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Corbyn peace award silence: FactCheck asks wrong question, gets wrong answer

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At the weekend, the SKWAWKBOX published an article on the International Peace Bureau‘s (IPB) award to Jeremy Corbyn – and mentioned the mainstream media’s (MSM) complete lack of coverage.

The article went viral.

This afternoon, Channel 4’s FactCheck (C4FC) published an article on the MSM’s omission and concluded, basically, that it was fine.

The article claimed that the failure to mention Corbyn’s receipt of the award – jointly with world-renowned author, philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky, often called the ‘world’s most-cited author’ – was essentially normal and unsurprising, because in other years the “prize doesn’t generally get much coverage in the UK media”.

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C4FC was recently the subject of a somewhat critical SKWAWKBOX article when it had to correct and water down an article that had originally claimed Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell didn’t understand government borrowing after leading economists backed his statements on the topic.

It has also erred in its latest analysis which – somewhat unusually – does not address provable facts or figures.

Because it asked the wrong question.

The award by the IPB – which is older than the Nobel organisation – may not be a topic of much interest when it’s awarded to someone who is not a subject of interest in the UK news.

But Jeremy Corbyn appears – most often negatively portrayed, according to academic analysis – daily in the UK news media. The fact that the leader of the main opposition party – significantly ahead of the governing (after a fashion) party in the polls – receives an international peace award from one of the world’s oldest peace federations is news because of who Corbyn is as well as because of the nature of the award.

Especially when that party leader is routinely and ignorantly smeared by those same media by association with ‘terror groups’.

C4FC asked the wrong question and therefore reached the wrong conclusion. The right question is a very simple thought experiment:

Had Theresa May – highly unlikely as it is – been the recipient of the award, would the MSM have reported it?

It takes very little consideration to realise the ‘no-brainer’ answer: it’s inconceivable that the Establishment media would pass over it without comment – far more likely that it would make a day’s-worth of half-hourly headlines.

Ask that question and you’ll reach the right conclusion about the MSM’s complete (well, broken by C4FC now) silence on Corbyn’s win.

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18 comments

  1. I suppose the list of previous recipients is a bit tame a few presidents of the USA Eisenhower Wilson, Carter and someone called Obama. The usual suspects Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandala, Desmond Tutu, same sort of list as the Gandhi prize but goes back before the 1st world war, it was only founded in 1892. Of course, the MSM wouldn’t make anything of May receiving a similar reward………

    1. Hmm… maybe I’m missing something – do you know you’re listing winners of the Nobel Peace Price, not the Sean MacBride Peace Prize?

  2. The whole of the overpaid overweening Mainstream Media are scared to death of passing any compliments or accolades Corbyn’s way in case he becomes even more popular with ordinary voters and, God forbid, may even get elected and introduce higher taxes on their over-inflated salaries!

  3. It is essentially unsurprising and normal that the pro-war establishment media regularly and consistently publishes hatchet jobs against Jeremy Corbyn.

    It is only to be expected that, due to its proven and inherent bias and due to the fact that Mr Corbyn has the pro-war Conservative Party on the ropes, the establishment media has intentionally omitted to report the pro-peace story that Mr Corbyn has been awarded the Sean MacBride Peace Prize.

    It makes perfect sense. Like John Lennon said, you need to advertise peace like you would advertise soap, so people are aware peace is available.

    This grave omission to mention Jeremy’s award proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the UK establishment media only wants to promote war and death.

    The establishment media’s refusal to promote peace indicates that is highly probable that it is in the process of preparing to sell another war to the public.

    Because only a war will save May and the establishment now.

  4. Bang on.

    I am afraid these big ‘media’ fact check pages are a joke to me. Thankfully. I don’t have to trawl and fact check those self anointed fact checkers for myself. I just ignore them, read from various diverse sources and make my own mind up.

    1. Thank you so much, Allan. I’m so grateful to have a positive and respectful media acknowledgement of Mr Corbyn’s achievement that I can share on social media.

  5. It is a measure of rising Establishment fear, Tory disintegration and snivelling MSM cowardice that even the obnoxious pantomime of plausible deniability has degenerated into ad hoc evasion and dissembling.

  6. Can anyone be in any doubt that if some establishment technocrat like Owen Smith or Yvette Cooper had been elected as Labour leader we would be preparing for another General Election. As matters stand the elite who work in the back office are stuck with a zombie Government and a popular opposition Party leadership with policies they have been working to reverse since Atlee.

  7. Through all his adversity, name calling, plus 2 elections, he stands above all his counterparts, as a shining light for all humanity around the world!
    It wouldn’t come as a shock, to me, if he’s not made, the SAINT for PEACE and HUMANITY!
    Could I be as brave as to write, “he is”, the SECOND COMING!…………..
    SERIOUSLY, THO, that would be a proper kick in the crutch, for all those who hate and doubt him!

  8. Surely other people have noticed his initials are JC.
    Happy Corbynmas to one and all.

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