A healthy democracy depends on an active citizenry which is able to make informed decisions. That is, in theory, the role of the fourth estate: to help the public understand their own society and the world around them, to hold the powerful to account and to challenge myths and expose uncomfortable truths. You do not need to be a long-time critic of the British media ecosystem to see those basic functions are not being satisfied when it comes to Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. Rather than detailed scrutiny being applied to the most important single political event since the second world war, it has been reduced to a spectacle, a pantomime, all framed on the government’s own terms.

Just as Theresa May’s “no deal is better than a bad deal” bluster collided with political reality, Johnson’s demagoguery was followed by his own capitulation to the EU’s red lines. Yet his embrace of a deal first offered by the EU 19 months ago – and rejected by May as something “no UK prime minister could ever agree to” – has been presented as an against-all-odds, critic-defying triumph. The consequences of a deal predicted to strip the country of £130bn worth of growth – making the average Briton £2,250 a year poorer over the next 15 years – should be front and centre in the debate. Yet they are not. Johnson declared he would rather “die in a ditch” than request an extension: but request one he did, and die in a ditch he did not. Yet most of the British press focused on the theatrics of the prime minister not signing a letter and sending a copy of the Benn act instead. This is, of course, exactly the framing the Tories desire.

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There are excellent, perceptive political reporters. But too much political reporting trivialises coverage of political events, reducing them to a crude soap opera, centred on personalities and tittle tattle, rather than explaining competing ideas or worldviews, or placing them in a broader social context. Drama takes priority over substance.

It does help, of course, that the Tories have the active, partisan editorial support of most of the British press, while sympathisers with the main opposition party are a few isolated, mostly freelance individuals within the media ecosystem. One independent-minded political reporter declared: “You have to give credit to No 10 for knowing exactly how to play the UK press.” But in truth, press outlets are not victims of their own gullibility, manipulated by clever mini-Machiavellis in No 10: they are willing and amenable. Their coverage is skewed to the political interests of the moguls who own the newspapers who – quite rationally – fear their economic position will be damaged by the far-reaching reforms that would be implemented after a Tory defeat.

There is another factor that afflicts not just the print press, but the self-declared impartial broadcast media, too. Stenography – simply regurgitating the lines of the Tory political operation without analysis or context – is not political journalism. But Johnson’s operation is offering access in exchange for just such pliant reporting. Those reporters who have attempted to genuinely scrutinise Johnson have found themselves frozen out. There is nothing new about this: it’s how Alastair Campbell managed the media at New Labour’s peak.

That’s not the end of the story, of course. While Labour’s ability to push back at a Tory-crafted narrative is made extremely difficult by a press overwhelmingly sympathetic to the government’s position – as the commentator Matt Zarb-Cousin puts it, being a Tory is playing politics on “easy” mode – Labour’s communication strategy is currently sorely lacking. The party has acted as though it was blindsided by Johnson’s assumption of power, and it still lacks clear messages that cut through.

Yet Labour needing to swiftly get its act together does not absolve the media of its systemic failings. On the brink of the most dramatic political upheaval for generations, we deserve thorough, intense scrutiny and a government held mercilessly to account. We are being denied that and – with it – a properly functioning democracy, too.

• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist