Will the same papers do this for Tory conference too?
As the country’s right-wing press sharpens its cutlery ahead of Jeremy Corbyn’s speech to Labour conference, it’s worth noticing how coverage of the event already displays bias along political lines – and to keep this handy when the Conservative party conference is covered next week.
Consider this your cut-out-and-keep guide to newspaper bias this conference season.
Here are five general trends to watch out for:
1. Prominence – while the Left-leaning Mirror and Guardian have treated the Labour conference as a national story worthy of their front page, most of the conservative press has kept the conference off page 1 (Times, Daily Mail, Daily Express), or relegated it to second or third story (Telegraph).
This is on the morning after Labour’s shadow chancellor gave a speech laying out the party’s economic policies.
One exception is the Sun, which melds its stablemate paper the Times’s splash about Mars with the conference to attack and ridicule the new Labour administration.
This is not the first time this has happened. Earlier this year the Times kept the Labour party’s general election manifesto off the front page, where the Tory manifesto was featured positively.
Will the same newspapers keep the Tory conference off of page 1 next week?
2. Hostile editorials – while the Sun’s front page story is more an opinion column than news coverage, the dedicated editorial pages of the other newspapers are already pummeling the Labour conference.
The Mail’s columns are perhaps the most robust, though supposedly more serious papers like the Telegraph are not far behind.
As ever, this partisan coverage is written with the general public’s best interest at heart…
Will the same newspapers be as critical of the Tory conference, or will they write as critical supporters of the party?
3. Irreverence and mockery – As the Sun recently proved, mockery of politicians (an important practice) is not something the press applies without prejudice. Political sketches of the Labour conference and newspaper cartoons will similarly ridicule Labour with more gusto – today’s Sun front page being a good example.
Can we expect the same treatment for the Tory conference?
4. Ideas described as out of date – Economic, social and defence policies floated by Labour are called old-fashioned and a ‘return to the 1980s/70s’, despite their being the roughly the same vintage as those of the Tories.
Will the policies of the Conservative party be characterised as a return to the past?
5. Splits and disagreements amplified – There is certainly a big gulf between different tendencies within the Labour party over its direction with Corbyn at the helm.
But as the Tory top brass jostle for position (who was the MP and Oxford contemporary who gave Lord Ashcroft the pig story…?) ahead of their own leadership election before 2020, and as splits over the European Union bubble on, threatening to cripple David Cameron’s EU referendum campaign, their conference will surely yield plenty of comparable material.
Will the papers explore (and revel in) these warring factions within the Tory party?
Now it’s over to the papers. Let’s see how their coverage of the Tory conference resolves these questions.
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Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
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49 Responses to “Five examples of biased press coverage of the Labour party conference”
Dave Stewart
Right lets challenge some of your ill conceived ideas. approximately 97% of money in circulation is created by private banks when then make loans out of nothing (the magic money tree is you will). That means that it is private banks that get to decide how that new money is used and get to profit from it. Primarily it goes into property and financial assets such as derivatives which while they make banks lots of money actively destabilize our economy. If you don’t believe me I suggest you read a bank of England report call “Money creation in the modern economy”, I’m sure you can google it.
Furthermore as has been previously pointed since the 2008 crash £375 billion has been created by quantitative easing which has almost exclusively been used to pay down banks balance sheets and further non-productive speculation. It is estimated that some 40% of the benefit of this QE has gone to the top 5% wealthiest household because they are most likely to hold financial and property assets and the money created has only stoked these rather than actually do anything productive, you know like building hospitals or factories. So if you like th emagic money tree terminology you could say that thanks to Osbourne and the Bank of England the magic money tree has been used for the betterment of the already wealthy.
What Corbyn has suggested is that this same process of QE (not printing money as that is far too simplistic and explanation of what QE entails, if you want to know I’m sure you’re capable of googling it yourself) could be used to provide investment in actual productive things such as national infrastructure and investment in public services. Building and upgrading much needed infrastructure for everyones benefit (especially private business) will employ people (reducing the welfare bill) and if done smartly greatly support British business through the supply chain and contracting work. So again back to the money tree, Corbyns suggestion does not actually stop private banks from creating money and capturing the benefits form this process but it does allow government (and indirectly everyone, including business) to benefit from the creation of a relative of this new money from the magic money tree.
I fail to see how anyone could be against such a proposal given that it makes so much sense. Also before you go on about inflation, I will respond. Current levels of inflation in historically very very lo (same as interest rates), obviously under any fiscal expansion it is necessary to monitor the level of inflation to be sure that it is not stoked too much. However Corbyn has never once said that this policy would be a free for all or that it would go on indefinitely. Those words have been put in his mouth by people opposed to his ideas. Also I presume that you as a businessman understand the importance of borrowing to fund investment in order to secure greater future growth. Why may I ask you does this make sense for a business but not a nation?
stevep
I don`t smoke, Wolfie, Tobacco or anything else. Never have done, never will.
I`m very happy that you are a successful businessman and even happier that you seem to employ a good number of people.
But I don`t represent you or other wealthy people who think the world is their oyster and everyone else who disagrees must be deluded.
I represent the 13 million people living in Britain who live on a day-today basis below the poverty line who think a slice of the cake would be very nice. That includes many of the self-employed who don`t appear to be as “entrepreneurial” as you are.
As for joining the 21st century, we have a Government who are hell-bent on returning Britain to the 19th century, socially
and economically, so I wouldn`t lecture too much about that, if I were you.
As for dinosaurs, they lived for millions of years quite happily until a catastrophic event intervened. I doubt the human race has the same tenacity for survival. In fact, if we don`t learn to live together and share our dwindling resources, I don`t give us long at all.
As far as “Free” markets are concerned, they have reduced more people to penury than made them wealthy. There`s very little of “Free” about them.
The Landed, the wealthy, the big corporations etc. live in a sort of wealthy almost-socialist club where state handouts, tax breaks, tax havens, benefits to the poor so profits aren’t disturbed soften the blow of being a millionaire. The rest of us have the Free market inflicted on us nationally and globally with the economic chaos that comes with it and billions have to live with.
Very skewed and unequal.
I don`t care for yachts either and I get sick.
Sick of poverty, sick of inequality, sick of decent people not able to find decent jobs, sick of the lack of democracy and accountability in this country, sick of government attacks on the most vulnerable in our society.
But most of all I am sick to my stomach of millionaires trying to deny it`s happening.
Freedom for the democratic republic of Tooting, Wolfie.
stevep
Trying very hard not to patronise, it would be too easy.
No, I`m not a failure, neither are the millions of people who quietly go about their work and daily business. That`s just your perception. A sadly skewed one.
The wealthy and powerful in any form of society have used oral traditions and later, the written word to keep themselves empowered and everyone else in check.
From Monks hand-copying manuscripts to the invention of the printing press, the written word was a source of power and mystery, coveted by the few and denied to most others.
Literacy was almost a way into a form of secret society.
Like I mentioned, the printing press made it easier to spread the written word, as long as you could read Latin.
Assuming a universal standard of literacy,If you are able to control what people read you can control how they think. If the newspaper is the only route to information, then you are in a position of power. All dictators understood that.
Most people in the UK were barely literate well into the 20th century.
The consumer society, where people could buy things on a whim has only been with us since the late 1950`s. The media used advertising as their form of propaganda to encourage people to buy things they never new they wanted. A new form of power and control.
People only essentially believe what they are encouraged to believe by parents, friends, society, the media.
If the media had little influence on people then the entire advertising industry wouldn`t exist. They know all the psychological tricks in the book about how easily people are influenced.
it`s great we`ve got the internet in the last few years, the information age has really just begun. We can get information from anywhere, instantly.
That`s why the elite and their sycophants won`t keep the lid on thing for much longer, despite their best efforts.
That`s why Labour will be in a far stronger position than currently given credit for.
See ya Wolfie.
Plutocracy for Tooting!
woolfiesmiff
I read the first line of your rant, it is totally and utterly incorrect and shows you know NOTHING about money and how it works.
Your complete failure to understand how current QE works, Hint its the Gilts market, is woeful. The last Labour Govt along with this Tory Govt has BORROWED huge amounts of money from the banking system in order to INCREASE public sector spending ( go look up the figures). This is UNSUSTAINABLE. Try googling Weimar Republic, Zimbabwe or Venezuela for lessons in why this doesn’t work
QE is BORROWING money from Banks and achieves EXACTLY what YOU railed against in your opening sentence . Thats why Peoples QE won’t work as it will just run up MORE debt ( to banks) & a LARGER deficit . If what you said was remotely correct there would be absolutely NO REASON to tax anyone anything . Good grief
There is ONE WAY and one way only to increase wealth in the economy and that is to develop businesses, increase productivity, increase overseas exports of manufactured goods and services and to create more jobs. Everything else is rearranging deck chairs .
Your question
“Also I presume that you as a businessman understand the importance of borrowing to fund investment in order to secure greater future growth. Why may I ask you does this make sense for a business but not a nation?”
This on the face of it is a reasonable question so let me try and answer that with an example.
A business borrows say £1m to develop a new car emissions software system. If ( and its a big risk) they manage to produce a piece of software that the market wants, they then have a UNIQUE product at a premium selling price. So they sell 2000 units at £1000 each, they make enough to pay back the loan and interest and to grow the business. At that stage as other players enter the market they can afford to reduce the unit cost as their overheads have diminished and expand their market and therefore their business grows.
If the government borrows £1m to improve a road. They have NOTHING with which to directly recoup the capital cost and interest. They hope that the road will enable more people to use it in order to generate more business that might result in more tax revenue ( which is the governments only source of income), that tax revenue will then be used to pay down the cost and interest. Now heres the kicker the cost of product development is totally different to infrastructure. You see whilst you might enhance a product using the pre tax profit generated by a product, infrastructure requires ongoing cost of maintenance which you have to fund by either significantly raising taxes and or borrowing even more. Yes of course one of the main reasons we have a public sector at all is to provide that essential infrastructure however someone HAS to pay for it. It is a well established point that it is paid for by the consumer. Therefore tax is recouped in VAT and duty on fuel, VED etc. This 1) impacts the poorer members of society and 2) Can cause revenue to diminish as less people can afford to pay the costs and fewer people use the service. So it comes down to what in business is called ROI and that is a calculation you make before you can borrow the money. The government has NO legitimate way of estimating the return on investment in infrastructure.
In order for the government to have investment like a business they would have to build things like a road or airport which they then DIRECTLY charged the consumer to use, i.e. toll roads ( which is exactly how our original road network was built) or an airport usage levy.
See the House of Commons report into this here
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmpubacc/406/406.pdf
Please let me know how much money Corbyn is going to borrow, what he is “investing” it in, what the total cost of that borrowing will be and by what date we will have paid back the capital and interest and start as you say “earning ” from it.
I’m answering your question about the difference between business investment and government investment. I’m NOT saying that the government should never engage in infrastructure development ( it is clearly a major role of government)
As to me reading the BoE report ha ha if only you knew….Lol
Harold
Borrow even more what do you mean? Osbourne has borrowed more than all the Labour Governments combined, to achieve what, even more than the last one between 2005/10 who had to bail out the banks as well. If I heard the speeches right it was to balance current spending, which was Labour Policy as far back as Snowden in the 20’s then borrow at the really low interest rates for Capital Investment, or should we ask the Chines to fund it? Secondly how much money has been printed under QE? Clue it runs to billions. Thirdly I thought I heard the only Part Leader who has spoke up about supporting the industries which employ 1-9 as a workforce, not like the present Government who in the last couple of budgets have introduced measures which will happen the small business world. If ordinary people think Corbyn is deluded might they also be the same people who believe Osbourne has a plan and the economy is doing well?