Brexit and a fresh outburst of partisan reporting

In too many cases name-calling and propaganda in our media have replaced attempts to analyse and understand, writes Raymond Snoddy

In the US Presidential elections, television has been accused of treating the phenomenon that is Donald J. Trump as a reality TV show, while newspapers have been left to do the heavy lifting.

Certainty without the endless, uncritical television coverage in the early days of someone who looked like a colourful character, before it was realised just how serious a threat he poses, it is unlikely that Trump would ever have become the Republican candidate. If that is what he still is.

It is American newspapers which have done the digging and exposed the mountain of lies, the unacceptable, and, in some cases, possibly downright illegal behaviour.

They have even been prepared – eventually – to set aside inappropriate concepts of impartiality and balance to go on the attack on a matter of the greatest public interest.

For Trump supporters, including women, it has been the television images that have created both the myth and the loyalty so that each new attack is dismissed as further evidence that the elite establishment is out to get him.

The televised debates have been more revealing, particularly the most recent, as the threatening Trump paced around trying to physically intimidate his opponent – looking more and more unhinged as he went.

But for those still open to reason and argument it has been the likes of the New York Times and the Washington Post that have led the way.

The New York Times landed the scoop on the $916 million Trump tax loss in 1995 and with it no federal taxes paid for 18 years, and has now taken to calling Trump “a liar” on its front page.

The Washington Post produced the “pussy video” and has said that “Trump lies the way other people breathe”.

On a matter of the gravest national and international importance the US media has finally worked out where its duty to society lies.

Across the Atlantic on the very different issue of Brexit no such consensus had emerged in the media – indeed this week the very worst of partisan parallel universe reporting has broken out again with name-calling and propaganda replacing attempts to analyse or understand.

Matters have regressed all the way back to early June when lies such as the £350 million a week for the NHS, Turkey joining the EU by 2020, or more subtlety, that you can control your borders and have access to the single market, were all the rage.

It all started to kick off again with the reactions to Prime Minister Theresa May’s speeches to the Conservative Party conference that control of borders was the prime objective with the clear implication that this inevitably would lead to a Hard Brexit.

As the value of the pound continued to fall against the dollar and the Euro, The Times lit the fuse with successive front page splashes this week.

First there was the warning from the CBI that the Prime Minister risked closing the door on an open economy with her immigration policy and that a Hard Brexit could create a very negative atmosphere for business.

On Tuesday there was the leak of a Treasury document forecasting that a Hard Brexit could cost £66 billion a year in lost tax revenues implying further serious cuts, higher taxes or a larger debt.

The Daily Mail has not been slow to respond, first with a splash saying that Anthony Bamford of JCB would not renew his membership of the CBI because of its pro-European stance. This was hardly surprising because Lord Bamford donated £100,000 to the Leave campaign.

The story was then backed up by a quote from a City type saying the CBI was “the most irrelevant organisation ever formed”.

Now the Daily Mail has cranked up coverage with attacks on Carolyn Fairbairn, director-general of the CBO, for her “bizarre” views that “without lower-skilled workers from the EU, Britain would face serious labour shortages, putting key sectors in difficulty.”

Then it was on to more general condemnation in the most intemperate language: “Whingeing. Contemptuous. Unpatriotic. Damn the Bremoaners and their plot to subvert the will of the British people.”

Naturally the Daily Mail’s City Editor Alex Brummer trumpeted the fact that the slide in sterling “could be the boost the economy needs ahead of the challenge of conquering global markets.”

The Sun, on its front page, was more interested in pop star Will Young pulling out of Strictly Come Dancing and non-EU mothers giving birth at a London hospital.

But inside there were page leads – Stock and Awe – on the value of Britain’s biggest companies soaring because of the fall in sterling and calls for a Petrol watchdog to protect motorists from rising fuel prices perhaps forgetting that petrol is priced in dollars etc.

A Sun leader noted that the backbone of UK industry is not the tiny percentage of companies exporting to Europe. It’s all about the small firms who don’t and are looking forward to ridding themselves of costly EU red tape.

Presumably the sort of red tape that protects worker’s rights, health and safety and the environment, and The Sun may have overlooked the fact that it is “the tiny percentage” of companies which must be responsible for the nearly half of the UK’s exports that go to the EU.

If you want to inhabit a sane newspaper Brexit universe then you could not do better than turn to Martin Wolf, chief economic commentator of the Financial Times.

Wolf argues that politicians propose and markets dispose and that the markets have taught Theresa May a harsh lesson on sovereignty and its limits in the real world.

According to Wolf, the currency markets have already demonstrated the falseness of the Leave premise that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK.

There is even a possibility of a complete collapse in the UK currency. It probably won’t happen, Wolf concedes, but loose talk about a Hard Brexit is making it rather more likely.

“A host of decisions that affect the UK will always be taken outside it. But this truth is unlikely to stop the train towards a complete Brexit departing on its timetabled journey. Stopping it would take a miracle, or rather a crisis. Is that likely? No. Is it possible. Yes,” concludes the FT journalist.

It can’t be long before Martin Wolf is denounced as part of the plot to subvert the will of the British people just as such liberal, elitist organisations in the US such as the New York Times and the Washington Post are denounced for exposing the lies of Donald J. Trump