I saw Polly Toynbee on the telly the other day
and, following the ‘Milibrand’ interview where Ed made clear he felt the power
of the media was not as it once was, the question was asked, ‘do our media
organisations affect the way we vote?’ Polly gave a yes. Her fellow guests on
the telly that day didn’t. So, does our media push public opinion?
Well, Nigel Farage seems to be worried it.
Specifically about the way BBC have treated him and his party throughout this
campaign. Yesterday in he pointed out that a charitable arm of the BBC took
around £22 Million from the European Union, suggesting that the BBC had vested interests
in the outcome of this election. Strong assertion Nigel. Farage then stated
that he had had limited coverage in his seaside constituency of Thanet South,
and when the BBC did get round to offering him a spot on the news, inferring
also that they had done so only as a consequence of an Ofcom ruling that UKIP
were a ‘major party,’ “all he got was a few shaky shots of some bussed-in
activist hurling abuse at [him].”
These complaints about press bias are nothing
new from UKIP. Mr Farage was disgruntled during the so called ‘Challengers Debate’
also, questioning the make-up of the audience. Contrary to what Ed said he
perhaps was not wrong to do so. Although David Dimbleby had stated on air that
pollsters had selected the audience fairly by proportional representation of our
nation’s voting preferences, it was subsequently found by an Express
investigation that the supposedly, fairly selected audience, was far from it.
There was also a similar finding after the ‘Leaders Question Time Debates.’ The
questioner Catherine Shuttleworth, a small business owner and self-proclaimed
tory, was sat in the ‘carefully chosen, undecided section of the audience.”
From this position she set about biting chunks out of Ed Miliband. Labour
campaign sources, just like Mr Farage had been a week prior, were complaining
of the show being “rigged.”
When I sat watching the telly a few days ago
(it was the BBC incidentally) the question put to Polly was not specific to the
BBC but media in the round. This week has seen most of our national newspapers
pick a side but I would imagine that as the readership of our printed press
dwindles and moves toward digital and social media, any tenuous hold over our
imagination media organisations have, will gradually slip away.
The Independent’s Editor Amol Rajan must still
feel that his words are influencial. Today he wrote a very personal apology
targeted at teachers for any exaggeration he may have made regarding the
problems the profession faces. This is no doubt commendable but presumes that ‘the
press’ on the whole has influence on its readership. I’m with Polly, I think in
however an indirect way it probably does, don’t you?