In autumn 2002 the Observer newspaper\u2019s correspondent Ed Vulliamy found\u00a0confirmation\u00a0of\u00a0a terrible truth many of us already suspected. In a world-exclusive, he persuaded\u00a0Mel Goodman, a former senior CIA official who still had security clearance at the Agency, to go on record that the CIA knew there were no WMD in Iraq. Everything the US and British governments were telling us to justify the coming attack on Iraq were lies.<\/p>\n
Then something even more extraordinary happened. The Observer failed\u00a0to print the story. In his book Flat Earth News, Nick Davies recounts that Vulliamy, one of the Observer\u2019s most trusted reporters, submitted the piece another six times in different guises over the next half year. Each time the Observer spiked the story.<\/p>\n
Vulliamy never went public with this monumental crime against real\u00a0journalism (should there not be a media trials section at the Hague?). And the supposedly liberal-left Observer\u00a0was never held accountable\u00a0for its\u00a0grave\u00a0betrayal of its readership and the world community.<\/p>\n
But at the weekend maybe the tables turned a little. The Observer gave Vulliamy a platform in its comment pages to take issue with its editorial the previous week savaging Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s election as Labour Party leader.<\/p>\n
In understandably cautious mode, Vulliamy called the paper\u2019s stance towards Corbyn \u201cchurlish\u201d, warning that it had lost the chance to stand apart from the rest of the British media, including the Guardian. All had taken vehemently against the new Labour leader from the very beginning of his candidacy.<\/p>\n
we conjoined the chorus with our own \u2013 admittedly more progressive \u2013 version of this obsession with electoral strategy with little regard to what Corbyn says about the principles of justice, peace and equality (or less inequality).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
What do these two confrontations between Vulliamy and the Observer \u201313 years apart; one public, one not \u2013 indicate about the changing status of the liberal-left media?<\/p>\n
To understand what\u2019s going on, we also\u00a0need\u00a0to consider the coverage of Corbyn in the Guardian, the better-known daily sister paper of the Sunday Observer.<\/p>\n
All the Guardian\u2019s inner circle of commentators, from Jonathan Freedland to Polly Toynbee, made public that they were dead against Corbyn from the moment he looked like he might win. When he served simply to justify claims that the Labour Party was a broad and tolerant church, these commentators were in favour of his standing. But as soon as he began to surge ahead, these same liberal-left pundits poured more scorn on him than they had reserved for any other party leader in living memory. In a few months Corbyn has endured\u00a0more contempt\u00a0from\u00a0these fearless watchdogs of the left than the current Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, has suffered\u00a0over many years.<\/p>\n
The Guardian\u2019s news coverage, meanwhile, followed exactly the same antagonistic formula as that of the rightwing press: ignore the policy issues raised by Corbyn, concentrate on trivial or perceived personality flaws, and frame the stories in establishment-friendly ways. We have had to endure in the Guardian the same patently ridiculous, manufactured reports\u00a0about Corbyn, portraying him as\u00a0sexist, anti-semitic, unpatriotic, and much more.<\/p>\n
We could expect the rightwing media\u00a0to exploit every opportunity to try to discredit Corbyn, but looking at the talkbacks it was clear Guardian readers expected much more from their paper than simple-minded character assassination.<\/p>\n
Red neoliberals<\/h4>\n
The reality is that Corbyn poses a very serious challenge to supposedly liberal-left media like the Guardian and the Observer, which is why they hoped to ensure his candidacy was still-born and why, now he is leader, they are caught in a terrible dilemma.<\/p>\n
While the Guardian and Observer market themselves as\u00a0caring about justice and equality, but do nothing to bring them about apart from promoting\u00a0tinkering with the present, hugely unjust, global neoliberal order, Corbyn\u2019s rhetoric suggests that the apple cart needs upending.<\/p>\n
If it achieves nothing else, Corbyn\u2019s campaign has highlighted a truth about the existing British political system: that, at least since the time of Tony Blair, the country’s\u00a0two major parliamentary parties have been equally committed to upholding neoliberalism. The Blue Neoliberal Party (the Conservatives) and the Red Neoliberal Party (Labour) mark the short horizon of current British politics. You can have either hardcore neoliberalism or slightly more softcore neoliberalism.<\/p>\n
Corbyn shows that there should be more to politics than this false choice, which is why hundreds of thousands of leftists flocked back to Labour in the hope of getting him elected. In doing so, they overwhelmed the parliamentary Labour party (PLP), which vigorously opposed him becoming\u00a0leader.<\/p>\n
But where does this leave the Guardian and Observer, both of which have consistently backed \u201cmoderate\u201d elements in the PLP? If Corbyn is exposing the PLP as the Red Neoliberal Party, what does that mean for\u00a0the Guardian, the parliamentary party\u2019s house paper?<\/p>\n
Corbyn is not just threatening to expose the sham of the PLP as an alternative to the Conservatives, but the sham of Britain\u2019s liberal-left media as a real alternative to the press barons. Which is why the Freedlands and Toynbees, who are the keepers of the Guardian flame, of its undeserved\u00a0reputation as the left\u2019s moral compass, demonstrated\u00a0such instant\u00a0antipathy\u00a0to his sudden rise to prominence.<\/p>\n
They and the paper followed the rightwing media\u00a0in keeping the focus resolutely on Corbyn rather than recognising the obvious truth: this was about much more than one individual. The sudden outpouring of support for Corbyn reflected both an embrace of his authenticity and principles and a much more general anger at the injustices, inequalities and debasement of public life brought about by neoliberalism. Corbyn captured a mood, one that\u00a0demands\u00a0real, not illusory change. He is riding a wave, and to discredit Corbyn is to discredit the wave.<\/p>\n
Character assassination<\/h4>\n
The Guardian and the Observer, complicit for so long with the Red Neoliberals led by Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, thought they could kill off Corbyn’s campaign by joining in the general media bullying. They thought they could continue to police the boundaries of the political left \u2013 of what counts as credible on the left \u2013 and place Corbyn firmly outside those borders.<\/p>\n
But he won even so\u00a0\u2013 and with an enormous lead over his rivals. In truth, the Guardian\u2019s character assassination of Corbyn, rather than discrediting him, served only to discredit the paper with its own readers.<\/p>\n
Corbyn\u2019s victory represented\u00a0a huge failure not just for\u00a0the political class in all its narrow neoliberal variations, but also for\u00a0the media class in all its narrow neoliberal variations. It was a sign that the Guardian\u2019s credibility\u00a0with its own readers is steadily waning.<\/p>\n
The talkback columns show the Guardian\u2019s kneejerk belittling of Corbyn has inserted a dangerous seed of doubt in the minds of\u00a0a proportion\u00a0of its formerly loyal readers. Many of those hundreds of thousands of leftists who joined the Labour party either to get Corbyn elected or to demonstrate their support afterwards are Guardian readers or potential readers. And the Guardian and Observer ridiculed them and their choice.<\/p>\n
Belatedly the two papers are starting to sense their core readership feels betrayed. Vulliamy\u2019s commentary should be seen in that light. It is not a magnanimous gesture by the Observer, or even an indication of its\u00a0commitment to\u00a0pluralism. It is one of the early indications of a desperate damage limitation operation. We are likely to see more such “reappraisals”\u00a0in the coming weeks, as the liberal-left media tries to salvage its image with its core readers.<\/p>\n
This may not prove a fatal\u00a0blow to the Guardian or the Observer but it is a sign of an accelerating trend for the old media generally and the liberal-left media more specifically. Papers like the Guardian and the Observer no longer understand their readerships both because they no longer have exclusive control of their readers’ perceptions of what is true and because the reality \u2013 not least,\u00a0polarising inequality and\u00a0climate degradation \u2013 is becoming too difficult\u00a0to soft-soap.<\/p>\n
Media like the Guardian are tied by a commercial and ideological umbilical cord to a neoliberal order a large swath of their readers are growing restless with or feel downright appalled by.<\/p>\n
In 2003 the Observer knowingly suppressed the truth about Iraq and WMD to advance the case for an illegal, \u201cpreventive\u201d war, one defined in international law as the supreme war crime. At\u00a0that time\u00a0\u2013 digitally the equivalent of the Dark Ages compared to now \u2013 the paper\u00a0just about managed to get away with its complicity in a crime against humanity. The Observer never felt the need to make real amends with Vulliamy or\u00a0the readers it betrayed.<\/p>\n
But in the age of\u00a0a burgeoning\u00a0new media the Observer and Guardian are discovering that\u00a0the rules are shifting dangerously under their feet. Corbyn is a loud messenger of that change.<\/p>\n