and failed to connect the dots. We were not reminded of her numerous mistakes in every article written about her. Indeed, John Rentokil of the misnamed Independent took Jeremy Corbyn to task for pointing them out at her final PMQ's, as if being forced out of office by your own right wing was somehow a cause for national celebration, and to suggest otherwise was "ungracious".

Jeremy Corbyn is subjected to a stream of negative articles accusing him of anti-Semitism, and of betraying the remainers in his own party. These articles, often emanating from Labour politicians, are reported in the papers and then followed up by the broadcast media. The papers then pick up
broadcast stories and write about that, giving the broadcasters an opportunity to repeat the story. This is the 'news cycle' and far from being dominated by intrepid reporters following leads it is more and more reliant on the tabloid press and social media,  often fuelled by the Conservative Party and Labour malcontents, for its main stories.

The Times: Theresa May was brave

Thus, a general impression is allowed to form that Jeremy Corbyn is unfit for office (a view in line, coincidentally, with the views of his political opponents in the Labour Party), whilst Theresa May’s bumbling premiership was described as resolute and brave. Rather than being “under pressure” from the right wing of her party (who have now ousted her) she was “holding firm” and being “strong”.

The truth behind the accusations are rarely, if ever examined. Jonathan K Cook does an excellent piece on the post-truth society in his blog. In their information piece on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party the BBC repeat an allegation made by Margaret Hodge and Luciana Berger that anti-Semitism in the party increased after 2015. There is no clear evidence of this, but the piece then goes on to state that following the election of Jeremy Corbyn many new members joined who were pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel. No evidence is given to support these allegations. Successive enquiries have sought to label new Labour members as “hard left” and tolerant of anti-Semitism. Little solid evidence has been produced to support those allegations, yet the media keep on repeating them, usually as fact, with little context or discussion.

Poll shows Labour supporters no more AS than Libs

A 2017 YouGov poll found that 32% of Labour supporters (not even members) endorsed at least one anti-Semitic statement. If true, it was a YouGov poll so who knows, that would be pretty damning. Except that so did 30% of Liberal Democrat, and 40% of Conservative voters.

Interestingly enough this is one YouGov poll that received some critical appraisal in the media. This in contrast to a YouGov poll that was bad news (allegedly) for Labour such as the one commissioned by the People's Vote Campaign which I discussed here. Why the difference?

The People’s Vote poll supported the narrative that Labour should be a remain party which many of its centrist MPs supported, the anti-Semitism poll was counter to the narrative that Labour was an anti-Semitic party promoted by the same centrist MPs.

As we enter the political era of Boris Johnson PM, the media will undoubtedly abandon any critical analysis of the Government as it allows Britain to pursue a policy that almost everybody agreed would be a disaster for the British economy - a no deal Brexit. They may not be keen on a no deal  Brexit but they will not forget that undermining the Tories could lead to a Labour Government led by the man they have demonised for the past 4 years.

So, that same media will undoubtedly ramp up the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn who they, and their paymasters, do not consider as a fit person to be PM. Whilst negative headlines will play a part, so will attack by omission as Jeremy Corbyn will be ignored when he gets the better of Johnson at PMQ’s, and as everything he says or does is filtered through a negative news agenda. You have been warned.

What do we mean by equality?

One concept often used by the left is equality. After all, who could argue against equality? But, what do we mean by equality?  I assume that if you have found this page you are not looking for cooking tips. More than likely you found your way here via my Twitter page. So, I am assuming you are on the left, probably a Corbyn-supporting Labour Party member or voter. If so, like me, you will almost certainly have said that the problem we face is massive inequality. And, to counter that, you will have said, what is needed is equality. But, if you are like me, you will probably not have spent much time clarifying exactly what that might mean in practice. It is enough, generally speaking, to be against inequality.

But, critics of the notion of equality, such as the philosopher William Letwin (yes, Oliver’s Dad), point out equality can only be achieved by mass conformity. Everything and everybody is equal only when everybody is exactly the same. We cannot argue, it seems, both for equality and individuality.

Harry Kane has exceptional talent

Except that is exactly what we should do. My idea of equality is that every person should have an equal chance to achieve all that they are capable of achieving. We are often told that certain people have unique skills and talents and that this justifies giving them much higher wages than others. Very often those arguing this use exceptionally talented people as their example: Harry Kane, Serena Williams, Mo Farah, Stephen Hawking or Einstein. As a result of their unique talents these individuals are highly paid and, so the argument goes, any attempt to impose equality would prevent them from exercising their unique talents as we are all forced to conform to the lowest common denominator. Equality it seems can only be achieved by preventing talented people from using their natural talents. It’s a powerful argument. After all, I can kick a ball but I can’t do so as well as Harry Kane and I can run but I’ll never be as fast as Mo Farah. Why shouldn’t they earn a lot more than me when they have talents I can only dream of?

This needs some unpicking. We currently live in a World where the top 1% have as much wealth as the bottom 50%. Most people in that top 1% do not possess any unique talent, unless being born to rich parents is considered a talent. But, more importantly the bottom 50% don’t lack talent what they lack is an opportunity to express their talent. It remains the case, that your class of origin is still the best indicator of your eventual class. That indicates that there exists in the UK, the USA, Europe and elsewhere deep-seated structural inequality.

As a socialist I am not motivated by envy as is often asserted, but rather by compassion. I am not so much concerned to remove the wealth of the 1%, but rather to increase the wealth of the 99% and particularly the poorest. And, by wealth I do not just mean money, but what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu  called ‘cultural capital’ by which I understand the opportunity to play sports, to learn musical instruments, and to explore what the Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen calls ‘capabilities’.

Murdoch's sons where they are because of their talent?

The reason this concerns the 1% so much, and below them the 10%, who are parasitical on the top 1%, is two-fold. First, they like to believe that they are where they are because of their talent and hard work, rather than their family connections and luck. For an example of this kind of reasoning see this article from  the Harvard Business Review. Second, they convince us that we are playing a zero-sum game. For the poor to have more they would have to have less and they do not much want to give up their wealth or their privileges. A version of this argument appeared in The Independent in 2017 as a critique of Labour’s economic policies.

Some socialists take the view that the 1% are simply greedy, that they are motivated by avarice and hatred of the poor. That may be true for some of them, but it is not their greed or hatred that is the real issue. The issue is that in order to provide opportunities for the 50% we need to make structural changes to the social system which go beyond electing a Labour Government (or whatever socialist alternatives exist elsewhere in the world).

Says who?

Comrade Corbyn??

For some reason even those who count themselves as anti-capitalist can be reticent in arguing against the idea of human nature as the cause of so much of the misery in society. Many people in the Labour Party were very quick to distance themselves from allegations that they were Marxist revolutionaries (to be fair many others embraced it).

The appeal to human nature is routinely used by those in the ascendancy to deny the privileges they enjoy to the majority. As the brilliant socialist R.H.Tawney noted in his book Equality in 1929:

“Every generation regards as natural the institutions to which it is accustomed. Mankind, it seems, is more easily shocked by the unusual than by the shocking.”

It might be worth reminding ourselves that creating a more equal society is not just about economics but, according to Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett more equal societies generate more happiness, more trust, and improves the well-being of citizens more generally. I am not aware that either of them are flag-waving members of the Communist Party so we might assume that as experienced epidemiologists their conclusions were supported by the mass of evidence they examined.

Professor Philip Alston, also far from being a card carrying communist, was equally blunt in his recent assessment of poverty in the UK for the United Nations. He wrote

“In the area of poverty-related policy the evidence points to the conclusion  that the driving force has not been economic but rather a commitment to achieving a radical social re-engineering.”

Of course, instead of hanging their heads in shame the Government questioned the motivations of Professor Alston claiming that he was politically motivated, as if driving people into poverty was not political. I am the first to applaud the rigour inherent in these studies, but their flaw is that in addressing those who tend to do very well out of inequality they perpetuate the myth that structural inequality is a policy issue rather than a systems issue. Naturally, if we can solve poverty by policy alone that preserves the social system that produced it in the first place. But, if it were that easy, if it were really only a case of enacting some progressive legislation then why does poverty persist?

The architects of austerity

Policies which are antagonistic to the poorest and most vulnerable members of society clearly exacerbate poverty, as we have seen since 2010 when the Tories and Lib-Dems enacted their joint programme of austerity. But, is it equally true that policies that are intended to reduce poverty have the same effects.

Undoubtedly, some of the policies enacted by the last Labour Government took some people, particularly children, out of poverty. I am certainly in favour of such measures. But, how quickly those people (or at least people from similar backgrounds) were plunged back into poverty. Some 14 million people in the UK now live in poverty. That is not an accident, nor is it just a case of the Tories lack of compassion. It is systemic.

In order to change systemic problems requires system change. We have tried, and failed, to tinker with the system. From a socialist perspective a realisation that the entire basis of our social system is the root of the problem does give us a headache. Not least because systems are incredibly difficult to change. We therefore become absorbed with doing what we can to alleviate the worst excesses of a system we barely believe in, rather than doing nothing at all.

Supporting Labour, even a left-leaning Labour Party, can become an end in itself. Our energies can become absorbed into internal (and internecine) party disputes, in canvassing for one election after another and, worst of all, seeing the election of a Labour Government as our overall goal.

A Labour Government which fails to reform the welfare system (I believe the DWP in its present form should be scrapped) and fails to reform taxation to make the wealthy (particularly tax-avoiding multi-nationals) pay their fair share would not really be worth electing. And, to be clear, I am happy to support those policies as a reformist vision. But, here is the rub, making the wealthy pay more tax and ensuring that workers are paid a living wage is not the same as transforming the social system. Furthermore, it risks the very real danger that the reforms will simply be unravelled either by the next Tory Government or even by a Labour Government under pressure from the IMF following a run on the pound.

The greater the inequality the worse the well-being of citizens

So, if we are serious about equality (let alone socialism) we need to begin a slightly different conversation. What mechanisms are there for the overall transformation of naked, free-market capitalism into a socialist society where the needs of each are balanced against the rights of the many. That might well involve upsetting most of the 1% (although if Wilkinson and Pickett are correct greater equality will improve their well-being as much as the bottom 1%), many of the middle layers who are reliant on the largesse of the 1% and in the UK the majority of the current PLP who cannot see beyond reforming an unreformable system. Importantly, it means re-thinking the role of markets to turn them into what the philosopher Diane Elson describes as ‘social markets’. These are markets whose function is not to bring buyers and sellers together so that sellers can make profits, but markets which ensure that goods (and services) are provided to those who need them and in a way that does not allow some individuals to accumulate vast amounts of the social good, whilst others are denied even the basic goods required to keep body and soul together.

Tony Benn made the point in his series of essays published as Arguments for Socialism in 1979:

“A degree of intelligent and democratic planning could supersede the concept of market forces as a magical way of distributing wealth." he wrote, continuing "We have got to make the leap from the world of market forces towards more democratic decisions about resources and a greater respect for human values."

It is because there is still a chance that such markets could be created that I remain committed to socialist values. How we might find ourselves in such a place I will talk about in a future blog, but for those who came here looking for cooking tips can I just end with this advice. If you have a cake keeping the largest slice for yourself whilst allowing others only crumbs is neither fair nor equal, and it does not take too much imagination to change that distribution.

Time to save the BBC?

There is little doubt that over the past two years the BBC have enraged those on the left with their coverage of the Labour Party. This reached a new peak with this week’s Panorama “investigation” by former Sun journalist John Ware.  For many on the left the bias of the BBC has reached proportions that are now beyond redemption. According to many the only option is a mass boycott of the BBC coupled with a campaign to remove public subsidy via the licence fee for what has become a propaganda tool working for the Conservative Party.

At times, perhaps especially so in the past month or so, it has felt as if the Labour Party membership have found themselves in a war with both MPs from their own party and the massed ranks of the mass media. And, as Senator Hiram Johnson, famously said in 1917, “When war comes, the first casualty is truth.” The relationship between propaganda and journalism is indeed a tangled web, and whilst we should not see every news report that is critical of Labour as  Tory propaganda we do need to understand the processes behind them.

This week I tweeted a response from BBC Political Correspondent, Chris Mason in which he made a number of claims. Most importantly when asked why a report into anti-semitism that exonerated Jeremy Corbyn would not feature on BBC News, he replied that it was not newsworthy. Whilst that is debatable in itself, he continued “don’t bother with the threats”, although no threat of any kind had been issued. In the same tweet he continued “they just make independent journalists more determined to carry on reporting without fear or favour.”

In a follow-up tweet he enlarged on his original assertion that it was not newsworthy by adding “the long-standing views of one journalist are not newsworthy”, and continued to talk about being threatened.

The journalist in question was Gideon Levy, a veteran Israeli journalist who was speaking at Palestine Expo at London’s Olympia exhibition centre.  He was tweeted by pro-Palestine activist/journalist Sarah Wilkinson (@sarahwilkinsonbc). The Palestine Expo is an annual event celebrating Palestinian art and culture and, according to the organisers, this year was attended by over 10,000 visitors . The BBC had extensive coverage of the event. Sorry, my mistake, the BBC entirely ignored the event, as did ITV and SkyNews. Indeed, it turns out that Chris Mason was right it simply was not newsworthy.

This begs the question of what exactly is deemed newsworthy. One place to start is with the idea of framing. This is the technique used by journalists to place news items as part of a wider narrative. A few years ago I worked on a project looking at the framing of the Kosovo war. We examined the way in which news organisations tended to privilege certain actors. In the case of the Kosovo war this led to an emphasis on governmental and military sources. Those opposed to the war were rarely the focus of news stories and when they were they were often treated as deviant actors.

So, when Chris Mason asserts that a story is not newsworthy what he means is that it does not fit the frame which his organisation has determined. This framing must then bring into question the idea that journalists are “independent”. Journalists, even relatively senior ones, are subject to managerial influence. No journalist, for example, who made it their business to promote Jeremy Corbyn would be likely to rise through the ranks. Promotion, and the perks that accompany it, are part of a process. Independence is only ever going to be permitted within the pre-determined narrative framework.

MRC Report found bias in 2016

None of this should surprise supporters of Jeremy Corbyn who are routinely described as deviant, hostile and threatening. Having said that, it is not just Corbyn supporters who think the media has a bias. The Media Reform Coalition found that on both the BBC and ITV twice as much time was given to critics of Corbyn than to his defenders.  In July 2016, over 100 senior academics from British universities signed a letter to The Guardian which stated “The leadership of Jeremy Corbyn has been subject to the most savage campaign of falsehood and misrepresentation..”

Does this, then, support the notion that the BBC (and other news organisations) are inherently biased? The answer is slightly more complex than we might, on the surface, suppose. In a recent Twitter exchange somebody pointed out that both the left and right consider the BBC biased, therefore they must be doing something right. The argument is that if the left think the BBC is right wing and the right think it is left wing, then clearly it cannot be biased, because it could not be biased simultaneously against the left and the right. The problem is that this logic assumes that there are only two political positions and between them is common sense. Of course, for those who reject left and right and worse see them as essentially the same, this is a very appealing proposition. For so-called “centrists” this is appealing because it places them firmly in the common sense camp.

This is why Chris Mason can believe that in rejecting views outside the mainstream he is still “reporting without fear or favour”. Journalists, particularly TV journalists do not like being accused of bias. They like to think that they are the voice of the average person, asking the questions the public want asked. The American Press Institute puts this succinctly in its guidelines for journalists.

Many people, they argue, use facts but journalism is different because “journalism involves the conscious, systematic application of a discipline of verification to produce a functional truth...”  This presupposes that it is only journalists who can do this but fails to acknowledge that they cannot simply leave their own preconceptions at the door when they enter the newsroom. Journalists, like all of us, have values and opinions. They believe that they are being objective. But their values are shaped by the prevailing culture as much as anybody else’s. They have a World view and a set of taken-for-granted assumptions that, as much as they deny their existence, shape their work.

Importantly it is not only what is reported that is important, but what is omitted. 

As Phillip Knightley says in his brilliant book ‘The First Casualty’ omissions play an important role in maintaining a consensus. He gives the example of the reporting of the Russian Revolution in 1917, and notes that, “Hardly any of the reforms introduced by the Bolsheviks were reported...Nothing was reported of any projects ofsocialization, nothing of the nationalisation of the land, nothing even of the reform of the calendar..” In other words, the media have form for selective reporting, it did not start in 2016 with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader.

When Chris Mason says that the views of Gideon Levy are not newsworthy that is not just a journalistic assessment, but one based on his framing of the story. It is not just bias but the dominance of a particular World view which, we should presume, is shared by the majority of his journalistic colleagues and, more importantly, those who employ them. According to research by the Sutton Trust in 2006 journalists were far more likely to be privately educated and to have attended Oxbridge than the general population. A demographic which is strangely similar to the figures for Conservative 

MP’s 45% of whom are privately educated. Given this common background it is hardly surprising that journalists feel more comfortable with the Tories than with Labour.

It may be too simplistic to say that a private education creates a particular world view, but it also serves as a proxy for a privileged upbringing. What passes for common sense assumes that the centre ground is somehow the natural political home of most people, and that by exposing “extreme” views that the public will have the same disdain for them as those reporting them. To some extent, this explains both their antipathy to Jeremy Corbyn and their fascination with “colourful” characters such as Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson.

Potential BBC journalists?

This belief that journalists, rather than political activists, represent the ordinary voter is part of what the late Christopher Hitchens called the “we fallacy”. This is the assumption that the media speak for us so that they can confidently say “we” to mean all right-thinking people, for which read all right-leaning people. As Hitchens points out the manufacture of consent (a phrase coined by Noam Chomsky) is achieved by creating a false consensus between the mass communications industry and the general population. Of course it is not entirely one-way but as Hitchens points out the mass communications industry is, “an area of contestation in which the ruling class naturally holds most of the cards.”

It is this adherence to the centre ground which leads many to call the BBC biased, and to argue for the ending of the licence fee. Whilst, promoting a particular view of the World is biased, it is not a bias against Labour specifically. It is that the set of values that journalists and BBC management hold to be self-evidently true, are threatened by a party that is on course to break the neo-liberal consensus.

I am told that in continuing to support the licence fee (whilst wanting it to be free to those who cannot afford to pay) I am supporting this same World view. However, I find it odd that socialists do not oppose the introduction of the free market into the BBC with the same vigour they oppose privatisation elsewhere. There are undoubtedly things at the BBC that could be improved, and I would hope that a future Labour Government would look at the narrow range of views considered newsworthy, and give guidance to the effect that framing the news as a conflict between neo-liberalism and its challengers, whilst never giving sufficient time to opponents of neo-liberalism is not impartiality. But, if the licence fee is removed then without public subsidy from elsewhere the BBC will either disintegrate entirely or become a part of a multimedia corporation.

It is the framing of the news in favour of a privileged section of the community that is at the root of the BBC’s institutionalised bias. It is because the framing is conducted according to common sense assumptions shared by many journalists and Conservatives that it is increasingly difficult for Labour to get a fair hearing. It is also why certain groups remain entirely marginalised in the mainstream media. 

BBC News Report on Gaza

The Palestinians, for example, are reported primarily as a problem to be solved, and even when they are victims of Israeli aggression we are reminded that the Palestinians themselves are aggressors. This report from March 2019 is typical. After telling us that 190 Palestinians have been killed in the past year, we are then told “Last summer an Israeli soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian gunman.” The justification for the Israeli shootings is then given, but none for the Palestinian. The implication here is that Israel kills to protect its citizens and Palestinians pre-empt this by killing a single Israeli soldier. To be clear here, I am not suggesting that Palestinians are right to kill Israelis or that they should kill more, but if the reporting is supposed to be impartial why am I not given any rationale for the killing of the Israeli, but I am told that Israel defends the killing of 190 people in terms of the safety of its citizens.

I share the frustration of many on the left with the BBC in particular, but news organisations more generally. But, I am loathe to accept that the BBC - our BBC - cannot be saved. For all it’s faults the BBC is still an integral part of British culture. It extends way beyond the news to entertainment, sport and music. From BBC1 to Radio 4 and to the World Service.  Left to the vagaries of the free market much of what is good about the BBC, including many programmes that would never get made commercially, will be lost forever. If it were to become a subscription service many people, those who perhaps rely on it most, will no longer be able to access it. I think we should, as socialists, defend an institution that is dedicated to providing entertainment free at the point of use and without the incessant interruptions of commercials.

The BBC was "reorganised" by David Cameron so that its management was more reflective of business (for which read more sympathetic to the Tory Party). This has undoubtedly made the BBC more servile than at any point in its history. This is not to underestimate, however, the deeply held establishment values it has always espoused. I have still not forgiven them for their misinformation over Orgreave during the Miners Strike. But not everybody who works for the BBC is right-wing. I imagine a BBC that is genuinely impartial, prepared to at least debate with those who propose a different type of economic order and which is prepared to make programmes that both entertain and question. 

Whilst the BBC has never been “ours” as such (the Reithian ethic on which it was founded takes a particularly paternalistic view of the working class), it is closer to most of us than our irritation with Chris Mason or Laura Kuensberg might allow us to admit. For most people, particularly of my generation, the BBC in one way or another formed the soundtrack to our lives. I would like to see a BBC which genuinely reflected British society and the full range of opinions within it. Perhaps that is naive, but saving the BBC seems to me a better option than abandoning it as a lost cause as so many on the left seem wont to do.

Is it time for a ceasefire in the intergenerational war?

From: https://archive.org/details/StrangeTelemetryPokerCards

Inter-generational warfare. Sounds like a new Marvel film doesn't it? To be honest I’d probably go and watch it. But actually it refers to an idea that the young and the elderly are in political and social conflict. The elderly, so the theory goes, are responsible for most of the problems that the younger generation are experiencing. One frequently cited example is that if the elderly were to be paid less in pensions, then more money could be paid for services that would benefit younger people. So how grounded in reality is this conflict and, assuming the war is real, is there any hope of a resolution?

According to statistics there are currently 480,000 people aged 16-24 who are unemployed . The Student Loans Company reports that in the current financial year over £15 billion was lent to students, against only £2.3 billion repaid.  According to the Institute of Fiscal Studies, around one-third of young buyers can not afford the 10% deposit on even the cheapest homes in their area. The conclusion here is that young people are having a harder time than their parents. Being young, it seems, is no longer a time to enjoy life to the full. 

Modern living is far from easy. According to an online survey by the Mental Health Foundation some 60% of people aged 18-24 are unable to cope with almost half feeling stressed over their body image. And, whilst suicide rates in the UK remain low, there has been a worrying increase in suicides rates among the 18-24 year old cohort with official statistics showing a rise from 3 in 100,100 to 5 in 100,000 in 2018.

Young people are stressed

If young people are unhappy, stressed and, in their opinion, poor it has become fashionable to blame older people. The older generation, it is claimed, ruined the economy, the environment and the life chances of their off-spring. The older generation had opportunities that the current generation did not. When they left school there were jobs a-plenty and for the academic minded a grant for higher education. Housing was relatively cheap and the right-to-buy scheme meant many were able to buy at bargain rates. Moreover, their jobs were more secure and came with gold-plated pensions meaning that today’s 70 and 80-year olds are living a life of subsidised luxury whilst the young struggle in part-time, insecure jobs to pay off up to £50,000 in student loans.

This so-called inter generational warfare is being conducted, inevitably, mainly through social media. Whilst my focus here is the UK the arguments are travelling across the Atlantic. Bruce Cannon Gibney wrote an influential book in which he unambiguously points the finger at older generations for all that is wrong with the World. You don’t have to look far on social media to find younger people glibly blaming their parents for having too much. It is easy to argue that if the older generation had less then the younger generation would have more. If only they were not in receipt of pensions then we would not be saddled with student loans. If they had not bought all the council houses then there would both be more affordable rented accommodation and homes for sale. These arguments, whilst tempting, are wrong.

By blaming past generations for societies ills we let the real culprits off the hook. It should be obvious that a “generation” is itself a reification, meaning that it is a convenient shorthand for something that really does not exist. Older generations are no more to blame for, let’s say, student loans than immigration is to blame for job shortages. Even if some relationship between the two could be shown it would not be causal.

For anybody with socialist leanings, here I put my hand up, the idea that an entire generation could be responsible for something is fundamentally mistaken and yet another example of the politics of the blame game which is used successfully to avoid scrutiny  of the rich and privileged. 

Generations are not homogenous. Whilst many people supported, and benefitted, from the right-to-buy scheme, many opposed it and the Tory Government that introduced it. Whilst many benefitted from a student grant (I was one of the last cohort), many of those same people campaigned against the Tory government that introduced them. I spent a good deal of my 3 years in university on marches, sit-ins and getting signatures on petitions so that future generations would not be saddled with massive debts.

Social housing in Vienna

That it is now difficult to get on the housing ladder is not a consequence of the sale of council houses. It was the lack of any planning to ensure that the housing market was not simply left to the vagaries of the free market. It’s not as if we have to look too far for inspiration. In Vienna, for example, the average per metre rent price in 2018 was €9.40, in Berlin it was €9.80 whilst in London it was €28.20. This is not just a market issue, and it has nothing to do with age, rather it is one of political philosophy. Wolfgang Muller, Deputy municipal director of Vienna is quoted in the Financial Times as saying “Our philosophy is the highest quality of living for everyone”. This is perhaps why 60% of the housing in Vienna is what is termed social housing.

Most countries in Europe make some direct charge to students for higher education, but it is a

peculiarity that the rates vary considerably between various countries. Nine EU member states have no fees at all, but amongst the other countries one country stands out for its high burden on students. You guessed it, the United Kingdom (though it’s worth noting that Scottish students pay no tuition fees and in Wales fees for Welsh students are capped at £3,000, sill more than the average European student would pay though). The point is that the move from grants to loans has nothing to with generations and everything to do with political philosophy. We should ask, younger people in particular should ask, why it is that successive Tory governments have not looked to Europe or Scandinavia for inspiration but to market-driven USA?

And, what of these gold-plated pensions that older people are enjoying. The attack on pensions is two-fold. First, it is asserted, that because people are living longer we can no longer afford the state pension. One way to reduce the cost has been to gradually increase the age of retirement. For women this jumped from 60 to 65 and is currently 67. Younger people can rightly argue that it is unfair that they will have to work longer than their parents. Though it could equally be pointed out that older generations left school earlier (at 14,15 or 16), that the numbers going to university were minimal and that the changes in pensionable age affect all generations, other than those already retired. But, the main thrust of the attack is that pensions are paid for by those in work to be enjoyed by those not working. This is patently not true. State pension is paid for by National Insurance contributions, of which the average pensioner will have paid for 30 or 40 years before retirement. The only reason why those currently in work have to “subsidise” pensioners is because of government profligacy. They spent the money on other things and hoped that enough people would die before the financial black hole appeared. I realise this is an over-simplification but the point is that the older generation have paid for their state pension and for younger people to imagine that if they lost those rights the money would somehow transfer to them is naive.

Nick, now Lord, Clegg with friend

The second tenet of the attack on pensioners is aimed at those with workplace pensions, the so-called gold plated pensions enjoyed by those particularly in the public sector. This term was coined (pardon the pun) by none other than Nick Clegg. Yes, the same Nick Clegg who promised to oppose further

increases in tuition fees and then voted for them as part of the Con-Dem coalition. This was the start of a wave of attacks on defined benefit pension schemes. 

It is worth pointing out that the average private pension is around £8.6k per annum, less for women. Does that seem like gold-plated? But what is missing in these debates is that people with workplace pensions will have taken a reduction in their take home pay in order to build up their pension pots. And, that if their pensions are over £12.2k a year, they have to pay tax. In other words, it is not taking from the young to give to the old. Whether it is state or workplace pensions it is simply giving back to people what they had saved for.

According to AgeUK research the number of pensioners living in poverty is around 2 million, the figure has hardly changed since 1945, although it is worth noting that it was falling slowly until 2010 when it began to rise again. 2010, lest we forget, was the year of the Con-Dem coalition. (Thanks Nick!)

So, let’s get back to the issue of inter generational warfare. The idea that the old are ruining the lives of the young is a wedge being used to divide those who should be united. The difference between the lifestyles of older and younger citizens are not consistent across different countries. Rather the UK has chosen to adopt a series of policies that have had the cumulative effect of creating a worse social environment, especially for younger people.

Trade unions defend young and old

It might be pertinent to note that in 1979 over 13 million people were members of trade unions, by 2016, despite population increases the number was 6.2 million. This, of course, does not explain all the differences that generations face, but pensions and wages are bread and butter issues for trade unions. The fact is that benefits of any kind are rarely given benignly, they are fought for and the only way to fight is to be organised and do so collectively. Whilst young people are more likely to vote Labour, they are also less likely to vote at all. Poverty, higher education fees, running down public services, the shift from the collective to the individual are not generational issues, they are class issues. Only Labour governments (and even then not all Labour governments) have a genuine concern for working class people and the conditions they live in. 

All the policies which younger people are blaming their parents for were Tory policies (even if some were kept by the last Labour Government). They made a political choice as Philip Alston, launching the UN’s report into poverty in the UK, noted. The government could have made other choices, but instead of seeking inspiration from Europe and Scandinavia, they have stayed in thrall to the economics of the free market. Such economics enrich only one group of people at the expense of the rest of us. For those younger readers who still feel that the older generation are to blame, I want to end with a plea for a ceasefire. You really are fighting the wrong enemy here.

Younger, rich people will not be without homes (they may well be renting them to you), will not want for a decent job (they’ll start at the bottom of the family business and work their way to the top, even if it takes them all week), will not worry about their pension in old age (they’ll just steal yours), and will continue to encourage us to fight amongst ourselves to divide their crumbs as they fall from on high.

If you are not rich, it is not your parents or grandparents who are holding you back it is a social system that continues to be tilted in favour of one class. That class owns not only the means of production but the means to spread discord and disharmony amongst the lower classes. Whilst we concentrate on each other, they are free to carry on consuming the fruits of our labour. The only way this is going to end is when we start to rethink our priorities, and that cannot happen until we begin to rethink our commitment to the free market.