Vocal Voices

It's a funny thing. Whenever a politician looks like they might be in with a sniff of power, and they are not deemed acceptable by the media, they get an absolute mountain of abuse heaped on them.

It doesn't matter if they are right wing like Marine Le Pen, or Donald Trump, or left wing like Jeremy Corbyn. If they don't confirm to the stereotype that the media demands, they get a merciless slagging.

Whereas with someone like Tony Blair, who was involved in the invasion of a country resulting in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people, never even got asked a difficult question in all his time in office.

Strange.

That's a real $64 question, Cromwell.

We are certainly seeing it with May at the moment. She is still in a honeymoon period with the media and nobody ever asks her a hard question. And even when she gives a fluffy answer to a relatively easy one she is never pressed, it is left to slide.

However, things are changing. Social media and blogging means that the traditional 'press' is called out by us ordinary folk a lot more than it ever was.

The media are companies, in general, responsible to shareholders who are, in a large part, equity funds. They are, in their own right, massive corporations. They do as they are told. Blair filled the BBC with his cronies and they knew what was expected... Control the news.

Anyone who says "big business and equity funds are going to pay for my spending spree" are going to get short shrift in the media.

Anyone with a private pension should look at the Labour manifesto with horror. Unfortunately most people with private pensions don't even have the slightest clue what the Labour manifesto would do to their pension.

One of the biggest changes Maggie did, outside of council houses, was to make it profitable to invest in your retirement. Which many working class people did. Anyone who attacks that retirement fund to fuel a vote buying splurge in government spending is going to find their votes going elsewhere.

So the media challenge and question. May is a known quantity, she's not going to damage business, she's not going to damage the economy, she's not going to go crazy. The main thing she is going to do is make sure that we exit the EU and that EU punitive and damaging conditions do not apply in our emergence to the world markets.

The others? Hard questions have to be asked and the answers are, generally, not pretty.

Ah yes, the media companies being "owned" by other big companies and following a particular line has been going on forever. They told us what to think, and we complied.

That is all changing in the information age. People blogging or posting on social media are overwhelmingly not "owned" by anyone. They are largely anti-capitalist and anti-media and refuse to toe any line. There are of course "plants" put there by "right (correct) thinking" groups to keep us on the straight and narrow but they get called out again and again.

Whether they like it or not the media and their backers are going to have to live with the new order.

Workingman wrote:Ah yes, the media companies being "owned" by other big companies and following a particular line has been going on forever. They told us what to think, and we complied.

That is all changing in the information age.

It is, which is why there is all the screaming and hollering over "fake news", ie any news not put out by the mainstream media. There is going to be a battle waged over controlling the internet using excuses like banning "hate speech", and it won't be pretty.

Don't worry, the Tories are going to "control" the Internet so there won't be a problem with "fake news", there will just be "news" and it will be up to you to work out if it's right or not by going to other countries like Russia or China to verify it. Oh, Wait, I have to do that today already....

Well at least it will give Labour something to campaign for in 5 years time. They might even be almost worth trusting by then, for one term at least. If Corbyn is gone.