Guestlist Issue 88 | Page 10

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.