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The media is downplaying Greens and talking up the BNP

by Rupert Read    
May 19, 2009 at 9:20 am

Recent polling since the expenses scandal broke shows the Greens have been reaping the rewards of public anger at the main Parliamentary parties. Some indicate we may even receive a result rivaling the 15% highpoint of the ’89 election.

A ComRes poll this weekend put the Tories at 28%, Labour at 20%, the Lib Dems on 14%, below UKIP’s 15%, with the Greens on 11% and the BNP on just 4%. A YouGov poll out yesterday showed that could be the tip of a more radical, positive mood: 34% said they may vote Green at this election.

But here’s the funny thing: the primary focus of the media, and the BBC in particular, has been on the BNP. It remains a party that appears to be falling short of expectations for them.
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BNP: leaflets and adverts

by Sunny Hundal    
May 18, 2009 at 7:19 pm

There is a minor controversy over some Royal Mail workers in Bristol refusing to deliver BNP leaflets, a position that is entirely allowed under their contracts.

Royal Mail has now backed down, after one local worker described the management acting as “cheerleaders for the BNP,” and asking individual workers “Why are you anti-BNP?” when they balked at delivering leaflets. What, a picture of Nick Griffin alongside a KKK leader and founder of Stormfront not enough?

But there’s a more worrying issue here. As Adam Bienkov highlights on Tory Troll, local newspaper owner Newsquest is happily taking money from these racists. I’m ok with local newspapers writing about the BNP if its a legitimate news story. But taking money from neo-nazis? Do they have no shame?

Then josephlaking messages me on twitter to say: “in Thurrock, where the BNP launched their manifesto, a local paper was carrying a story entitled ‘BNP choose us for launch” — just great. Do readers know of other instances of local newspaper carrying BNP advertising?

Update: I’ve compiled a list here.

Where are the fans of greed now?

by Claude Carpentieri    
May 18, 2009 at 7:15 pm

Not long ago you couldn’t utter a single word against excessive City bonuses. Those who did were envious moaners clueless as to how financial markets work.

Take the same pious Telegraph that was this week ranting against the “scandalous greed” of MPs. As recent as October 2006 they sported this proud headline: “Greed is good“.
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Melanie Phillips: the thick or nasty dilemma

by Paul Sagar    
May 18, 2009 at 9:21 am

I adhere to a rather offensive school of thought. Its basic premise is a simple dilemma: that those on the political right are either thick or nasty. That is, either they realise that the policies they promote and the world views they endorse mean preserving the power, wealth and privilege of the already powerful, wealthy and privileged at the expense of everyone else, or they don’t. If the former: nasty, if the latter: thick.
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The BBC risks losing its way

by Padraig Reidy    
May 14, 2009 at 3:10 pm

The broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby has written an article for Index on Censorship arguing that, “The BBC Trust’s condemnation of Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen has the potential to cause serious damage to the corporation’s international standing”.

He says:

The decision by the BBC Trust to censure the BBC’s Middle East editor for breaching the corporation’s guidelines on accuracy and impartiality deserve closer scrutiny than it has yet been given. Jeremy Bowen is justly regarded as one of the BBC’s most courageous, authoritative and thoughtful broadcasters; his hundreds of despatches and commentaries from various frontlines in the Middle East have been noted for their acuity and balance. Now, thanks to the Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee (ESC) — a body with the absolute and final authority of a latter-day Star Chamber — not only has Bowen’s hard-won reputation been sullied, but the BBC’s international status as the best source of trustworthy news in the world has been gratuitously — if unintentionally — undermined.

And he concludes by saying:

Of course the Bowens of broadcasting can look after themselves; they may feel aggrieved or frustrated, but they will shake off such verdicts; nor will they allow their editorial perspective and judgement to be constrained by them. But younger and less experienced correspondents will not find it so easy. At best the risk is that it becomes routine to hedge their coverage with so many cautionary “ifs” and “buts” that their journalism is denuded of genuine clarity and insight. At worst, they will simply start to regurgitate edited versions of competing press releases with an invitation to viewers and listeners to draw their own conclusions. Were that to happen, the BBC would have entirely lost its way, and we will be left a great deal poorer.

Newspapers feeding the anti-politics mood

by Dave Osler    
May 9, 2009 at 10:40 am

Nine formidable broadsheet pages in the Daily Telegraph yesterday morning were devoted to forensic analysis of the expenses claims of cabinet members. Only the most diehard political anoraks will read every last line; this is hardly a subject of much intrinsic fascination.

At one level, this is propaganda directed against Labour, and highly effective propaganda, too, coming as the culmination of months of revelations about spare bedrooms, bath plugs and cable television porno flicks.
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Geert Wilders’ great plan to save the west

by Sunny Hundal    
May 6, 2009 at 11:19 am

I recently wrote about the Dutch MP Geert Wilders being slammed by the right-wing lobby group Anti-Defamation League, but forgot to put his comments in context. The Dutch MP made an acceptance speech for the Freedom Award he was given by the Florida Security Council in Miami.

And Geert Wilders certainly believes in ‘freedom’, because he advocates a ten point plan to Save Western Civilisation:
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Nurses don’t deserve the abuse they get

by Guest    
May 6, 2009 at 9:15 am

This is a guest article by Zarathustra
As a nurse, the Margaret Haywood affair was particularly saddening to me, not just because of the appalling standards of nursing care she exposed in her secret filming for Panorama, but also because of the way she was struck off by the Nursing and Midwifery Council for doing so.

But whether one agrees with her actions or not, anyone who works in nursing will tell you that what she filmed was not an isolated incident, and can be found elsewhere in hospitals all over the country. So why is nursing care failing so badly?
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In post-Soviet Russia, President blogs you

by MatGB    
May 5, 2009 at 9:51 pm

Dear Gordon,

Look, it’s fairly simple. Social Media? You don’t get it. Your video on YouTube has been resoundingly ridiculed due to your terrible performance and complete lack of content. The person who did the production for it? Send them off to the Kremlin for some lessons, there’s a good chap.

Why? Have a look at this. Yes, that’s the President of Russia contributing to his regularly updated blog. I don’t speak Russian, but diplomat Nicholas Whyte, who does, describes it as “an impressive performance“, and even without understanding a word, he comes across as genuine and engaging.

Politicians can, if they put the effort in, use social media like blogs, twitter and YouTube effectively. But if they don’t put the effort in? It’s probably better not to bother than to do something badly.

But then Gordon Brown does everything badly.

Will the Guardian endorse Libdems at the election?

by Sunny Hundal    
May 5, 2009 at 4:17 pm

This week’s New Statesman features an interesting Leader that takes a half-hearted shot at the Guardian’s political coverage. In a piece titled ‘Brown-hating hacks refuse to listen to what Labour has to say‘, an extract says:

Certainly, in recent days, the government has made several promising moves which may appeal to the electorate more than to the Cameron-loving and Brown-hating media. (The Guardian can scarcely contain its admiration for Mr Cameron; its interview with the Tory intellectual Michael Gove on 25 April was a model of swooning sycophancy of the kind that the riven and troubled newspaper regularly serves up when reporting on the Conservatives.) The trick in the run-up to the next general election will be to ensure that such initiatives form part of a larger narrative – and crucially one that is social-democratic in nature. [emphasis mine]

I think this could be taken further.
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The Evening Standard says sorry

by Sunny Hundal    
May 4, 2009 at 3:16 pm

Roy Greenslade writes:

The London Evening Standard today launches one of the most daring of publicity campaigns by apologising to Londoners for its previous behaviour.

Buses and tubes will carry a series of messages throughout the week that begin with the word “sorry.” The first says “Sorry for losing touch”. Subsequent slogans say sorry for being negative, for taking you for granted, for being complacent and for being predictable.

A good start though I wonder if it will be enough to turn around its reputation. Will the Evening Standard also apologise for carrying reports that the G20 protestors were throwing bricks at the police trying to help Ian Tomlinson?
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Smearing British Muslims through opinion polls

by Martin Robbins    
May 4, 2009 at 11:30 am

Last year I wrote about what I called the “disgusting misrepresentation of British Muslims,” the publication of heavily biased opinion polls by lobby groups that were quickly picked up and promoted by elements of the right-wing press.

This week, I’m pleased to say that a group of British Born Muslims who saw that coverage and my article, got in touch to let me know that they’ve been going out and collecting evidence to help fight for the reputation of their community. Those who saw my first piece for Liberal Conspiracy know that I’m here to advocate science-based policy, so this week I want to explore the science of opinion polls, and look at how the evidence has been abused by a network of right-wing journalists and lobbying interests.
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The Daily Mail and the ‘antichrist’ car

by Newswire    
May 1, 2009 at 11:50 pm

This week the Daily Mail’s “Foreign Service” breathlessly reported that a car with the number-plate 666 went up in flames – perhaps because it carried “the number that identifies the Antichrist”. Perhaps it was a slow news day – the newspaper caught up with the story two years after it actually happened. Who says journalism is dying?
(via Richard)

Private Eye on McBride / Guido saga

by Sunny Hundal    
May 1, 2009 at 6:23 pm

This piece was published in the latest fortnightly edition of Private Eye. I thought it was too interesting and delicious to pass up and wrote it up since it’s not available to link online. It does a great job of capturing the hypocrisy of all involved. Those bored by this saga look away now….

——-
Blog Standard (1 – 14 May 2009, page 5)

Congratulations to blogger Paul Staines on his spectacular scoop with the McBride/Draper emails. Congratulations too for his belated realisation of the superiority of the “dead tree press” in choosing to print not a word from them on his own “Guido Fawkes” website and hand them over instead to the Sunday Times and News of the World.

That allowed Rupert Murdoch’s lawyers to take on the legal risks and the potential costs over which the fearless Fawkes had been fretting for some time as well as allowing for the addition of a good dose of the hypocrisy and humbug against which his blog is dedicated.
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New editors for New Statesman

by Newswire    
April 30, 2009 at 5:35 pm

From a press release issued today
New Statesman magazine has appointed Emily Mann is its new deputy editor. It has also appointed Mehdi Hasan as its new senior editor (politics).
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Panic! The big flu is coming!

by Claude Carpentieri    
April 29, 2009 at 2:57 pm

Collective panic is the one thing society can’t do without. Part of the holy trilogy that also consists of collective mourning (Diana and Jade Goody to mention but two) and collective hysteria (the World Cup on the big fuckoff screen while Carlsberg-Tetleys count the cash), it comes in cycles, regular as clockwork.

We suckle on scaremongering like a baby to a teat, feeding on the notion that The Big Plague is Coming like a periodical reminder of our mortality, which is probably why disaster movies routinely top cinema charts worldwide. So let’s just hope that the current panic surrounding the swine flu is nothing more than cyclical hypochondria like it has been a dozen times before.
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The ‘brain drain’ scare tactic should be ignored

by Paul Sagar    
April 29, 2009 at 12:11 pm

Those who oppose fair taxation have bee quick to deploy a favourite tactic in the wake of the 50p tax on the richest 1% of society: to hold the rest of society hostage by declaring that if we put up taxes, they’ll leave. In fact, they’re at it yesterday on Comment is Free.

That’s right, it’s the dreaded Brain Drain. The bogey-man of the right, which acts as both a threat and a scare tactic. For, firstly, we’re supposed to think that the estimated 25,000 people who will leave if we suffer a brain drain are so valuable that the rest of us will suffer as a result. Secondly, this is used to hold us hostage: “Put up taxes, and we’ll leave…and you need us to stay.”

So it’s worth considering whether a) a Brain Drain will happen, and b) whether it would be an unambiguously bad thing if it does.
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Sometimes I can’t tell brown people apart either

by Sunny Hundal    
April 27, 2009 at 2:59 pm

I can only assume that in order to hide his embarrassment over Iceland now electing a left-wing government, thanks to policies Daniel Hannan MEP was praising not long ago, he has now written this hilarious post saying he can’t tell the difference between Sunder Katwala of the Fabian society and myself. Perhaps we do look that similar, though I have the advantage of a distinct beard. Or perhaps it’s that elusive sense of humour Iain Dale thinks only right-wingers can have. Who knows. My twin has replied to Hannan here.

But I do think Dan Hannan MEP should stop being embarrassed he got it so spectacularly wrong over Iceland’s economy, and should go on a worldwide tour to advise governments of economic policy. He’d be helping leftwing parties everwhere. Though I’d advise limiting use of the ‘you people all look a bit similar‘ theme – it might not work in other places.

The ‘Evil Poor’

by Laurie Penny    
April 26, 2009 at 2:58 pm

Dave Osler has addressed the question of the class-war-that-isn’t; what we need to talk about urgently is when, precisely, it became good form to treat people on low incomes as if they were an entirely different, morally deficient species of person. When did it become alright to call the poor ‘evil’?

No, really. Let’s not forget that this week the Orwell prize for blogs was awarded to NightJack, a blogger who claims to be a white, middle-aged police officer posting about his experiences in the force, passing over, amongst others, the esteemed Alix Mortimer. One of his winning entries is entitled ‘The Evil Poor’. Initially I assumed that the title was ironic. It isn’t.
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An open letter to the Evening Standard

by Guest    
April 22, 2009 at 4:15 pm

Guest post by Guy Aitchison of Our Kingdom
I received an email yesterday from the Evening Standard Letters page asking me to comment on Sir Paul Stephenson’s response to the fallout from the G20 protests and the article in the Guardian by former Met commander David Gilbertson blaming a systemic crisis of leadership in the force for police violence.

I took the opportunity to point out the remarkable shift in editorial policy at the Standard in the short number of weeks since the protests. So far there has been almost no self-reflection by the media on their pernicious role in hyping up the prospect of violence in the run up to the G20 and then uncritially reporting, and, in the case of the Standard it seems, exaggerating the police’s version of events in ways that smeared protesters.

Here’s the letter anyway.
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