Brexit and The Media: Simon Hinde

BREXIT AND THE MEDIA
Simon Hinde
C.N.R.S. Editions | « Hermès, La Revue »
Volume 77, Issue 1, 2017 | from 80 to 86

ISSN 0767-9513
ISBN 9782271115614
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Simon Hinde
University of the Arts London
Brexit and the media
An hour after victory was declared for the Leave side leading many commentators and politicians to conclude

in the referendum, Tony Gallagher, the editor of the Sun, that their power may be on the wane. Had Britain opted to
Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper, crowed: “So much for remain in Europe, it might have signalled the beginning of
the waning power of the print media”. In common with the the end of the British press as a political force.
overwhelming majority of the British press, the Sun had Hence Gallagher’s delight at the outcome—a victory
throughout the campaign made no secret of its support for for the Leave campaign by 52 per cent to 48 per cent. The
Brexit, and had, just days before the referendum, embla- result had not been widely predicted: pollsters, most pun-
zoned its front cover with a Union Jack and the message dits and even senior Leave campaigners had been publicly
“BeLEAVE in Britain”. and privately expecting Britain to vote for the status quo.
When the outcome became clear, at about 5am on Friday
June 24, it set in train a domestic upheaval that saw the
A politically engaged British press resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron and most
of his senior allies and a period of shocked introspection
In British public life, the press, specifically the right- on the part of the political and media classes.
wing popular press, has long been accorded an almost On all sides of the debate, there is agreement that
supernatural power to influence the outcome of elections the referendum was only nominally about Britain’s place
and referendums. A 1992 front-page headline in the Sun— in the European Union. The public, especially those who
“It’s The Sun Wot Won It”—, which followed an unex- voted Leave, were responding to a complex series of issues:
pected Conservative general election victory, has become migration, disillusion with the political class, a growing
part of political and media folklore. The Sun, and papers divide between London and the rest of the country, the
like it, were credited with the power to deliver the votes politics of “austerity” which, since the global economic
of many millions of readers, usually to the Conservatives. crash of 2008, have seen dramatic cuts in public services,
Since 1992, however, the Sun’s circulation has dropped a labour market in which “jobs for life” have been replaced
by 50 per cent and other papers have suffered similarly, with casual, short-term employment, economic insecurity,
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falling real wages. It was as if Britons were being asked to To this group of proprietors and senior journalists,
vote in a referendum on the state of the country and whe- the European Union represents much that is odious: regu-
ther or not they felt happy, safe and secure. Fairly or othe- lation, taxation, social welfare, collectivism, the constant
rwise, for many of those who voted Leave, the European reminder that Britain is just one country among many
Union had become a proxy for everything that they felt (in contrast with the Empire which we ruled). They had
was wrong with the country and with their lives. The been campaigning for Brexit long before the word existed:
Sun and newspapers like it reflected and amplified these the Sun first demanded a referendum in 1990 and, along
discontents. with much of the rest of the media, has been viscerally
Britain, perhaps more than most Western countries, hostile to the Europe, its Union, its Parliament and the
has a press that is politically engaged and parti pris. This Commission for decades. In newspapers like the Sun, the
goes beyond the traditional opinion pages, where com- Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express,
mentators peddle the paper’s editorial line. Over the last reporting of Europe has focused on cost, waste, bureau-
couple of decades opinion has increasingly leached into cracy, interference in domestic sovereignty and, particu-
reporting, such that on some issues, many newspapers larly in the last ten years, on immigration. The tone has
make little or no pretence of objectivity. alternated between poisonous vituperation and moc-

The most aggressively committed parts of the British kery: coverage was often untrue or exaggerated beyond
press are firmly on the right of politics. They proclaim reason, to the extent that the European Union set up a
a view of the world that combines revolutionary fervour “Euromyths” website, devoted to debunking the claims
for free-market, small-government economics with ultra- made by the British press.
conservative nostalgia for the monocultural, socially This approach to reporting Europe was pioneered by
stratified, deferential (and partly imaginary) Britain of a journalist called Boris Johnson, who was Brussels cor-
the 1940s and 1950s. Most British newspapers owe their respondent for the Daily Telegraph in the 1990s and whose
existence to a small group of “press barons”—aggressive coverage became a byword for mendacity harnessed for
businessmen such as Lords Beaverbrook, Northcliffe and comic effect (the EU is banning prawn-flavoured potato
Rothermere, who founded newspapers for profit and poli- crisps, is dictating how much cleavage a barmaid may
tical influence and required them to reflect their conser- show, will ban abnormally curved bananas). Johnson later
vative social and political views. Ownership has passed on became a politician (he is now British Foreign Secretary)
(though the Rothermere family still owns the Mail through and was a major figure in the Leave camp, campaigning
a publicly-quoted company), but the culture remains. against a caricature of Europe for which he was in large
Today’s press barons are generally strong-minded busi- part responsible.
nessmen of aggressively right-wing cast—Rupert Murdoch
is the best-known and most powerful. They use their papers
to propagate their political opinions and appoint as editors The campaign for Brexit
people who share their views. These are, pretty much wit-
hout exception, in the image of the proprietors: white men, It is impossible to calculate the effect that the long-
middle-aged or elderly (Paul Dacre, the long-serving editor running British press campaign had in preparing the
of the Daily Mail is approaching 70), with a nostalgia for ground for the moment when the referendum was finally
the British Empire and the Second World War. called and the campaign began. At that moment, there was
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Simon Hinde
no doubt that papers like the Mail, Express, Telegraph and into UK”, “Huge boost to EU exit hopes”, “New EU threat
the Sun would be participants in the campaign rather than to your pension”, “Outrage at bid to ‘rig’ EU vote”, “Migrant
reporters of it. seized every 6 minutes”, “Migrant crisis will cost £20bn”,
Even knowing this, it was hard to be prepared for “Fury at PM’s EU pension threat”, “Proof we can’t stop
the torrent of coverage that followed and its bitter rage. migrants—five million EU citizens have been given right
“Who WILL speak for England?” the Mail asked on its to enter Britain”, “Outrage over plans to raise our taxes”,
front page in February, likening opponents of the EU to “New EU tax raid on Britain”, “EU ’very bad ‘ for pensions”.
British politicians of the 1930s who spoke out against The Mail’s front pages included “Migration revolu-
Hitler and the Nazis (though the paper was careful to say tion” (a proposal by senior Leave campaigners for tougher
that there are “no parallels whatever between the Nazis rules on migration), “EU killers and rapists we’ve failed
and the EU”). As the referendum drew close, the Mail ran to deport”, “What a way to tackle a migrant crisis!”, “The
another front-page reading: “Lies, greedy elites. Or a great Albanian double killer who’s lived freely in open-borders
future outside a broken, dying Europe. If you believe in Britain for 18 years”, “Arise Sir Remain!” (on a controver-
Britain, Vote Leave” while the Sun’s front page offered its sial knighthood for a remain campaigner), “Fury over plot
“BeLEAVE in Britain”. Each of these features was clearly to let 1.5m Turks into Britain”, “Brexit poll boost as migra-

labelled a comment piece, albeit they appeared on the front tion fears grow”, “We’re from Europe let us in!”, “PM’s TV
page, where readers traditionally expect to see news. As Mauling over migration”.
we shall see, though, the pro-Brexit convictions of the The Telegraph offered “Boris: learn English if you
British press went far beyond the realm of commentary: want to move to the UK”, “Cameron savaged as voters
news coverage which (according to traditional journalistic revolt”, “Gove blasts EU elite for destroying British jobs”,
conventions, at least) should strive for balance and accu- “European criminals free to live in Britain”, “Britain can
racy, became infected by bias, distortion and lies. This isn’t fight terror threat better outside EU”, “Number 10 panics
a completely new phenomenon in the British press, which as Leave surges”, “boost for Leave camp as it takes poll
has increasingly allowed political conviction to override lead”, “Out camp reveals its blueprint for Brexit”, “Vote
its journalistic scruple. What was startling, in the daily Leave, change history”, “Cameron’s migration deception”.
barrage of pro-Brexit news coverage in the press, was its As well as the sheer number of newspaper front
absolute disdain for professional ethics and norms. Large pages advocating Brexit, either implicitly or explicitly, it
parts of the British press were so committed to the Leave is worth considering the types of story that they ran. Pro-
campaign that they became, in all but name, part of its Leave announcements were covered positively and lar-
propaganda operation. gely without criticism, such as the Express story on Nigel
In the first three weeks of June, as the referendum Farage’s warning on immigration and the Telegraph’s
drew closer, there was a blizzard of anti-EU, pro-Brexit story on the Leave camp’s Brexit proposals. By contrast,
news stories on the front pages of newspapers and, par- warnings and announcements from the Remain side were
ticularly, story after story about migration. The Express presented as controversial, focusing on the criticisms that
offered “Migrants pay just £100 to invade Britain”, “20,000 they attracted (“Outrage over plans to raise our taxes”,
migrants ready to sneak into Britain”, “There will be bodies “Cameron’s migration deception”).
on our beaches” (a warning from Leave campaigner Nigel Migration was the topic that came to dominate
Farage on immigration), “Cover-up over migrants sneaking the debate, even though it was (and still is) remains
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questionable whether leaving Europe will have any effect population, this is a group that wields disproportionate
on the numbers of migrants coming to the country. The influence over the political process.
Leave campaign relentlessly focused on migration with a This is not the only reason why, despite a rapidly
series of announcements, posters and photo opportuni- declining circulation, the British press continues to
ties, which drew allegations of racism. The Mail was forced influence and shape political debate. An important factor
to apologies for a story in June—“We’re from Europe let us is the daily news cycle, which is enshrined in political and
in”—which featured a picture of migrants emerging from media process and observed with quasi-religious devotion
a lorry in Essex, when it emerged that the migrants were by politicians and journalists alike.
from the Middle East, rather than Europe (the story also It begins with the Today news and current affairs
ran in the Sun). The Mail was also forced to correct a story program on BBC Radio 4, which is broadcast between
that wrongly claimed that EU migrants were responsible 6am and 9am on weekdays and whose centrality to British
for 700 crimes a week. The corrections, as is invariably the public life is impossible to overstate. Day in, day out, it
case, received a fraction of the prominence granted to the is Today that determines the political agenda, as politi-
original story. cians of all parties vie to appear on it, timing important
Observers guided solely by the press could easily announcements so that they are heard for the first time

reach the conclusion that Britain is a uniquely insular on the program. Announcements, debates and gaffes
nation and one that is deeply hostile to foreigners. The (Today’s famously adversarial interviewers pride them-
reality is different: Britain scores more highly on interna- selves in forcing politicians into damaging admissions) are
tional measures of social liberalism than countries such as then picked up by websites and other broadcasters, and
France and Belgium. In particular, the young, the univer- roll through the day’s news, sometimes to the evening and
sity educated, dwellers in large cities are likely to hold quite beyond.
tolerant views and each generation is more socially liberal Yet Today’s own agenda is determined (more than
than its predecessor. That this has not produced a more it would probably care to acknowledge) by the press. The
liberal press is due in part to a demographic quirk that stories to which it gives prominence, lines that it takes,
reinforces and helps to explain newspapers’ anti-Europe the questions it puts to its guests are influenced by and
bias. With the growth of digital media, young people often drawn entirely from, the headlines in that morning’s
have deserted the printed media. The ageing readers who newspapers. Politicians on the Remain side were obliged to
remain tend, like the papers’ proprietors and editors, to respond to claims drawn from that day’s Sun or Mail and
be socially conservative—and hostile to Europe. Detailed vigorously pursued, rather than having room to put their
analysis of the referendum results showed that 61 per cent own case. This image of campaign on the defensive would
of over-65s voted for Brexit, compared with just 25 per set the tone for the day’s coverage across the British media.
cent of 18‑24-year-olds.
Even more pertinently, the elderly ensured that their
voices were heard. It appears that over 80 per cent of over- The post-truth era
65s voted in the referendum, compared with only 40 per
cent of the 18‑25 age group (despite a vociferous public Throughout the campaign, both sides paid fast and
campaign to encourage the young to participate). If news- loose with the truth. The strategy of the Remain side was
papers are read by under 40 per cent (and falling) of the to issue an escalating series of blood-curdling warnings
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Simon Hinde
about the economic consequences of leaving Europe. Leave the foreseeable future. Again, since the referendum result,
campaigners countered these rather effectively by bran- this claim has disappeared from British public discourse.
ding them “Project Fear”, the implication being that they During the campaign, these statements were made
were at best exaggerated and, at worst, untrue. Newspapers repeatedly, in the press, on the radio and on television, by
picked up the “Project Fear” claim: the pro-Brexit media the most senior figures in the Leave campaign, even after
was enthusiastically scornful, to the point of accusing the their falseness had been clearly established for anybody
Leave side of treacherously “talking Britain down”. Papers who was interested in knowing the facts. Conventionally,
on the pro-European side of the divide greeted the Leave politicians caught in a lie face consequences: they must
claims with a mixture of weary scepticism mingled with a apologize or even resign; they and their campaigns are
kind of embarrassment. damaged and discredited. In the referendum campaign,
If Remainers were guilty of exaggeration and distor- the lies, and their regular repetition, seemed to strengthen
tion, the Leave camp lied with a dizzying aplomb, placing the Brexit cause.
at the heart of their campaign two assertions, which proved In their book The Elements of Journalism, Bill Kovach
crucial in persuading wavering voters, despite being and Tom Rosenstiel say that journalism is at its essence
rapidly exposed as lies. The first was that EU membership “a discipline of verification”: it is respect for facts coupled

costs the country £350 million a week and, that if we were with a determination to uncover the truth that separates
to leave, this money would be spent on the National Health journalism from entertainment, propaganda, fiction and
Service. This was a particularly potent claim because of art.
cuts to public services and because of the totemic posi- There has been something of a return (in some jour-
tion that the NHS occupies in British life: it is, as a senior nalistic circles, at least) to the old-fashioned and perhaps
Conservative politician once observed, “the closest thing unglamorous discipline of fact-checking: this is pro-
that the English people now have to a religion”. bably a response to the storm of unsourced information
The second powerful key assertion made by the Leave unleashed by social media. Does that video really show a
side was that Turkey is likely to join the EU by 2020, raising drone strike in Raqqa? Is that Twitter account genuine or
the spectre of unlimited migration from a Muslim (though fake? Journalists are engaging seriously with these issues
technically secular) country and from its neighbours such by subjecting claims to serious scrutiny and that is a very
as Iran and Syria. good thing.
Neither of these claims was true: the cost of British In the Brexit campaign, however, it didn’t work. The
membership is around £248 million a week (due to Britain’s £350 million claim was debunked, over and over again by
long-standing rebate from the EU) and the figures in any the most reputable of organisations. The BBC examined it
case take no account of EU spending in the UK, which in minute detail and concluded unequivocally: “Leaving
amounts to around £100 million a week. Nor was there the EU would not give the UK an extra £350m a week to
any likelihood that the money saved would be spent on the spend on the NHS.” As the campaign went on, some papers
NHS (within hours of the referendum result, Leave cam- took the unusual step of describing the claim as false in
paigners abandoned this aspect of the claim entirely). For their reporting. Yet, on referendum day, polls showed that
a host of political reasons—including the fact the UK, like over half the population still believed it to be true.
all EU countries, has a veto over new members—there is In all political campaigns there are debates about
no possibility of Turkey joining in 2020 or at any time in facts, allegations of lying and actual blatant untruths but
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the Brexit campaign felt like something different. What we Gunster, who worked for Leave] said early on was ‘facts
witnessed was an example of the phenomenon that is star- don’t work’ and that’s it. The Remain campaign featured
ting to be called “post-truth” politics, alongside Donald fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. It just doesn’t work. You have got
Trump’s US presidential candidacy and Vladimir Putin’s to connect with people emotionally. It’s the Trump suc-
foreign policy in the Ukraine. In “post-truth” political cess.” With the support of much of the press, the Leave
discourse, the accuracy of what you say is unimportant, campaign sought to discredit public figures who made
what matters is the force and frequency with which you the case for Europe. Pro-Remain politicians, economists,
say it and the emotional resonance that it holds for your entrepreneurs, artists and writers were attacked as biased,
audience. unreliable, elitist and out of touch, in a strategy which cli-
Trump’s successful US presidential campaign was maxed in the assertion by Michael Gove, a cerebral senior
built on a series of controversial and in many cases pro- Conservative politician at the heart of the Leave cam-
vably false claims, ranging from inchoate assertions of paign that “the people of this country have had enough
Hillary Clinton’s “crookedness” to the specific, yet fantas- of experts.”
tical, allegation that Barack Obama was the founder of Isis.
For his part Putin has claimed on television that there are In the face of the lies, distortion, exaggeration and

no Russian soldiers in Ukraine, despite plentiful evidence scorn of traditional sources of authority and information,
to the contrary. this could have been a moment for journalists to demons-
The claims of Trump, Putin and the Brexiteers are trate the virtues of “media gatekeeping”—filtering infor-
delivered with conviction, hammered home by repetition mation to ensure that the public is properly informed on
and maintained even in the face of proof of their untruth. a matter of historic importance. As we have seen, a large
The £350 million Brexit claim was painted on the side of part of the British press was determined simply to propa-
the buses that took Leave campaign leaders around the gandise. That part of the media that set out to inform—
country, long after it had been exposed as a lie. The claims principally broadcasters and a few newspapers—found
skilfully push certain psychological buttons—nationa- hampered by perceived journalistic norms of news cove-
lism, disgust at political elites and so on—so that sup- rage. In the name of neutrality and objectivity, claims
porters believe them unquestioningly while waverers are known to be false made by one side, were often juxtaposed
inclined to believe that there must be some substance to with factually accurate rebuttals from an opponent but
them. The burden of proof then falls on political oppo- without any guidance from the reporter as to their relative
nents and the media, who have to sift through data and credibility. This “he said, she said” approach to reporting
come up with facts to repudiate the claim. But by that time, may have felt like neutrality to journalists, and looked like
the original claim has been firmly established in voters’ neutrality to their readers, but in reality it represented a
minds. The fact that the lie is out there, being debated by damaging false objectivity that gave equal weight to truth
opponents and the media, gives it credibility. and lies. Rather than journalistic punctiliousness, it repre-
The Leave campaign grasped this early on and made sented a kind of dereliction of duty.
it a core part of their strategy. Arron Banks, a multi- It does not help that reporting is expensive and good
millionaire backer of Leave, compared his campaign to reporting requires trained and experienced people. For
Donald Trump’s, saying: “It was taking an American-style newspapers in straitened financial circumstances (which
media approach. What they [political strategists Goddard in Britain is all newspapers), it is easier and cheaper to fill
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Simon Hinde
pages and websites with opinion pieces: tens of thousands opinion and how it can be influenced, allied to a lack of
of words of evidence-light, assertion-heavy commentary scruples as to ways and means. Social media was hugely
written by people who are experts in everything and significant, with its unchecked flow of unverified infor-
nothing. The role of columnists in the decline of British mation and its “filter bubbles” and “echo chambers” which
journalism should not be overlooked. (Before the refe- mean that we are increasingly unlikely to be exposed to
rendum, Boris Johnson was a columnist; after the refe- facts and opinions that challenge our view of the world.
rendum, Michael Gove became one. The role of columnists But in the end this was a failure of journalism and
in the decline of British politics may be worth examining, of journalists. The way the Sun, the Mail and Express
too). behaved wasn’t a surprise: we knew what they were like.
Of course, there were other factors at play. The Leave What was revelatory was, for all their reporting, fact-chec-
campaign was far more skilfully executed than that of king and punditry, how irrelevant to the debate the rest of
the remainers, with a surefooted understanding of public the media was.

B ibliographical references
Ford, R. and Goodwin, M. J., Revolt on the Right : Explaining Sup- Kovach, B. and Rosenstiel, T., The Elements of Journalism, New
port for the Radical Right in Britain, Abingdon, Routledge, 2014. York, Three Rivers Press, 2007.
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Brexit and The Media: Simon Hinde

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BREXIT AND THE MEDIA

C.N.R.S. Editions | « Hermès, La Revue »

Volume 77, Issue 1, 2017 | from 80 to 86

Downloaded on www.cairn-int.info - - - 37.122.176.128 - 08/07/2020 09:00 - © C.N.R.S. Editions

Electronic distribution by Cairn on behalf of C.N.R.S. Editions.

Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)