#MediaWatch: Supping with the Devil with a Long Spoon

It’s early days yet, and anyone who pronounces definitively about the new Labour Government after less than three months in power is not only a hostage to fortune but kidnapped by clickbait. No snap poll or single announcement by an administration just finding its feet in Whitehall and Parliament can yet determine which direction Keir Starmer will take. And of course, not only will he be steered by events, and – if we speak up – also public opinion, protest and activism.

So the photo taken of the Prime Minister en route to the US to meet President Joe Biden to discuss allowing Ukraine to use long-range Western weapons is just a fleeting snapshot, but it does highlight the problems with the political culture this new government inherits. 

I won’t go into the details of the personnel surrounding Starmer on the inflight briefing. Forget (if you can) for a moment Harry Coles’ career at Guido Fawkes and The Sun and pride of place as head of the Westminster Lobby. Forget too Robert Peston to his right, his anonymous briefings about the deadly ‘Herd Immunity’ four years ago during the Covid pandemic…

You can even put aside, for a moment, the lack of diversity among the transatlantic throng. As Carol Vorderman explained in her Alternative McTaggart lecture, the news industry is increasingly unrepresentative of the country as a whole, more exclusively reserved for the wealthier middle classes – unlike most other professions. As we have often detailed in Byline Times, there has been a merger between the political and media classes – a revolving door and carousel of jobs and favours between government, print and broadcasting.

But are we supposed to forget the last decade of duplicity?  That many of these same journalists either boosted or enabled the disastrous premierships of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss? The fact that many of the newspapers represented here backed a penuriously hard Brexit? That they monstered minorities, migrants and Muslims well before the violent riots of the summer? That they routinely print falsehoods, churn PR copy and advertorials or recycle dodgy dossiers from Tufton Street-style opaque think tanks? 

Should we forget our papers are mainly owned by non-domiciled millionaires or billionaires, with hedge funder Sir Paul Marshall now joining the media oligarchy by purchasing the Spectator and bidding for The Telegraph?  And why should pride of place go to the political editor of The Sun when the paper has paid out nearly a billion in settling claims for industrial-scale criminal activity? And why court Murdoch’s failing daily newspaper when his US outlets, especially Fox News, have promulgated false claims of voter fraud and enabled violent attempts to overthrow democracy in the very country Starmer is visiting? 

BREAKING

The ‘Bored’ Millionaire Buying up Britain’s Right-Wing Media: Paul Marshall ‘Set to Buy’ The Spectator

‘Tory bible’ set to fall into hands of tycoon who liked tweets about ‘civil war’ and ‘mass expulsions’ of migrants

Josiah Mortimer

Calm down, people say to me. That’s just the way things are. Starmer has to deal with the mainstream media. It’s just business as normal. The way things are. 

But that’s the point of politics, to change the way things are. Though Starmer has dropped plans for a second part of the Leveson Inquiry into press ethics and criminality, and Labour voted to repeal the modicum of press regulation passed ten years ago, he surely must know – especially as the Director of Public Prosecutions who paved the way for the phone hacking investigation – the background of the people he sits with. If you sup with the devil, you have to use a long spoon. 

Is that spoon long enough? Supporters of Starmer will say he’s using the media, and he must communicate, regardless of the messenger. While the press is often accused of being ‘client media’ – it always exacts a price for that and expects politicians to follow their agenda, and become their clients too. 

This toxic co-dependence has poisoned political discourse and allowed corruption and conflicts of interest to become a norm in our society.  Labour is happy to face hard decisions to address the parlous state of the economy after the depredations and decay of the last 15 years. Why not address one of the key causes of that: our political culture? 

The Water We Swim In

The phrase comes from an old joke. An old fish is swimming along and meets two younger fish, commenting “Isn’t the water lovely today” before gliding off. One of the younger fish turns to the other and says “What’s water?”

Our editor Hardeep Matharu often points out this ‘water we swim in’, the soft-wired assumptions and legacies which constitute the social norms and habits we are largely unaware of. The featured photo above shows very little self-awareness about the problems of our political culture. And if it remains unconscious, it is unlikely to change.

Culture, Steve Bannon once observed, is “upstream of politics”. But as another, less problematic, American politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said –  while culture matters most, governments can change culture. 

If Keir Starmer is serious about renovating Britain, then he will have to look at the media. 

We’re here to check on that and hold this government to account – and help them do better if we can do so. That’s why, as as successor to our successful #VoteWatch24 campaign during and in the run-up to the last General Election, Byline Times is launching a #MediaWatch campaign to scrutinise the media and we need your help. 

#mediawatch CrowdfundER

Help us expose the worst of Britain’s media and social media and demand something better

A healthy media is the cornerstone of a functional democratic society. Unfortunately, Britain today doesn’t have one. That’s why Byline Times is launching a new project – Byline Media Watch – to monitor and tackle disinformation in broadcast and social media and take on misleading bias in the press.

Outside the system, we can hold the tech broligarchs and non-dom media moguls to account.

Contribute to the #MediaWatch crowdfunder

Have you seen an example of false reporting in the press? Or disinformation online? Have you noticed another partisan article by someone not declaring an interest? Or a media company rigging the market or pulling in a political favour? Is the BBC providing a false balance between a truth or a lie? Or is GB News spreading a deadly conspiracy theory? Then let us know at mediawatch@bylinetimes.com

We’re particularly keen to follow disinformation online, especially on social media platforms owned by tech broligarchs who use the cover of ‘free speech’ to expose dissidents to authoritarian governments or boost their commercial interests in this brave new world of crypto corporatism. 

As Séamus Dooley, NUJ assistant general secretary, has noted, there is an “existential crisis” in British journalism. A study by the Reuters Institute has revealed that trust in news has now collapsed to 35% down from 51% in 2015. A lot of this is down to the rise of unregulated social media disinformation and algorithmic manipulation 

 “The challenge today for politicians is to deliver a two-word response to the likes of Elon Musk and the second word is ‘off,’” Dooley told the TUC: “Quite frankly, that cannot be the future of our society.”

Byline Times has been covering big tech monopoly abuses for years. We’ve also specialised in Kremlin disinformation. The recent revelations about payments to US ‘super spreader’ influencers are just, according to the FBI itself, the tip of the iceberg. So we’d be keen to hear from you about any signs of foreign interference in our democracy, whether it be from Russia, China, Israel or Iran. Contact us at  mediawatch@bylinetimes.com

Meanwhile, if you find these deep dives into disinformation too unnerving or discouraging, you can always help us hire a specialist dedicated journalist to do it by supporting our MediaWatch crowdfunding campaign. 

We might not always be able to change the world to make it better, but we have a constant duty to stop it getting worse.