And look at the fawning story<\/a> in the Standard itself where Osborne says he is proud to be a Conservative MP but will lead a team of \u201cdedicated and independent journalists\u201d. So how will that independence work? How, for example, will the Standard cover the austerity cuts to London\u2019s services that were initiated by its own editor?<\/p>\n There seems to be an implicit acceptance that for an MP, having six jobs is an issue, but deciding what story leads the Standard every day isn\u2019t. \u00a0If that\u2019s become the conventional wisdom, it raises bigger issues than whether Osborne should quit as an MP. We need a rethink on the whole question of the part the press play in public life.<\/p>\n Of course, papers have always taken sides. Two hundred years ago, Jonathan Swift<\/a> used The Examiner<\/em> to rail against the \u201ccontrivance and cunning of stock-jobbers\u201d? But papers have also provided facts. Swift\u2019s contemporary Daniel Defoe produced a detailed account of the hurricane of 1703 \u2013 The Storm <\/em>\u2013 still seen as a landmark in British journalism.<\/p>\n Facts and opinion <\/strong><\/p>\n And for two centuries since, newspapers have run factual news stories and opinionated leader columns side-by-side. But since the Thatcher government, papers like the Mail and Sun have increasingly blurred that distinction and presented political rhetoric in the guise of news. For example, remember the Mail tellin<\/a>g us in 2012 that 29 million Romanians and Bulgarians could come to the UK. The latest figures<\/a> say fewer than 300,000 showed up.<\/p>\n Unsurprising therefore that the papers are now seen as political first, editorial second. \u00a0But this should not be a \u2018whatever\u2019 issue \u2013 something to dismiss with a shrug. If we believe, as the historian Howard Zinn observed, that: \u201cDemocracy depends on citizens being informed.\u201d, then we are witnessing its subversion. We no longer have voting outcomes informed by a free press but by propaganda, defined by former Sunday Times editor Harold Evans as: \u201cpersuading people to make up their minds while withholding some of the facts from them.\u201d\u00a0 In my view, the election of Donald Trump and the UK\u2019s vote to leave the European Union show us what happens when propaganda prevails over information.<\/p>\n The media spectrum <\/strong><\/p>\n There are now broadly three categories of media: the neutral in the middle of a spectrum, such as the BBC, ITN, the \u2018i<\/em>\u2019 and agencies like Reuters and the Press Association; the moderates to each side, such as the Times and Telegraph to the right and Guardian and Huffington Post to the left; and the extremists on each end, like the Mail and Breibart on the right and Morning Star and Canary on the left. By and large the moderates are still offering journalism while the extremists have abandoned it for politics.<\/p>\n This places a huge responsibility on the neutrals and moderates to preserve an informed democracy.\u00a0 The BBC\u2019s editorial guidelines<\/a> say: \u201cImpartiality lies at the heart of public service and is the core of the BBC’s commitment to its audiences.\u201d Good stuff \u2013 but the BBC must walk the talk. James O\u2019Brien is a brilliant broadcaster and polemicist \u2013 but not an impartial Newsnight presenter. On the proactive side, the neutrals need to supply the information people need to make educated choices. Recent BBC coverage of the NHS and African famine was a return to form \u2013 but it could choose to dig much deeper on big issues from Brexit to social care and unearth the facts politicians and the political press are hiding.<\/p>\n The moderates, too, have a responsibility to keep reporting both sides of the story on the news pages so their readers form an opinion instead of having one foisted on them. \u00a0Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who care about democracy should think about investing in new sources of independent information such as Full Fact<\/a>. \u00a0And perhaps some organisation that carries some authority \u2013 a university, think-tank or school of journalism – should commission a rigorous analysis of the media that calls out those that no longer follow genuine journalistic principles.<\/p>\n Yellow journalism <\/strong><\/p>\n Something similar happened in New York in the late 19th<\/sup> century when sensationalist \u2018yellow journalism\u2019; was at its peak. Libraries and universities boycotted the worst offenders and in time, much of the US press came back from the dark side. Central to that process of rehabilitation was Joseph Pulitzer, who had indulged in his own share of lurid populism but ended up setting the New York Times on the progressive, fact-based path it still follows today and founding the Columbia School of Journalism and the Pulitzer Prize. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0He warned: \u201cA cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself.\u201d<\/p>\n Not only is that still a relevant warning \u2013 but one that recognises the power of the press to shape society. And there is still a chance to turn that formidable power into a positive one \u2013 as articulated by US TV anchor-man Dan Rather: \u201cA free and truly independent press is the red beating heart of freedom and democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What matters more: that an MP has five jobs outside Parliament or that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13679,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13678"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/news-1074604_640-150x150.jpg\")
The Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Lord Bew, has been quoted<\/a> as saying the case raises the issue of \u201chow much time MPs have to devote to their parliamentary work\u201d. Is that the only issue? What about the conflict of interest?<\/p>\n