Dear All,
I do love going through the UK’s Sunday papers, but last week’s Sunday Times was a bit disturbing. I have to admit I mostly buy this paper for its magazines -- the Culture magazine with its excellent book reviews and interviews and the Style magazine for its glamour and gloss. And the news coverage is mostly interesting, albeit often replicating stories on Sky News (both are owned by the same group, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp), but last week’s Sunday Times raises some questions about both agendas and journalistic standards.
The front page headline of last week’s Sunday Times screamed out that one British novelist was of the opinion that the Labour Party’s new (left wing) leader Jeremy Corbyn was unfit for the job: ‘Martin Amis skewers Corbyn as third rate and undereducated’ was the amazing news that had made it to the front page. Wow, what a scoop: an Oxford educated toff novelist with a famous father and a wealthy family writes a piece for The Sunday Times in which he is scathing about Corbyn, and then his views that the party leader is "undereducated, slow-minded and humourless" make it as ‘news’ to the Paper’s front page. Gosh, what an amazing news story…
It is especially amazing in light of the fact that there actually is an amazing news story, a scoop, in the paper -- a story the editors have tucked away in the obscurity of Page 4: a Sunday Times investigation finding that pharma companies are dodging strict regulations and hiking up the prices of drugs they sell to the National Health Service (NHS). In some cases the price of these drugs has been increased "by more than 2,000 per cent". This shocking and investigative story is however trumped by the report that Amis ‘pours scorn’ on Corbyn.
That ‘report’ depicts Corbyn as a dangerous, socialist leader who is set to wreak havoc in not just the Labour Party but also in British politics and on the UK economy. The ‘Red Threat’ theme is reinforced by a (mostly needless, in the context of the headline) mention of Corbyn’s "hard-left aides" Seumus Milne and Andrew Fisher. Yes, this is 2015 -- not 1955-- but the ‘Reds are coming!’ message never fails to alarm all us good capitalists. Anyway, the theme continues in the paper’s Comment pages where a whole piece was devoted to lambasting Corbyn’s recently appointed head of strategy and communications, Seumus Milne. In this piece (titled ‘Putin never dreamt of such a useful idiot at the heart of Westminster’) Ben Judah attacks Milne, a long time Guardian journalist, likens him to the Cambridge Spies (i.e. traitors) and lambasts him for associating with George Galloway and for presenting an alternate view to conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. He criticises Milne for "sharing a platform with Putin" and for appearing on a "propaganda station’" (ah, the irony). He also makes much reference to Milne’s education (Winchester and Oxford), leaving one with the impression that he considers Milne a traitor to the traditions of these elitist institutions but he then, somewhat bafflingly, asks what drives Milne: "is it arrogance, his public school boy’s conviction he knows better than everyone….?"
Ah yes, the arrogance of the public schoolboy. Martin Amis for example? (who incidentally the paper bills as"the outstanding novelist of his generation"). Indeed.
It is somewhat ironic that certain parts of the British media are now so vexed about Corbyn, when it was actually the electronic media that played such a great role in his rise to prominence. The TV debates featuring the four contenders, rather than revealing the weakness and ignorance of the backbencher, actually allowed Corbyn to come across as genuine and knowledgeable and very different from the younger candidates who didn’t seemed to be saying anything however much they spoke.
Let’s watch the media narrative now…
Best wishes