The Media Dictatorship Has Doomed the Economic Left

The mainstream press has and always will be an undeniable influence upon the masses. While it is their duty to reflect current affairs, the media often serves the interests of a lobby of multinational media companies. Regardless of your political outlook, it cannot be denied that the political left is grossly unrepresented in these interests. The enterprising owners of these newspapers ensure agendas are printed against those who propose even the slightest redistribution of their wealth. The reporters tactically concoct scandals and petulantly vilify any political opposition. These are often timed on the eve of an election to topple any form of left-wing surge in the polls. This dilutes the contents of political discussion to easily digestible smears against the political left. It is not just the hand of the voter that holds the pen in the polling booth, it is the self-regarding clench of media tycoons wrestling the nib into the “Conservative” box.

In 2019 across Britain, only 43.6% of the population (who turned out) voted Conservative. This then appears glaringly more marginal when considering the (often anti-conservative) apathy that limited turnout to 67.3% of eligible voters. As a result, only 29.3% of eligible voters chose to vote conservative. In spite of this, a slew of right-wing newspapers excessively floods the circulation in Britain with 13 of the 19 most popular papers (including Sunday editions) being right wing tabloids. Notably, the 4 most popular papers all self-identify as right-wing. While newspaper circulation lends itself to the older generation who are typically more conservative, many of these are accessible online to all ages. Most crucially though, the number of papers in support of right-wing economics is unduly disproportionate. As a result, public opinion is hegemonized by the aggressive smears of right-wing papers against the left that distract from economic injustice. This breeds a self-perpetuating cycle of right-wing politics in the British public. These papers are calculatingly bankrolled by the self-interest of the largest multinational media corporations such as News Corporation (formerly owned by Rupert Murdoch), Reach and The Daily Mail and General Trust. Arguably, these corporate subsidiaries will skew the affiliations of newspapers to the economically libertarian centre right. This is not just endemic with right-wing outlets but also with the supposedly “centre left” papers such as The Guardian who continued to demonise Corbyn’s Labour Party, barraging him with smears that the leading anti-racist campaigner was facilitating “anti-Semitism”. Such papers are used to project the illusion of political scope when there is in fact a consensus of neo-liberalism threaded between the agendas of almost every leading paper. The very fact that one of the few left-leaning papers such as the i (sister paper of the independent) is owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust demonstrates the media bias against the left that multinational company monopolies have created. The petulance of the smears and the timing of the media propaganda on the eve of elections is indicative of their ability to control public opinion. Notably, the only time Labour has succeeded in recent years in an election was under Blair. This may largely be due to the endorsement of the neo-liberal Blair among The Sun’s 3,877,097 strong readership at the time. This indicates that the only way to avoid the wrath of the right-wing media monopoly is to move economically right (as Blair did with the removal of Clause 4). The economically left Jeremy Corbyn suffered the brunt of the partisan media that ultimately doomed his campaign with the projection of a “traitorous and anti-Semitic” caricature through newspaper front pages. As a result, Corbyn pleaded for a nationalised British Digital Corporation to offset the power of the multinational free-market media monopoly in 2018 at Edinburgh Television Festival. This condemnation of the economic left, through the mainstream media, is ensured by the editorial pressures of a grossly neo-liberal media lobby.

With most of the main media outlets backed by a lobby of the economic right, the petulance of their agendas is aggressively thrust into the public. Corbyn yet again serves as a great example for this with the media’s fastidious attempts to portray him as anti-British, anti-Semitic and too radical. A report in 2016 by the University of London found that the supposedly “impartial” TV News aired double the amount of critical material than it did supportive material in relation to Corbyn. Another study, also in 2016, found that in 75% instances of reporting in the media, Corbyn is factually misrepresented. The flimsy incessant smears against Corbyn were lashed across the front pages of the media. In November 2019, The Daily Mail fuelled the false narrative that Corbyn (a lifelong anti-racist campaigner) was somehow uncaring of Anti-Semitism as he supposedly mispronounced Jeffrey Epstein’s name. This anti-Semitism smear campaign against a progressive Labour Party was exacerbated by The Guardian (one of the few supposedly “left-wing” mainstream newspapers). The Guardian journalists, such as Jonathon Woodgate, baselessly smeared Corbyn. Woodgate claimed Corbyn endorsed “assorted authoritarian regimes” which represented “his willingness to look past antisemitism on the left”. Also, Anushka Asthana covered the PMQs of Corbyn and Cameron in early May 2016 in The Guardian with an underlying and false implication that Corbyn held extremist anti-Semitic views. The Guardian has also sacked many left-wing journalists for criticising the military aid of the US to Israel such as Nathan J Robinson in early 2021. This exemplifies the anti-Semitism smears used by even The Guardian in order quell the economic left. In reality, Corbyn is one of the most anti-racist figures in British history. Corbyn has been an anti-racist activist for his entire life, playing a crucial role in organising the Battle of Wood Green 23rd April 1977 (a protest against the exponential rise of the alarming National Front movement in a world rife with racism). Corbyn has also been a proponent for civic freedoms and democracy for his entire political career and has only met with extremist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah in a process of diplomacy. The mass media lobby weaponised Corbyn’s pacifism and diplomatic past to attempt to portray him as a racist and traitorous extremist. This was an extremely cynical and false campaign used to vilify Corbyn and distract from his economic policies. While The Guardian employs a handful of Corbyn supporters such as Owen Jones, the level of imbalance across the mainstream media condemned Corbyn’s electoral chances from the very beginning. The slander perpetuated against him by the neo-liberal establishment, from every corner of the mainstream media, is evidently the desperation of the tax-evading media elite to elect a member of the free market.

It is important to realise that these falsehoods and smears against the economic left have been circulated by media hegemony for years. The vulgar tediousness of the right-wing tabloids, such as The Sun, was lain bear in 2015 with the claim that Corbyn did not bow low enough at the cenotaph. This was clearly a desperate attempt to diminish the popular momentum of Corbyn’s electoral rise at the time by portraying him as unpatriotic. This is reminiscent of the smear of another economically left-wing figure, in Michael Foot in the late 1970’s, who was accused of wearing a disrespectful and scruffy “Donkey Jacket” at the cenotaph. This was in a fact a very expensive jacket designed to appear respectful. The smears against the economic left even date back to 1924 with the Zinoviev letter. This was a fraudulent concoction by The Daily Mail designed to ruin Labour by preying on anti-communist hysteria 4 days before the election. The timing of these smears is often notable as well as the counterfeit Zinoviev letter suggests. These are only a limited number of examples of tedious smear campaigns across the media, used to barrage any candidate who proposes a raise in taxation on the wealthy. The fact that there is such a neo-liberal consensus across the multinational media companies ensures that these smear campaigns range from The Guardian to The Sun (with varying degrees of subtlety). The ubiquity of these smears will naturally have been aggravated by the congestion of media in the modern digital world. It is no coincidence that one of the most progressive and economically left-wing politicians in recent British history, in Jeremy Corbyn, was also the most smeared in modern history. With the popular 2017 manifesto, masterminded by McDonnel and Corbyn, the tax hikes on the wealthiest proposed turned the media monopoly even more viciously against him.

The media has become another major format for the establishment to influence the voter. The desperation of multinational media companies to avoid a raise in taxation ensures that left-wing popular surges are quelled by the media. Britain is now faced with the illusion of democracy as the pressures of the media are far too influential in condemning the left. This may one day change in a time of crisis and economic breaking point, as the voters become increasingly attuned to economic disparity. However, even through the current Covid-19 pandemic the will of the media has been asserted with the more liberal Starmer replacing a vilified Corbyn. It is also important to understand that the media’s influence extends beyond what is purely economic. It also has huge control in its negative representation of certain groups in society such as protestors. This was seen recently in the March Bristol Riots of 2021 in which the police were wrongly reported to have been injured when the protestors (who were defending the right to protest) were in fact injured and beaten. The media has huge control of a voter’s interaction with current affairs. With the prevailing biases currently in place, reform over multinational ownership and editorial censorship of the journalists is vital to restore Britain to a democracy.