Bias In The Media

I’d only been awake a few minutes this morning before being spurred into writing another post. The reason? Opening a newspaper. The article in question that drove me to such anger was a piece in The Telegraph covering the recent UKIP conference.

Now I have no objection to the reviewer (Tanya Gold) taking issue with their policies, nor do I mind it being a subjective piece. My issue with it is that the piece has no ambition to give an outline of the party’s conference; instead it is designed to make UKIP seem as foolish as possible. Every quote is twisted and turned and everyone who has been interviewed is turned into a figure of ridicule. Within the first couple of paragraphs we have “They are here – the Little England Euro-sceptics, brushing the dust from their eyes”, “ragtag army of bearded men and ancient ladies” and “UKIP supporters are the worst dressers in British politics”. Honestly, can you imagine the same tact being used for other parties? Perhaps she would describe Labour as ‘self-interested liars, filling out their expenses forms’ or the Conservatives as ‘insubstantial career politicians, desperately trying to get their greedy mitts on power’.

This comes literally weeks after Nigel Farage, UKIPs former leader and most prominent member, was fined €3000 for correctly pointing out that Herman Van Rompuy (EU President for those who have never heard of him) has all “the charisma of a damp rag” and “the appearance of a low grade bank clerk”. This was enough for politicians to call for the democratically elected MEP to be suspended from the European Parliament, though similar language against this party seems more than acceptable – expected even. The hypocrisy astounds me.

But back to the article – surely this article is attacking a party many of The Telegraph’s readers agree with. After all it is a conservative newspaper, and The Conservatives have been bleeding votes to UKIP since ‘Cast-Iron Dave’ (as he is regularly called in the newspaper’s own comments) reneged on his Lisbon Treaty Referendum promise. Surely then none of the paper’s journalists despise UKIP to such an extent that they’d write such a scathing article. Well presumably that is why the editors brought in Tanya Gold to write the article, a lady famed for her “comic observational articles” in The Guardian, The Independent and The Daily Mail: the three papers that a typical reader of The Telegraph would disagree with most strongly.

As I conclude this post though I am heartened by the comments below the article. Despite the blatant attempt to win wavering Tories back into the fold, this article seems to have, if anything, pushed them into the arms of UKIP. At this moment all but 1 commenter has pledged their vote to UKIP. I will end with two of my favourite quotes from these comments:

“Your paper may well mock and denigrate UKIP in the run-up to the General Election, but it will be UKIP that has the last laugh when Cameron and his cronies fail to collect the keys to Number 10” (Christopher Dean)

“They aren't 'slick', and they don't have powerful spin doctors to get the Party 'message' across. In my book that is a definite plus … Pathetic” (Robbydot)