If the government rip the guts out of the BBC and the right set up a UK version of Fox News, will the labour movement here - the unions and the cooperatives in particular - finally build communicative resources that can break the power of the right? theguardian.com/media/2020/aug…
The Guardian, Mirror and BBC have given elected leaders of the labour movement an alibi for their acceptance of a media consensus that is *at best* ambivalent about working class organisation and is adamantly opposed to radical change in political economy and foreign policy.
This media consensus is a comfortable enough habitat for many Labour MPs, who see themselves as a kind of Team B for British capitalism. But it is a disaster for anyone who wants to address climate change or head off the threat of an increasingly confident and wealthy far right.
It's time for unions and cooperatives to run a "Preston model" type review of their budgets; shift resources away from trying to secure coverage in media outlets that are structurally hostile to them towards the development of egalitarian & cooperative media operations.
These operations will have the added bonus of making elected elites in the Labour movement more accountable by making members better informed about internal dynamics - ever more vital given the scale and professionalisation of labour institutions.
But they will also be able to operate outside the capitalist media consensus that refuses to discuss communicative power in anything other than the most childish and misleading ways. They will be able to take seriously Rosa Luxemburg's advice that ...
“The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.”
FWIW, if the BBC want a Swedish-type media tax, the left should support it, so long as the BBC radically democratises its governance and its news and current affairs production and distribution on terms acceptable to me and @ta_mills - no taxation without representation.
