Framing the debate

The mainstream media have made Diane Abbott getting her numbers in a muddle their lead political story of the day. Even the evening news shows are running with it as if nothing else has happened in the day.

It's understandable that it would get coverage, it was a total mid fart from someone who should have known better, but all the fuss about Abbott's mind-fart displaced much more sinister and downright dishonest stories.

Theresa May

Just for comparison have you seen any mainstream media coverage of Theresa May's political minders locking a load of journalists into a room today so that they couldn't invade her Tory "safe space" with their awkward questions and journalistic scrutiny?

Did the mainstream media tell you about the fact that Theresa May's minders refused to allow the media to film or photograph her replies to their pre-approved questions (which turned out to be yet more evasive repetition of her election sound bites like a broken robot) in case she was filmed making another gaffe like the one where she couldn't even remember the name of the town she was visiting the other day.

This happened on the same day as Diane Abbott's mind-fart, but apparently this kind of despotic control-freakery from Theresa May and her minders is so normal it's not worth covering at all.

In the grand scheme of things do you think that getting your minders to lock a load of journalists in a room to hide you from journalistic scrutiny is better or worse than getting your numbers in a muddle then correcting yourself later?

Richard Graham

Or how about the lack of mainstream media coverage of the Tory MP Richard Graham who publicly lied that there are some permanent degenerative diseases that "get better" on the Victoria Derbyshire show, then refused, point blank, to back up his assertion that permanent degenerative diseases "get better" with a single example.

So we have a Labour Party politician who got her numbers in a muddle over a good policy to lower crime by reversing the Tories' agenda of imposing the most extreme cuts in policing levels since records began.

She gets ridiculed and dragged over the coals as the number one item on several news channels despite the fact it was a mistake that she apologised for and corrected later... but a Tory MP openly and brazenly lying about permanent degenerative diseases getting better gets no headlines at all.

In the grand scheme of things do you think that openly lying that permanent degenerative diseases "get better" then refusing to back up your assertion with a single example is better or worse than getting your numbers in a muddle and then correcting yourself later?

Framing the debate

This disparity between the way the mainstream media holds opposition mistakes up to scrutiny and the way they wilfully overlook the worryingly autocratic tendencies and outright unforgivable lies of the ruling party is why the Tories are almost certainly going to win the next election.

The Tories are almost certainly going to win because the vast majority of the mainstream media are intent on framing the news in a way that always holds the opposition to account a lot more vigorously for mistakes than it ever holds the government to account for the dictatorial control-freakery of their leader, the outright unforgivable lies of their politicians, or their utterly lamentable track record in government.

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