Skip to main content

Government minister clashes with Newsnight presenter

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/andrea-leadsom-sparks-backlash-after-calling-for-broadcasters-to-be-patriotic-over-brexit-a3572321.html

Andrea Leadsom sparks backlash


Related image


I am no fan of this government or of Andrea Leadsom. By the same token, I am no fan of the media and television "news" reporters and presenters either, as they are on the whole, biased and partisan in their coverage.However, this is the second occasion within the last 2 weeks, that Emily Maitlis has managed to draw senior politicians into the open and expose either dangerous ineptitude and incompetence, as in the interview with Theresa May on the 16th June, following the disasterous fire at Grenfell Tower, or the dangerous and sinister insinuation from Leadsom, that the press and media should somehow report only that which the government finds "acceptable". In this respect, the media have over the past few years needed little encouragement to follow the government lead and have filled their political coverage pages with some of the most scurrilous and biased slanting of facts and personal attacks that I have ever seen in all my experience of political activity. However, this is the first time that a senior conservative government minister has hinted so directly and publicly, that brodcasters should slant their reporting and be "willing to be a bit patriotic" in their reporting.
Leadsom would clearly prefer, along with I suspect many conservative MP's and supporters, a totally controlled press and television,reporting only that which the government "Minister of Information" passes as suitable for public consumption, with broadcasters asking questions and presenting programmes using a prepared and approved script. It is the model used in many other countries as a "thought control" device to influence people and prevent dissent.
I recall a comment made by a resident of another country, to the effect that when the press, radio (and television today), periodicals, advertising, in fact everything that a person can see or read or hear all carry exactly the same message, it is inevtiable that the message is accepted as truth.
As much as I loathe and despise many of the "newspapers" currently available on the news stands (or the "on line" versions), together with television stations broadcasing, with one or two notable exceptions within the ranks of their presenters, a warped version of truth veiled as news, I have no wish to see the same situation occuring here.
Andrea Leadsom is floating an idea which is the thin edge of the wedge.We must never allow broadcasters, television stations or the media to become mere conduits for government propaganda.
The freedom of the press is a right which has been hard won and must not be allowed to be restricted or removed by Leadsom or any of those with similar thoughts.
We may not like what we see, read or hear in the media, we may not agree with much of the nonsense which they churn out almost daily, but it is the only media we have and for the most part it protects us from the excesses of government.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Enough of this hysterical nonsense

  http://style.uk.msn.com/royal-baby/how-will-the-royal-baby-look-as-he-grows-up Media generated hysteria.                           This is too much. For the last 36 hours (thought it seems more like 36 days) there has been wall to wall news coverage, media and television comment and reporting, with Sky News taking first prize for frenzied minute by minute reporting from the Palace, the hospital, from a village somewhere in England, from the studio and anywhere else that Burley, Botting and company could stick a microphone into some obscure "celebrity's" face and ask for yet another banal quote. All this galvanising the mass hysteria of some elements of the public, (who the media would have you believe is the reaction of "the whole world",) with their flag waving, dancing, singing and cheering over what is after all, no more than a woman having a bab...

New Agenda on Sunday is out Sunday, Apr. 28, 2019

https://paper.li/f-1346065353#/ Good morning everyone. Last weeks scare regarding Megan and Harry being sent to live "somewhere in Africa" seems to have been dispelled, at least for the time being. It now seems that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will take up residence in California.  Unless  they are actually  doing  some proper work in "The Golden State", I hope that they are taken off the civil list so that we do not have to fund their life choice. The nauseating Daily Mail is at it again. A headline this week, which I will not even bother to reproduce here, screams out in disgusting and repulsive bias without any acknowledgement to the factual basis of their "story". Spewing out their usual smears and embellished distortions about Hamas, the IRA, Hezbollah and the rest, the Mail condemns itself with ample justification, for the closure of a "newspaper," which again abuses 10 fold, the privilege of "freedom of t...

A perverse and rather sinister media obsession to discredit, smear and undermine Jeremy Corbyn

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/venezuela-jeremy-corbyn-blasted-for-not-condemning-president-maduro-a3606156.html#commentsDiv Venezuela: Jeremy Corbyn blasted for not condemning socialist President Nicolas Maduro as violent conflict escalates There is a perverse and rather sinister obsesseion with the media and particularly television "interveiwers", in seeking to secure from Jeremy Corbyn a "condemnation" of some person or organisation or event. This time it is connected with events in Venezuela and the actions of President Nicolas Maduro and the bloody crackdown on protests against the result of last weeks poll which inaugurated a constituent assembly . The media "stories" and the interrogation by the television interviewers, are as subtle as a sledgehammer being nothing more than a variation on the "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" question, which so many repoters use in order for them to make themselves appear very ...