The ‘I’: Dimbleby States Media Treating Corbyn Unfairly

Also in yesterday’s I newspaper was a piece by Adam Burnett, ‘Corbyn Is Not Treated Fairly, Says Dimbleby’, in which the host of the Beeb’s Question Time attacked the media’s bias against the Labour leader and said it would be wrong to rule him out of winning the next election. The article reads

Veteran BBC host David Dimbleby has blasted the “lazy pessimism” of the media’s election coverage, saying Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has not been given a “fair deal” by the press.

The Question Time chairman, who will host the BBC’s election night coverage, said Mr Corbyn has “a lot of support in the country”, and given the “political somersaults of recent years, it would be a mistake to count Labour out.

“It’s a very odd election”, said Mr Dimbleby, speaking to the Radio Times. “The interesting thing is that a lot of Labour supporters really like and believe in the messages that Jeremy Corbyn is bringing across.

“It’s not his MPs in the House of Commons necessarily, but there is a lot of support in the country.

“And I don’t think anyone could say that Corbyn has had a fair deal at the hands of the press, in a way that the Labour party did when it was more to the centre – but then, we generally have a right-wing press.”

He added: “My own prediction is that, contrary to the scepticism and lazy pessimism of the newspapers and British media, it’s going to be a really fascinating night, and it will drive home some messages about our political system and the political appeal of different parties that no amount of polling or reading the papers will tell us.”

Of course, Question Time has also shown it’s own bias at times against Corbyn and the Labour party. And under Blair, New Labour was not a centrist party. It was, in its determination to privatise the NHS, the education system, and throw millions off welfare benefits, a right-wing party, just as the Tories are now. And the Tories in their determination to destroy the welfare state, which began in earnest under Thatcher, are far right when compared to the post-War consensus in all parties to support the NHS and welfare state, and maintain full employment.

Dimbleby’s right to attack the media’s bias against Corbyn, even if some of it seems like he’s trying to whip up interest in his own election night programme by saying that the outcome isn’t a foregone conclusion. But he’s wrong about it being ‘lazy pessimism’. It’s deliberate lies and fabrications, by a media and political class that are desperately afraid that Corbyn will succeed in undoing forty years of Thatcherism, and create a genuinely fairer and stronger Britain.

The right-wing media, including Beeb, and its paymasters come from the upper middle class, which have done very well thank you under Thatcherism. They have profited from the tax cuts and massive expansion in power and wealth achieved by grinding the other 75 per cent of the population down with increased taxation, the destruction of the welfare states, the privatisation of state industries, including the NHS, stagnant wages and zero-hours contracts. They, and the businesses they head and manage, have profited immensely from a cowed workforce, who are forced to work for poverty pay.

It is because Labour under Corbyn threatens this, that they have responded with lies and smears.

Don’t believe the media.
Vote Labour on June 8th.

Tags: BBC, Bias, Conservatives, David Dimbleby, General Election, House of Commons, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, Margaret Thatcher, Media, MPs, New Labour, NHS, NHS Privatisation, Polls, Privatisation, Question Time, Radio Times, Tax, Tax Cuts, The 'I' Newspaper, tony blair, Welfare State, Zero Hours Contracts