The UK media is an example of an oligarchy successfully controlling the entire information landscape and consistently pushing for manufactured “problems of the week” while ignoring real disturbing trends in home ownership, poverty, health and inequality between London and the abandoned “regions”.

The book “Fake law” was terrifying to me - it talks about a whole number of high profile judicial cases that were pretty much distorted by the Mail/Times/Telegraph into whatever propaganda they wanted to push that week, often directed just in ways that it would benefit the oligarchy. And there are multiple books like that. Fake Law, Flat Earth News, Merchants of Doubt.

BBC? The Guardian? The Independent? I think you're picking and choosing narratives here, not accurately representing reality.

The Guardian is ok but it doesn’t have the staff for real investigative journalism or long form. There’s a reason why the big breaks journalists got in the last decade or so were whistleblowers delivering them data dumps, not journalists following up a story - Flat Earth News talks about this - newspaper staff has been gutted to the point where that sort of thing doesn’t exist anymore.

And without that staff, The Guardian can’t do proper investigations on london real estate’s connection with major money laundering for instance.

Indepedent like someone else pointed out is owned by a Russian oligarch. BBC doesn’t have the mandate to do investigative deep journalism, they can only do reports or documentaries - but that BBC can’t break a major story or investigate anything of political importance because that would jeopardise their “apolitical” position.

This leaves the right wing media, which is the majority in the UK (opposite to the US, in the UK the right wing dominate the media) and they manufacture and manipulate the stories into seemingly-real controversies that are actually just a cover for them to get some law or change passed in Westminster. Read the book “Fake Law” - the way the Mail/Times/Telegraph have distorted even simple judicial cases into something they could use to get popular support for whatever their owners wanted is profoundly disturbing.

I don't. The Mail wants to turn every story into outrage. The Telegraph has lost touch with reality, and is frankly weird. I cancelled my Times subscription over the weird reporting of the Snoopers Charter. I checked back recently and it has just got worse

The Independent is owned by Lebedev. It is part of the aforementioned oligarchy, literally.

No, he's right. And it has been this way for a long time. The way Corbyn and Assaange were demonized and smeared ought to have made it obvious - but that's the thing about controlling the entire media landscape. Even if it ought to be obvious, there are people telling you to ignore the truth tellers, and you've nowhere to read their exposes except social media, where in fact they are likely shunted down the algorithm.

There are always people running in online to say that since "both sides" detest the BBC they must be doing something right, but that's ignorance at best, if not plain disingenuous. The BBC have an insanely pro corporate pro war stance, and have wielded it in elections with craft and force. Same w the others.

It's not just me saying all this either. Many have noticed. Many decry the loss of a balanced media landscape. But you won't hear about it on corporate news, or the Beeb or the Grauniad either.

https://pressgazette.co.uk/john-pilger-says-guardian-column-...

The destruction of Corbyn as an “anti semite” was an incredible act of mass psychological warfare inflicted on the British public.

An incredible feat, to all those involved, respect for their skill. I’d never seen anything quite like it before I moved to the Uk.

Didn't some of his own party members accuse him of anti-Semitism? There was a television documentary about it.

Yes but apparently a bit of very real antisemitism is a small price to pay for having the left wing of capital in power instead of the right wing of capital.

Unfortunately the anti-semite line was easy to make stick because of his well known vocal opposition to the Israeli oppression of Palestinians. So not an incredible feat, but it was a case of corporate interests and the Tory party pushing the "emergency button" as an real Social Democrat was getting too popular and very close to becoming PM.

Also, as seems to be the fashion for left wing politicians, he has a soft spot for Russia. I think some people still think there is a Communist utopia over there, it's very strange. Not a good look recently.

I don't believe that there would have been no response from the UK to the Russian invasion if he had ended up PM, but it would have been slower and less impactful.

> the anti-semite line was easy to make stick

No it wasn't. Tremendous coordination and force went into pushing that line.

> because of his well known vocal opposition to the Israeli oppression of Palestinians

A view shared by right thinking people everywhere. Oppression is bad yo.

> it was a case of corporate interests and the Tory party pushing the "emergency button" as an real Social Democrat was getting too popular and very close to becoming PM.

Yes. But it wasn't easy, and it wasn't right, and the fact that the BBC and the Guardian and every other major paper and network failed to call the smear campaign out - and even fed it - is indicative of horrifying and deep problems.

> as seems to be the fashion for left wing politicians, he has a soft spot for Russia

Not really, he just isn't into escalating into war with a nuclear power; and recognizes that the Russian people are not the Russian leadership. This "nuance" has been shot and buried in a shallow grave.

> I think some people still think there is a Communist utopia over there, it's very strange.

Literally no one is saying that, except for corporate right wing media putting words in people's mouths. It's really weird that you'd believe them, given - again - that no one is saying that, or anything even remotely like it.

> I don't believe that there would have been no response from the UK to the Russian invasion if he had ended up PM, but it would have been slower and less impactful.

Again, this is a line pushed by right wing corporate media against left leaders all the time. And I thoroughly disagree with it.

Like - how is BoJo faring right now? Do you feel he's respected as a leader? Come off it.

And Britain is on the brink of blackouts without Russian oil, thanks to the dependence on oil fostered by Tories and their mates. A left, pro environment government would not have been so dependent in the first place.

>No it wasn't. Tremendous coordination and force went into pushing that line.

There is no need for coordination when Corbyn did nothing but feed the news cycle with stupid acts and dumb hot takes.

He also directly supported and appeared on stage with people who are anti semites and just did everything possible to be guilty by association.

>And Britain is on the brink of blackouts without Russian oil, thanks to the dependence on oil fostered by Tories and their mates. A left, pro environment government would not have been so dependent in the first place. Being on stage with known anti semites, supporting known anti semites (for other reasons), appearing on Iranian state TV and blurbing one hot take after another.

The UK reliance on Russian fuels was less than 3% of total imports the vast majority of which were through mixed fuel imports from the EU. There were no direct import contracts between the UK and Russia.

> Like - how is BoJo faring right now?

Given the two abominations of humanity up for PM now, in 3-4 months he’s going to look positively Churchillian.

You say that like it's a compliment ...

> is to my eyes scandalous. But somehow unremarked

There's a lot of remarking going on - Private Eye, for example, have been banging the "NHS privatisation" drum for a couple of decades at least. The Guardian, too, mention it not infrequently.

This is very true. The NHS has become a commissioning organisation -- it puts out a request for a service and providers bid for it. Many of these services are IT related; many of them are things like physiotherapy referral programmes. Patients may or may not know who provides their care. This is not at all how things used to be and I have noticed it get far worse of late.

As an aside, I’ve had first hand experience in a couple of those outsourced IT services and the amount of wasted money in that area alone is staggering.

Said firms are also laughably bad. A number of NHS services were taken down by a crypto-locker style attack just recently.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-62442127

The internal NHS IT services were no worse and far better value as you say.