Reblogged from Michael Meacher MP:
I suppose we must thank the Mail for exposing so starkly and vividly just
what a despicable purveyor of poison it is, so consumed by bigotry and hatred of
all things progressive in British life that it can so grossly misrepresent Ed
Miliband’s father who fought for Britain in the war when the Mail sided with the
Nazis in the 1930s , and then sent reporters deliberately to disrupt a Miliband
family memorial service to try to extract further mischievous comments. Not
only was this an appalling breach for anyone with a shred of common decency, it
is also well-timed to inform the deliberations of the Privy Council as it
decides in this next week which of the regulatory charters is to be put forward
– the royal charter supported by all the political parties or the one concocted
at the last moment by the right-wing press to maintain their stranglehold over
the nation’s information and thought patterns. Dacre, bullying and foul-mouthed
Ayatollah of the Mail – the man who redoubled the felony by reprinting the Mail
on Sunday’s slander about Miliband’s father and then refused to apologise for
the gatecrashing of the memorial service – this is the man who under current
self-regulation is chair of the editors’ code of practice committee. There
couldn’t be a better illustration of how unfit such a man is to run a newspaper,
let alone have oversight of the nation’s journalistic ethics.
To say that we have a free press when it is run by such characters as
Murdoch, Dacre, Desmond, and the Barclay brothers is a contradiction in terms.
It is in fact monopolised by an exceedingly rich coterie of private tycoons who,
despite their protestations, make sure through their appointment of editors that
their viscerally right-wing prejudices permeate the culture and content of the
newspapers they own. A free press is one that is owned and controlled neither
by the State nor by an individual purely on the basis of wealth. The Dacre
affair at the Mail shows just how far the latter can allow the culture and
ethics of a paper to degenerate into out-of-control vindictiveness and personal
animus which is utterly contrary to the principles of a genuinely free
press.
Ed Miliband has been brave, and right, to take on the excesses of corporate
power which are so badly tarnishing British life. He took on, and won,
against Murdoch over BSkyB, against the rabid Fleet Street frenzy over Leveson,
against the Big Six energy profiteers over gas and electricity pricing, against
the banks over their exploitation and irresponsibility, and against the new
private monopolies like G4S, A4E, Serco and Capita over their abuse of power.
But there is nowhere which cries out for reform so much as the unconscionable
press which in their present form and ownership are revealing themselves as
utterly unfit for purpose.