Last week, presenter Emily Maitlis mysteriously disappeared from an edition of Newsnight, leaving it to be hosted by her colleague Kate Razzall. This was after she had made a few sharp, but entirely fair and justified comments, about Dominic Cummings’ breach of the lockdown regulations in the previous evening’s edition of the programme. This had resulted in the Beeb receiving a nasty message from 10 Downing Street. The Beeb, Razzall and Maitlis herself all denied that her disappearance from the show on the subsequent evening was due to official disapproval. But to everyone else capable of putting two and two together and making four, the link seemed obvious.
Unfortunately, the Tories and their supporters have been out there denying any such connection. One of the Tory-supporting channels on YouTube, We Got A Problem, has instead claimed that Maitlis flagrantly breached the Beeb’s impartiality rule, and was therefore rightly the subject of 40,000 complaints. I haven’t watched the wretched video on the reasonable grounds that if I do, it’ll just make me angry. But even without seeing it, it still seems to me that there are two obvious flaws with their argument. Firstly, Tory anger does not mean that Maitlis broke the Beeb’s guidelines. All it does is show that the Tories are angry. Secondly, how many of these messages are genuine? This is a good, fair question. The Tories have a history of using bots and some of the email and twitter messages that have appeared in the last few years applauding the Tories and particularly Boris Johnson have rung massively fake. There are two many similarities between them and an awful lot of have come from previously unknown internet addresses. There’s also the case of the various medical professionals who tweeted out their messages of endorsement to Boris for his handling of the Cornoavirus. Many of them were demonstrably fake. One of them used a photograph of a Greek paediatrics nurse in London, but affixed it to a fake identity of a gay doctor. The scandal was briefly discussed by the Beeb, who decided that there was too little information to make the connection with the Tories and suggested that it was someone trying to smear them. As the Beeb has a long and infamous history of pushing pro-Tory propaganda, and especially the noxious smears against Jeremy Corbyn over the past four years, I think the opposite is true. The Tweets were fakes from the Tories, and the Beeb was trying to defend them by suggesting that the messages were anti-Tory fakes.
Maitlis’ disappearance was shortly followed by that of Laura Kuenssberg. Goebbels’ true-blue Tory spiritual daughter also vanished from her position in front of the camera to take an unscheduled holiday. This was after she had tried asking further questions about Cummings’ short touring holiday to Durham and Barnard Castle at Bozo’s press briefing, when the Prime Minister stopped the ladies and gents of the fourth estate asking his Chief Medical and Chief Scientific Officers about the affair on the grounds that such queries were political, rather than scientific and medical. Kuenssberg gave no reason for her sudden absence, just the message “Not around for a few days – keep up with [BBC News] and [BBC Politics]“. It’s therefore entirely possible that, despite her loyal support of the Tories and flagrant breaches of the Beeb’s impartiality rules in their favour, she too had been the subject of official disapprobation and had been hit with the ban hammer.
Her announcement that she was taking a short leave of absence was greeted with messages of support by some. Others remembered just how biased she had been, and so sent messages such as “We might get some actual reported news for a change” or ask her if she had, like Maitlis, also been sanctioned. Others reminded her of the occasion a few years ago when she left the Beeb to work for ITV, and Peter Oborne’s tart comment about her being the Beeb’s equivalent of Robert Peston. Oborne is a journalist of immense integrity, who stopped writing for the Torygraph because of the way that paper’s management was demanding that articles should be written to suit their advertisers. He also presented a Dispatches documentary for Channel 4 attacking the Israel lobby and urged people to vote Labour at last year’s election.
Zelo Street in their article about Kuenssberg disappearance concluded
‘So what gives with Ms Kuenssberg? Taking a few days off while the country is in lockdown and in the middle of a significantly sized national crisis? Curiouser and curiouser.
There is one further problem: the BBC will manage fine without her. I’ll just leave that one there.’
In addition to its own, innate right-wing bias, the Beeb’s also under additional pressure from the Tories. They want to privatise it for the benefit of their donors in the rival, private broadcasters, like Sky and one Rupert Murdoch. The Corporation is facing devastating cuts and the Director-General is up for replacement in a few years’ time. This brings with it fears that the Tories will impose one of their henchmen, who’ll carry out their plans of closing it all down and selling it off. Boris is already threatening to decriminalize nonpayment of the license fee, which would starve the Corporation of millions of pounds if it goes ahead. It therefore seems all too likely to me that, no matter how impartial or even pro-Tory presenters may be, the Corporation is so terrified of Tory displeasure that any offending journo now faces a few days’ suspension. Even if, like Kuenssberg, they have resolutely toed the government line all the way down the road.
As for the Tories themselves, they’ve shown themselves to be the party of fake news and lying propaganda. Their style of handling the media now seems closer to that of Putin than other, properly democratic nations. If a hack displeases the Arkhiplut, he sends a couple of state toughs round to beat them. Other hazards include being thrown down stairwells.
Johnson hasn’t gone that far yet, but give him time. And the lying Tory media would excuse and applaud such brutality when it comes.
Zelo Street this afternoon has posted the results of a very interesting poll conducted by Sky News. The channel took a survey of 1,652 Brits, asking them about the lockdown, whether they trusted BoJob and Starmer, and also if they trusted the media, among other questions. Zelo Street’s article concentrates on the results for politicos and the media. Which are, ahem, interesting. And not good news for any parties, but especially not the ladies and gentlemen of the fourth estate.
The channel reported that although they were increasingly anxious and sadder, the British public were emphatic that the lockdown should continue. 51 per cent of the public trusted Johnson to tackle the Coronavirus, but 39 per cent don’t. This gave our clown prime minister a score of +12.
Only 25 per cent of those polled trust Starmer, while 34 per cent don’t, meaning that he has a score of -9.
Trust in journalists was very low. Zelo Street began its article by stating that the British press has been at the bottom of the league in Europe in the esteem in which it is held by the public. It’s trusted even less than the press of countries that have, within living memory, been dictatorships, like Spain, Portugal and the eastern European nations. Only 24 per cent trust TV journos, while 64 per cent don’t, giving them a net score of -40. Only 17 per cent responded that they trusted newspaper journalists, compared to 72 per cent who didn’t. They therefore had a score of -55.
Ian Dunt, a broadcast hack, tweeted that it was hard to overstate what a disaster those results were. A tweeter identifying him- or herself as the CEO Antifa answered him with “Remember when Peter Oborne tried to warn you all about this and got blacklisted by most publications?”. Zelo Street reminds us that Oborne, a journo of immense integrity, has warned for some time of the tendency of some in the broadcast media simply to repeat the claims of anonymous government spokespeople. He named Laura Kuenssberg and Robert Peston as two serious offenders. Zelo Street concludes
‘Now has come the public’s verdict. Don’t say you weren’t warned, media people.’
It’s shocking and dispiriting that just over half of the British public trust Johnson to battle the Coronavirus. This is despite the long list of his failures, beginning with the Tories’ underfunding of the NHS, their refusal to update the plans for a pandemic emergency and take on board the lessons from wargaming such an emergency way back in 2016, to Johnson’s refusal to heed medical advice back in January and impose a lockdown. It ignores the way Johnson, and some in the Tory ranks even now, pushed a pseudo-scientific commitment to herd immunity, which could leave up to 200,000 – 250,000 dead, in favour of the economy. And then there is the continuing failure to order sufficient supplies of PPE for the front line medical and care workers. The FT has now stated that the official figure of 18,000 deaths is an underestimate. It does not include those dying in care homes or at home. The real figure is 41,000. Some of these people could have been saved if Johnson had acted sooner. If he’d actually gotten off his Eton-educated arse and attended the Cobra meetings. If he really had worked all hours round the clock, instead of just having his shills tell us that, while he bunked off at weekends. If he actually took the work of government seriously, instead of simply acting out his power fantasies.
Nevertheless, the stats also show that trust in Johnson is falling. When Hope Not Hate did a similar poll a couple of weeks ago, they put trust in Johnson at 64 per cent. It’s down 13 per cent. No wonder that the Tory spin doctors are putting up fake twitter accounts and Tory front organisations are putting up spurious signs, all telling us how wonderful Johnson is and how the emergency services and NHS staff love him. He and his followers are afraid, because if the trend continues, after a couple of weeks trust in him will be as low as Starmer’s.
As for the public distrust of the Labour leader, some of that is a successful hangover from the vicious media campaign against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party. But some of it may well be due to his own background in the Labour far right, his lack of response to Johnson and his failure to act so far against the plotters and intriguers that deliberately sabotaged Labour’s election campaign. As has been pointed out, Starmer was a participant in one of the coups against Corbyn. He managed to score points earlier this week against Dominic Raab at Prime Ministers’ questions, but mostly he’s been quiet. He has taken zero action against the plotters, racists and intriguers named in the leaked report, instead seeming determined to find and punish the whistleblowers. Members are considering suing the party and asking for a return of their subscriptions on grounds of breach of contract because of the antics of the Labour plotters. If enough people did this, it would wreck the party.
Starmer could regain public trust by acting decisively against the plotters in the leaked document. The media now consider it a non-story, because it doesn’t conform to their predetermined desire to paint Corbyn as an anti-Semite. But he could make it the story and, if properly advised, actually do something Corbyn couldn’t do and take control of the narrative. He could also gain more trust by actually increasing his public profile. By taking the lead and publicly criticising Johnson. The way is open for him to succeed and gain the trust of the public.
But I fear he won’t, because that means acting against the very same right-wingers who worked hard to put him, or someone like him, in place as leader of the party.
But the media are in a marginally worse position, as their venality and bias has meant that public confidence in them, and especially after their massively biased reporting of Corbyn and the Labour party, is now at a record low.
If this continues, then, when the lockdown is lifted, the press will still see a collapse in readers because by that time people will have worked out that they’re missing nothing by not buying them and their lies.
This morning I caught a brief item by the Beeb tackling what they called the ‘rumours’ of the Tories using fake Twitter accounts to post messages supporting Boris Johnson and pressing for a return to the herd immunity policy. When this became difficult for them to justify outright, they simply retreated into calling for the lockdown to be lifted. Which would pretty much be the same policy. It just wouldn’t describe itself as ‘herd immunity’.
The plot was uncovered on Monday by John O’Connell of Rightwing Watch, a site which I think tackles Fascism and right-wing extremism. Which would, judging by the Tories horrendous policies and long history of flirting and supporting extreme right-wing parties and ideologies, naturally include them, and particularly Boris Johnson. O’Connell believed he had found 128 fake Twitter accounts posing as NHS staff. These seemed to come from the DHSC through a marketing company that had only one client, the DHSC, four staff, all ex-DHSC. The accounts themselves had been posted by a single person, who was herself on secondment from government.
O’Connell presented as evidence a Tweet purporting to be from a deaf junior doctor, Susan, who said that she was transitioning this year. She said she was fighting Covid-19 with other LGBTQ+ people. ‘Susan’, however, didn’t exist, and the photo of her was an NHS paediatric nurse from Greece. O’Connell contacted the Department of Health and Social Care to get their response. There was absolutely none, and his offers to go through their data was refused. When he tried again, they told him it was also misinformation, and if you repeated it, you were harming our common attempt to battle the Coronavirus. And the messages themselves all mysteriously disappeared.
From the details O’Connell gave, it sounds like he has the government bang to rights, including the very identity of whoever posted the tweets. And it’s not like Boris hasn’t done it before. The Tories did, using Cambridge Analytica for Brexit, and Dominic Cummings was unmasked by the Absurder as the noxious personality behind the Twitter account @toryeducation, which abused the government’s critics and opponents. This was when Cummings was a mere spad at the department of education under Gove. And I think Boris has been using a bot army more recently too.
The Beeb, however, in their wisdom decided to give the story no credence. The government and Twitter had both denied that these fake accounts had been created, and O’Connell had not handed over his data. The only evidence was the Tweet from ‘Susan’ and the 128 deleted accounts. ‘Susan’ was, the Beeb’s correspondent explained, a genuine fake account. But the character with its LGBTQ+ identification looked like it was by someone trying to discredit Boris by posting a fake identity that looked like it came from him or his supporters. And so the Beeb decided that the claims were just rumours after all.
At no time was it mentioned that Boris, Cummings and the Tories have used such bot accounts. O’Connell wasn’t even named, let alone interviewed to present his side of the argument. Perhaps the Beeb contacted him and he was unavailable for comment. But somehow I doubt that. Another Tweeter had tried to get the Beeb in the form of Laura Kuenssberg, as well as Robert Peston and a number of websites and news organisations interested, including Zelo Street and Novara Media. Mike and Zelo Street put up articles about it, but the lamestream media had zero interest when Zelo Street put up their articles yesterday.
I don’t know, but it seems to me that O’Connell is correct, and the Tories and Twitter are lying. As for the Beeb, they now have such an extreme pro-Tory, anti-Labour bias that I don’t think they can be trusted on stories like this. O’Connell has said that he doesn’t want to be crucified like the people, who revealed Cambridge Analytica. He’s therefore waiting for the evidence to be ‘gold-plated’ before he reveals it in full. It’ll be very interesting if and when he does.
In the meantime, the Tory supporters were out on Twitter screaming that he was a crank, and, unsurprisingly, a left-wing anti-Semite. Yes, we’re back to the anti-Semitism smears again. The fact that the smear merchants were reduced to name calling and smearing once again to me acts as another factor in his favour.
O’Connell’s probably right, as the abuse directed against him shows that certain people are very, very worried.
The Tories don’t get any better. The party that spent public money on the Institute for Statecraft and its wretched Democracy Initiative, or whatever the wretched organisation was called, to put out anti-Labour, anti-Corbyn propaganda from its army of sympathetic hacks on Twitter has once again been exposed using pretty much the same reprehensible tactics. The pretext for giving the Democracy Initiative our hard earned tax money was to defend democracy against Russian on-line influence. In reality this meant targeting any British or European politico that the right didn’t like. This time there seems to have been absolutely no excuse whatsoever. They did it simply to push propaganda. And when caught the sock accounts were deleted and the Department for Health and Social Care went on the attack, vehemently denying they had done any such thing, and shouting that it was all misinformation that would damage the common effort to combat Coronavirus. Rubbish. The Department was caught red-handed, and it’s got the weaselly paw-prints of the man Zelo Street calls ‘Polecat’ Dom all over it.
Mike put up the story last night. John O’Connell, of the awesome Rightwing Watch, had discovered 128 fake accounts, 9 probable fakes and a further 14, possibles, which had been created by someone at the Department. 43 of those fake accounts used photographs of real NHS staff. One of these was for a deaf NHS junior doctor, ‘Susan’, who was due to transition into someone of the opposite gender. ‘Susan’ gave a shout out to the LGBTQ+ community, and praised Boris Johnson. The photograph used for the Tweet was identified by John Scott as that of Mia Magklavani, a paediatric staff nurse from Greece. The fake accounts were trying to push for the ‘herd immunity’ solution to the crisis, although this changed and instead they were arguing that the lockdown should be lifted.
The DHSC created these sock accounts through a marketing company set up a few months ago. This company apparently only has one client – the DHSC, and a staff of three, all ex-DHSC. The posts were sent using the mass-posting tool Hootsuite, whose account was registered to one person with four assigned contributors. That person is a government employee on temporary secondment to the department.
O’Connell contacted the DHSC about this, naturally making some inquiries. They refused to comment. He also offered to provide all his data to them to help them with an internal inquiry, which they declined. He also asked to deal directly with their Soc Med and Comms teams to work through their data. They refused that offer too. When he asked for further comment, he got this reply from the Department:
These claims are categorically false.
To share disinformation of this kind undermines the national effort against coronavirus.
Before anyone shares unsubstantiated claims online, use the SHARE checklist to help stop the spread of harmful content: https://sharechecklist.gov.uk/
O’Connell makes it very clear that no-one should be surprised by these tactics. They’re what the Tories did when they were pushing Brexit with Cambridge Analytica. And at the general election First Draft, a monitoring body, found that they issued 5,952 political ads on Facebook that they called ‘indecent, dishonest and untruthful.’ The Labour Party didn’t issue any deceitful advertising.
Mike in his article on this squalid little tactic advises people not to use the ‘sharechecklist’ link, as the Tories at the changed their publicity department’s monicker to ‘FactCheckUK’ at the election. This purported to be an independent fact-checking organisation, and calmly reassured anyone who used it that the Tories were telling the truth, and Labour were lying. Which was more lies, of course.
John O’Connell further states that the DHSC and various NHS trusts have shown no interest in the welfare of the 43 NHS staff whose photos were used. He naturally wonders if this runs contrary to their duty of care. And Mike concludes his article about this by asking rhetorically
And why would anybody use a government website to check whether content is harmful, when it’s the government that is accused of creating it?
The danger is that the Tory government is undermining trust in the institutions we need to be able to trust. It is deadly dangerous – but the Tories are playing the fool.
Zelo Street added further information, noting that another Tweeter had tried to alert various media figures to the scandal, like Laura Kuenssberg, Robert Peston, Peter Jukes of Byline media, and Novara Media, The Skwawkbox, Zelo Street itself, and Carole Cadwalladr. Unfortunately, although Peter Jukes responded stating that it looked very much like Cambridge Analytica/ Russian bot farm tactics, the other major media figures appear to be uninterested. Zelo Street suggested that it might be because they’re afraid of Polecat Dom.
Zelo Street followed up their piece with a further article arguing that Dominic Cummings was very likely behind this torrent of sock puppetry and falsehoods, as the Polecat has previous. He was rumoured to be the man behind an abusive account, @toryeducation, when he was but a lowly Spad working for Michael Gove in the education department. This Twitter account poured scorn and abuse on politicos like Margaret Hodge, Chris Patten, Tristram Hunt, Hannah Richardson, Robert Peston, the Beeb, as well as Zelo Street and Tom Barry of Boris Watch.
Cummings denied he was behind these tweets, but Toby Helm, at that time a hack at the Observer, revealed that the Department had taken steps to stop the Twitter feed issuing any more abuse against its opponents. He also stated that the Observer had said that two contributors to it were Dominic Cummings and Henry de Zoete. Under the code governing spads, disseminating party political material and personal abuse were sackable offences. Cummings and de Zoete had not denied they contributed to the feed, merely saying that they were not @toryeducation.
And, like the 128 sock puppets John O’Connell discovered, @toryeducation also mysteriously vanished. It was registered as an official Tory account on Twitter until the day after the Observer told the world who was behind it. And a year after this all occurred, bloated badger-haired Libertarian Fascist Guido Fawkes revealed that it was indeed Cummings who had been the Twitter account while discussing a spat between Gove and Clegg over free school meals.
Zelo Street concludes
‘Cummings is not, it seems, subject to the controlling hand of his current boss right now, and restored to health following his brush with Covid-19. And by complete coincidence you understand, the Twitter fakery is firing up again. As Private Eye magazine might have put it, I wonder if the two are in any way related? I think we should be told.’
It seems O’Connell has got the Tories bang to rights, right down to the personal identity of the woman behind all these fake accounts. And it really does look like Dominic Cummings is also behind it, although given their record of flagrant, gross mendacity, he doesn’t seem to have broken any established Tory patterns of conduct whatsoever. It would be rather more surprising if they told the truth instead.
But it also shows the Tories are afraid. Very afraid. According to polls, 65 per cent of the public think that Johnson is doing a good job, which shows how effective media spin and propaganda is. But with the death toll increasing and medical staff running out of PPE, that spin appears to be wearing very thin.
And so they’ve started lying again, to cover up their massive failures and the deaths for which they’re responsible.
The sock puppets’ support for the discredited ‘herd immunity’ policy and an end to the lockdown also shows how worried they are about their donors’ interests. The party’s backers clearly want the lockdown ended so that they can continue making big bucks.
Even though this policy could lead to 40,000 deaths, or even as many as 200 – 250,000.
But still, Murdoch and those hedge fund managers must have their billions.
The Tory attempts to impose rigid, authoritarian control over the press continues. One of the big stories yesterday was the news that the assembled hacks and hackettes of the media had walked out of a press briefing organised by No. 10. There was going to be a ‘technical briefing’ on Brexit by David Frost, our comedy Prime Minister’s adviser on Europe. However, only selected members of the fourth estate were invited. A list was read out of those favoured journos were going to be allowed to go to No. 10, splitting the media into two groups as those who were and were not invited were told to stand on different sides of the room. The media outlets that were definitely not invited included the I, Daily Mirror, Independent, Evening Standard, HuffPost UK and PoliticsHome. Those papers not on BoJob’s list also tried to get into the briefing. This assault on press freedom was too much even for those invited, and other journos walked out of the meeting in protest. They included Laura Kuenssberg for the Beeb, ITV.s political editor Robert Peston and the senior political correspondents from the Heil, Torygraph, Scum, Financial Times and the Groaniad. A row broke out, with Lee Cain, BoJob’s director of communications, declaring “We are welcome to brief whoever we want, whenever we want’.
The Mirror’s political editor, Pippa Crerar, described the shenanigans as ‘sinister and sad’. The SNP’s culture spokesman, John Nicholson, commented that Johnson already hid from interviewers he found too tough, a tactic he learned from Trump. The Shadow Culture Secretary, Tracy Brabin, said that it was concerning that Johnson was using Trump tactics to hid from scrutiny. Dame Eleanor Laing, the deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, also condemned BoJob’s actions, and said, ‘Accredited lobby journalists are indeed part of our parliamentary community and so, of course, must be, should be, and normally are treated with respect’. And the NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said: ‘As ministers are now boycotting certain programmes and journalists, this represents another very dangerous step.’
The I covered this in yesterday’s edition, for 4th February 2020. Their description of the events on page 10 was accompanied by an analysis by Richard Vaughan, ‘No 10 has started to chip away at freedom of press’, describing how this was just the latest step in Boris’ attempts to restrict press freedom and hostile reportage. The article ran
Since entering No 10 last year, Boris Johnson’s senior advisers have wanted to exert greater power when it comes to the media. Up until the election, Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s de facto chief of staff, and his direct of communications Lee Cain, were too distracted to do much about it.
But having secured an 80-seat majority, the pair have all but declared war on the parliamentary “lobby” journalists in a bid to exercise their new-found strength.
First was change to the lobby briefing system – the twice-daily meetings where journalists can fire questions at the Prime Minister’s official spokesman.
Cain insisted that all meetings would be held in Downing Street rather than the Commons. This raised concerns that it would give No 10 the power to refuse entry for any journalists who had fallen out of favour.
And so it has proved. Last week, a select group of journalists were invited to a briefing by security and intelligence officials on allowing Huawei to run part of the UK’s 5G network. Representatives from I, the Daily Mirror, HuffPost, the Independent, the Press Association, Reuters and several websites were barred.
Yesterday, No 10 repeated the move, attempting to freeze out several journalists from a Downing Street briefing with the Government’s lead Brexit negotiator David Frost, only this time it prompted a walkout.
It follows similar decisions by Mr Johnson’s team to boycott BBC Radio4’s Today and ITV’s Good Morning Britain as well as avoiding Andrew Neil during the election.
It is a power play by Cummings and Cain, who prioritise “message discipline” above all else and who view the favoured outlets as being essential to getting their message out. The move has been described as Trumpian by opposition MPs, due to its similarity to the way the US President excludes certain reporters he does not like.
It would be very easy to dismiss this as sour grapes at not being one of the chosen few titles, but it is a worrying sign of things to come. Shutting out certain publications damages the bedrock of a free media which exists to help hold the Government to account.
In fact, as the media coverage of the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn has shown, it’s been a very long time since the Tory media held the government to account. They were also very heavily favoured by the Beeb. John Major, when he was in power in No. 10, used to ask his cabinet how their friends in the media could help them spin certain issues and stories. And former cabinet ministers of Tony Blair’s have described how he was always concerned to have the press on his side, and that Rupert Murdoch was always an invisible presence at meetings due to his switch to supporting Blair.
Now with this attempt by Boris to exclude the media outlets he dislikes and Johnson debating whether or not to abolish the licence fee and privatise the Beeb, the media just might be waking up to what a threat Johnson poses to freedom of speech and of the press.
And this is a very dangerous step. Trump, who started this tactic, also pondered whether or not he could have certain newspapers closed down. He can’t, at least not at the moment. But that’s another step in the sequence of imposing a rigid state censorship over the media comparable to that of Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy.
The media were fine about supporting Boris when it was voluntary. He was standing up for capitalist freedom against that evil Commie Corbyn. Well, Corbyn wasn’t a Commie, and they’re just now starting to find out that under Boris, supporting him is going to be compulsory.
Okay, there have been a number of pieces written recently about the Tories’ plan to run down the Beeb in preparation for its eventual privatisation, while at the same time turning it into their propaganda mouthpiece. But Zelo Street today has put up an excellent piece adding a few more details.
The Sage of Crewe begins with the quote from Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, that Boris and his wretched pet Machiavelli, Dominic Cummings, want to have significant influence over the choice of the next Director-General of the Beeb following the departure of Lord Tony Hall. Cummings and co are looking for someone sympathetic to their plans for the Corporation.
The piece then quotes the Guardian, which explains that Cummings’ think tank, the New Frontiers Foundation in 2004 called for the end of the Beeb in its present form, and suggested that right-wing activists should try to undermine it by painting the Beeb as the ‘mortal enemy’ of the Tories. The Foundation instead called for the establishment of an equivalent to Fox News to get round the state broadcaster’s impartiality rules. The Groan also reveals that Johnson saw Murdoch for a social meeting the day he announced the date of the election. Murdoch has been the only newspaper magnate Bojob has seen in the first three months of his tenure of No. 10.
Zelo Street also quotes Byline Media, which noted that the first newspaper the Beeb told about its decision to cancel Victoria Derbyshire’s show was the Times. Which is, of course, owned by Rupe. Byline Media also reported how Murdoch has been trying to destroy the Beeb for 40 years, and was three times able to delay Panorama’s investigation into the News of the World’s ‘fake shake’, Mahmood Mazher.
The Street concludes
‘Now that same Murdoch empire has an in with the Government, whose chief advisor is more than sympathetic to the idea of taking the axe to the BBC – just as Murdoch wants.
And the Beeb finds itself in this parlous position just as its trust ratings have fallen – especially among those on the left who would in the past have rushed to its defence.
Who will now come to rescue the Corporation? Don’t all shout at once.’
This confirms what was suspected since Boris took power and announced that he was considering decriminalisation nonpayment of the license fee. The Murdoch press has been consistently attacking the Corporation, as Byline Media says, for the past 40 years. Murdoch even ranted about it when he spoke at a television festival a few years ago.
Johnson’s support for Murdoch should worry everyone concerned with quality broadcasting, and that includes Tories as well as left-wingers. About 20 or see years ago Private Eye reported that an American Conservative organisation had awarded Rupe the ‘Silver Sewer’ Award for his role in coarsening and degrading American culture. His US network, which I think he’s now sold, Fox News, was so biased that it rightly earned its nickname ‘Faux News’. It’s a cesspool of fake news and right-wing propaganda. So much so that a media monitoring organisation found that you were going to be less well informed about the world after watching it than if you did. Americans have frequently been criticised for not knowing much about the rest of the world. Fox News is one of the factors keeping them ignorant, including about the state of their own country.
And while Murdoch supports Tory policies, his personal interests aren’t identical with theirs. When Murdoch was negotiating to buy the Times back in the ’70s, many Tories opposed him because of his treatment of Profumo. The former Tory minister, who had been forced out because of the scandal over his affair with Christine Keeler, had been rehabilitated after many years in the wilderness. He’d been working with a homelessness charity in the East End, and was ready to make a comeback. But Murdoch made that impossible when one of his papers raked over the Profumo scandal once more, in order to sell a few more copies.
Giving more of the news media to Murdoch also means that he can and will suppress the opinions of government ministers on vital topics when this also suits him. Way back in the 1990s Chris Patten, the former last British governor of Hong Kong, wrote a book about his career. Murdoch at the time was negotiating with the Chinese government, about whom Patten made some strong observations. The book was therefore rejected by its prospective publisher, which was one of Murdoch’s companies. It was picked up by another publisher, but the threat to democracy remains. Murdoch is not afraid to suppress the views of senior government ministers, and while they may find other media outlets, allowing Murdoch even more of grip on our media also endangers this.
And he’s also not afraid to dump the Tory party in its entirety when it suits him. John Major belatedly realised that Rupe had become too powerful and was too mercenary back in the last days of his government. Frustrated that the Tories weren’t giving him enough of what he wanted, he turned instead to Blair and the Labour party. Apparently Major railed at this betrayal during a cabinet meeting, and said that they should find ways to cut Murdoch’s empire down to size. But by that time it was far too late.
Murdoch is an active threat to the NHS and the welfare state, which he also despises and wishes destroyed. But his growing domination of British media and wish to destroy the Beeb for his own network make him an active threat to democracy and free speech in the UK. He exerted a powerful influence over Blair when New Labour was in power. Former cabinet ministers have said that he was always an invisible presence at cabinet meetings, as Blair worried about how policies would go down with him.
The Beeb should remain a publicly owned network. But their flagrant bias towards the Tories and bitter vilification of Labour now makes it difficult for anyone on the left to support them.
A few days ago the Director-General of the Beeb, Lord Tony Hall, formally stepped down. According to Mike over at Vox Political, Robert Peston has said that this means that the Beeb’s chairman, David Clementi, can oversee the installation of a new D-G, who isn’t under the control of Boris and the Tories. But Mike argues instead that Clementi’s time as chair is nearly over, and it’s likely that Johnson will use his influence instead to make sure the next D-G is a Tory puppet, who will purge anyone BoJob and Cumming’s don’t like. He also reblogs posts from the ever-perceptive Tom London, who points out that the Beeb has already been significantly biased towards the Tories. The bias against Labour and Jeremy Corbyn personally was so pronounced that it denies the election democratic validity. Tom London says that while it might say ‘Democracy’ on the tin, that democracy has already vanished when nothing but propaganda is being pumped out.
Quite so. As Mike says, the Tories’ plan is to install someone, who will raise no objection to their privatisation of the Beeb and its replacement by commercial operators, who will kowtow to the Tories.
In fact, as Mike also says, the Beeb has been under Tory influence for quite some time. Ever since David Cameron passed legislation allowing the public sector to recruit from the private industry. This has led to the influx of further senior management and corporate bosses at the Beeb, determined to turn it into a propaganda mouthpiece for the Tories.
It was also announced today that the Corporation was axing the Victoria Derbyshire Show. Derbyshire is a highly respected journalist, and the decision dismayed journalists and media figures as diverse as Paul Lewis, Stephen Pollard, the extreme right-wing editor of the Jewish Chronicle; Martin Barrow, and the Labour MP Tracy Brabin. Lewis described the show as ‘innovative’, praising the way it dealt with important social issue like poverty other mainstream shows would have struggled with, and called it ‘a people’s current affairs programme’. The former MP Danielle Rowley said that the show made complex issues accessible through a wide-ranging format, different voices, and great journalism and presenting. Martin Barrow, who is a foster carer as well as a journo, condemned its cancellation, and said he would always be grateful to the show for its reports into children’s care and young people’s mental health. Brabin said that the show was unique in having rigorous campaigning and allowing the public to have their say. She also praised Derbyshire as sharp, approachable and with a personal story that made her relatable. Laura Smith from Crewe and Nantwich praised the show for making sure that the voices of the survivors of historic abuse were heard, and praised the personal bravery of named victims that appeared on the show.
Zelo Street states that not everyone was upset by the show’s cancellation. Right-wing guttersnipes Darren Grimes and the Economist’s David Vance were overjoyed, though Vance considered it no more than a welcome start and wanted the complete closure of the Beeb.
Zelo Street believed that the show’s cancellation might not be unrelated to the fact that Derbyshire showed up Dominic Raab in the 2017 general election. Raab had claimed that the people using food banks weren’t poor, just experiencing ‘cash flow problems’.
The Street concluded
‘Once again, journalism is publishing, or indeed broadcasting, what someone does not want to see published, or broadcast. And the increasingly craven BBC is axing it.
Trebles all round for leering Tory boot boys. A lesson in grim reality for everyone else.’
Another right-wing figure, who was not at all sorry to see Derbyshire and her show cancelled was Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon of Akkad, the man who broke UKIP, who has made a video about it. Sargon and his equally deranged followers are convinced that the Beeb is biased towards Left and against the Tories, even when all the evidence shows the complete opposite. He thought she was particularly biased towards the Tories because she accidentally used the ‘C’ word for Jeremy Hunt’s surname when announcing a story. She immediately apologised, and said it was usually men, who used that word. Which is actually true, though I have heard it used by some foul-mouthed women. Sargon decided her comment showed that she had planned it, and thus her whole demeanour was an act. My guess is that it was a genuine mistake, but someone in the Newsroom probably had been referring to Hunt by the obscenity. Hunt’s name practically invites it. Derbyshire may well have heard it so often, that she accidentally said it herself, even though it was genuinely something she wouldn’t normally have said.
I’m not sure that Derbyshire is as unbiased as her supporters claimed. I was at a local Labour party meeting last week, and one of the subjects that came up again and again was the extreme bias against Labour by the media and its continued pushing of the anti-Semitism smears. And Derbyshire had done her fair share of this as well. When interviewing a spokesman from the Labour Party, Derbyshire had persistently asked them if they thought Corbyn needed sensitivity training. The spokesman had replied that he already had such training, as had they all. Too which she responded that she couldn’t believe the Labour party representative had said that he didn’t need it. Which is not what the Labour person had said.
Sargon’s video about it is interesting, however, for some of the stats he found. These included Derbyshire’s salary – £200 – £249,000 – and her viewing figures: 39,000. He concluded that her show had such a small audience that this was reasonable saving. He also pulled out the ratings for the audience of BBC news. Under Lord Hall, it has declined from 27 million three years ago to 18 million. It’s lost a third of its audience. While Sargon and other members of the right and extreme right are convinced it’s because of the Beeb’s nonexistent left-wing bias, the reality is that many of those 9 million viewers, who’ve turned off or over, will be left-wingers and Scots Nats put off by the Corporation’s pro-Tory bias.
My guess is that Derbyshire’s cancellation shows the direction the Beeb is moving. The Corporation’s being run down as it becomes nothing but a Tory propaganda outlet. The Tories would like to privatise the Corporation completely, but still recognise how valuable it is in the meantime. 70 per cent of the British public take their broadcast news from it. So the BBC will retain its main news programmes while closing down those, like Derbyshire, that provide a public service but don’t have massive ratings.
In that way the Tories will turn it into a propaganda network Goebbels would have been proud of, while preparing it for eventual privatisation and replacement by the networks of the Tories’ corporate backers.
One of the defining features of every dictatorship has been rigid control of the press. In the former USSR and Soviet bloc until Gorbachev, the media was owned and controlled by the state, and it dutifully followed the party line. The leader was praised, and his opponents were vilified. Before being rounded up, imprisoned and shot, of course. It was exactly the same in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The newspapers there were privately owned, but even so had to follow the party line. In Germany, this was set by Josef Goebbels, the infamous ‘Minister for Public Enlightenment’. The Tories also have an intolerant attitude to the media. Most of the newspapers are owned by proprietors, who support the Tories and so have a strong Tory bias. The Tories therefore expect the press and media to follow their line. When they don’t, they start flinging around accusations of bias. When it’s state-owned companies, like the Beeb, they start making threats of ending the license fee or privatising the corporation, as I remember them doing so in the 1990s. With private broadcasters they threaten to remove their broadcasting license. Thatcher did this to London Weekend Television in the 1980s following the company’s documentary, ‘Death of the Rock’. This showed that the SAS team that killed an IRA terror squad in Gibraltar had acted as a death squad. The terrorists had been under army surveillance during their entire journey through Spain, and could have been picked up at any point with minimal bloodshed. The programme concluded that they had been deliberately executed. Thatcher went berserk at this demonstration of British lawlessness, and withdrew LWT’s broadcasting license. It was replaced instead by Carlton, no doubt named after the infamous Tory club.
And the Tories were making the same threats yesterday to Channel 4, after the programme humiliated Johnson in its leaders’ debate over climate change. Johnson has now resorted to Tweezer’s tactic of running away from possible tough or hostile interviews. He refused to turn up to be grilled by Andrew Neil on his show on the Beeb, which has embarrassed our state broadcaster, as they got Corbyn on his show by falsely telling him that they would be interviewing Boris this week, and that it had all been agreed with the Tories when it hadn’t. Fearing a repeat of last Friday’s leader debates, when Britain’s oafish Trump junior was properly shown to be a blustering moron, Johnson scarpered again. Channel 4 therefore took the decision to go ahead with the debate, but put in a melting ice sculpture to represent the BoJob.
Realising that a Conservative non-appearance didn’t look good, the Tories decided to send Boris’ father and Michael Gove, his best mate. Who weren’t allowed on the programme for the simple reason, as Channel 4’s news editor Ben de Pear pointed out, that as lovely and charming as they were, they weren’t the party’s leader. Gove started lying about how he turned up at Channel 4, but was turned away because Corbyn and Sturgeon didn’t want to debate a Conservative. This was disproved by Robert Peston, who tweeted
Classic Vote Leave tactics this whole ‘Gove turns up’ while CCHQ complains to regulator Ofcom about Ch4 barring him. It is all about proving to supporters that the London media establishment are against them (don’t laugh) while trying to intimidate all broadcasters.
Unable to get their own way, the Tories have complained about the debate to Ofcom, claiming that the channel has broken its legal requirement to be impartial and that the refusal to admit Gove and Stanley Johnson was a partisan stunt. They also told Buzzfeed News that if they’re re-elected, they would review Channel 4’s broadcasting license.
Sunny Hundal pointed out the sheer hypocrisy behind this.
If Corbyn had threatened Channel 4’s license over climate change debate, every newspaper in Britain would rightly be calling it ‘Stalinist’. Yet the press is silent and BBC is treating it as a legit story.
Zelo Street concluded
‘Tory commitment to free speech does not include dissent. Who’s being Stalinist now?’
The Tories don’t like freedom of speech at all. They withdrew LWT’s broadcasting license after ‘Death on the Rock’, and had a Panorama documentary how the party had an overlapping membership with the BNP, National Front and other Fascists, ‘Maggie’s Militant Tendency’ suppressed. And during their coalition government with the Lib Dems, they passed legislation providing for a system of secret courts. If the government decides it is necessary for reasons of national security, the accused may be tried in courts from which the press and public are banned. They may not know the identity of their accusers, nor the crimes of which they are accused or the evidence against them. It a system from the pages of Kafka’s The Trial and The Castle, and is the same as the perverted judicial systems of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia. And Cameron also wanted to make street demonstrations more difficult by passing legislation that would restrict the right to march and demonstrate under the pretence of protecting local residents from ‘nuisance’.
With this latest threat to Channel 4, the Tories have shown themselves not only cowards and bullies, but an active threat to freedom of speech. Get them out, and Labour in!
In yesterday’s I, regular columnist Simon Kelner launched another tirade against Jeremy Corbyn, fulminating about the Labour leader still remaining as head of the party despite all the anti-Semitism accusations.
I didn’t read it, because there’s absolutely no need. Kelner has previously gone on the attack, claiming that Corbyn and his supporters are terrible anti-Semites, because they ignore the wishes of the Jewish public. Which means right-wing, establishment, Conservative Jews, who like Tories everywhere despise Corbyn for standing up for the poor, working people and socialism. He hates Corbyn and the Labour left – actually the real moderates, and not the Blairite Neoliberals – because they are daring to challenge four decades of Thatcherism, its monstrous failures and destruction of human lives and the prosperity and welfare of the ordinary people of this country. Which of course includes Jews. He, and the rest of the establishment, also hate Corbyn because he dares to stand up for the Palestinians, against the policies of a genocidal Israeli state. Hence the determination with which members of the Israel lobby deliberately conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Or even moderate Zionism with anti-Semitism. I remember how a group of moderate Zionists were viciously attacked and smeared on social media as anti-Semites because, as observant Jews and humane people, they had tried to comfort Palestinians, who had been gunned down by the IDF, and said the Jewish prayer for the dead, the Kadish, over one of those killed. If I recall correctly, the Kadish is a verse from the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Old Testament:
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord forever.’
But it was too much that pious, godfearing Jews should pray for Arabs, who in the minds of these racist fanatics are all subhuman terrorists!
And this is the type of fanatic Kelner and the rest of the media are protecting and defending, even if they claim to be for peace in the Middle East. Because they are attacking those, who are genuinely for peace and justice between Jews and Palestinians in Israel, and are prepared to stand up for this, rather than mouth fine-sounding platitudes about the ‘two-state solution’ without taking it seriously. Like Joan Ryan.
But Kelner is also probably exasperated because it shows that a substantial part of the Labour party and by extension, the British public, no longer take the accusations of anti-Semitism seriously. People are still supporting him, no matter what smears and scandals they manufacture. And an increasing number of people are calling it what it is: hasbara. Israeli civilian propaganda. Lamestream hacks and media personalities like Kelner aren’t convincing people that Corbyn and his supporters are anti-Semites. Because the public knows better. And the more the establishment smears Corbyn, the more people become convinced that he isn’t, and that they’re afraid of him for entirely different reasons. Like genuine social justice, anti-racism and the empowerment of working people. The stuff Kelner, who I believe used to write for the Heil, hates. And I’ve blogged before about how even members of the Israel lobby are finding that increasingly people don’t believe their lies about anti-Semitism. And Kelner is obviously one of them.
Which proves the opponents of these smears right. The anti-Semitism smear is over-used. It’s just people like Kelner and Robert Peston crying ‘Wolf’. And because of that, they’re also desensitizing people to the genuine anti-Semitism of some of the really horrific regimes in eastern Europe, and Nazi groups over here like the banned National Action.
Kelner and his colleagues are hack propagandists, and the sooner the type of media they represent die, the better. In the meantime, if you want to get real news, go to some of the amazing left-wing news and comment sites on the Net and YouTube.
Earlier today, Mike put up a piece commenting on a report by Evolve Politics and a tweet by Robert Peston that the Tories are finally losing patience with Theresa May’s spectacular lack of leadership. According to Peston, a former supporter of Tweezer said that they can’t go on with her for much longer, as her lack of leadership and inability to make decisions was creating a vacuum which allowed the Remainers to run riot. After the votes are in next week, she will have to go. The article in Evolve Politics commented on this tweet, and pointed out that only 48 signatures are needed for force the Tory chairman Brandon Lewis to hold a vote of no confidence in Tweezer. And the latest revelation of her plunging popularity means that the figure could be easily reached.
Mike himself went on to suggest that her days as PM could be numbered, and possibly in single digits at that, particularly after Corbyn scored points against her and her government again and again at Prime Minister’s Questions today. He attacked Tweezer Brexit, and her failure to publish a White Paper on it, or to negotiate it properly with the EU and also the ridiculous buffer zone idea for Northern Ireland. The Labour leader commented that her government had produced more cancellations and delays on Brexit than Northern Rail.
Mike’s article ended with another tweet from Dazza, who said that May wants to be put out of her misery. They should call another general election, which the public will use as a second referendum.
This came after the Conservative Home website published its ‘league table’ showing how popular May and various members of her cabinet were. This was reported by RT in the video below. For some reason, Gove is in the lead, with an approval rating of 72.5 per cent. Just behind him is Sajid Javid with 70.4 per cent. Tweezer is in minus figures, -9.5. But there is someone even more unpopular than she is: Jeremy Hunt with -25 per cent.
So much for Theresa May, and the Tory party’s attempts to brand her as Margaret Thatcher Mark 2, and all that rubbish last year about her being ‘strong and stable’. Instead, as Mike pointed out in a series of articles on his website, she’s very weak and wobbly indeed.
Quite why Gove should be the favourite amongst the Tory faithful is still a mystery, however, as he’s as stupid and incompetent as she is. It was Gove, who managed to get Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s sentence increased by the Iranians when he came on TV to bail out his equally incompetent chum, Boris Johnson, who’d also managed to get her sentenced increased through his wilful ignorance. Gove declared that the government didn’t know what the poor woman was doing in Iran, which played into their hands and allowed them to claim that she had been spying. She hadn’t; she’d been there on holiday, and had taken her daughter to meet her Iranian relatives. This shabby incident shows how absolutely unfit for leadership Gove is. He is, after all, the man, who managed to run down the British educational system when he was minister for it a few years ago. If he looks better now, it’s probably only because ‘Thicky’ Nicky Morgan, his mad-eyed successor, was even worse. Nevertheless, the Tories seem to love him, at least for the moment. According to Chunky Mark, one Tory donor has even called on the party to ditch May and put Gove in No. 10 instead.
For the rest of us, this wouldn’t change anything. All of the Tories are incompetent and malign. The best thing that could happen for us is that they hold a vote of No Confidence, and then collapse amid a frenzy of backstabbing and infighting, leaving Corbyn to enter No. 10.
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