Nigel Farage has criticised the UK’s establishment media for its breathless coverage of leftist narratives which are not only irrelevant to the British experience but infer that “Britain is a hotbed of racism”.
“In the last few weeks, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 News, and Sky News have all shone a magnifying glass with great intensity on the issue of race because of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“As many others have pointed out already, the fact that America and Britain are very different countries; with divergent histories; and contrasting methods of policing, has apparently been of no consequence to these news organisations. By also inferring that Britain is a hotbed of racism, these broadcasters have been utterly dishonest,” Mr Farage wrote in The Telegraph on Wednesday.
“They carried reports about the rioting and looting in U.S. cities which followed Mr Floyd’s death on such a scale that anybody would have thought his appalling killing had taken place on British soil.
“Instead of examining what Black Lives Matter truly wants, including its aim to ‘defund’ the police, the mainstream media has presented its coverage as though Britain is a seething cesspit of racists and bigots,” he added.
Part of the problem, Mr Farage has said in recent days, is that those media organisations which do not toe the left-progressive line are subject to threats of defunding via advertising. Far-left movements seeking to shut down free speech and the free press are far more organised, he says, and have become proficient at mobilising campaigns against journalists or news outlets.
“So it isn’t just mob rule on the streets, it’s actually changing the whole shape and perception of our mainstream media,” Mr Farage said on Fox News on Tuesday.
The same appears to be happening in the UK, according to the Brexit Party leader, with Mr Farage writing on Wednesday that he suspected his involuntary departure from LBC — after he compared BLM to the Taliban for its mob-like iconoclasm — “was a result of a similar campaign”.
The biased nature of the big British networks has been exposed in recent weeks, with the BBC reporting that violent BLM protests that resulted in the injuries of 27 London Metropolitan police officers in one weekend were “largely peaceful”. While media veteran Alastair Stewart OBE — who was ousted by ITV’s news network for quoting “racist” Shakespeare — tweeted with incredulity that the BBC had referred to the “controversial statue” of Sir Winston Churchill.
On Thursday morning, Sky News’s Kay Burley broke any pretext of impartiality by saying that she wanted to “hug” failed U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. During an interview with the former First Lady which aired on Thursday, Ms Burley admitted: “I saw you in an Upper East Side restaurant soon after the election, and I wanted to come over and give you a hug because I can’t begin to imagine how hard it was to walk back into the light after such a crushing defeat.”
Mr Farage quoted statistics revealing a drastic fall in trust in the mainstream media. He also remarked on the rise in people willing to pay for news produced by outlets not subject to the support of advertisers, which in turn are vulnerable to threats of organised boycotts by the far left.
The Brexit Party leader wrote: “The fact is that a brave new world of news, comment and journalism is developing quickly. It is a world which will pose more and more of a challenge to the mainstream, traditional broadcasters. I welcome that. It is time for the truth to be heard loudly and clearly and objectively again.
“The biggest casualty of this crisis so far has been free speech – the ability of people to ask questions about current events. In the end, free speech must emerge the winner.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.