Comment

At the weekend, the SKWAWKBOX published an article on the International Peace Bureau‘s (IPB) award to Jeremy Corbyn – and mentioned the mainstream media’s (MSM) complete lack of coverage.

The article went viral.

This afternoon, Channel 4’s FactCheck (C4FC) published an article on the MSM’s omission and concluded, basically, that it was fine.

The article claimed that the failure to mention Corbyn’s receipt of the award – jointly with world-renowned author, philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky, often called the ‘world’s most-cited author’ – was essentially normal and unsurprising, because in other years the “prize doesn’t generally get much coverage in the UK media”.

C4FC was recently the subject of a somewhat critical SKWAWKBOX article when it had to correct and water down an article that had originally claimed Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell didn’t understand government borrowing after leading economists backed his statements on the topic.

It has also erred in its latest analysis which – somewhat unusually – does not address provable facts or figures.

Because it asked the wrong question.

The award by the IPB – which is older than the Nobel organisation – may not be a topic of much interest when it’s awarded to someone who is not a subject of interest in the UK news.

But Jeremy Corbyn appears – most often negatively portrayed, according to academic analysis – daily in the UK news media. The fact that the leader of the main opposition party – significantly ahead of the governing (after a fashion) party in the polls – receives an international peace award from one of the world’s oldest peace federations is news because of who Corbyn is as well as because of the nature of the award.

Especially when that party leader is routinely and ignorantly smeared by those same media by association with ‘terror groups’.

C4FC asked the wrong question and therefore reached the wrong conclusion. The right question is a very simple thought experiment:

Had Theresa May – highly unlikely as it is – been the recipient of the award, would the MSM have reported it?

It takes very little consideration to realise the ‘no-brainer’ answer: it’s inconceivable that the Establishment media would pass over it without comment – far more likely that it would make a day’s-worth of half-hourly headlines.

Ask that question and you’ll reach the right conclusion about the MSM’s complete (well, broken by C4FC now) silence on Corbyn’s win.

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