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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 1/22/22

No 10 Lockdown Parties - Why the Media Are Complicit

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's head is on the chopping block. Each day, the media digs up more embarrassing details of parties hosted at his No 10 residence or other government buildings in flagrant violation of strict lockdown rules enforced on the rest of the country.

Ostensibly, the current furor creates the impression that Britain is a vigorous, functioning democracy where the media serves as a watchdog on power, holding the government to account when it breaks its word or the law or is exposed for hypocrisy.

Prompted by the media's revelations, Johnson is now facing scrutiny from Sue Gray, a senior civil servant whose investigation is expected later this month and may plunge him into further trouble. There are demands that the police should investigate too.

The image of an embattled prime minister fending off tenacious reporters is the one being promoted by the media, of course. But it is almost certainly an illusion. Britain is looking far more like a managed democracy where political and media elites work in partnership to control the flow of information and decide what remains in the shadows. What we, the public, sees is largely what we are allowed or supposed to see.

Revolving Door

Indications that British democracy is dysfunctional have been apparent for years but the evidence has grown particularly stark under Johnson. He has been able to exploit the vulnerabilities of a political system whose checks and balances have been hollowed out over decades.

Until relatively recently, the tsunami of often outrageous lies Johnson has told since becoming prime minister barely registered on the media's radar. It has been outsiders - from the Telegraph's former political commentator, Peter Oborne, now with Middle East Eye, and lawyer Peter Stefanovic - who have done the legwork to bring these deceptions and fabrications to public attention.

But the sudden onslaught of critical coverage of Johnson over a series of lockdown parties - dubbed "PartyGate" - risks obscuring this failure and wrongly restoring the media's reputation for hard-hitting investigations, and truth-telling.

The reality is very different. "PartyGate" completely undermines any claim the media have to be acting as a watchdog on government. How were the press corps so slow to learn of the regular rule-breaking parties that took place in Downing Street and elsewhere in Westminster through the lockdowns of 2020 and early 2021?

It is not as if the worlds of politics and media are far apart. There has long been a revolving door policy with sympathetic journalists, especially senior political correspondents much in demand by the main parties for their media relations offices.

James Slack joined the Sun newspaper as deputy editor in 2021 after nearly four years serving as a spokesperson for No 10, including during the period of the lockdown-busting parties. His own leaving do also reportedly violated the rules.

As David Yelland, a former Sun editor, observed on Twitter of the original revelations of a lockdown party attended by Johnson at No 10: "I can easily name ten, maybe as many as 20 UK political journalists who must have known or should have known about this Johnson party. Their editors would fire them. Except some of these mates of Boris are editors."

More parties have come to light since.

Rumor Mill

The main job of political correspondents and political editors is to be plugged into the famously indiscreet and backstabbing Westminster rumour mill.

The idea that not one of Britain's high-powered political journalists heard a peep about the lockdown parties until the first revelations appeared many months later - just before Christmas - stretches credulity to breaking point.

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Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the 2011 winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: (more...)
 

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