Corbyn’s Alternative MacTaggart Lecture in Edinburgh was
probably the first example of the Labour Leader setting his own agenda after
weeks dominated by the anti-semitism furore. While the row with the Jewish
community shows no sign of abating – and new footage emerges of Corbyn making extremely
dubious remarks at a London conference five years ago – his media proposals were
indeed eye-catching enough to deserve some scrutiny.
He started with a direct attack on mainstream news.
‘While we produce some fantastic drama, entertainment,
documentaries and films,’ Corbyn argued, ‘when it comes to news and current
affairs, so vital for a democratic society, our media is failing.’
His evidence for this sweeping statement? That people, when
questioned in surveys, say they don’t trust the media.
Of course, a fair degree of scepticism is entirely healthy
when looking at journalistic output. The British tabloid press doesn’t have the
greatest of reputations and proprietors clearly have strong financial and
political interests.
But in the Corbynite world, this suspicion of ‘mainstream media’
or the ‘MSM’, extends to any organisation
with a newsroom and professional journalists.
His supporters are just as likely to rail against the BBC as
they are to condemn The Sun or The Daily Mail. In fact, any outlet which doesn’t venerate
Corbyn as some kind of living saint is treated with contempt.
The Labour Leader’s
own fanbase fuels the very distrust which he describes.
And when politicians such as Corbyn and Trump question the
role of professional journalism, they play a profoundly dangerous game. They are
feeding a cycle of cynicism which becomes self-perpetuating and self-fulfilling.
As he moved on, he naturally started to focus on his
obsessions with media ownership. He said that he aimed to ‘break the
stranglehold of elite power and billionaire domination over large parts of our
media’.
The press barons who help to highlight his shameful past are
obviously in his sights, but Corbyn is also looking at multinational
corporations such as Facebook and Google, who now wield huge power over the media
landscape.
According to Corbyn, ‘political and social activists’ should
‘get involved’ in deciding the business model of media in the future. Quite why
the views of these self-appointed people would be accepted by multinational businesses
or actively promoted by government wasn’t explained. But if these activists are
anything like the individuals who troll, snipe and vent online to promote Corbyn’s
agenda, then we’d better prepare for the biggest culture war the UK has ever
seen.
After this, Jez started to outline his more specific proposals,
including the sponsorship of what he calls ‘public interest journalism’. The
most charitable interpretation of this segment of the speech is that he sees
the whole business of news reporting as revolving around worthy investigations.
Naturally, we all want to see journalism that exposes injustice
and corruption. But one gets the sense that in Corbyn’s puritanical and
self-important world, the reporting of entertainment or royalty or celebrity is
unbearable trivia. It doesn’t count as ‘real’ news.
And do we really believe anyway that local or not-for-profit
organisations are somehow going to expose wrongdoing or social ills more
professionally and credibly than, say, The
Washington Post, The Guardian or
the BBC?
In a world where we are confronted with Breitbart and The Canary
and Westmonster and Skwawkbox, what confidence do we have
that Jez’s ‘news co-ops’ are going to be producing anything other than
polemical rubbish and half-baked conspiracy theories?
Corbyn then moved on to the BBC, with his much-reported proposals
to ‘democratise’ the public-service broadcaster. It would seemingly become a
news co-op on a grand scale, with workers and licence-fee payers running the
show.
My general impression is that a Momentum Labour government
would promise the BBC new funding by taxing successful new media businesses,
but this largesse would come with a big caveat: adherence to the editorial
policies laid down by People’s Committees. It would be an environment in which
no self-respecting professional journalist could possibly want to work, but that
matters little to the ideologues behind the scheme.
Naturally, supporters of Corbyn online lapped it all up.
Many saw it as Jez getting ‘his revenge’ on the biased journalists who have
given the veteran socialist such a hard time.
And then, of course, their guru was on to the idea of journalists electing their editors.
And then, of course, their guru was on to the idea of journalists electing their editors.
This is Corbyn at his most hare-brained and is the kind of idea
that you’d expect to see championed during an occupation at Berkeley or the LSE
in the 1960s. Perhaps in Caracas, while the editor of the local paper pops out
with rucksack of cash to buy an espresso, her staff plot to overthrow her. But
it isn’t going to happen in the UK anytime soon.
What should be particularly worrying to supporters of Labour
is that some quite good ideas – extension of Freedom of Information legislation,
for instance – were hidden amid all of Jez’s ideological baggage.
So if you didn’t get to hear about them, don’t blame the MSM.
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