Written by Sir John Redwood
This article was first published in John Redwood’s Diary and we re-publish with his kind permission.
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The contrast between the way much of the conventional media reports on the European continent compared to their reports on the USA and UK has never been starker. We regularly hear every Democrat criticism of President Trump and every Lib Dem and Labour jibe about Boris but never hear the AFD tearing into Mrs Merkel nor National Rally assailing Mr Macron.
The choice of topics is also skewed. We hear regular reports into poverty, racism and violent crime in the USA or UK but no such coverage of France or Germany. The mass protests in France for almost a year along with the deaths and woundings of protesters by the security forces usually go without mention. The nasty outbreaks of violence in Germany linked in their media to minority criminal elements in the recently arrived migrant population and to groups of local people who oppose the migration policy by violence go largely unremarked.
The strange double standards applies to reporting austerity politics. Any cut in public spending in the UK within the context of an overall state budget rising in real terms is reported as unacceptable austerity. The true homes of austerity economics in parts of the Eurozone go little discussed, even though there we have seen cash cuts in wages, cash cuts in state pensions, large layoffs and the rest. There is a refusal to see that the Uk Treasury’s whole programme of increased taxes and limited spending rises was based on the EU requirement to see state debt as a percentage of GDP falling.
Even more curious is the differential approach to new laws. If they come from the EU they get little criticism and often little coverage.Anything proposed here or by Mr Trump is likely to get energetic and critical debate. The massive data law GDPR had a big impact on business costs and priorities for many months yet it was as if it did not exist in much of the media. Imagine the rows if a UK government had proposed that.
The USA and UK have made good progress in creating jobs and cutting unemployment. The mass unemployment of much of the Eurozone and the unacceptably high youth unemployment in much of the south gets little attention. Remain inclined media ought to be as scandalised about unemployment and poverty in Greece or southern Italy as they are about lesser amounts in UK blackspots. The EU ideal should create equal concern about anywhere in the Union.
Over our many years in the EU much of the media have denied the EU has much impact on our lives. Now we are leaving that same media tell us the EU is so critical to so many aspects of our lives we cannot live without it. No wonder so many people now say back “We don’t believe you.”
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[Ed: Don’t miss Sir John Redwood’s book “We Don’t Believe You: Why Populists and Establishment See the World Differently”!]
Yes Sir John. Every news program has a hard luck story complaining about someone not getting enough welfare , free housing, english lessons healthcare . or public sector layabouts needing more time off having doled out all of the above.
The trouble is that the BBC and Channel 4 are effectively state-owned, dependent on hand-outs and institutionally socialist. There is a well-trodden path between the BBC, the Guardian and the Labour Party which are all socialist. Journalists are often schooled by the BBC or C4, and take their prejudices with them throughout their careers. Even other broadcasters like Sky are regulated by OFCOM, a state-run quango that demands “standards” that amount to left-wing propaganda.
Social Media sites like Twitter, Facebook and the like are run by west-coast US liberals, and feel entitled to ban those who don’t subscribe to their own simplistic world view.
And yet the left rant about the “right-wing media”. I wonder where they find that?
And many of the big social media companies have started to employ leftwing politicians to help them ‘police’ their sites. We are now seeing a sinister move to stopping any conservative or free thinker from airing their views. The recent discussion held between Candice Owens and Carl Benjamin highlighted just how many centre or right wing contributors have not just been banned, but have been ‘non personed’ too. Their ability to make a living has been denied them, their ability to talk to their followers has been denied, their ability in some cases to send photographs to friends has been stopped.
These people are being ‘removed’ from society by those who wish to control the narrative. Carl succinctly hit the nail on the head when he remarked how many new, private sites in foreign lands were being set up by intelligent people, who, by causing an underground movement are creating exactly the same conditions that the Soviet Union and East Germany created. The UK is suffering for the first time in its history of totalitarian government and it will not end well.
I had hoped that Redwood would have been chosen as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Owen Paterson returned to Dept of Environment; the latter quickly sorted out the flooding on the Somerset levels, if I rightly recall.
The history books I was given had it That. During the French revolution the helpful and thoughtful British Aristocracy Kindly Removed any hint of what was happening across the chanel from any news etc. to save bloodshead, I suppose they still haven’t changed.
Bravo Sir John Redwood – encapsulating everything we already know about our utterly corrupt and mendacious MSM, yet is rarely articulated. Another excellent article by this thoroughly principled, decent, patriotic man, who is as rare as hen’s teeth in the sewer of the political arena.
As further evidence of media bias – not that we need it – the essential and inimitable Paul Joseph Watson has pointed out that the MSM has of course gone overboard in trying to link the El Paso shooter with white supremacists and of course with Trump’s narrative, but are strangely silent on the Ohio shooter for whom there are openly available links to the Democrats and particularly support for Elizabeth Warren. They are not blaming her narrative for stoking him up to hate and murder.