Jeremy Corbyn spoke yesterday in Edinburgh about his plans for changes to the media landscape. ‘MSM’ coverage of the event has tended to focus on two areas.
Either we’ve heard fake news about cameras not being allowed in and Corbyn not allowing journalists to ask questions – both untrue – or equally fake news about Corbyn wanting to rig the media in his favour. One senior press journalist even appeared on Newsnight last night to claim that Corbyn wanted to put ‘placemen’ into the BBC – at which point irony meters across the UK exploded, because that’s exactly what the Tories have done since 2010.
Corbyn didn’t only take questions from journalists. He took a number of them from members of the public in attendance, as well as participating in an extensive ‘Q&A’ with actor Maxine Peake. And one part of that Q&A hasn’t been much featured on even friendly independent news sites.
The telling and moving segment of the Q&A came when Corbyn was asked about his experience of mainstream media attacks since he became Labour leader – and he responded with dignity and understatement, describing a ceaseless campaign of smears against him as the
papers being somewhat unkind about me
before going on to make a steadfast defence of the need for journalists in a ‘vibrant democracy’ and to pay tribute to journalists who have risked and even lost their lives in the pursuit of truth.
But after years of smears, when asked what he thinks it’s most important for the mainstream journalists to do now, his answer – as it has consistently been throughout his leadership – was all about others and their needs.
About the many – not him:
No self-pity. No drama – in stark contrast to the behaviour of some Labour MPs who have suffered far less for far more cause.
Just, as ever, a self-deprecating and completely authentic concern for others – especially those left vulnerable and deprived by our broken economic system and our skewed, dysfunctional mainstream media landscape.
For the poor and for our children.
If ever a lesson is needed in why the UK needs Corbyn in Downing Street – and why the Establishment is so desperate to stop him – this provides it.
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JC is a Star!
Oh and because as independent critically thinking left wing democratic socialists JC agrees with us!
JC for PM!
I sometimes wish Jeremy was a bit more combative, but I understand and respect why he isn’t. I just think that if he fought back a bit more they might think twice about smearing him.
And they wonder why there’s a “cult” around him.
I never seen or heard any politician like that. Unflinching in the face of such attacks from all side and totally focused on his message: poverty, working conditions, fairness. Total self effacement. The kind of person I want to be PM, but he won’t make it on his own. He is not a Messiah with magical powers, just a good bloke.
If it wasn’t for places like the Skwawkbox or the Canary, columnists like Owen Jones, groups like Momentum and thousands of ordinary people on Twitter to relay his message and redress the smears, he’d be destroyed, eaten alive by the system. But neither he nor Momentum organised it (which is what the Tories and pundits on MSM don’t get). No one organised it. The “movement” spontaneously arose because thousands of people came to the same realisation: our current path will lead to self destruction, he’s a good one proposing to do something about it, he’s attacked from all sides, he needs help from us.
I put in 700 hours of study to “defend the defenseless in the Holy Land” after the killings in Gaza. This morning I wrote two pages on IronyGate:
https://www.academia.edu/37288873/The_Locking_of_the_Gates
And just to say I have now found that MuralGate, CemeteryGate and IronyGate are all linked to people associated with the “charity” the Henry Jackson Society (Pollard, Cohen, D Murray, MacShane, Deech) – in the case of IronyGate via Richard Millett. See the latest version of Locking of the Gates. The question I have no means of answering is the funding links. My work on this in a thread – please retweet for someone with journalistic expertese to hopefully discover!
https://twitter.com/ChrisFriel7/status/1029996235950882816