We are often told how lucky we are in countries like the UK and 26 counties to have a ‘free press’ which is not strictly true. It may be true enough to say the state do not interfere with the media in countries like Britain, Germany, France and Ireland, among many others, in the same way we are told they do in Russia but to call these news outlets free is stretching it. Any reporter who publishes anything against the newspaper proprietor’s interests or political position - and any editor who allows it will be dismissed. Be under no illusions about that.
So, perhaps we should define a ‘free press’ in its entirety. Does such a thing exist? Can such an entity exist? Just as it may not be in the interests of the Russian or other authoritarian states to print the truth, neither is it in the interests and advancement of interests for the billionaire owners of the British and other capitalist countries media to tell their readers the truth in any other gospel but their own. The gospel according to Rupert Murdoch or that of Richard Branson. Perhaps the late David Bowie should have written a song about this, like the one The Gospel According to Tony Day which he wrote and was released back in 1973. These are the two magnates who own television stations and newspapers and they are not alone. And it would be imagined if a free-thinking reporter printed the truth about, say, the rail dispute ongoing in Britain and wrote from the trade union point of view instead of prioritising the management and government position they would face the sack. The media are a very subjective source of information not to be believed without question. Perhaps the only thing they write which is true, and then look twice and check, is the date! As Arthur Scargill once said at a press conference:
why don’t you lot jut for once print the truth? I know you will get the sack, but you’ll feel a whole lot better for it.
I remember back in the British Coal Miners Strike in 1984-85 and the nominally Labour paper, the Daily Mirror then owned by a very rich man called Bob Maxwell printed lie after lie about the NUM leadership. The very same Mr Maxwell who ran off with his company’s employee’s pensions reportedly and was supposedly found floating in the Atlantic Ocean off the Canary Islands? Maxwell had been bugging his employees' telephones, illegally, to test their loyalty. Maxwell was the proprietor of what we are supposed to believe is a ‘free press.’ This so called ‘free press’ printed lie after lie about the NUM leader, Arthur Scargill and, to a lesser extent the union's general secretary, Peter Heathfield. This so-called Labour paper, when the chips were down just like the Labour Party in Britain, supported Margaret Thatcher’s attacks on the NUM leadership. The Daily Mirror printed lies about the NUM collecting money from Libya’s Colonel Gadhafi and a supposed trip to Libya by Roger Windsor, the union's CEO and MI5 agent.
Windsor was placed there by friend of Thatcher’s and MI5 chief Stella Rimington purposely to spy on the National Union of Mineworkers at Thatcher’s bequest. The position of CEO was the only role in the higher echelons of the NUM which was unelected by the miners. Windsor travelled to Libya, supposedly as far as the union were concerned, to meet with Libyan trade unionists. Windsor had secretly arranged a meeting with Gadhafi which was not authorised and was certainly not in his remit, a meeting which he had photographed. These were the images which were seen in the newspapers and reported on national news, all lies and fiction invented purposely by the British state, executed by Windsor, and dutifully reported by the ’free press.’ No questions about the authenticity of Windsor’s agenda on his visit and who wrote it were asked. This was despite the denials of the NUM leadership that this meeting with the Libyan leader was not on Windsor’s to do list and, if had been known of, would have been forbidden. As Scargill later said; “if Colonel Gadhafi wants to help the miners he would stop selling cheap oil to the British government.”
The fact the Thatcher administration was importing cheap oil from a supposed enemy state just to crush the NUM was never reported. I would suspect any reporter who got the truth behind this and reported such, would have been at best dismissed at worst disappear, just like in South America where no ‘free press’ exists. The media told lie after lie about the NUM leadership while at the same time reporting Thatcher’s proven lies as truth! On more than one occasion Arthur Scargill had stated Thatcher and the NCB Chairman, Ian MacGregor, had a secret “hit list” drawn up to “decimate the coal industry”. This was denied by the government who claimed Scargill was making it all up to pursue his “own political agenda”. In actual fact the NUM hit list was an understatement as the one Thatcher had written dwarfed the union's figures of pit closures. These lies by the British Government were never reported by the ’free press.’
Much of the biased reporting against the trade unions continues today, and if anybody has read the stuff about Mick Lynch, General Secretary of the RMT (Rail and Maritime Transport) union, who are presently in dispute they would see correlations between the reporting of the miner’s strike forty years ago and that of today. The last thing any newspaper owner would want is to give militant trade unionism any credibility as it may for one give their own employees ideas about wanting better pay, more freedom, and much more say in their own industry! It was Rupert Murdoch who used the governments anti trade union legislation against his own employees and their union, the NGA (National Graphical Association) at his News International works, Wapping in the later 1980s.
On Sunday morning 28th May 2023, I was watching Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday Morning Politics Show on which she interviewed then British Health Secretary, Steve Barclay. Laura is usually very impartial and her interview with Mr Barclay was no exception. She asked Barclay about the forty new hospitals he had told the British people the government were going to build. Barclay went, as is the norm, round the houses before not answering any of the interviewer’s points. Much facial acting and hand waving to express himself, but no actual answers. When Laura pointed out that in fact, they were not going to build forty new hospitals at all, he then said; “we will be building extensions on to hospitals to create new facilities.” And when it was suggested that this sounded like; “building a patio on to your house and saying it is a new house”! Mr Barclay then repeated his answer several times about new extensions and never really telling the truth that there are no new hospitals, certainly not forty, as such just a few additions to the old ones. This was objective and fair reporting but Mr Barclay is only a British Minister and people get used to being lied to by such people as this all the time.
On then to interviewing the Russian Ambassador to the UK, Mr Andrei Kelin, now obviously playing to a pre-arranged script. She asked the ambassador about Russian attacks “on civilian targets” and other atrocities the Russians have allegedly carried out in the Ukraine. Fair enough, a reasonable question which the Russian diplomat struggled with, as would Laura with his reply. Without actually addressing the deeds carried out by the Russian army, which are little different apparently to those carried out by the Ukrainian armed forces, including the overtly Nazi Azov regiment, Mr Kelin pointed out that the shooting of “civilians had been going on for nine years prior to February 2022 by the Ukrainian Army in the Donetsk region and Luhansk which have Russian majorities in Eastern Ukraine”. To a large extent she ignored this point asking again about Russian atrocities to which the ambassador repeated his counterclaim which she once again ignored possibly on government instructions. What he was trying to say was the Russians went in as a response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians. Is this true? I know no more than anybody else including those who pretend to. What is true and does give the ambassador's claims some credibility is the presence of the Russian hating Nazis operating in the region.
Much of the biased reporting against the trade unions continues today, and if anybody has read the stuff about Mick Lynch, General Secretary of the RMT (Rail and Maritime Transport) union, who are presently in dispute they would see correlations between the reporting of the miner’s strike forty years ago and that of today. The last thing any newspaper owner would want is to give militant trade unionism any credibility as it may for one give their own employees ideas about wanting better pay, more freedom, and much more say in their own industry! It was Rupert Murdoch who used the governments anti trade union legislation against his own employees and their union, the NGA (National Graphical Association) at his News International works, Wapping in the later 1980s.
On Sunday morning 28th May 2023, I was watching Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday Morning Politics Show on which she interviewed then British Health Secretary, Steve Barclay. Laura is usually very impartial and her interview with Mr Barclay was no exception. She asked Barclay about the forty new hospitals he had told the British people the government were going to build. Barclay went, as is the norm, round the houses before not answering any of the interviewer’s points. Much facial acting and hand waving to express himself, but no actual answers. When Laura pointed out that in fact, they were not going to build forty new hospitals at all, he then said; “we will be building extensions on to hospitals to create new facilities.” And when it was suggested that this sounded like; “building a patio on to your house and saying it is a new house”! Mr Barclay then repeated his answer several times about new extensions and never really telling the truth that there are no new hospitals, certainly not forty, as such just a few additions to the old ones. This was objective and fair reporting but Mr Barclay is only a British Minister and people get used to being lied to by such people as this all the time.
On then to interviewing the Russian Ambassador to the UK, Mr Andrei Kelin, now obviously playing to a pre-arranged script. She asked the ambassador about Russian attacks “on civilian targets” and other atrocities the Russians have allegedly carried out in the Ukraine. Fair enough, a reasonable question which the Russian diplomat struggled with, as would Laura with his reply. Without actually addressing the deeds carried out by the Russian army, which are little different apparently to those carried out by the Ukrainian armed forces, including the overtly Nazi Azov regiment, Mr Kelin pointed out that the shooting of “civilians had been going on for nine years prior to February 2022 by the Ukrainian Army in the Donetsk region and Luhansk which have Russian majorities in Eastern Ukraine”. To a large extent she ignored this point asking again about Russian atrocities to which the ambassador repeated his counterclaim which she once again ignored possibly on government instructions. What he was trying to say was the Russians went in as a response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians. Is this true? I know no more than anybody else including those who pretend to. What is true and does give the ambassador's claims some credibility is the presence of the Russian hating Nazis operating in the region.
What did appear pretty plain to me was Laura Kuenssberg with this interview, unlike the one with Mr Barclay, was running to a prearranged script. This may well have been written by the BBC bosses in conjunction with the British Government who in turn would have sought approval from Washington. It was not a transparent and free interview. When the ambassador asked; “why had the atrocities carried out by the Ukrainian Army against Russian people in the Donetsk not being reported in the British press” she shifted ground a little briefly acknowledging all atrocities are wrong in a very mumbled fashion. She did not address the issue as to why the actions of the Ukrainian armed forces in Eastern Ukraine had not been reported in the same way as those of the Russian Army in the British press or news. Unlike the prior interview with Steve Barclay about the health service and building, or not, of forty new hospitals which Mr Barclay was given ample opportunity to answer, this interview was very much anti-Russian. Laura did not, probably because she could not, answer the Russian Ambassador's counterclaims.
The Russian claims about Nazis in the Ukraine have recently been vindicated by President Zelenskyy’s reference to Russians as “near humans”. This is similar discourse to that used by the Third Reich describing the Russians as “Untermenschen” (sub-humans). This clip was on the news very, very briefly and not shown again - obviously it was not intended to be aired at all! This short clip unintended or otherwise shows once again the biased reporting we are subject to. What may have happened if an Editor had insisted Zelenskyy’s full speech about Russian being “near humans” be aired? I’ll leave that to the imagination.
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| Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist. |
Even Squinter had to make a public apology when he wrote an article criticising the Great Leader Gerry Adams...
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