Putting stories before pursuit of truth – our media

The media tell us that public opinion is sharply divided about the story they have spent the past few days ramming down our throats.

Apparently the Harry and Meghan “story” is all

Fancy a taxpayer subsidised Christmas break to a luxury Caribbean holiday retreat?

Well, let’s imagine we have a female PM and that, just like the present PM, she described single mothers as “irresponsible” and their children as “ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate” but that she was strangely coy about admitting how many children she had parented and with whom and that she had taken her latest ‘toy boy’ to this luxury Caribbean retreat.

Do you really believe our national newspapers would resist having screaming headlines and paparazzi cameras with telescopic lenses taking unflattering pictures to accompany their story? And what if Jeremy Corbyn were the PM and he did precisely the same? How would the media behave then? I think we all know the answer to that.

But the media clearly measures PM Johnson by a different yardstick. It’s as if they fear the consequences of criticising a deity.

My point is… our national media has lost its cutting edge, especially where the present Government is concerned. It’s of course in part because most newspapers have a right-wing agenda, will be happy with the present Government and will not want to do anything unsupportive; and it’s because much of the broadcast media take their news lead from the newspapers and the BBC itself has been cleverly muzzled by the Conservatives simply by maintaining a perpetual threat to its license fee.