The UK right wing press: news or propaganda? The Boris domestic story.

Some background for non-UK readers. The contest for the next leader of the Conservative party, and therefore our next Prime Minister, is now between two: Boris Johnson and someone else. Johnson is the clear favourite to win. Johnson has a pretty colourful love life, such that uncertainty about how many children he has produced is a talking point.

Last week neighbours of Johnson’s current girlfriend heard screaming, crashing and shouting coming from her home very late at night. One particular neighbour, Mr. Penn, knocked on the door but there was no response. He then rang the police, who quickly came to the property. The police were satisfied that all occupants were OK, they had no concerns and left. One other neighbour described the earlier noise as so bad they thought someone had been murdered.

That would have been that, except that one of those neighbours, a Mr. Penn, contacted the Guardian about the story, and had also switched on his phone inside the flat when the noises started. The reason he gave for contacting the Guardian was simply that the story was of public interest. The Guardian rang the police and they initially said there was no incident that night. When the Guardian rang back with further details the police corroborated the story.

The story was of course of public interest. It was on the front page of every newspaper the next day, including the right wing press. So far, the right wing press were acting as proper newspapers. It is what happened next that tells a more interesting tale. Mr. Penn decided to go public (the Guardian had kept his identity secret) because

“The unpleasant things being said about myself and my partner, and some quite frankly bizarre and fictitious allegations, have been upsetting for not only us, but also for family, friends and fellow Camberwell neighbours, who are currently being harangued by the media. I would ask that you leave private citizens alone and focus instead on those who have chosen to run for power within the public eye.The attempts from some areas of the press to instead focus their stories on us, and in particular my wife, have been eye-opening, and very alarming.”

Here is a headline from the Mail the day after the incident hit the front pages that gives you a flavour of what he meant.

“'Leftist' millionaire's daughter whose playwright husband called police on Boris after recording screaming bust-up 'gave the finger' to PM-hopeful in the street - as it's revealed Johnson's girlfriend Carrie no longer feels safe at home.”

Here is some more from the text:

“Most curious of all is what the couple did – and why they did it – after they were assured by police that there was nothing to worry about, that no one was hurt, no crime had been committed and that there was no cause for further action. At this point many in their position might have slunk away, faintly embarrassed they had dropped their neighbours (with whom they share a tiny communal landing) in it with police.”

Other right wing newspapers joined in. The Times searched through Mr.Penn and his wife’s twitter accounts to find ‘incriminating evidence’ that they were Remainers, left wing, disliked Johnson and so on. The Telegraph gave two pages over to comment of a similar kind.

The hypocrisy of the follow up reporting had two aims. The first was to distract attention away from the fact, which no one denies, that Johnson had had a blazing row with his girlfriend that frightened many neighbours and to instead focus attention on the messengers. The implication of rather a lot of the reporting is that if you hear a woman screaming next door best keep it to yourself. The hypocrisy is that every newspaper had run the story as a front page lead the day before, so Mr. Penn had been absolutely correct that the story was of public interest.

The second aim is to ensure that any other member of the public that might have potentially important information about a Tory politician that was in the public interest keeps it to themselves. They will keep it to themselves because they know that if they reveal it they will have the full might of the Tory press trying to destroy their character in the days after the information was revealed.

Adam Ramsey describes this as anti-journalism, but I think that does not fully describe what is going on. If it had been a Labour politician of any rank these same journalists would have gone to any length to find the dirt on the politician, and not reward their sources by investigating them as well. What these newspapers are doing is propaganda: providing information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, designed to promote a political cause or point of view.

Why have these papers not yet descended to the level of Fox News in pretending bad things (for Trump) did not happen? These papers know that most of their readers will get their news from one of the broadcasters as well. If they are not reporting what is a top story for these broadcasters their bias is all too obvious. They cannot hide the story that is embarrassing to one of their own, but they can do their best to prevent similar stories in the future never seeing the light of day.

Mr. Penn and his partner have left their flat after receiving a large number of death threats as a result of this newspaper coverage. Our right wing propaganda machines has achieved its goal. 

The right wing partisan media is the elephant in the room in discussions of mainstream politics and far right extremism

Treason used to be a word associated with spies or assassins. Crimes against the state of the utmost severity. Yet, to take just two recent examples, here is an article in the Sun describing how “Treacherous Theresa” has surrendered our freedom. “May's name will rank alongside those of the worst eels in Western history - and she deserves it”. Cross the Atlantic, and here is a presenter at Fox News calling for the "the traitorous treasonous group that accused Donald Trump" to be locked up. “True justice” she calls it.

It seems that the word treason is now being used to describe the actions of a Prime Minister the writer disagrees with, or to describe a legal inquiry that successfully prosecuted a number of individuals who were once close to the President of the United States. How does this escalation of language happen, and does it matter? To understand both questions we need to start with what links these two examples. The are both from media outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch.

As a detailed analysis of the Murdoch dynasty by Mahler and Rutenberg of the New York Times shows, Rupert Murdoch created, and runs with the help of his sons, a supremely successful media empire. Media businesses in particular are subject to regulations, and part of Murdoch’s success has been to get round those regulations. As Mahler and Rutenberg write: “Murdoch’s news empire is a monument to decades’ worth of transactional relationships with elected officials.” These are not always right wing politicians, as his support for Tony Blair showed, but they tend to be, reflecting Murdoch’s own situation and views.

Murdoch is not part of a long-standing establishment but rather the opposite. In that sense he is a particularly influential example of what we could call the neoliberal elite that Aeron Davis describes so well in his book ‘Reckless opportunists: Elites at the end of the Establishment’. But why would someone like Murdoch, and the UK’s other press barons, be happy with people employed by their media organisations using inflammatory language like ‘treasonous’ in their papers?

The standard response of many people in the media to a question like this is that it sells newspapers. Newspapers or radio stations or TV channels like Fox are just expressing the views of their readers. There is no doubt that is partly true, but the reality is that this is a two-way relationship. The media reflects the views of those that read or see it, but it also shapes those views. The excuse that media just reflects their audience’s opinions cannot be used to absolve those media outlets of responsibility for what is said or written there.

There is now overwhelming academic evidence that the media can have a potentially powerful influence on what those who consume it think and do. A particularly interesting and powerful recent study by two economists looked at US cable channels, which remain the main source of news on political campaigns even in the digital age. They isolate viewers who view these channels just because of their place in the channel ordering, rather than because their political preferences seek out particular channels, in order to look at how influential the channel was.

They find that the existence of Fox News boosted the Republican vote share in 2000 by about 0.5%, which fits with another study that used a different method to isolate the influence of Fox. However the growing viewership and increasingly right wing stance of Fox increased its impact on the Republican vote share in 2008 to a huge 6%, which was far bigger than the influence of any other channel. An equally interesting finding is that the political stance of Fox is far to the right of where it should be to maximise viewers. In other words Fox is broadcasting material that maximises its ability to shift its audience to the right, rather than to maximise its profits.

Unfortunately there are no studies yet of Trump’s election, but it seems very likely that the influence of Fox was crucial in his victory over Clinton. In the primaries Fox had a more critical view of Trump, perhaps because Murdoch did not think he was up to the job. Mahler and Rutenberg found three sources who reported Murdoch saying “He’s a [expletive] idiot” about Trump, although Murdoch’s spokesman denies this. It was ironically other broadcasters that gave Trump much more coverage than his opponents, because he was “good TV”. Reporters then talked favourably about Trump, simply because he was gaining vote share. After it was clear he would win, Murdoch saw his chance to form a close relationship to a US President. That influence is now so strong that one recent article in the New Yorker was entitled “The Making of the Fox News White House” (HT @rupertww).

Would this level of influence also apply to the UK press? There is every reason to think so. For example this study found that when Murdoch’s Sun switched support to Labour, it increased Labour’s vote in 1997 by 2%. That was not enough to influence the result, but when the Sun switched back to the Conservatives in 2010 that had a similar impact in the opposite direction, which was enough to influence that result. Newspapers influence attitudes towards austerity, and the best predictor of attitudes on immigration is newspaper readership. I note other studies with a similar message here.

There is no doubt that both Trump and Brexit reflect deep underlying causes. What the media is able to do is help direct those causes in particular ways. To again quote Mahler and Rutenberg: “The Murdoch empire did not cause this [populist] wave. But more than any single media company, it enabled it, promoted it and profited from it.” Given the narrowness of Trump’s victory and the Brexit majority, it is extremely likely that Fox News and the Brexit press were respectively the difference between defeat and victory.

Once we accept that the media can have an influence on mainstream politics, it would be very surprising if it did not also influence the political fringe. We should be shocked at soldiers using a photograph of the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition for target practice, but we cannot just put this down to soldiers expressing their personal views about Corbyn’s attitude to Nato and his past associations. What legitimises in soldiers’ eyes doing this is the constant demonisation of him in the press. The press both reflects and influences.

More serious than target practice, Corbyn was the intended target of the man responsible for the terrorist attack at Finsbury Park mosque. A Labour MP, Jo Cox, was murdered during the Brexit campaign, and a member of a far right organisation plotted to kill another, and many MPs have received credible death threats. According to Britain’s counter-terrorism chief, the man responsible for the Finsbury Park attack was “driven to an act of terror by far-right messaging he found mostly on mainstream media”. As Gary Younge writes, the threat from far right terrorism is growing alarmingly and while “the violence may come from the fringes, the encouragement comes from the centre.”

If you think the idea of terrorists being inspired by the mainstream media is fanciful, just listen to the extract from Fox I linked to in the first paragraph above. Of course this is an unintended effect of the extreme language the partisan media uses. Whether the rise of far right parties and groups is an unintended consequence is less clear, particularly when the BBC chooses to broadcast an interview with a far right leader straight after 49 people had been murdered in New Zealand. There is academic evidence that media coverage of far right groups like UKIP does increase support for these groups, and as I have already noted this is partly why Trump became the Republican candidate for President.

But the main reason for the language the partisan media is now using is to ‘fire up the base’, who in turn will influence politicians to do what the owners of this media want. This route of influence is well established in the US, which is why David Frum, former George W Bush speechwriter, says “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us. And now we’re discovering we work for Fox.” We are now seeing it happen over Brexit, as candidates who oppose No Deal are deselected and would-be leaders play to a base which is heavily influenced by the partisan press it reads.

There is one important difference between the UK and US, however. The US retains a widely read independent press that can discuss the influence of the media. In the UK, independent broadcasters would find that more difficult and in any case they mostly do not try. UK journalists tend not to talk about the partisan press as a key political player that can influence a party, perhaps in part because they would be talking about colleagues who work for that press. The myth that the media just reflects and does not influence is too convenient for many, so the media remains the elephant in the room in discussions about politics and political extremism in the UK.

Islamophobia and Antisemitism: a case study in BBC bias

In March and April, there was constant BBC coverage of Labour’s problems with antisemitism. One piece, in March, talked about a ‘saga’. I have no general problem with this coverage. Labour does have a problem, so it should be covered by the BBC. However there has been far less coverage of the problems the Conservative party has with Islamophobia. Is there an objective reason to justify this?

The antisemitism story was notable for two important reasons. First religious organisations had publicly complained. Second these complaints had been supported by prominent Labour figures. However exactly the same applies to Islamophobia. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) have called for an inquiry, as have other leaders and groups. Sayeeda Warsi, former co-chairman of the Conservative party, has repeatedly called for more action (the latest here).

But to suggest equivalence between the two stories is misleading. The Conservatives’ Islamophobia problem is a much bigger issue for two reasons. First, the senior Conservative Sajid Javid has attacked the MCB for harbouring members with unacceptable views on extremism and not representing Muslims. In contrast Labour leaders have not attacked the Jewish organisations in the same way (by saying, for example, that their views come from a pro-Israel stance), and have met directly with them. Whatever the truth of Javid’s claim about extremism, the charge that they are unrepresentative is rather undermined by an organisation affiliated to the Conservative party, the Conservative Muslim Forum, also calling for an inquiry. (Letter to Theresa May here.)

Second, while Labour has never to my knowledge run an anti-Jewish campaign to win a general or mayoral election, the Conservatives did exactly that against Sadiq Khan who is now mayor of London. David Cameron even libeled an ex-Imam in his attempts to link Khan to Muslim terrorism.

Thus on any objective criteria, the Conservative Islamophobia problem has been a more serious story than Labour antisemistism. Yet the balance on the BBC has been the other way around, with far more coverage of the latter than the former.

What is the source of the bias? One may be that BBC News tends to ‘follow the story’, which invariably means following stories in the press. Corbyn has few friends in the major press titles, whereas the Conservatives are openly supported be much of the press. Another, I’m afraid to say, is that the BBC is very reluctant to criticise the government on its own account, something that goes back many years.

Case studies such as these are critical in establishing that the media has a clear bias against the current Labour leadership. (There are others: this is rather fun, and also academic research: here for example) The BBC itself, which is deluged with criticism from all quarters, seems to find it difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. The classic line that because they get criticism from both sides they must be doing something right is nonsense. The political right in particular, because they know the BBC is sensitive to criticism, puts a lot of resources into criticising the BBC, and it will continue to do so whatever the BBC’s output.

All this presumes that Islamophobia and Antisemtism are viewed as equally bad. I personally think they should be, but unfortunately terrorism and Western wars in Islamic countries may have confused many people. Here is Sajid Javid again:

“All communities can do more to try and help deal with terrorists, try and help track them down. But I think it is absolutely fair to say that there is a special burden on Muslim communities because whether we like it or not these terrorists call themselves Muslims. It is no good for people to say they are not Muslims, that is what they call themselves. They do try to take what is a great peaceful religion and warp it for their own means.”

The idea that Muslims bear a ‘special burden’ has been the excuse used by the right wing press for consistent Islamophobia. When a member of the ‘non-Muslim community’ kills Muslims outside of a mosque, and says when arrested that he wanted to kill all Muslims, he is described by the Times as a mentally troubled lone-wolf, as if to emphasise that there is no special burden there. As in so many things, the irresponsibility of the right wing press has influenced sections of society for the worse. Perhaps it has also influenced the BBC.

The media and Attitudes to Austerity

One of the important features of austerity introduced into the UK from 2010 onwards, at a point when the economy had not shown any significant signs of recovery, is that it was popular. Indeed, as many people appeared to blame the previous Labour government for the need for austerity as the Coalition government actually implementing it, because the deficit had increased while Labour had been in power.

If we acknowledge, as we should, that austerity was the wrong policy to pursue, and that it had harmful effects on everyone (an average loss of around £10,000 per household according to my most recent estimate), why was this policy popular? Many people would argue that the macroeconomic case for fiscal stimulus was complex, while simple analogies between governments and households were easier to grasp. However I have also argued that the media played a large role in focusing on the latter and largely ignoring the former.

This is the issue addressed in a new paper by Lucy Barnes and Timothy Hicks in the American Journal of Political Science. (For those that cannot access this, here is a slightly earlier version.) They measure attitudes towards austerity on a simple scale, and then relate that attitude to party support and newspaper readership jointly.

The lower bars show that, for people with no party affiliation, attitudes to austerity were very different for Guardian readers compared to, say, Telegraph readers. In other words, a LibDem voter who read the Telegraph would be more hawkish about the deficit than one that read the Times. There are two explanations for this finding. The first is that how the newspaper was reporting issues around the deficit influenced readers. The paper verifies that the Guardian and Telegraph did report these issues in very different ways. The second is that readers choose their newspapers based on their attitudes to the deficit. This seems unlikely (remember these effects are over and above party affiliation), as austerity was a relatively new issue.

Nevertheless, the authors tried an experiment where it showed different groups a short text about the deficit, which differed in only one paragraph. A control group did not see the paragraph, a ‘Guardian’ group saw text which suggested that austerity might not be necessary, and a ‘Telegraph’ group saw text suggesting it was. Immediately after reading the text, each group was asked about their views about the importance of reducing the deficit.

The Guardian group (those that had read the Guardian type text) did indeed think austerity was less urgent than the control group. However those that had read the Telegraph style piece, which drew parallels with Greece, were no more pro-austerity than the control group. The paper notes that “a generally anti deficit discourse would result in little difference between control and ‘Telegraph’ groups, as indeed we find.” In other words the pervasive media discourse was pro-austerity, and so reading a pro-austerity text made no difference to people’s attitudes. Being exposed to Keynesian ideas, in contrast, did influence people.

So this research suggests two things. First, how the media presents issues like austerity matters because it influences public attitudes. Second, it suggests the general media climate in the UK was pro-austerity, and exposing people to Keynesian arguments could change their attitudes. The general media climate goes beyond newspapers, and includes broadcasters like the BBC. This suggests broadcasters were giving voice to an austerity agenda and deliberately excluding a Keynesian perspective. Which might be excusable if Keynesian economics and consequent anti-austerity views had been a fringe preoccupation, but in reality it was the view of the majority of academic economists. It seems broadcasters had become tired of experts long before Brexit.

Was Labour’s decision on EU immigration in 2004 a mistake?

The Labour government decided to let people from the A8 eastern and central European countries that had just joined the EU to have free access to the UK from 2004. Most other member countries delayed the point at which free movement from these countries was allowed. As a result, we had a large influx of migrants from Poland and other countries from 2004.

The received wisdom seems to be that this was a huge mistake. Jack Straw called it a spectacular mistake. Ed Miliband said the government had got it wrong. I’m reminded of this by Ian Jack, who recently in the Guardian gave us eight reasons that we ended up with Brexit. One was that decision by Labour. He writes

“immigration had begun to die as a political issue until, in 2004, Tony Blair’s government decided to open the UK labour market to the eight eastern and central European countries that had joined the EU.”

Here is data on UK immigration and Ipsos-Mori’s running poll on how many people think immigration is an important issue. (You can see data on all the issues here.)

It is certainly true that immigration has ceased to be viewed as an important issue (blue line) in the late 1990s. But immigration’s importance as an issue rose dramatically not from 2004, but well before 2004. From 2004 to 2008 it increased a little, but then declined as worries about the economy took centre stage.

This does not fit Jack’s story about a dead issue reignited by immigration from the EU in 2004, unless voters were anticipating the decision. It seems more likely that voters were responding the large increase in non-EU immigration that happened after Labour came to power, as the chart below shows.

But even that seems improbable: did it really take people a few years to notice. Here I show that there is a variable whose timing correlates with the increasing importance of immigration as an issue with only a slight lead: news stories about immigration. I give lots of evidence that suggests that the relationship is causal: press coverage about immigration, which in most papers is invariably negative, causes people to say immigration is an important issue.

Once you allow the press to have an important causal role on attitudes, and as I describe here there is good evidence that they do, the story that the 2004 decision was a big mistake can be seen in a different light. What we can say is that high immigration from the late 90s allowed the press to write about immigrants flooding the country, and the 2004 decision allowed them to say the same thing about EU immigrants after 2004. But then the 2004 decision is only a mistake because newspapers weaponised it.

To his credit Jack does list among his eight reasons for Brexit the UK press, and suggests as I have done that the difference between the vote in England and Scotland owes something to the press being “far more rabid” in England. Our rabid right wing press were always going to weaponize EU immigration whenever it happened. Labour could only have delayed A8 immigration until 2011. That would still have given newspapers plenty of time to write negative stories about EU immigrants before the referendum in 2016, as they of course did in spades. As immigration from the EU between 2004 and 2011 is likely to have provided economic benefits for natives, it is not obvious that the 2004 decision was a mistake at all.