Thread by @docrussjackson

Another #THREAD about truth, the culture war, money, & our broken news media.

Following eerily similar stories in the Mail & the Express, Nick Robinson's apology is all over @Twitter, posted almost exclusively by culture war warriors - who hate the @BBC - as "proof" of #BBCbias.

The 'outrage' is fuelled by a false claim made by Nick Robinson - a former Chairman of the National Young Conservatives & President of the Oxford University Conservative Association - that a Ministry of Justice cleaner, Mr Gomes, had died 'of Covid' while working in Downing St.

It transpires that Mr Gomes had not been working at Downing St at the time of his death, but at the nearby MoJ. And while colleagues had raised concerns he'd been suffering Covid-like symptoms in the lead up to his death, a coroner's report recorded it as heart hypertension.

Nick Robinson made the false claim while interviewing Boris Johnson's chief of staff Steve Barclay over #Partygate, for which he has now apologised.

This, imho, is where it gets interesting. Please do read on.

https://twitter.com/bbcnickrobinson/status/1529762048430772224?s=20&t=mu3LE79ptBX9CBoWUh6yig

What much of the commentary fails to mention, is that when Nick Robinson made the claim he was quoting from a report by a political magazine called 'The Critic', which stated Mr Gomes had been 'instructed to keep coming into work during lockdown, had contracted Covid & died'.

The Critic is a monthly British political & cultural magazine.

Contributors include controversial culture war cranks David "too many damn blacks" Starkey, Joshua 'husband of Melanie Phillips' Rozenberg, Peter 'professional contrarian' Hitchens, & Toby 'breast-obsessive' Young.😬

The Critic was founded in 2019, with Michael Mosbacher, former editor of Standpoint magazine, & Christopher Montgomery, a strategist with the ERG of Eurosceptic Tory MPs, as co-editors, funded by Jeremy Hosking, a Conservative party donor who had previously donated to Standpoint.

In 2019, editor of Standpoint magazine, Edward Lucas, said that the magazine was to be "a lively champion of unfashionable causes such as the virtues of western civilisation... We fight culture wars vigorously, mix polemic with mockery, & are all in favour of triggering people."

Standpoint magazine was run by the Social Affairs Unit, a spinoff charity of a neoliberal economic thinktank, the IEA. Standpoint was initially funded by British Marine trade association Chair Alan Bekhor & other rich donors, such as Jeremy Hosking, who donated £850,000 in 2019.

Jeremy Hosking also funds anti-‘net zero’ campaigns & has "given" millions to the @Conservatives, to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party/Reform UK, to Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party, & is the director of a company with $134million pounds invested in oil & gas.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1507149511768084487?s=20&t=mu3LE79ptBX9CBoWUh6yig

The dominant narrative & framing around this story is that 'a biased anti-Government representative of the biased anti-Government @BBC told deliberate lies & spread #disinformation about #Partygate but was caught out'.

But the truth is somewhat different.

The truth - obscured by the Mail & Express - is that a well known right-wing @BBC presenter & former Chair of the National Young Conservatives & President of the Oxford University Conservative Association, quoted information from a hard-right pro-free-market culture war magazine.

The only 'winners' from this story:

- Nick Robinson for his 'honest apology'

- Those downplaying the importance of #Partygate & claiming its seriousness was 'exaggerated'

- People who want to persuade others that the @BBC is a left-wing anti-Govt propaganda machine (it isn't).

The article which Nick Robinson quoted from is by Robert Hutton, author of "Would They Lie To You?" which covers "vital life skills" including: "avoiding blame" & "using words and statistics to prove anything" & "taking credit for other people’s work".

thecritic.co.uk/the-right-to-a…

Ironically, the claim made by Robert Hutton in The Critic was made previously by another news & politics online news magazine, The Tortoise (part of Tortoise media) in a podcast in July 2020, when @hackneylad & @geordiedav, told told Emanuel Gomes' story.

tortoisemedia.com/2020/07/07/the…

In yet another interesting twist, The Tortoise was co-founded by controversial former Times Business Editor (2006 - 2012) & @BBCNews director (2013 - 2017) James Harding, former tennis partner of David Cameron, & a pupil at public school St Pauls with his friend, George Osborne.

So what can we learn from this? Basically, the "news" the British public get should, arguably, be more accurately described as #propaganda: salient facts & context are often concealed for political purposes, & incidents & events can be weaponised to fulfil ideological objectives.

I've written elsewhere about the amplification of deliberately misleading culture war stories, & about the harmful effect on Britain & on British people of the highly partisan nature of certain "news" sources, which so profoundly shape public opinion.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1522144149843156993?s=20&t=7nibf3YOYKYcV3whuNkQGQ

Media literacy & critical thinking - deliberately excluded from the school curriculum by successive Govts - would help to reduce the malign influence of "fake news", conspiracy theories & #propaganda, but imho, the more pressing problem is concentration of news media ownership.

Just three companies (Rupert Murdoch's News UK, Jonathan Harmsworth's Daily Mail Group, & Reach) dominate 90% of the UK national newspaper market (up from 71% in 2015).

When online readers are included, these three companies dominate 80% of the UK market.

We need #Leveson2

I believe #Leveson2, a Royal Commission, or a Public Inquiry are essential if we are to have an adequately informed British electorate.

Imho, ALL opposition parties should unite on this issue, & promise to deliver an independent review of UK news media.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1525460094506643456?s=20&t=7nibf3YOYKYcV3whuNkQGQ

One last thing: I believe the @BBC has some serious problems to address, but I have no doubt whatsoever that the Beeb, along with our #NHS, are two of the most important institutions in Britain & the world, & it's increasingly clear that the @Conservatives want to destroy both.

A false & easily disprovable myth - pushed by right-wingers the billionaire-owned press - perseveres, especially among the fewer than 3 in 10 of the electorate who voted Tory in 2019, namely: that @BBCNews & @BBCPolitics has a left-wing anti-Govt bias:

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1206992886841192451?s=20&t=UxR_fmwBNOc221oiS_mpNQ