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.