LONDON (Bywire News) - There is a huge double standard when you compare the way the press treated Jeremy Corbyn and his policies versus how they treat the same ideas under the Tory government.
The majority of the mainstream media do not like Corbyn. In fact, analysis in 2019 showed that the press shared stories from military and intelligence sources portraying Corbyn as a ‘threat to national security’ on average once every six weeks when he was elected leader of the Labour Party.
They took a dislike to him immediately, and scoffed at his ideas to improve lives.
A 4-day week would ruin the economy. It was laughable, said the press. There was no way it could have been done, not under Corbyn anyway. But now, under Tory rule, it’s a great plan! A completely new and fresh idea, right?
The Express published an article in April explaining how a four day week after COVID could benefit people’s mental health and be the new normal. They do not berate the idea in the article, instead reporting on it quite neutrally, but when it was suggested by Corbyn, they said it would ‘wreck the economy’. Why the change of heart? Because it was Corbyn.
Another example is his plan to bring free broadband to everyone, an idea that would have been incredibly helpful during all three of the lockdowns when a huge amount of people were working and studying from home. This was laughable, of course. It was a ‘communist’ idea to give everyone access to Wi-Fi during a time where everything is online, according to The Daily Mail.
The press attacked Corbyn by calling him a ‘crackpot’ and saying it was too expensive to do (and as we all know, there is no magic money tree). Spending £5bn on upgrading Wi-Fi to keep up with European countries standard, though - that’s reasonable.
It is interesting how differently the Mail report on the same idea but from different people. The government is willing to spend a quarter of what Corbyn wanted to invest to upgrade Wi-Fi in rural areas, not improving access for all households. Somehow that is better in the press’ eyes.
Corbyn had a plan to end homelessness by taxing the rich a little more to fund building more council housing. Of course, this was laughed at and considered ridiculous even by people who weren’t in the tax bracket, and thus unaffected.
The Daily Mail berated this idea, but then reported on Boris Johnson’s idea of spending £236mil on a similar objective like it was regular news. There was no bias in their report on Johnson, whereas they called Corbyn's idea an ‘assault’ and claimed he was trying to start a ‘class-war' by ensuring everyone had a safe place to live.
It is a huge issue in the mainstream media that they can continue to abuse one person for ideals just because it is coming from that person.
Corbyn was bullied during his time as Labour leader by the press, and the press are proving themselves to be more and more hypocritical as time goes on by pandering to this government and their re-hashing of Labour policies. Will they ever admit they were wrong?
(Written by Emma Ireland from Hacked Off, edited by Jess Miller.)