The BBC’s Nick Robinson (a former chair of the Oxford University Conservative Association) has desperately tried to discredit independent media by saying that criticism of the BBC is so persistent that it’s negatively affecting public perceptions of mainstream media, and also accused independent media of living in a “social media bubble”.
I’ll tell you what really negatively affects people’s perceptions of the BBC. It’s stuff like the BBC politics editor Robbie Gibb moving directly from the supposedly impartial BBC directly to Theresa May’s propaganda team at 10 Downing Street, BBC journalists like Laura Kuenssberg fabricating fake news stories to attack Jeremy Corbyn and being allowed to get away with it without punishment, and the shockingly biased BBC coverage of stuff like the Scottish Independence referendum (massive anti-Independence bias that was obvious to all but the most rabid of Unionists) and the General Election debates (Jeremy Corbyn getting relentlessly grilled on his sticky subjects while Theresa May was tossed one ridiculous softball question after another).
As for living in bubbles, it’s not the diverse range of independent media journalists who are living in a deluded political bubble, it’s clearly the mainstream media journalists who operate in the cosy Westminster clique alongside the politicians they’re supposed to be holding to account.
How else is it possible to explain that the political class and Westminster bubble journos were both so ridiculously out of touch with the public mood that their only debate about Theresa May’s vanity election was whether she’d end up with a super-majority of 100+ or a mega-majority of 150+?
Mainstream media journalists have become so absorbed in the Westminster political bubble that they’ve ended up uncritically repeating the tropes that are circulating amongst the privileged political class (many of whom went to the exact same elitist private schools as they did) instead of actually trying to hold the political class to account for their actions.
All too often mainstream journos just regurgitate these delusional tropes from Westminster bubble as if they’re news, whilst basically ignoring the serious real life issues faced by ordinary people (the lower orders) like the unprecedented ongoing Tory wage slump since 2010, the systematic abuse of disabled people, the housing crisis, and the critical state of the NHS, the education system, local government services, and the rail network.
Their total immersion in the insular Westminster bubble perspective is the reason so many mainstream media journos were flabbergasted and completely incapable of understanding how Theresa May lost her majority on election night.
The gradual realisation that independent media had a significant role to play in the result that took the mainstream journos by such surprise has got them fired up and angry.
They’re furious because they see themselves as the true and only legitimate gatekeepers of public opinion, and they can’t stand the idea that uppity plebs from ordinary backgrounds are now using social media to influence public opinion away from the predetermined news agenda favoured by the elitist establishment class of Westminster politicians, mainstream media hacks, and corporate fat cats.
People like Nick Robinson are outraged because they tried every propaganda trick in the book to guide the public into handing Theresa May a huge parliamentary majority, but we didn’t do as we were told, shopping around for news that better matches our own perception of reality than the ludicrous tropes that emanate from the Westminster bubble and get magnified by the BBC and the rest of the mainstream media.
Just hours after Robinson fearfully aimed both barrels at independent media the Tories shot a massive great hole in his already sinking argument by parachuting the former chair of the BBC Trust Rona Fairhead into the unelected House of Lords to take up a ministerial position in Theresa May’s government!
How on earth is anyone expected to believe that the BBC are actually an impartial public service broadcaster when these days they’re obviously more of a fertile recruiting ground for new members of the Tory government than an institution committed to holding the Tory government to account?
But Robinson and his ilk would have you believe that any critical coverage of the revolving door between the BBC and the Tory party, or the desperately deteriorating standard of BBC political coverage, is some kind of nasty conspiracy spread by sinister forces who are intent on upsetting the natural order of things.
As far as they’re concerned the intimate relationship between the BBC and the Tory government is all above board and nothing to worry about.
And it’s this complacency and complicity that is the main reason that their influence is being gradually eroded by independent media journalists who cover politics from outside the confines of the insidious Westminster bubble
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!
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