LBC is another case of corporate UK media culture and its sinister agenda

Successful radio giant LBC has a tried and tested media business model. Pick sensational topics while pandering to bigoted simpletons to manufacture outrage then reap the benefits as the hysteria goes viral. In this way LBC mimic hard-right US shock-jocks like redneck Rush Limbaugh and the bombastic conservative agendas of Fox News. It may not seem quite as vitriolic with its 'British' accent but underneath the methodology is the same. Also bear in mind that many politicians make this outlet their home.




Owners

They are owned by Global Radio who are every bit as corporate as they sound. They own multiple UK stations including Galaxy, Smooth, Capital, Heart and Xfm

Firstly in May 2015 they were found to have engaged in an Orwellian act of self-censorship by protecting scandal-hit HSBC - a bank which seems to go from scandal to scandal  Very worrying then a director of the bank sits on the board of the BBC

Members of the public were so concerned that a complaint was made to regulatory body Ofcom. This was not only rejected but requests for transparency in the decision-making process were denied by the government body.

Later the same year they were finally held accountable by Ofcom for running ads resembling news stories


LBC tax avoidance

In 2013 a story broke that LBC's top parent company Global Worldwide is registered via complex arrangements in the British Virgin Islands, a tax-haven featured heavily in the Panama Papers.

Ed Miliband even appointed GW chairman Sir Charles Allen to review Labour's governance and finances. A former chief executive of ITV and chairman of EMI, Allen has since become chairman of Labour's Executive Board.

This also explains their reluctance to publish negative stories about HSBC being enablers of tax avoidance.


LBC 'personalities'

Katie Hopkins

Can you imagine what your employer would do if you used her rhetoric in a place of work. If any extremist muslim or someone without her privilege had her platform their treatment would be quite different and expose the double standards of a corrupt media.

Nick Ferrari

• "Racist shock-jock"
• friend of disgraced hard-right  Sun hack Kelvin McKenzie
• Almost tory candidate for mayor of London 

Iain Dale

• Ex-tory candidate
• like Hopkins and Ferrari supported Brexit
• Attacked a protester because they were upsetting his right-wing PR stunt

Other regular right-wingers include:

• Daily Mail's Andrew Pierce
• ex-Sun now Times Stig Abell

LBC follow the Fox News formula with a token 'lefty' regular, James O'Brien. Their roster is heavily biased towards middle-aged pale males with only 3 regular female presenters and have only just recently added 1 single non-white presenter who has made a good career pandering to the right-wing

Labour leadership election: debunking Corbyn media narratives

It seems strange that Labour are in the same position they were a year ago - with a leadership election involving Corbyn. If that's what it takes to prove he is representing those desperate for a real alternative to a broken and failed system then so be it. What the sneering media and other elites fail to comprehend is that their groupthink has made them blind to how decades of neoliberalism have marginalised millions - a clue should have been Brexit winning or UKIP coming 3rd in the popular vote in 2015. Corbyn resonates with many of these people.




Time to scrutinise the myths surrounding a social phenomenon that won't go away even if Corbyn does:

Abuse & violence is somehow his fault

A brick was thrown through the window of Angela Eagle's offices after announcing her leadership. Clearly this is a horrible thing to experience and it is right that serious concerns were raised over her safety with speculation of political motivations. Except the speculation didn't remain speculation. Soon the media was sometimes subtly, sometimes not, framing this as the thuggery of Corbyn supporters. Almost implying that he himself had sanctioned this. Even his supporters have been swept along by this.

Another important point of forensics is that this act affected the building her offices were in, not her actual offices. A stairwell was the target - hardly the heart of Eagle's operation. This video highlights this but obviously cannot say categorically that it was simply mindless vandalism just as Eagle herself cannot say it was linked to Corbyn despite her interview clearly giving that impression



Also an alleged act of intimidation would do its job wherever aimed. The issue is not how the facts are interpreted but how they are reported. Of course it is very easy to imply that this was the work of Corbyn supporters or the man himself just by simply omitting these facts or placing his name in the same headline:

Of course all abuse and violence is wrong but the media have a responsibility to differentiate the right wing abuse Labour MPs get all the time from internal incidents be it Corbyn supporters or not. Except it's clear few have any interest in this - see articles here:

• Why should we believe these claims about Corbyn supporters being “brutal” at meetings?
• Why are the Labour coup plotters fabricating evidence of abuse?

Corbin couldn't convince Labour supporters to vote Remain and didn't try hard enough

He is unelectable

Under Corbyn's leadership in the recent 2016 elections, Labour performed better than expected and bettered the tories who are apparently a united family of competence despite Brexit splits, a disastrous economy, election fraud and a new Prime Minster who failed as home secretary

Corbyn supporters are all metropolitan liberal elites

Last time I checked voters in Northern seats could hardly be considered as part of this group.
In the picture above you can see Labour holding councils in Bradford, Bolton, Barnsley, Blackburn even Birmingham is hardly elite country. Furthermore working class constituencies are nominating Corbyn for leader.

Tory election fraud: Another nail in the coffin?

Never mind the EU referendum, tory election fraud could explode their right to rule. It seems very likely that they have been declaring local campaigning as national spending which has no limit, unlike the former. A telling sign is using local place names in letters sent using their national spending. If urging constituency voters to 'vote Conservative here in Torbay' qualifies as non-local campaigning then the local spending limit is redundant if it's so easy to circumnavigate.

Meanwhile the tories have underestimated Corbyn's Labour based on his first real test. Losing no councils in the May elections is a decent return for someone who gets so much negative media. There were even gains in the South where many predicted Labour would suffer, these are areas where he is suppose to be rejected by swing tory voters.

Right-wing racists and the rank hypocrisy of the complicit establishment

The mainstream media are pursuing a narrative of anti-semitism within the Labour party. While there are isolated incidents and Naz Shah rightly paid for one, there is no evidence to support this is systemic within the Labour party. Anti-semitism is an issue for the whole of society and should be dealt with but right-wing mud-singling exceeds the reality of the issue. This is the 'dead cat' strategy of Lynton Crosby to distract from an endemic racism of the right, as the following shows.

The same right-wing that say nothing on the rise of Islamophobia. On any given day you can see keyboard bigots throwing racial insult after insult at any minority. The double standards and rank hypocrisy of the establishment has never been more obvious. It is not even confined to the aforementioned lunatics but brazenly flaunted in national debates without recourse.

The government ruling what many consider to be the most racially harmonious nations in the world has descended into Islamophobia, race-baiting & 'dog-whistle' racism, pandering to those bigots at the margins of society, who will do anything to target an immigrant.

This was evident in a Theresa May immigration speech that had echoes of Donald Trump, so much so that even the right-wing tax-avoiding Torygraph condemned it.

The Zac Goldsmith London mayoral campaign has demonstrated how the tories are not past neo-colonial divide & conquer to try and win an election. They'd probably run-over their own grannies too. Again many of their own have called out this desperate racism.

Just got this email from a member of #Conservative party I have never met. Says it all. #zacgoldsmith #SadiqKhan #UK pic.twitter.com/T8ELUK9K7P

— Shazia (@ShaziaAwan) April 25, 2016

David Cameron even joined in. There have been constant insinuations that because Sadiq Khan is muslim he is not concerned about a terrorist attack in his own city. This is some of the worst gutter politics ever. The whole sorry scandal is neatly taken apart here:

So nasty are Goldsmith's methods, even a few on the right have called it out. This article summarises the poisonous campaign well, from ex-Telegraph writer and lifelong tory supporter, Peter Oborne:

Meanwhile the recent Obama visit and intervention in the EU debate caused outrage among paunching racists like Boris Johnson. The privileged clown has background of racial slurs and it is a sign of our corrupt system that any he is considered him fit for any public office let alone PM.

King's College university have reacted with ethics foreign to the tory party who are perpetually smearing Labour with anti-semitism. 

Far right elitist blowhard Guido Fawkes (Paul Staines) is a self-confessed Zionist, essentially backing Israel's Netanyahu apartheid regime who attack Gaza disproportionately killing children, are silent when IDF soldiers execute defenceless Palestinians and systematically erasing their land.

Ignoring right-wing anti-semitism undermines their faux-crusade against racism. They are only interested in this issue as a political football to smear opponents and move closer to a one-party state based on flimsy lies.

'The Race Card'

Any attempt to oppose or highlight the racism of privilege is met with the audacious accusations of 'playing the race card'. This mantra of neo-colonial self-entitled white men just compounds the racism as they attempt to dictate to minorities how to feel and think when the evidence is so clear. They must be wishing for a return of the Empire.

Your insights on racism are really appreciated, media pundits:

Exposing Lynton Crosby's 'dead cat' distractions that maintain the tory illusion

Lynton Crosby is the tory's Minister of Propaganda 

His tools of manipulation are political game-playing and media complicity.

What is a 'dead cat' distraction?

The use of shock tactics to move national debates away from a awkward subject. The playground equivalent to shouting "Look over there!" to a teacher then running away. Here are well-documented examples of his strategy:

The 2012 London mayoral election

Ken Livingstone was proposing cheap fares, a popular policy until the tories, with the help of their media cronies, raised the subject of his taxes which shifted the debate into pure speculation. The election was narrowly won by Boris Johnson, who has left no legacy for the capital.

The 2015 general election

Ed Miliband's cost-of-living issues were gaining traction until efforts were made to position the alleged Falkirk Labour "vote-rigging" scandal as the main national debate.

Michael Fallon's 'Miliband has knifed his brother in the back'
Instead of discussing Trident before the last election the then Labour was smeared by the tory Defence minster. Many who knew Fallon said it was out of character, suggesting Crosby was involved. Again it was effective at taking a thorny issue for the conservatives off the table.


More recently

Early 2016

Allegations of left wing anti-semitism.
There has been a strong media narrative about the left's 'anti-Semitism problem' with even the allegedly left-leaning media are taking part. This has clearly been orchestrated from the right. Although a serious issue, we hear little actual evidence. No doubt there is an insidious move to conflate left wing voices against Israel's apartheid with racism.

Meanwhile there is little coverage about the rise of the far right across the west with grassroots extremists followers of Trump, Britain First, Pediga (Germany) & Front National in France or the growth in Islamophobia.

Jan 2016

David Cameron's 'bunch of migrants' language:
The debate about Google's tax evasion was stymied by some strategic racism and predictable fall-out.

March 2016

Supposedly genial and moderate London mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith's campaign is straight out of the Crosby dirty tricks playbook with racial profiling - stereotyping Hindu Indians with info on passing down family jewellery and alluding to his opponent's identity as a Muslim, classic dirty divide and conquer tricks. As if these the days of Indian/Pakistan partition.

March 2016

The Labour list story emerged from the tory activists at The Times conveniently in time for David Cameron to use at Prime Minsters Questions. This, after the devastating Osborne's omni-shambles budget part 2 and the subsequent resignation (self-promotion) of IDS.

More to come ...

All clear evidence of where tory priorities lie. They are more bothered about winning than the lives of citizens, especially those who don't vote for them.


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The EU referendum debate reveals a more sinister democratic deficit

Brexit campaigners have a point, the EU referendum debate reveals a democratic deficit - our collective ignorance and illiteracy.

On the 23rd June the nation will be asked to vote on an issue whose outcomes reach further than any general election while masses of voters are struggling to comprehend the issue. Our establishment resembles a totalitarian state in matters of public information. So much for a progressive enlightened western democracy? Also the same vested interests have prevented 16/17 year olds voting despite the enormity of the decision. Wouldn't want too many people getting involved in democracy would we?

We don't need conspiracy theories when at every turn we are kept ignorant of our governing system and it is no accident or oversight. Our political illiteracy is not confined to the wilfully ignorant or the uneducated. One can simply ask intelligent, knowledgeable people about the core EU institutions, what are they? how are they elected? how do they affect our lives? what is the troika?

Beyond the simplistic soundbites of our anti-intellectual debate, the European Parliament legislates on a number of issues like regulating banks and setting a bonus cap. It can maintain online privacy and uphold human rights, but it could also mean permanently privatised railways, austerity and the spectre of the profit-over-people TTIP trade deal. And so the EU economic war on the vulnerable continues as the gap widens between rich and poor.

The Brexiters offer nothing against neoliberal global institutions which wield more combined power than their continental nemesis. The undemocratic governance of the EU is replicated internationally. Anyone remember having a say in the G20? The G7? Or deciding the IMF board? Meanwhile the World Trade Organisation (WTO) oversees secretive trade talks of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal involving the collective economic might of East Asia, Australia and the US. This pact is very similar to aforementioned TTIP in that it favours big business over citizens. Brexits want Commonwealth trade to replace EU trade, yet fail to challenge the anti-consumer TTIP terms. With the lack of profile given to this massive issue why should the public feel confident them as an alternative?

The simple framing of Remain or Brexit excludes a third possibility of a democratic EU with bottom-up sustainable economics, fairer competition, absolutely no TTIP and strengthened worker rights. This referendum issue is a complicated mix of national, regional and global debates. But you can't study their underlying neoliberal orthodoxy on any national curriculum, or understand it by watching the news. That is perhaps the greatest democratic threat of all.

Instead we are distracted by the opium of personalities like Boris & Farage because the mainstream media gets revenue from the sensational over facts & insights. The day they and Brexiters highlight the importance of information about power structures is the day I'll believe they want ordinary citizens to reclaim democracy.

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Paris attacks reaction, the clash of civilisations narrative and the war machine

This blog is named in reference to the tragic Charlie Hebdo events and the aftermath. You can read the background here. 10 months later and Paris suffered a different kind of attack, targeting random individuals in what these psychopaths identified as typical representations of western liberalism. They are psychopaths because they have no real ideology because what ideology calls for the random killing of fellow followers of that ideology. Many muslims were killed that night yet still we hear how this is a clash of civilisations between two opposing ideologies. The same night "Muslims" trended on twitter bringing about predictable bigotry and hate speak. And there is Ahmed Merabat, the French police officer who was coldly executed defending the satirical magazine that mocked his religion #JeSuisAhmed

Post Paris the agenda of elites consists of divide and conquer, propagating the clash of civilisations myth as an advertisement for war. This is a fake construct because firstly ISIS/DAESH are not muslim and secondly, divisive narratives are short-termist. The lack of hope in mainstream rhetoric is telling. They would prefer a hysterical and fearful public ready to accept blind militarism regardless of the viability. Goebbels used such tactics to great effect  during the Nazi regime.

Here are some revealing reactions from establishment commentators, some while people were being murdered outside Stade de France stadium.

It was also interesting to see bigotry and hate speak from Facebook profiles featuring Tricolour flags under many news articles. Opportunists who on another day are happy bashing the French or whoever else is different. This echoes those who say we should take care of the our own citizens instead of immigrants - while abusing single mothers and benefit claimants because the tabloids tell them to.

In the midst of this there were some other more informed reactions from ordinary decent people that were cause for optimism:

The war machine is grinding into gear with the establishment media doing free marketing for the military-industrial complex delivering profits for the arms industry and its war lords.

It's telling to go from that morally and physically courageous survivor, to the political machinations of war-mongering. #Newsnight

— Sally Lewis (@Sallyapiacere) November 16, 2015

For a great ideas-based documentary about the geo-political charade and fog of war, please watch Adam Curtis' Bitter Lake - summarised by himself below:

Fear and mistrust are so often engineered by those with the means to do so. We must not let insidious power agendas on any side create a climate that prevents solutions.

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Media reporting of the Swedish neo-Nazi killer and other white extremists

Appropriately grisly subject matter for Halloween. I have written before about how the media reports of racially motivated murders when the assailant is white. Here are some more case studies:

A week ago (23rd Oct 2015) a Swedish terrorist stabbed a teacher and pupil to death while 2 others are in hospital recovering from wounds. It was deemed a neo-Nazi hate crime by the police and given little coverage by the mainstream. It has sharply fallen off the agenda since. This happened in a town where mosques were burnt down in the 90s. Imagine it was white majority churches.

How many would remember the attacker's name or even the incident itself?
How much profile does the media give acts of extremism when the perpetrator is white? Researching this article has proved a lot harder than you'd think for a story about a Nazi violence only a week old.

Some analysis of the narrative:

The terrorist motives are clearly being softened. They emphasise the killer's mask being like Star Wars character Darth Vader which is firstly inaccurate and secondly not as attention-worthy as the true intention behind the crime. This trivalises a terrible act. The mask actually represents his own perverse tribute to the Nazi storm-troopers. They also did not specify which ethnicity he targeted. Minority lives don't matter in their agenda.

 Dog-whistle site for sinister bigots, Breitbart implied the school of mainly migrants deserved attacking with this divide and conquer headline:

There is a similar narrative from Daily Beast. Another terrorist Dylann Roof, murdered 9 black people at a Charleston, SC church in another racially motivated act of terror. DB acknowledge he was a white supremacist contradicting their initial defence of him based on superficial Facebook journalism.

In the aftermath there was extensive burning of black churches which you would think would be major news. The UK TV outlets that covered the killing did not broadcast any of this. Too much truth for Middle England let alone Middle America.

Michael Brown, the black teenage police victim in the incident which sparked the Ferguson riots was even compared unfavourably to white serial killer Ted Bundy by the relatively liberal New York Times. The lengths the media go to provide this good/evil judgements contributes to a racial landscape that sees significant funds raised for the killer policeman and rallies in support of him.

The black shooter in Virginia never received such a defence from the same publication:

It seems the media pick and choose who they apologise for. How can the killer have played the 'race card' when his former employers settled out-of-court on his lawsuit, effectively acknowledgement of  his claim of discrimination.

Based on such evidence, it is hard to defend Daily Beast against accusations of racism in the reporting of killers. There is growing evidence that this exists at multiple media organisations, including unsurprisingly Fox News but even the liberal news outlets mentioned. Tim McVeigh was afforded this measured humanising piece from the Washington Post in 1995. How many of us even know who Tim McVeigh was? The only terrorist who saw proper US judicial process after killing 168 people including 19 children.

Even the justice system seems to have a problem. This is the shocking case of a US cop who executed a black man and was given immunity.

The Huffington Post do a brilliant synopsis of the whole issue:

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The establishment groupthink at the heart of the BBC

Print journalism was famously called 'the Fourth Estate', a remark attributed to MP Edmund Burke at the 1787 introduction of press reporting in parliament. He was emphasising the importance of holding government to account with complete independence - unlike the 3 other estates of the time (the Commons and two Lords).

The following highlights the conflict of interests within the supposedly culturally diverse BBC undermining Edmund' Burke's tenet of democracy in the contemporary media landscape. 

James Harding, Head of BBC News

• Went to same independent school as George Osborne.
• Went to Cambridge.
• Worked as a financial journalist.
• Worked at The Times owned by Rupert Murdoch.
• During his time at the paper he had to apologise for withholding information to the High Court during the Leveson inquiry.

Laura Kuenssberg BBC political editor

• From a well-connected family. Relatives include the last Governor-General of colonial Nigeria, a High Court Judge and the founder/president of the Royal College of GPs.
• Worked at ITV

James Landale, BBC News Deputy Political Editor

James Landale in David Cameron's kitchen

• Went to Eton with David Cameron.
• Worked at The Times.

Andrew Neil, presenter on the BBC Daily Politics

 Andrew Neil with David Cameron, Grant Shapps and Spectator editor Fraser Nelson

• Tutored by Vince Cable during his University of Glasgow days, who he would later interview many times.
• During university was a member of the Conservative Club.
• Worked for Rupert Murdoch as Sky's chief mover in the early days.
• Worked at the right-wing free market Economist and right-wing Sunday Times.

Andrew Marr BBC Marr Show presenter and ex-Political Editor

• Married to Jackie Ashley from another mostly establishment media org The Guardian and daughter of a Labour life peer. Life peers are a thing that exists in 21st century Britain
• Made use of a High Court super-injunction to prevent the media reporting the truth, nevertheless he continues to be regarded highly as a journalist in mainstream circles.
• In April 2003 made the report below celebrating  Blair's illegal Iraq invasion.

Allegra Stratton, BBC Newsnight reporter

• Cambridge alumnus
• Married to James Forsyth political editor of the right-wing The Spectator magazine owned by tax exiles the Barclays Brothers, who also own the right-wing Daily Telegraph

Nick Robinson ex-Political Editor 2005-2015, now at BBC Radio 4 Today show

• Founder member of Macclesfield Young Conservatives
• ex-Cheshire Young Conservative Chairman
• Former Young Conservative National Advisory Committee member
• As a student he was President of the Oxford University Conservative Association

The BBC Board of Trustees

Rona Fairhead, Chairman of Trust

Rona Fairhead being questioned about financial irregularities

• Cambridge alumnus
• Also works for HSBC and PepsiCo
• Declines to answer questions about Swiss banking irregularities.
• Admitted failings when her bank received a fine for money-laundering 
• Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for 'services to industry'

Roger Carr, Vice Chair

• Worked in the City
• Business background at Thames Water, arms company BAE systems & energy giant Centrica
• Knighted

What does this mean for any public interest issue that challenges the weaknesses in their inevitable consensus. It doesn't have to be conspiracy for decision-making to be influenced by mostly privileged backgrounds. All homogeneity by definition has blind-spots.

Would James Harding ever take aim at his powerful old boss about his bigotry or non-dom status?
Would Allegra Stratton ever scrutinise on the financial matters of the Barclays Brothers?

Would Rona Fairhead ever green-light an investigative series on the workings of HSBC, a bank that has already proven to be corrupt and a major part of our economy?

The names are inter-changeable, the outcomes similar.

Below is some background to journalists at The Times I published previously here

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