BBC ideology supported by Labour useful idiot

Labour to the rescue as the Graun leads with a story about how the BBC rubbished Corbyn. The implication is clear -- the BBC cannot now be criticised by the new Government (as the Times reports) for anti-Brexit bias. Good old Aunty can play her favourite card -- equal and opposite charges of bias means she is somehow unbiased.


Aunty also offers a classic change of focus as usual:

[The Labour politician's] use of the word “consciously” on the Today programme this morning (see 9.48am) implied [!] he thought BBC reporters were deliberately slanting coverage to increase the chances of a Conservative victory

So only open deliberate conscious bias counts, and we never see that, which leaves intact the professional and class ideologies of the broadcasters.

The Graun rallies more 'consciously' on behalf of the BBC and all journalists everywhere:

The campaign saw an unprecedented level of criticism of British journalism  

It's balanced of course:

Corbyn partly blame[s] the still-powerful Sun and Daily Mail for his defeat, despite the plummeting print circulations of national newspapers. At the same time the Conservatives have turned their fire on the media and are threatening to decriminalise the licence fee – potentially severely undermining the BBC – and look at other ways of changing the way the UK media operates.[Just on that issue -- what sort of broadcaster depends on criminalising people who do not subscribe?]

So now it is only:

right-wing tabloids which relentlessly backed the Conservatives...[who]... indirectly help to set the agenda on television, radio, and online.  

Not at all like A Neill who announced his 'moral high ground' agenda well in advance for the BBC Johnson interview that did not happen.

There is some news at least for those fearing the dark arts:

we must constantly remind ourselves that the people most likely to have voted Conservative in 2019 are the least likely to have accessed news about the election online.”...the Tory campaign was briefly derailed by a photograph of a child on the floor of Leeds General Infirmary, a viral message spread among Conservative backers that the image had been faked by Labour supporters. Aided by a toxic mix of falling trust in traditional media outlets and Facebook’s hands-off approach to content moderation, the hoax message was spread to millions of people aided by promotion from mainstream journalists and influencers such as former England cricketer Kevin Pietersen [an influencer?].

But before we leave dark artery altogether:

When the Guardian ran an experiment to record the smartphone screens of volunteers we found that some people consumed their news almost entirely through headlines, few clicked through to the full article, and those that read to the end of a piece were a rarity.

The Graun knew this already I suspect, hence the disconnect between its own shouty headlines and the actual copy, recorded many times here in this blog

It's still a terrible worry for old fashioned journos:

online audiences are so fragmented that information can reach millions of people without ever being seen by journalists [!] or political campaigns.... [one nearly-defeated Labour MP said] there was a separate election going on, which was a Facebook-orientated campaign [turning on]...Corbyn’s connections with the IRA.

He must have some tech-savvy old people in his constituency after all? Very gullible ones too. The remark is in quote marks suggesting it is verbatim, although there is no source, of course. 'Someone' said:

‘But it’s on Facebook – how can there be something that isn’t true?’

The Graun continues to try to set the agenda though:

The coalition between middle-class professionals, often working in the public sector, and traditional working-class communities fell apart last Thursday. ... A comeback is only possible if it develops a new, more subtle politics of place ...It [Labour Party] emerged then as a civilising force for community, solidarity and self-help, run by and for the industrial working classes. The same yearning for communal renewal characterises post-industrial Britain [class-based though,not the usual sort of rainbow coalition stuff the Graun likes?].

But other bits remains dubious. Here is an emerging ideological theme:

a sense of patriotism... runs deep in leave-voting constituencies

Voting for Brexit still can't be anything rational then? Get Labour politicians to wave a few Union flags about at international football matches and all will be well?