Many have accused the BBC of 'bias' for failing to cover Saturday's anti-austerity march which took place in Central London. So are they right?
Many have accused the BBC of ‘bias’ for failing to cover an anti-austerity march. So are they right?
Many have accused the BBC of ‘bias’ for failing to cover Saturday’s anti-austerity march which took place in Central London.
So are they right? Well yes and no. Media bias is one factor, but there are also other less encouraging reasons which explain the media’s relative disinterest. Here are four:
Protests (on their own) rarely achieve anything
Protest has its place but on its own it rarely achieves a great deal. Paradoxically it tends to work better in those places in the world where it is forbidden: the heavy handedness of the authorities can often result in protests swelling to millions of people. In authoritarian states protest is also a revolutionary act. In liberal democratic Britain it isn’t.
That’s not to say that protest is pointless; but it would be naive to overestimate its possible impact. Much like the newspaper sellers who hang around these events, those who cling to the idea that peaceful marches in Central London can make a huge impact haven’t adapted to a changed world: online activism is far more effective at reaching a large audience than marching through the Capital. It’s also less tainted by any association with the strange people who sometimes hang around the fringes of protests, such as these people.
This specific argument has been lost
For better or worse, the anti-austerity argument was lost back in 2010. Since late 2013 a majority of people have also told pollsters that austerity is actually good for the economy: 42 per cent now say cuts are good for the economy while 37 per cent say they are bad.
One needn’t confer respectability on an idea simply because it is popular, but it does perhaps help to explain why the media failed to give Saturday’s protest the level of coverage the organisers believe it deserved. There is no longer a mainstream anti-austerity narrative. The Tories and the Lib Dems are making cuts, Labour are going to make cuts and no one who isn’t is going to get anywhere near power anytime soon. As far as the media is concerned the debate is over.
There comes a point when sound and fury aren’t enough
People want to know what the protesters would do instead, and they feel they aren’t getting it. ‘No cuts’, declared the banners on Saturday. But no cuts invariably mean tax increases. ‘Tax the rich,’ I can hear you say. Fine, lots of us would like the rich to pay a higher proportion of their income in taxation; but why pretend this is a panacea?
Peter Mandelson famously said that Labour was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”, and left-wing critics of previous Labour governments have picked up on this quote as an example of Labour servility to the well off. What critics forget is that, in a globalised economy, it’s actually quite hard to tax the rich ‘until the pips squeak’, to use former Labour chancellor Denis Healey’s phraseology, firstly because the rich would probably leave the country, taking their businesses, tax revenue and jobs with them. You may profess not to care about such things, but whether you like it or not you still need money to pay for services and the like.
As the Laffer Curve demonstrates, increasing tax rates beyond a certain point is counter-productive for raising further tax revenue. The big challenge for the left in the 21st century will be figuring out how to tax the rich progressively transnationally, because a nation state-based approach is no longer enough.
There is some media bias at work
But this is less because of a deliberate decision to exclude anti-austerity protests, and more because of the class backgrounds of many journalists. British journalism already favours the rich, powerful and glamorous over the poor, weak and unfashionable, journalist and author Peter Oborne wrote a few years back, and having little invested in the services this government is cutting means that many journalists slip effortlessly into narratives of the cuts being “inevitable” and austerity coming as a consequence of “runaway government spending”.
This problem is being exacerbated as journalism becomes the preserve of the upper-middle classes due to unpaid internships and the collapse of many local newspapers.
So yes, there is bias, but not in the way many think.
74 Responses to “The real reasons the media didn’t cover Saturday’s anti-cuts march”
Juan P
An independent Scotland would need only a fraction of the armed forces it currently has.
Al Qaeda don’t even know where Wick is let alone want to invade it.
ISIS are not, despite what the BBC might start telling us in the next couple of months, planning an all out assault on Arbroath.
Why would Scotland want to have a disproportionately large army, navy or air force? A similar sized defence capability as most other small European countries would suit Scotland fine.
Juan P
Corporation tax has been cut by almost every government including Labour. Possibly twice under Gordon Brown?
I don’t agree with cutting corporation tax and that is a proposal of the SNPs which I disagree with.
I mentioned that the SNP are far from perfect though in my earlier post and would welcome a strong and honest opposition from any other political party as things stand, let alone in an independent Scotland if the SNP won the first election.
It is also disingenuous to suggest that the Scottish Government, of any political persuasion under devolution, can truly offset policy dictated to Scotland by Westminster.
Yes, I agree that steps can be taken by the SG to mitigate the attacks on the poorest and most vulnerable in society but usually only at the cost of diluting the disproportionately small (given we contribute more to the Treasury than we take and have done for each of the last 33yrs) amount of pocket money handed to us by London.
If Scotland were independent we wouldn’t have to mitigate against disastrous Westminster policies. We wouldn’t create and implement them in the first place. The bedroom tax is a case in point.
I’ve also never said that the first day of independence will see the end of austerity. It will be the start of a long process of hard work and dedication to get the country back on track. At least we’ll be doing it under our own steam and self governance though.
In terms of the Union it’s been very obviously unsuccessful in Scotland for decades.
How is a government in London pissing away oil wealth that could have been used to tackle inequality and poverty in the best interests of the people of Scotland? Compare and contrast us with Norway where the biggest headache they have is frittering away too much of their vast wealth away on plans to replace the oil industry once it eventually runs out.
How is the destruction of industry, the lack of investment in infrastructure, atrocious levels of child poverty and Scotland having the lowest life expectancy in the UK good for Scotland?
I have lived in Scotland all of my life and have grown up in and worked in communities where the “success of the union” is nowhere to be seen in day to day life for the vast majority of people.
That is a stark reality for many in Scotland and if the union ever was truly successful for the average Scot it was in times long consigned to history.
Independence is only an opportunity to change things for the better but it will at least provide people with that chance to effect change. The power will rest with the people to choose the government that best represents their interest and people in Scotland will be guaranteed the government they vote for after each and every election.
That is something which can never be guaranteed by voting no.
P.s. Of course independence is irreversible. That’s the whole point.
Sundial
Some interesting points, especially the last one, about the more deep-rooted media bias, however, as has been noted here, the rest is rather – err – off.
Since when does the media report about protest base on its result?? 50, maybe even 500, people marching is not big news, but 50,000 people marching to parliament surely warrants a mention. Hey, there were even celebrities there. If the “ever-so controversial” Russel Brand calling for a evolution doesn’t get a mention , someone is really trying hard to ignore this.
While the “all the rich people will take their money elsewhere if we dare touch them” argument might work for small countries, Britain is a centre of world finance. not that the rest of the country sees a whole lot of benefit from that…
And before we increase taxation on the rich (which I am all for) , how about starting by just collecting the money they, and corporations, actually owe under today’s rates?
alshaw
The logic of the argument (about how to achieve taxation of the super rich) appears to be an increasingly connected inter-governmental system of regulation and control across the world. Apart from the civil liberties implications of that model, there are also issues of efficiency and practicality. An alternative approach would see a shift away from income tax and a move towards taxation of assets (particularly physical assets such as land/property.) Such assets, of course, are harder to hide away in offshore accounts.
Stephen Gash
England was being hammered long before the austerity programme started. Labour’s devolution was designed specifically to target England. The only way English people can reverse the apartheid enacted against them is to demand, and ultimately establish, an English parliament. The British establishment, British (there are no English) media and trade union movement are pathologically anti-English, so all things British must be erased for English people to prosper.