Can you trust the mainstream media?
“The danger is that the influential and the upper classes see journalism as too tabloid and populist, while working-class people think it pays little attention to people like themselves and their lives – and no one is happy.”
“It is beginning to feel like a culture war,” says Ian Katz, editor of BBC2’s Newsnight and formerly deputy editor of the Guardian.
.. “At Grenfell, a lot of the reaction crystallised around the idea of an establishment plot to minimise the extent of the catastrophe,” Katz explains. “There was an elision of a whole series of things into the Grenfell disaster, including the perception that the media had failed to give Corbyn a fair crack.
.. He’s talking about a new article of faith on the political left: that, in its attitudes to Corbyn, the media inadvertently revealed the truth about themselves. Instead of supporting Labour’s new leader, goes the narrative, liberal newspapers such as the Guardian and Observer, along with “state broadcaster” the BBC, set out to destroy him. When Corbyn did better than expected in the 2017 general election, this proved that the media were unequivocally wrong and the Corbynites were right.
.. She’s using a single Nick Cohen column as a synecdoche for the entire liberal press, but it’s central to the non-MSM worldview that the media be perceived as a consistent unit.
.. “The current Labour leadership is used to being a backbench rebel movement, a protest movement,” say Mark Wallace, editor of ConservativeHome. “The scrutiny you face when pitching to run the country is of a different order and that’s proving uncomfortable for them. I think there’s a knowing element to the endless personal pursuit of Laura Kuenssberg as well. If you bombard someone for long enough, they might never actually surrender to you, but it may have a chilling effect on what questions they ask.”
.. A 2016 survey by City University indicated that only 0.4% of working journalists are Muslim and only 0.2% are black, when almost 5% of the UK population is Muslim and 3% is black.
.. a brocialist [a male socialist or progressive who downplays women’s issues]