The TV and radio media have been really difficult to watch and their actions show suppression, bias, wilful blindness and are incapable to reflecting what voters want to hear. This has been the least intellectual election campaign in living memory. The stunning level of ring-fencing of ideas and discussion has been truly one of the most worrying developments in this election apart from the sheer lack of competition in this election.
On several of our articles covering the General Election we have brought to light faliures of the media when it comes to coverage, interviews and debates, ‘gotcha moments’, topics of choice and so on. There is a weird ‘cordone sanitaire’ amongst the TV and radio producers of our major broadcasters and indeed from the regulators who seem to reinforce this ringfencing. There is a lock-in of what is permissible and it is reinforced with the omission of the genuinely only alternative out there.
On the 27th of June, yesterday, the BBC flagship political programme ‘Question Time’ aired as per usual on Thursday evening. A few people still watch it but it doesn’t have the pull it once had. On the panel was a Tory One-Nation representative, a senior Labour candidate, a senior Lib Dem Candidate and a senior SNP candidate. The Tories are third in the country. The Lib Dem’s are barely reaching 11%. Only 4 out of 70 million can vote for the SNP (and 3% in the polls). No room for Reform? All 4 representatives said the same thing on politics’ social liberalism repeated four times. The BBC is genuinely showing no alternative to the uniparty consensus on politics, especially so close to the polls next week. There’s no offering of an alternative here.
The TV debates between Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak only are weird too. Why have them on? They are the only two capable of being Prime Minister in this election? Seriously? Sunak’s approval rating is -30 (Prince Andrew is -50). The Tories poll below the Reform Party almost regularly now. And why have this in the first place? No one votes for a Prime Minister. Sunak was appointed Prime Minister by some people in the Tory party. Starmer was put in place to reverse the damage done by Corbyn (though he publicaly tried to get Corbyn elected twice…remember that). The media keep trying to portray this election as a two-horse race. For any other party this is a stupid approach and serves only to turn people off politics thinking that these two according to an audience member are “the best we’ve got”. The media will have you thinking that it is the case.
Then there’s the coverage. Whilst Keir Starmer is on Sky being asked a question about what’s more likely: Labour winning the election or England winning the Euros, Nigel Farage is barraged by allegations of ‘Putinism’ and ‘racism’. As Labour candidates in Clacton and Hackney openly make racist comments about white people and Jews, as Tory candidates use insider knowledge to make a quick buck, as Green Party candidates declare Islamist allegiance to a death cult in the Middle-East, only Reform has a dedicated ‘sting operation’ conducted by Channel 4. Whilst Keir Starmer has multiple personal heartfelt pieces made about his ‘humble upbringing’ (despite his uncle owning a castle in Surrey and his dad OWNING the tool factory) the media have artificially created a divisive narrative about the only party not running as socialists or social democrats. On the BBC, ITV and Sky all they can ask about are things that the party are not running on in the election in the main. They aren’t interesting in the immigration debate, the Net Zero debate, the national debt debate, the foreign policy debate, the cultural debate, they are interested in what one campaigner said and then making up a narrative that a party now runs on ‘anti-gay’, or ‘racist’ policies.
The media have dumbed this election down and are letting vital debates flow by. The devastating constitutional reform Labour plan, the devastating Labour migrant resettlement plan, devastating because they are NOT POPULAR with the British public, are not being discussed. The media will have you think there is no genuine alternative. OFCOM made a new rule for this election that parties get a coverage relevant to their showing in the last 2 elections. This is new. It means only 8% of coverage should go to Reform UK, the only genuine alternative to social liberal parties dominating the airwaves. 8% of time to hear the other side of the debate?
This is NOT a party political article, as always. This is simply a worrying look at the fact that the media show barely any alternative. Not only does this let people stop thinking it further entrenches those outraged by the omission. The media are simply making things worse. Far from convincing people, the media are either making people become more extreme in that they will never have their minds changed, or simply turning people off politics altogether. The perception that this is what British politics is nowadays will allow those with little experience, knowledge or actual knowledge of what people want into power. Your classic politician nowadays does not need to be in touch with the people because the people are turned off by the lacklustre media coverage. They just need to be popular with these insufficient media organisations so they either get good coverage or bad coverage somehow only sees the light of day for a day or two. The consensus is reaching authoritarian levels as challengers are roundly dumped on with wall-to-wall coverage that could last days or weeks where an ‘investigation’ or a ‘gotcha question’ seems to linger on like a bad smell. Compare Nigel Farage’s coverage on a statement he made back in 2014 to Keir Starmer’s dogmatic claim that he would never use private healthcare if a loved one severely needed it 5 weeks ago. That comment was brushed under the carpet in an hour. Farage got bad press for almost a week. This presupposes that questioning liberal foreign policy is awful, and a man who would watch his loved ones suffer despite an option to help them is a perfectly fine statement. Wow.
The media, pandering to vested interests of producers, shareholders and their liberal elite friends, are no longer doing their jobs. The BBC Soviet-style presuppositions about things is beaten in terms of one-sided thinking by Channel 4, which can best be scribed as over-grown university students pretending to be journalists. ITV, which shows flashes of competence, sensationalises the trivial and spends far too little time on the important things. Sky has presenters who just want to hear their own voices. When Reform UK is discussed there’s often a disgruntled senior Tory telling viewers they are a wasted vote and ‘experts’ saying that the party doesn’t have a costed manifesto (news flash; none of the parties do).
This isn’t scrutiny. It’s propaganda.
We here at the TDL Times are really concerned with the lack of ideas, the lack of discussion, the lack of Socratic diologue, and are really worried that this is putting people off politics altogether. Dear reader, politics is not and should not be like this. There should be a reasoned debate from level-headed people with ample time to have their views aired and to be scrutinised with proper questions and time to reply! There should be genuine empathy not for the politician but for the viewers who WANT to hear what they have to say. There should be no pre-determined view of events and there should be a right to a proper reply when things go wrong.
Social media is where people are going as an antidote to the real media now. We’ve been watching social media; it’s anything but social. We would rather people got off social media and started living in the real world and talking to people in a reasoned way and having their minds potentially changed or further clarified and finding empathy with those they disagree. The media have made sure that this doesn’t happen.
It’s not often we make strong comments but we really mean this; aside from some notable exceptions, shame on the broadcast and print media on the whole. Shame on them.
This article first appeared on the TDL Times. For more information, articles and more please visit www.thetdltimes.com.
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