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Administrator
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Long Ashton, Bristol
Posts: 9,537
Party: None
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This is a letter sent to the new-ind-uk email group by Damian Hockney, UKIP member of the London Assembly, which references this issue:
Quote:
Mike Nattrass and I have not exactly seen eye to eye over the last couple of years,
which is about as understated as it can get, but I would be wary of
leaping onto the attack over his Chechnya analogy, simply because newspapers
which are hostile to us have written an interpretation of what he has said.
A friendly newspaper (if one existed) could just as easily have made the
point in a very different way.
Many eurosceptics have been making the analogies with the Soviet Union for
some time,
long before the latest tragedy in Chechnya.
And let's not forget the Godfrey Bloom fridge story. I certainly would not
have put it that way myself and was nervous about the initial coverage, but
in a very revealing way, the sentiment which lay behind it emerged very
clearly. I have seen the issue (and positive references back to Godfrey
Bloom) used seriously by many sources since then, and in a world where you
have to make impact to get your point across, and deal with the agendas of
journalists, a 5,000 word cleverly argued statement about employment of
women would
get precisely zero coverage where his point has been made and appears to
have gained some credence. I indeed had my re-think completed when I read a
headline
on the News Section of Sunday Times saying "You are RIGHT, Godfrey" and then
saw it used by two business organisations in a serious context, including a
conference I attended which had been nothing to do with politics.
And remember, whenever you make impact, it is the job of others on the other
side to attack you using tame reporters within media that are on their side,
with any tricks at their disposal. Misquote, use of opinion as reporting,
sometimes deliberately fabricating/exaggerating, use of hype....and above
all making what
you say MUCH more extreme than it was, and making it seem as if everyone was
horrified at what you were saying (the fraudulent use of isolation as a
technique). This is why if we mention asylum seekers, we are accused of
being racists etc. But if Blunkett makes an even firmer point, it is hailed
in Labour supporting papers and others as
'dealing with the issue'.
Eurosceptics and UKIP don't have control of the press and the manner of
reporting. If you are a journalist, you can make someone's private and
secret gift of a million pounds to a starving family look like a wicked
venal act if you have a reason to make it appear so: "Show off
self-publicist recklessly wastes money on feckless family which claims to be
poor. Fails to get the knighthood he is pretends to give secret donation..."
You know the sort of thing.
You are probably not aware of this, but UKIP at the Assembly has provided a
number of stories used by newspapers like the Mail on Sunday and Sunday
Telegraph in the last four or five weeks. To our astonishment, our
quotations given to these papers are then simply re-attributed to a
Conservative and all mention of UKIP (which sourced and researched the info
and provided the story to their journalists exclusively) is removed! So for
example I
might say as the quote to a journalist that: "It's outrageous that the Mayor
did x and y to pay for his Brussels office," and I will then see it in
print...but attributed to a Conservative Assembly member! Almost
Kafka-esque. Almost funny if it weren't happening to you. The most recent
one was breathtaking and we have insisted on some sort of an
apology/correction, which we hope will go in the Sunday Telegraph. But don't
hold your breath. Maybe we should just insist on the NUJ rate for a good
half page story and forget about getting the coverage...
It never ceases to amaze me that to a man and woman, we
eurosceptics/realists all doubt the truth and honesty and motives of the
press, and regularly use phrases like "you can never believe a word"...but
the minute we read a coloured version of a story, by our sworn enemies,
about the actions of a eurosceptic who we are not keen on personally, then
we appear to believe every word and swallow every line and shade of the
opinion given in the
article, even if we know no-one who was present, no nothing about what
actually happened and have only the newspaper report to rely upon!
Our party still needs reform, and I remain deeply unhappy at some of the
developments -
eg the attempt to make the NEC smaller with no rule change is simply wrong,
unacceptable and unconstitutional - and I will return to these separately. I
also want to see strong, proactive and public leadership, the development of
policies and a detached decision on how best to fight the next General
Election, not some half **** stitch up which lets the Tories off the hook.
If we act soon, we might even win seats at a General Election, backed by big
money and with good media coverage. If we just drift and act as Tories in
mourning, we will not achieve that. The media knows this. The potential
backers know this. If you look at the Bruges Group poll, you will see what
many are thinking. We cannot ignore change and we must behave like political
activists or radicals, not like part of the establishment. June 10th was the
beginning of the work, not the culmination.
But on the matter of media coverage of other party members I will always be
more likely to trust the member than the opinions of a biased partisan
commentator paid to find out ways of attacking us, paid to ignore the good
parts of a story and paid to dwell on subjective half truths which enable
the publication to continue the process of distortion at the behest of their
masters. Then if they can't dish you in the story to simply deny your
involvement and hand the credit to your rivals.
Last word to Richard North who made a very good point when he said in
relation to this and to the story about Sir Stephen Wall attacking Gordon
Brown: "the ones to watch are the cultured Sir Stephen Wall and his ilk, the
ranks of fonctionnaires who believe in the managerial concept of government
and who regard democracy, at best, as an irritation and generally as an
impediment to their plans. While we may be irritated and occasionally
appalled by the behaviour of our allies (and
doubtless will continue to be), it is as well, occasionally, to remember who
the real enemies are."
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25-09-2004, 02:40 PM
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