May 13, 2015

Priming the U.S. Electorate

by Vaska

Jim Naureckas’ latest analysis of the U.S. corporate media commentary following Labour’s loss in last week’s elections in the UK shows how the American corporate press is prepping the public for the 2016 election in the States by skewing its reporting on what the British have voted for and against.

As Naureckas points out, while Labour lost on a platform which focused entirely on cutting deficits, the American voters are being told a story completely at odds with the facts: viz. that it was its supposed, imaginary turn to the left, which the media are attributing to Hillary Clinton as well, that alienated the British electorate. Here’s how U.S.A. Today presents the results of the UK general elections:

Rather than endorsing this leftward shift in politics — a view arguably now animating the Hillary Clinton campaign for president in the US — voters returned the Conservative Party to No. 10 Downing St. with a heretofore unimaginable majority.

The reality, of course, is quite different. Not only had Labour shifted to the right, but the Conservatives themselves, the winning party, got a mere 36.8 percent of the vote. These, however are some of the facts Americans must be kept ignorant of lest they draw the sort of political conclusions U.S. corporate media and their paymasters would rather they didn’t.

Even the American “newspaper of record,” as The New York Times is still widely considered to be, has presented Labour’s loss in the same light.