Will Wright
We’re supposed to have a free press. If you buy a newspaper and read the news pages, then you are supposed to be reading facts. But which stories are chosen, and which are ignored? Every day, thousands of things are happening in the United Kingdom and abroad. They cannot all be reported every day. So someone chooses which stories to include – and just as importantly which to exclude. That is a practical necessity, and it is done in a hurry. But it does influence readers’ political opinions.
When a story is being covered by other newspapers, it is hard for one paper to ignore it completely. But a newspaper can give much less prominence to a story that does not fit with the paper’s editorial line. By doing this, the paper is subtly telling its readers that this story is not very important.
You think that you are just reading the facts. But which facts? Some are included and some are deliberately omitted. Sometimes a newspaper is pulled to order for a story that is factually wrong. Is that a genuine mistake? Or was that a deliberate attempt to mislead the readers?
Even if you stick to reading the news, rather than the newspapers’ editorial and opinion columns, you are still being influenced. Intelligent readers can read the opinion columns knowing this this is someone else’s take on the news. We might do that and furiously disagree with that journalist’s opinion.
What we should remember is that most people are not political. They might consider themselves to be ‘middle of the road’ politically. But when they do not already have a firm ideology of their own, they are ripe for being influenced by what they read – both selected news stories and someone’s opinions on those news stories.
A free press?
Newspaper owners and senior journalists tell us that democracy depends on there being a free press. The argument is that the government of the day, and other prominent people in society, should be subjected to scrutiny and criticism.
Big circulation newspapers can, and do, influence how the public votes in general elections. We freely choose whether to vote, and who to vote for. But we are influenced by what we read in the papers. Or more likely, our favourite newspaper.
But while our politicians are mostly elected, our newspaper owners and editors are not. There are perhaps a dozen national dailies. But some of them have much bigger circulations than others. Some smaller circulation newspapers are read by people who are themselves powerful and influential – so circulation numbers are not always the most important thing to consider.
A handful of newspaper owners, editors and senior journalists have considerable power. They say that they are an indispensable part of democracy – but who chose them? Not the British public. The question is: who does freedom of the press benefit? Who is it freedom for? A small media class or the British public?
If you have ever tried writing letters to a newspaper on a frequent basis, you will know that not every letter gets printed. If your views are regarded as beyond the pale by the newspaper editor, then you might be banned altogether. Editors do not mind at all banning an individual, or a particular group of readers’ views – but they scream to high heaven if they think that their own right to express their opinions is likely to be curbed.
Who is doing the influencing?
A free press is not quite what those defending the concept suggest that it is. That situation, in itself, would be bad enough. But the situation is even worse if we consider the identity of those in charge of doing the influencing. Rupert Murdoch is a part-Jewish globalist. Conrad Black is married to, and heavily influenced by, Barbara Amiel, a Jewess, and a fanatical Zionist. Robert Maxwell claimed to be an Anglican and denied being Jewish at all. But after his death he was revealed to be “Israel’s super-spy”. He is buried on the Mount of Olives, a Jewish burial ground reserved for Israel’s elite.
If British newspapers are owned and staffed by foreigners and globalists, then they are hardly likely to put British interests first. That is not the type of people that we want influencing our political opinions, or our voting habits.
I feel that most editors and journalists working for the newspapers in Britain would happily ban my opinions. Just the same as most establishment politicians would happily exclude British Nationalist opinions from the political debate completely and permanently. Should we really care if some government restricts the power of the media? No part of the mass media speaks for us.
Copyright (c) 2022 Will Wright. For permission to reproduce this post, please contact the author through this web site.
