To all those working on the ‘Get Corbyn’ strategy at The Guardian…
Do you remember all those articles you were running a few years back on how people were apathetic and disillusioned with politics in the UK? So much so that they could scarcely be bothered to vote.
Here let me remind you.
Apathetic and disaffected: the generation who may never vote
Politicians must tackle voter ‘apathy’, David Blunkett warns
The Guardian has a whole section devoted to voter apathy in fact. If we go further back do you recall how trust in politicians was at an all-time low? That’s what you told us.
Trust in politicians hits an all-time low
Even the politicians said they had to listen…
Labour’s challenge: ‘Four years to find two million votes. We must listen’
Something must be done you told us, something must change.
Well something has changed, I have never seen a period when so many people have been passionately engaged with politics. Perhaps the referendums on Scottish Independence and EU membership are partly responsible, but the main reason is Jeremy Corbyn.
Now we all know that the Parliamentary Labour Party never had any intention of allowing Corbyn to lead the party – it was a mistake, they underestimated the hunger so many people have for an alternative to the neoliberal consensus.
But Corbyn was elected with a huge mandate and his leadership of the Labour Party has seen meeting halls packed out, a huge increase in membership and most hearteningly a groundswell of enthusiasm from younger voters.
I would have thought you would be delighted with this new energy pouring into the democratic process – but instead of celebrating you seem hell bent on destroying it, why?
Why do you keep telling lies about Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters? Why do you have a merry-go-round of paid columnists rubbishing, smearing and distorting his every word and action? Why are you manufacturing news articles on a daily basis to cast his leadership and legitimacy into question?
Let me tell you what your readers say about you now – comments posted on our own humble blog:
I actually have to thank the Guardian for it’s extreme anti-Corbynism stance – if I hadn’t been so disgusted at their non-journalistic lie, smear and spin campaign, I might never have investigated further – and joined the Labour Party!
Not quite the result you were looking for I guess – here’s another:
The Guardian HAS become part of the establishment and I wonder whether Newspapers as a whole are on the way out. The Internet provides far more up to date information and I have only a passing interest in reading what happened yesterday, unless the journalism is high quality which it rarely is. I am more likely to read more specialised magazines or simply rely on social media for my news and info.
Whatever happened to the flagship of the liberal media? These comments rank as generous tributes compared to what your online readership thinks about you – doesn’t that concern you?
Don’t you have a moral duty as journalists to report the truth? Isn’t that the basis of your position and status within society? Isn’t that what you were trained to do?
To list all the instances of your ‘Get Corbyn’ strategy is beyond the scope of a letter (we would need a book or perhaps a new online encyclopaedia) but here are a few.
You lied about Angela Eagles office being vandalised.
You lied about the abuse supposedly surrounding the petition to censure Laura Kuenssberg.
You lied about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
Added to these blatantly false stories are the hundreds of deliberately slanted and willfully misleading articles whose sole aim is to undermine and bully Corbyn and his supporters.
The focus of your ‘Get Corbyn’ strategy is to smear his supporters as abusive, racist, bullies – what a way to encourage people to participate in politics!
All of the people who have recently joined the Labour Party, the Momentum movement and who have attended rallies up and down the land don’t have the advantages you have. They don’t have comfortable salaries, a secure job or the resources of a multi-million pound media behemoth to speak for them – so we have to wonder, who are the real bullies here? Perhaps you are.
If you succeed in your aim to silence Corbyn and the alternative political narrative he represents, will you be proud of yourselves? Well?
Proud that you stood shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in Britain so you could brow beat a popular movement for change amongst ordinary voters?
Proud that you managed to subvert real engagement in democracy amongst the young people who will spend their lives clearing up after our mistakes?
Proud that you betrayed the ethics of your profession so you could defend your own cosy relationship with the establishment?
I don’t expect that you will answer this letter – it seems The Guardian floats above the despair and disgust of its readership these days, but at least do one thing – spare us the sanctimony.
Spare us the hand wringing about the collapse of the wages of British workers, the privitisation of the NHS, the rise in food banks, the rise in homelessness, the rise in child poverty, the chaos in the Middle East and the terrorism that we have helped to forment, the destruction of the environment and the insidious extension of corporate power over all aspects of our lives.
But most of all, please spare us the abject hypocrisy of whining about British apathy towards politics.
Let it never be forgotten that when masses of people of all ages tried to get involved in politics, to have a voice, to have a vote and to make a meaningful difference – your role was to try and bully them back into silence.
You continue to misrepresent the views of this new political engagement, to smear their peaceful protests and to glowingly promote the frantic and ugly scramblings of the neoliberal consensus to retain control.
You have let us and yourselves down . You do not deserve to inherit the credibility, respect and authority that The Guardian’s proud history has bequeathed to you.
But consider yourself warned, a whole generation of bloggers, commentators, independent journalists and free news websites are filling the space you have vacated – we won’t let you squash this new democratic impulse without a fight.
If The Guardian simply runs out of supporters and money one day soon then don’t blame social media for your demise…
…your lack of integrity and relevance is all your own work.
John Lynch
Sodium Haze
27th July 2016
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See also: Follow Sodium Haze on Facebook
Well said sir
I suggest you read Owen Jones’s piece in the self same organ today. There is more to building a political party than congratulating each other on social media, attending rallies (really, think about that, attending RALLIES, FFS.) and virtue signalling. There’s work to be done out there among the voting public. How many of you can truly say that you’re up for the hard grind that older party members have been doing for years? Real graft. Bitching on social media just doesn’t cut the mustard. Even though that’s what I’m doing right now.
You misunderstand entirely the political landscape of this country if you imagine that “hard graft” of envelope stuffing and door knocking on behalf of the same failed ideology will win over a new generation to Labour. Wake up! This 2016 not 1997 – the public want an authentic alternative not a reheated Ed Milliband. Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters would be far happier not attending rallies in support of his second leadership campaign in ten months – but they are forced to by the antics of the usual suspects. If the party would unite behind Jeremy Corbyn and actually TRY to make a coherent argument in favour of co-operation and socialism we might just win an election. Go back to the mauve signs and the spin doctors and Labour is doomed. I’ll ignore the reductive silliness of the rest of your remarks.
Going for what you believe to be ‘fair’ in politics is what socialism is about. Having a sense of self worth related to the integrity of the ideas you espouse – rather than to money/looks/parental status etc. – is constructive. If Owen Jones calls that ‘virtue signalling’ that reflects on him. And mutual support and awareness raising and even publicity through social media and rallies are important. They affirm our need for each other and help us hone our ideas. Yes going door to door to get the vote in is to be applauded also – I’ve done it and will do it again – but there’s no need to denigrate the contribution of others in order to promote your own self-worth. That’s destructive.
I can honestly say that in 30+ mostly turgid years as a Labour Party member I have never felt as energised as I do now.
There was a very brief moment on the day of the Blair Labour landslide. But then Iraq. Labour had started its slow, inexorable transformation in to the establishment blob – a pale shadow of the true Tory horror show that was Thatcher, et al. I marched, with more than 1 million others, only to be ignored by our democratic betters in Parliament.
And now, oh frabjous day, there is every danger that Labour Party meetings won’t just mean the, usually old, male, chairperson shouting down the youngster at his/her first (and last) meeting for having the audacity to ask a question – any question.
It is even possible that the Secretary might not forget to send out invitations by “post” except of course to those who are likely to vote for his re-election.
It is fantastic to see young, old, female, male, transgender, ethnic minority, white British, gay, straight, everyperson at meetings and they want to DO things; not just pass resolutions and then agree to traipse around the same estates bothering people with the same leaflets about potholes and how we have fixed them – or not as is the case in recent, austerical times. (Before anyone shouts at me I have spent decades as that sad traipser).
So to the point – welcome all. We are in grave danger of getting a Labour Party that serves its original purpose and actually offers a socialist solution to the tricky issue of making sure poor people are not asked every single day to hand over more of their minuscule wealth to a handful of very, very rich people so they can simply sit on it and tell us how well the economy is doing.
Join us, diverse people; tip the whole thing upside down and make change. This time it cannot be stopped and to the print media I say simply goodbye. As Tolkein said, well the Orc, Gothmog (and 30 Seconds to Mars used it in their song “Kings and Queens”) – “The Age of Men is Over”. For Men read “The Guardian”, or all of print media, or the staid, committees in smoke filled rooms – whichever suits you.
Prior to the General Election last year it was said that because Labour had a fantastic ground campaign with thousands of foot soldiers, of whom I was one, door knocking and leafleting we would do well enough to beat the Tories. Guess what? with hardly anyone on the ground and a tiny membership compared to Labour, with their social media campaign and of course the right wing media, the Tories won!
Hi,
I consider myself working class. I grew up in Suffolk, 5th generation carpenter, went to college [A levels etc] then went on to be a carpenter on site for about 15 years, I now strangely run a computer games development company. But am very solidly of my class. I was of the generation that protested, I marched for Greenpeace, against the poll tax, was a hunt Saboteur [not easy] for years and marched with the Anti Nazi league.
I have been posting about the massive media overkill for quite a while. Its great that sites like SH and Canary, AAV are highlighting this.
The LSE study showed without a doubt that this is orchestrated and that it is undemocratic and more like propaganda than news goes without saying.
The Guardian are morphing, almost before our eyes. They are so Neo-Liberal and PC, aiming at those Tories who don’t want to think of themselves as Tories.
I started a petition about Bias in the media and the blatant bias against Jeremy Corbyn in particular. What also gets me is the pathetic attempts to seem so right on and caring while at the same time the portray the Working class as they typically do, useless, dole scroungers! The demonisation of the working class as per Owen Jones’s book and worse.
Its because JC stands up to this, to the media, to poverty, that he cares and wants to go back to many old Labour Values that I grew up with! Building social housing, a decent welfare system, looking after the poor and disabled, the disenfranchised. Free education to 3rd tier, which most of the PLP made use of. I am sick of the working class being made jokes of, while they are forced to work 2 jobs and often still need foodbanks to support their families. This IS NOT work, its slave labour, it makes a joke out of Tory claims about huge employment! The working class and shrinking middle class have never been poorer and our media with JC, Brexit and anything else that has to do with the working class have been reduced to stultifying opinion pieces, never with sources or evidence, but purporting to be both.
railing against a leader who managed to pull labour ahead while still being scourged by the media.
As I said I started a petition, I would really appreciate it of you at SH could link it or post it so it can been seen by far more people. Its not that old but is on its way to 1000 signatures in a few days.
We need to spread the word about SH / Can / AAV and other sites, to give a real alternative to the rubbish churned out by the mainstream and get it known by people! let them know real news and real sites still exist!
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-the-guardian-and-all-media-from-lying-ridiculing-and-misrepresenting-jeremy-corbyn
SW
John B – I’m in my 60’s, and finally my, and others’ ‘hard work’ is finally coming to fruition…..under the guise of Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonell, Dennis Skinner, Richard Burgen and all the new and established ‘greats’, who are now supporting a true Labour party that works and speaks for everyone across the social spectrum.
It seems to me that you are stuck in a mythical past, where Labour had become more of a concept, rather than a practical and positive force, for modern times. It had become hectoring, and concerned with self preservation over quality of life for millions of people.
As for the Guardian, it is, at present, like watching the steady, self inflicted (suicidal?) dying throes of a dinosaur. Very sad.
Step into the modern world John, there’s a lot of promise. And don’t be deceived by pretenders.
This is a great article. It’s a shame that we cannot get a few more great writers, like admin, together to produce a newspaper that is genuinely without bias. There again, we live in the 21st Century so perhaps it would be a backward step to start a new newspaper. I have been so enlightened about politics since JC came on the scene. I get a real buzz and cannot wait for the next meeting.
I agree that Jon B is living in the past perhaps he should go looking for his sloop!
Very true, it IS a great article, well-written and referenced with relevant sources, and above all, it has something to say.
But I must cast some shadow on your call for a ‘newspaper that is genuinely without bias’. I don’t think there can ever be such a thing. While John Lynch’s article calls on journalists to have some sense of ethics and tell the truth as their profession demands, the core problem is ‘what is the truth?’ And ‘the truth’ seems to mean different things to different people as we all see the world through our own ‘glasses’.
One simple step might be to not publish what one knows are deliberate lies, and to check sources and facts before printing. That would help a lot. Too few newspapers seem to do that these days, and some even to take a calculated economic decision that sales will outweigh libel payouts. Solid legislation to punish newspapers for this would help, such as making them print retractions on the front page in large type so their readership can form an accurate idea about the reliability and truthfulness of their favourite daily rag.
Apart from that, for any contentious issue, there will always be different viewpoints, and any newspaper will have its own agenda in shaping the world. Most people don’t read newspapers to broaden their perspective or have it challenged, but to have themselves confirmed in their own worldview. How many Telegraph readers are going to make a habit of buying the Guardian? How many Sun readers are suddenly going to take out a subscription to The London Times? How many socialist or leftist blogs are going to start talking about how capitalism sometimes does produce better results? How many of their readers would go on reading if they did? Few people are so truly open-minded. Apart from their own internal politics & agendas, it would be financial suicide for newspapers to start penning articles in opposition to the general views of its readership, as it appears the Guardian is about to find out.
But in sum, I don’t think it’s even possible to have a genuinely unbiased source of news.
I agree with much of what you say – when reporting ‘news’ moral and ethical judgement must always be exercised. What I despise with The Guardian is the decisions they are making about the nature of the truth and how they hide behind a myth of ‘journalistic balance’ to deny they are making them. The Guardian is a campaign sheet – not a newspaper and it should stop hawking itself as bastion of truth – it has become, in fact, a bastion against truth.
When the Guardian can run a piece entitled
“Yes, Jeremy Corbyn has suffered a bad press, but where’s the harm?” ( https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/jul/19/yes-jeremy-corbyn-has-suffered-a-bad-press-but-wheres-the-harm ) then they have lost the plot completely and no doubt a few readers with it.
I agree that it’s not possible to have any unbiased Newspaper but to present opinion as fact, to not bother doing even a few simple checks as to the truth of stories before putting them out there, this is behavior we are used to seeing from the gutter press, the Guardian used to be better than that.
It would be a good idea for newspapers to stick to the facts and let the readers make up their minds then on this. The nearest thing we had was Euronews’ ‘No Comment’ slots where they just showed things happening, with no voiceover or narration to comment on them.
But is this the ‘truth’? For a start, what stories decide to cover / not to cover can influence how readers see an issue. This is called agenda-setting. Some things just never make it to the discussion table or are under-reported and so the public don’t even consider them. Good examples might be how in the same month as the Nice atrocity, 115 people lost their lives in a car bomb attack in Baghdad. But there was no wall-to-wall coverage of the latter event, no running commentary, no books of condolences, no G8 leaders meeting to condemn the attack. Do 115 Iraqi lives matter less than 84 French ones? Certainly that’s how it would look according to western media. So the public is groomed to think of Iraqi lives as being of less consequence, or that somehow being blown up in a car bomb attack is their natural lot, nothing noteworthy about it. Or when the Israelis summoned the Turkish ambassador to explain the presence of Turkish nationals on an aid ship to Gaza: it was comical, the Israeli spokesperson sat on a stool that was very obviously higher than that of the Turkish ambassador to create the impression of superiority (except the effect was so exaggerated it became transparent and backfired). Or when the Royals were involved in some ‘scandal’ some years back and while British papers either didn’t carry the story or were very respectful & muted in tone, Italian papers carried full details. Maybe Italians are more jaded and less prone to shock.
Secondly, every story has a slant, no matter how carefully a newspaper tries to be neutral. Put the cameras behind the protestors and what you see is an impassive line of riot police, faceless, behind their riot shields = fascist totalitarian government v. people power. Now put the cameras behind the police and you see a crazy mob of angry, dangerous people = crazy leftist crackpots, danger to social stability. It cannot be helped because human beings are not objective, and everything from camera angles to lighting to music affects their subconscious interpretation of events. Imagine news of a plane crash with background music from Benny Hill!
Thirdly, even the whole layout of a newspaper creates the illusion that it reports ‘facts’ as news. You have the international and then local ‘news’, then separate editorials or ‘opinion’ pieces whereas in fact it would be more truthful to simply label all sections of the newspaper as ‘opinion’, since all reporting of news will be filtered through the politics and agenda of the paper, from what stories it chooses to cover (and which stories it ignores) to how it presents those stories.
At least the internet allows reading across many sources if one has the time and languages to do so.
quote: “facts are useless. you can prove anything that’s even remotely true with facts.” (homer simpson).
quote: “think. it ain’t illegal yet.” (george clinton).
“A newspaper is a political organ” – Leon Trotsky.
Dear SH: I take it you’re familiar with Herman’s and Chomsky’s classic text: ‘Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media’? So, I take it also that you’re being ironic in the questions you pose to the Graun hacks?
Obviously they’re not doing what the old idealistic formulations suggest true journalism should do: prying constantly into the doings of the power-wielders (with constant, meticulous fact-checking), sussing out what they’re really up to behind their PR, and telling the world what the powerful would rather we didn’t hear, didn’t know, and so can’t think about.
The lamestream media in the West, the Graunistas very much included, don’t do any of that stuff because that’s not their real job; as the practitioner-hacks have to understand very clearly if they’re going to have any hope of a fancy, over-paid, over-hyped career at the top of the hacking tree.
Their real job – as demonstrated exhaustively by ‘Manufacturing Consent’ and many other serious researcher-commentators – is to be stenographers to power: re-churning the power-wielders’ press-releases and PR-vomit – and their calculated lies – virtually without demur.
Naturally, that service to power involves keeping large acreages of taboo reality out of sight, and helping their powerful masters to keep the hoi polloi common citizens in what’s deemed to be their place, by the time-honoured practises of public-perception manipulation; by, for example, constantly smearing targets not liked by the ‘elites’, as much as by any other means.
But SH old soak, you’re not so naive as not to understand all this, are you? You’re just being ironic in your letter, aren’t you? You do know hacks aren’t – and behind all the fancy rhetoric aren’t really supposed to be, if they know what’s good for their careers – honest, unbiased reporters and interpreters of reality to the general public. You do understand that, don’t you?
I will confess that I know full well the answers to some of the questions I ask. It is hard indeed for The Guardian and the rest of the corporate media to disappoint me (they still manage it on a daily basis) – however the moral camouflage that Graun hacks hide behind annoys me and their lofty pronouncements are vulnerable to simple moral questions. One shouldn’t breeze past such questions too quickly IMO, however cynical we may all be about the answers.
i have subscribed to the guardian newspaper, but will NOT be supporting it again ,i always believed it to be fair and looked at both sides on reporting political agenda, it’s recent diatribe has been an insult to our intelligence
I run a community interest company with leading edge coaching and collaboration training for corporate and community development.
I spend a third of my time with disaffected young people in estates in Merseyside and it was one of those young people who got me interested in Corbyn – he was attending a rally with friends and suggested I go.
I looked into Corbyn wondering what was getting young men who had previously been so disaffected to organise, to argue, to debate and to act.
It was hope.
Corbyn seemed so quiet – I started to listen to him and was then horrified by what the mainstream media and the parliamentary politicians were up to. I was also inspired by his response.
He makes May’s jibes and taunts look like the playground bullying that they are.
He just doesn’t play the game and makes their games stand out so obviously.
I’ve usually voted labour – occasionally Green but now I’ve joined Labour and I’m contacting my local party and I’ve been to see Owen Jones and at the age of 46 I’m being reactivated by young people and by Jeremy Corbyn.
We aren’t militaristic.
We aren’t a cult.
We are intelligent people reasoning about what we want and voting for it.
Let’s get some newspapers coming alongside or let’s find some new ones that actually listen to the people.
That’s a hopeful and inspiring post. Great to hear. Thanks for sharing it.
I’m starting to like this guy and this website. Keep it up.
SodiumHaze >> guardian >> bbc
I stopped buying the Guardian and the Observer a couple for years ago, when what passed for journalism was in fact syndicated drivel of a tedious nature and of no news value at all. It used to speak for me , I used to trust it, it is now a voice of the establishment and I have no intention of buying it ever again.
Absolutely agree, thanks for writing this. Just one small correction – I think it should be ‘foment’, not ‘ferment’.
Thanks Steve – good spot. Fixed.
The thing that really did it for me, with the Guardian, was a comparatively trivial item. Just before Christmas they had a feature comparing the Christmas cards sent by the different party leaders. The main focus was on Jeremy Corbyn’s card and the writer claimed “people are mocking Corbyn’s card on Twitter”. This was illustrated by a screen grab of a tweet mocking the card.
Only thing is: the tweet was by the Guardian journalist who wrote the piece. A quick search of Twitter showed it was the ONLY tweet mocking Corbyn’s card at that time.
Now, if the Grauniad can’t see what’s wrong with doing that, then I despair for British journalism, frankly.
I have to thank the Guardian, it was there mendacious reporting that made me do some research on Mr Corbyn, and consequently joined the labour party, and also saved me quite a bit of money because I cancelled my subscription!