Five reasons why we don't have a free and independent press in the UK and what we can do about it

http://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/ed-jones/five-reasons-why-we-don-t-have-free-and-independent-press-in-uk-and-what-we-can-do-about
Date Written:  2016-12-18
Publisher:  OpenDemocracy
Year Published:  2016
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX20196

Exposes the power structures and entities that exert influence over the UK press, and proposes ways that influence might be subverted.

Abstract: 
--

Excerpts:

True editorial independence often doesn't exist in these papers. The owners can - and do - interfere with what is published in their publications, which editors and journalists are promoted or fired as well as which political parties the paper supports.

-

As the internet generation gets older, and hopefully less exclusively reliant on the corporate media, maybe things will continue to change. Despite relentless aggressive attacks by the corporate media against Jeremy Corbyn, which unmasked supposedly left-wing newspapers like the Guardian which three academic studies have recently confirmed, he managed to win two Labour leadership elections by a landslide. A poll of those eligible to vote for Jeremy Corbyn at the Labour leadership election a year ago found that for 57 per cent of them social media was a main source of news, as compared to around 40 per cent for the other candidates. Social and alternative media helped lead to the rise of Corbyn and changed the limits of 'acceptable' debate within the Labour party.