Media
Can’t Hide That They’re in Bed With May
By
Jonathan Cook
May 10,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- This is the first British general election in
decades in which there is anything approaching a
real political choice. For that reason, even the
most liberal elements within the corporate media
are jettisoning the pretence of neutrality and
objectivity. The stakes are simply too high.
In fact, their bias has become so overt that
even a veteran BBC and Channel 4 reporter like
Michael Crick is becoming exasperated and
letting vent on Twitter.
Crick’s
outrage has been triggered by the media’s
complicity in allowing British prime
minister Theresa May to stage-manage
her election campaign. The media are submitting
questions for vetting (without admitting the
fact to viewers), and failing to report that in
most cases only hardcore Tory party supporters,
not members of the public, are being allowed
near her.
One
should not be surprised that the Conservatives
want to rig the campaign trail to make their
candidate look good. The problem is that the
corporate media are conspiring to help them do
it.
Why
would the media be so willing to mollycoddle May
and keep her from embarrassing herself? Doesn’t
the media feed off the high and mighty being
brought low by gaffes and pratfalls?
That
might be true if nothing was really at stake, as
has been the case in the last few decades of
elections. But if May loses, Labour leader
Jeremy Corbyn will be in power instead. The
elites are so sure they are firmly in control of
everything that they are determined to make
sure that doesn’t happen.
May, it is clear, is a weak public performer.
That is why she has refused to debate Corbyn,
and why BBC interviewers are giving her softball
questions. She is even pampered with an
interview on
the BBC with her banker husband, Philip, posing
as though they are royalty.
In
contrast to May, the Labour leader makes a good
impression when he is able to speak about
policies rather than being battered by not just
hostile, but openly disparaging, questions from
BBC interviewers like Laura Kuennsberg.
During
the independence referendum campaign in 2014,
many Scots started to understand that they lived
in an ostensible democracy only. The media, and
most notably the BBC, worked so strenuously to
deny them any information that might
encourage them to make the “wrong” choice that
the mask of neutrality slipped off. In a sign of
the desperation, as the vote looked to be
nail-bitingly close, even the Queen was roped in
to bolster the case for staying in the union.
As the
UK media all but declare fealty to May, this may
prove to be an Indyref moment for the rest of
Britain.
Jonathan Cook is a Nazareth- based journalist
and winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize
for Journalism
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
