From Corbyn's Facebook page - not written by Corbyn himself.

Interesting analysis of the British Press' coverage of Corbyn's first week, which will surprise no one:

When a handful of conglomerates and individual owners have such significant influence over the UK media environment, it becomes virtually impossible for progressive ideas to get a fair hearing."

If only labour had a decent spin doctor

...if only we had a free press rather than a load of off shore tax dodgers using advertising revenue to prop up a failed business model to tell us how we ought to live our lives, then we wouldn't need spin doctors.

Let's not forget the press narrative was the use of spin doctors was what alienated Labour from their core voters in the first place.

There is no doubt Corbyn is scruffy in the media but that is because he want's grass roots ordinary people reforming things, rather than a bunch of rich blokes in the media setting the agenda to run things in their paymaster's way; They are well rewarded for their loyalty.

Its a big big big ask to change things. The media represents an interest groups that likes things the neo-liberal way and that's why they try to suffocate his every word. Things are very good for them and getting better and better. Corbyn is very dangerous for them. its the first challenge in a long time and they hate it.

In a democracy the press is meant to be an information system. I would say 70% of the political comments on here are based on information provided by the press rather than any deeper academic writing.

The press is meant to be an information system but its just propaganda of mega rich press barrens. To quote Chomsky quoting Edward Berneys, the father of public relations: the press provides the leadership with a mechanism “to mould the mind of the masses” so that “they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction.” The leadership can “regiment the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers.”

Bernay's is writing just after universal suffrage was won and the elite were terrified about how ordinary people might use that new power in their own interest and thinking about how they could do to control it.

We don't need spin doctors. We need a free press. A decent honest information system.

FFS nick.....

Bert needs no encouragement!

Apologies in advance for rambling...

Good to see the usual suspects engaging in the usual irrelevant "left" bashing.

Bert has a point and makes some sense if readers can see beyond their own knee jerk prejudices,as does Hoof.

Newspapers (whether accessed on line or in hard copy) undoubtedly remain powerful influences on how we (generally) get our info about the world,as do new on line news sources (ie Vice,part owner R Murdoch).

It is undeniable that such things are largely owned in the UK by people of means of a right wing disposition,given that money tends to buy the ability to own national news sources. viz. Mail (Rothermere family) Telegraph (Barclay brothers) Sun/Times (Murdoch).

It would be hard to argue that such papers are not somewhat biased in the slant they give to available facts and what they choose to highlight and not to highlight.

Corbyn at Remembrance day being a good recent example.I doubt many of us were there.If you read an item slagging him for snubbing the official lunch,it may have reinforced a negative view you already had of him.If you read an outlet explaining that he did so in order to remain behind and spend time talking to veterans rather than have a posh lunch,it may have reinforced a view that he is the first decent human being we've had as a party leader for some time.If your news source only mentioned the former slant,you would be ignorant of a neutral view of the facts,however much you can think for yourself.

But,we are never going to live in a world which is ideal and have a perfectly "neutral" press with a perfect level playing field for all would be news outlets and points of view.Also,we are not stupid and retain the ability to think for ourselves.

But,not withstanding that we cannot but be influenced by what we read.Take China.I remember growing up thinking it was a really bad place,based completely on what I read in the press and saw on TV.All of a sudden,Nixon had gone to China,and the coverage all focused on how they weren't so bad after all,indeed they were our new "friends".

But,we could ensure that we have as much balance as possible in our access to information by thinking about the extent to which we allow people to say own more than one paper or a paper plus TV/cable interests.WE could also reimpose stronger "public interest programming" caveats on commercial broadcasters.And think if we can do anything similar re UK-based on line news providers.We could introduce proper press regulation as per Leveson to give the non rich a chance to curb some of the press' negative excesses by obtaining proper redress.

There is,of course,one other thing we could realistically do to keep our media from becoming even more subjective and skewed predominantly on way in coverage.We could stop the assault on our "jewel in the crown",the BBC and make sure its news services get adequate funding instead of the cuts in recent years.Listening to it recently all the time when driving on the World Service is a reminder of what a gem it is (and could be much better)surrounded by thorns.

But that might require the likes of Murdoch to stop bashing it and stop utilising their close links to politicians to attack it.It might require us to make our displeasure about that somewhat more known.Which brings us full circle to why would Murdoch want to bash the BBC and in who's interests is it that we have become so anti-BBC as a result of mass negative press coverage,spotlighting the bad aspects while downplaying the good.

Edited by legaleagle (28 Nov 2015 12.01pm)

My only concern with Bert is his refusal to accept that any of us are capable of evaluating messages and filtering out the spin.

You've made a good case for the unfair nature of Corbyn's reporting, but you have not mentioned the totally unfair nature of the bombardment that Nigel Farage has taken from the media!

Not only that, he has had to put up with being shouted down whilst campaigning by left wing activists and even had a quiet family Sunday lunch in a pub invaded by scumbags that cannot campaign peaceably or in a socially acceptable fashion.

I don't remember you or anyone else making an impassioned plea on Nigel Farage's behalf?

Just accept, that any message imparted into the arena will have some sort of spin on it, and if you want to get nearer to the truth, read a few different sources and make your own mind up as to who is most likely to be the most honest.