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    'billionaire press' Archived Message

    Posted by Ian M on December 10, 2019, 4:24 pm, in reply to "Sure does b. The Frauds have calculated that he's a soft bourgeois, who'll stop at the ultimate red"

    'The storm of lies about our report in the billionaire press gave me an idea of what it must be like to be a Labour politician. [...]

    The lie was picked up on social media by other senior Conservatives, and has been used repeatedly in the party’s campaign materials, websites and Facebook pages. It was reproduced by most of the other billionaire papers, and continues to be circulated. [...]

    Even so, it eventually bowed to the inevitable. This is a rare victory against the billionaire press, but it would count for nothing if buried until the election is over. Anyone who wants a better world finds themselves at war with the exceedingly rich people who own the media and the editors and journalists they employ. The pen might be mightier than the sword, but the wallet is mightier than the pen. News is the propaganda of the oligarch. Are we prepared to allow the proprietors of the newspapers, many of whom live offshore, to determine the course of our politics?

    If the Conservative party is sanctioned by the Electoral Commission for any of its outrageous lying and cheating, it might, long after the election, have to pay the maximum fine of £20,000, which a friendly billionaire could doubtless pull out of his back pocket.'

    And in the previous article: https://web.archive.org/web/20191209052254/https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/03/land-reform-brute-power-billionaire-press-attacks

    'After urging land reform I now know the brute power of our billionaire press [...]

    All billionaires want the same thing – a world that works for them [...]

    But above all, they buy newspapers and television stations. The widespread hope and expectation a few years ago was that, in the internet age, news controlled by billionaires would be replaced by news controlled by the people: social media would break their grip. But social media is instead dominated by stories the billionaire press generates. [...]

    They use this power not only to promote the billionaires’ favoured people and ideas, but also to shut down change before it happens. [...]

    We showed how the billionaires and other oligarchs could be put back in their boxes. The result has been four extraordinary weeks of attacks in the Mail, Express, Sun, Times and Telegraph. Our contention that oligarchic power is rooted in the ownership and control of land has been amply vindicated by the response of oligarchic power. [...]

    to pursue them all would be a full-time job (we wrote the report unpaid, in our own time). The simple truth is that we are being outgunned by the brute power of billionaires. And the same can be said for democracy. [...]

    Labour has so far held its nerve – and this makes its current leadership remarkable. It has not allowed itself to be bullied by the billionaire press.

    The old threat has not abated – it has intensified. If a newspaper is owned by a billionaire, be suspicious of every word you read in it. Check its sources, question its claims. And withhold your support from any party that allows itself to be bullied or – worse – guided by their agenda.'

    Kudos to him for standing his ground and exposing the lies on this, but every time he invokes this 'billionaire press' demon it's another advertisement for his employer and a polishing of his PR image as fearless journalist-of-the-people working for the benevolent Scott Trust (Ltd.) The last paragraph states it openly: you should +trust+ the graun's output and not feel the need to 'check its sources' or 'question its claims' because it's not owned by a single billionaire oligarch. I've noticed Owen Jones and other figleaf 'radicals' using the exact same wording...

    So far but no further as Chomsky put it.

    I

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