Thanks to our gloriously unfree media, it is impossible to have a rational conversation about Jeremy Corbyn, Labour or just politics full stop. On Monday I posted a video interview with the Labour MP Jess Phillips, the latest in a series of relaxed conversations with political figures, recent examples being the colourful Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg and the rightwing firebrand Peter Hitchens. The response to the interview was, generally, very positive.

But it was Phillips’s direct style that provoked a media response. She had told Corbyn and his team that “the day that it becomes clear that you are hurting us more than you are helping us – I won’t knife you in the back; I’ll knife you in the front.”

What she meant was that she would never be a secret plotter: she would always be open and upfront. But after several lurid headlines about Phillips and knives, an angry backlash ensued. Someone even suggested on social media that the police get involved.

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Here’s the problem. Park what you think about Jeremy Corbyn, his leadership, or his policies: three months ago, he won a landslide victory in an open and democratic contest to become the leader of the country’s main opposition party. Ever since then, he has been subjected to almost universal media hostility and derision.

A poll this week revealed that a quarter of the population thought Corbyn was “turning out to be a good leader of the Labour party”. Yes, 46% disagreed (and, yes, polls have had a wobbly time of late), but as far as the media are concerned, it’s approaching 100%. The quarter of the population who are positive about Corbyn have almost no representation in the media. Is that healthy in a democracy?

And that is the context behind the reaction to my interview. A few were angry that I had even interviewed Phillips, that I was playing into the hands of the media onslaught. This is obviously ridiculous. It is unhealthy in the extreme to be exposed only to views with which you entirely concur, to become a bitter sect. But “Corbynistas” are being portrayed as an irrational, hate-filled mob lashing out at anyone and anything they disagree with. That’s largely based on extrapolating extreme – and unjustifiable – cases of abuse: as somebody who has been deluged with rightwing abuse, I’ve never tried to argue that those behind it are representative of the right. For most Corbynistas there is an understandable frustration that their views are treated with contempt by the media: that they have almost no representation.

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To the commentator who is not hostile, this poses a challenge. I have several criticisms of the Labour leadership, held in good faith and constructive in approach. Because I want the left to succeed – otherwise, what’s the point? The need to build coalitions of middle- and low-income people; to reach out beyond the converted; to have a credible, coherent economic alternative; to rebut smears of being hostile to the country; and so on.

But when voiced, the right will use these as evidence that “even the left is losing faith”. Some on the left will see such suggestions and criticisms as playing into the hands of an aggressive media campaign regarding anything but blind loyalty as treachery. The isolated sympathetic commentators end up almost duty-bound to stay in line.

Such is the unrelenting nature of the media attack, any balanced discussion of the Corbyn leadership risks being shut down. That the media can be so dominated by one opinion – and so aggressive about it – is a damning indictment of the so-called free press. I’m an opinion writer: my opinions appear in the opinion section. But the media is swollen with opinion writers, and in too many cases their work ends up in the news section. A constructive critique of the Labour leadership is still needed for its own sake if nothing else. It is, however, an almost impossible task.

There is an obvious comeback to my objections to the British media. I should be grateful: other countries lack any media independent of government; journalists who dissent can face persecution, imprisonment or even worse. It reminds me of the argument that we cannot talk of poverty in Britain when there are people starving to death in Africa. How much worse things are elsewhere is no excuse for our own injustices, even if they are – by those standards – considerably less severe.

It is bad that our press often resembles an aggressive political machine rather than a means to educate and inform. Our press is, after all, mostly owned by a very small group of moguls who, nobody could dispute, have very strongly held political opinions.

One of the key roles of the press is to scrutinise political parties. But when much of the press runs glowing front pages on government budgets while routinely savaging the opposition, the implications for our democracy are worrying. And that’s what enrages so many Corbyn supporters, even if some express their frustration in an unhelpful – or outright abusive – way.

A sense of disenfranchisement, of holding legitimate views that are officially treated as anything but, ends up with bitter outbursts expressed on social media. A balanced, rational discussion about Corbyn’s leadership seems utopian – but it shouldn’t be.