10
GUESTLIST
MEDIA WATCH
ISSUE 88 / 2016
EYE ON THE MEDIA
We’ve just gone through the most grueling political campaign we can expect in our life time. Of course I am talking
about Britain’s relationship with the EU. It’s been tough, dirty and at times dangerous. We’ve seen battling flotillas on the
Thames, MP’s grilled on national TV and most chillingly, we’ve watched as one of our own MP’s was brutally murdered.
It was a tough issue, a sensitive
one and quite a volatile one.
We’ve seen friends argue,
families feuding - pub beer
gardens have been full of Brexit
chat, social media awash with
seemingly random numbers/
percentages and words plucked
from the air.
The problem is, us voters
have been bombarded
with information - a lot of it
contradictory. Which made
making this decision very hard for
most. A study from the London
School of Economics found
that the UK’s population is the
least informed regarding the EU
out of all the member states.
This campaign was the perfect
opportunity to change all that,
but nothing did. Instead both the
leave and remain sides and the
UK press opted for stirring up
fear, preying on the insecurities
of people and offering Utopian
visions of the future. Whatever
you wanted to vote you were told
that your decision is reckless and
damaging. So wait, how the fuck
were we supposed to make an
informed decision if we weren’t
properly informed!?
It’s to be expected that the
opposing sides were to lower
down to this level,
though the
press have
acted in
this same,
divisive
way. At
a time
when we
needed them
more than ever
to deliver fair, factual
and informative news they
instead fell to the level of the
campaigning sides - throwing
shit at whatever side their editors
didn’t agree with. The Daily Mail
stamped ‘Project Fear’ on every
article about a remain argument,
completely undermining
whatever was put forward. In the
Guardian they acted like some
sort of super intelligent group
and implied those wanting to
leave are small minded, racist
and uneducated. These are two
examples, but all the media took
their sides and never really laid
out the reality.
In the aftermath of the result
we are now wondering why
our nation is so divided.
I’ll tell you why, because
these division lines were
draw up throughout the
campaign, things got
personal and now with
the referendum done,
people can’t just let go. And
it’s easy to understand why,
this campaign has highlighted
everything wrong in politics
right now. People played on
differences, insecurities and the
staggering differences in public
opinion. The timing hasn’t come
at the worst time, we’re at a
point where we need to be more
united than ever but the reality,
as produced by politicians and
the media, we couldn’t be further
away.