The voice of the people is a ventriloquist's dummy
The Daily Mail was doing populism before it was cool, affecting to speak with the vox populi, standing up for ordinary people and speaking truth to power.
Except, of course, when it wants the proles to fall in line and swallow whatever vat of reactionary tripe is being poured on them from Westminster.
This morning, in it’s ‘coverage’ of Theresa May’s Brexit speech, far from asking the tough questions and bravely championing the interests of its readers against received wisdom or government scheming, the Mail has chosen to hail the Prime Minister as a sort of superhero.
It’s headline reads:
“STEEL OF THE NEW IRON LADY
On the momentous day Theresa May said Britain WILL leave the single market, she put Cameron’s feeble negotiations to shame with an ultimatum to Brussels: We’ll walk away from a bad deal and make EU pay”
What follows is a pro-May editorial (‘In an iron-willed speech…’ etc.) disguised as a news story, paired with a cartoon of the Prime Minister looking like a cross between John Bull and Pippi Longstocking.
Cartoon May is standing, head back, hands on hips, looking ou defiantly from the White Cliffs of Dover, with a Union Jack flowing behind her in the breeze and an EU flag crushed beneath her feet.
Again, this is on the front of a national newspaper for grown-ups, not run by the government, in a relatively free country, where the press prides itself in its fierce independence.
With papers like this, who needs PR?
Adam Barnett is staff writer for Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter @AdamBarnett13
See: Michael Gove’s fawning Donald Trump interview proves he’s no journalist
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