Sinister Interest - Reforming the Media
This polemical pamphlet is a significant contribution to the current debate about what needs to be done if democracy is to flourish in a world of ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’.
The political turmoil in the UK over the last two years has drawn attention once more to the questionable role of the media in our democracy. In our latest pamphlet, three Green House authors - John Blewitt, Molly Scott Cato and Rupert Read - argue that Britain’s mainstream media is no longer fit for purpose. Its coverage of the EU and Scottish referendums, the General Election, and the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, as well as the unethical practices revealed by the Leveson Inquiry and its woefully inadequate coverage of climate change and other escalating ecological threats, have made the need for fundamental reform both more obvious and more urgent. The structure and concentration of media ownership, and the interference of shady anti-democratic organisations in the public sphere, are endangering one of the essential institutions that a liberal democracy requires to function effectively.
Only the enemies of democracy and of open public debate and discussion benefit from an unreformed media and the widespread assumption it engenders - that everybody lies.
