The Times’s front page story on Tuesday, about an opinion poll underlining Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity, was a rare example of a good news story about the Labour leader.

It reported the results of a YouGov survey showing that 55% of Labour members believed Corbyn was doing well, up four points over a fortnight, compared to 41% who thought he was doing badly, down seven points.

And 54% of the members said he would get their vote to remain as leader , compared with 21% who backed Angela Eagle and 15% who favoured Owen Smith.

But the informal agreement between Eagle and Smith means that one will drop out to avoid a three-way contest. In that event, according to the poll results, Corbyn would beat Eagle by 24 points (58% to 34%) and he would beat Smith by 22 points (56% to 34%).



It is doubtful if the story will do much to influence Times readers. But the page 1 placement of a positive article about Corbyn was significant on a day where most of the headlines were imbued with further criticism of him because he voted against Trident.

Among them was the Daily Telegraph’s front page piece about Corbyn being heckled by his own MPs during the Trident debate.

A page lead in the Daily Express headlined the accusation by prime minister Theresa May that Corbyn was helping Britain’s enemies by backing nuclear disarmament. And a page lead in Metro said Corbyn had been “blasted by his own MPs.”

The Sun’s editorial referred to Corbyn as “the hard-left terror sympathiser who wouldn’t fight back in a nuclear assault.”

And John Crace, in his Guardian parliamentary sketch, wrote of Corbyn:

“You can only admire the way in which he is turning the Labour party into a piece of dadaist performance art. However sincerely his views on nuclear weapons are held, there are few things more absurd in Westminster than a party leader who openly speaks against his own party policy.”

This portrayal of Corbyn comes amid the party’s two-day window in which new members must register to vote and against the background of research by the London School of Economics showing that Corbyn was “systematically attacked” by newspapers after his election last September.

The LSE study, Journalistic representations of Jeremy Corbyn in the British press: from watchdog to attack dog, was based on an analysis of the editorial content of eight titles over a two-month period in 2015: Guardian, Telegraph, Mail, Express, Sun, Independent, Mirror and London Evening Standard.

Researchers concluded that the papers had been guilty of vilifying Corbyn through character assassination, ridicule of his personality, and the delegitimisation of his politics.

Although they conceded that other leftwing Labour leaders had suffered at the hands of the press - naming Neil Kinnock and Ed Miliband (why not Michael Foot?) - they argued that “the degree of antagonism and hatred from part of the media has arguably reached new heights.”

They were unsurprised by the “negative and acerbic” coverage exhibited by the five rightwing papers, but argued that the left/liberal-leaning trio were guilty of anti-Corbyn reporting through “the amplification of internal struggles and tensions within the Labour party.”

This negativity was manifested by the trio having provided “an extensive and enthusiastic platform to those forces in the Labour party that aggressively contested Corbyn.”

Overall, their analysis found that more than 50% of the news coverage of Corbyn was “critical or blatantly antagonistic” with no “distinction between comment, conjecture and fact.”

Many articles mocked Corbyn’s ideas, policies, history and even his looks. Often portrayed as a clown-like figure, he was derided as the comic political equivalent of the TV character Mr Bean (Mr Corbean).

The study’s four authors also wrote an article on the OpenDemocracy website in which they contended that “Corbyn was clobbered by the British mainstream media in quite astonishing ways.”

Conceding that Corbyn is “a political maverick, a political transgressor and deviator who refuses to align himself with the mores and quirkiness of the British political establishment”, they thought press reaction to him was “transgressive and highly problematic from a democratic perspective.” They wrote:

“What the UK newspapers have done – and continue to do – to the Labour leader has grown beyond a political question. It now also raises ethical and democratic ones. A healthy democracy, to be sure, requires a strong watchdog in its press – but not an attack dog, snarling and barking at a different looking and distinctive talking politician that happens to challenge the status quo and advocate for a different kind of politics. In view of the results of our study, the British people also deserve a different kind of political journalism, critical yes, but also respectful of difference and civic.”

But I wonder if that really is what the British people want? Do they hunger for unbiased political coverage? Do they want politicians treated with respect?

I am not in the least bit surprised by the coverage of Corbyn. With something like 80% of his parliamentary party against him, would democracy benefit from a failure to reflect that reality?

I think we can presume that Labour MPs are not susceptible to press spin. Similarly, the fact that there is - according to that Times/YouGov poll - a healthy majority in favour of Corbyn among Labour members, they are not being influenced by the coverage. So where’s the proof of harm?



As for the readers of the eight titles, can anyone demonstrate that the negative coverage of Corbyn has unduly influenced their readerships?