1st Edition
Populism, the Pandemic and the Media Journalism in the age of Covid, Trump, Brexit and Johnson
Populism is on the rise across the globe. Authoritarian populist leaders have taken over and solidified their control over many countries. Their power has been cemented during the global coronavirus pandemic, though perhaps the defeat of populist-in-chief Donald Trump in the 2020 US presidential election (despite his continuing protestations to the contrary) has seen the start of the waning of this phenomenon?
In the UK Brexit is 'done'; Britain is firmly out of the EU; Covid is vaccinated against; and Boris Johnson has a huge parliamentary majority and, despite never-ending problems, of his own and others' making, his grip on power with a parliamentary majority of more than 80, still seems secure. Meanwhile culture wars continue to rage.
How has media, worldwide, contributed, fulled or fought this populism. Cheerleaders? Critics? Supplicants?
This book examines those questions in 360 degrees with a distinguished cast of authors from journalism and academia.
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
The Editors
Introduction: Journalism under pressure but still a force for good
Nick Robinson, presenter, Today programme, BBC Radio Four
Section 1: January 6 and the end of Trumpism?
Dispatches and analysis from the heart of the 21st century American drama
Raymond Snoddy
1. January 6 and the challenge to American television journalism
Robert Moore, US correspondent, ITV News
2. Ego uber alles: Will the Trump brand play on?
Matt Frei, presenter, Channel 4 News
3. Politics, pandemics and the race that Trumped all others
Jon Sopel, BBC North America Editor
4. How close Donald Trump came to victory in 2020 – and what it means
David Cowling, King’s College London, former BBC editor of political research
5. Navigating the Trump storm
Bill Dunlop, former President and CEO of Eurovision Americas, Inc
6. How Trump’s abuse of the media has changed America forever
Philip John Davies, Emeritus Professor of American Studies,
De Montfort University, Leicester
7. Donald Trump: Populist victim of partisan impeachment?
Clodagh Harrington, Associate Professor of American Politics,
De Montfort University. Leicester
8. The lie in the machine: Truth, big tech and the limits of free speech
Mark Thompson, former Director-General of the BBC and CEO of the
New York Times
iv
Section 2: UK politics and the media
Reporting the populist wave
Richard Tait
9. Public reactions to Brexit and Covid-19
Sir John Curtice, Professor of Politics, Strathclyde University
10. When news broadcasters became critical workers
Gary Gibbon, Political Editor, Channel 4 News
11. Johnson and Oborne: Parallel lives, diverging views
Raymond Snoddy, media journalist
12. Johnson and journalism: Anonymous sources in senior journalists’
social media feeds
David Smith and Julian Matthews, Lecturers in Media and Communication,
University of Leicester
13. (Most) Populists aren’t what they seem…
Peter York, cultural commentator, President of the Media Society
14. Must Labour lose?
Tor Clark, Associate Professor in Journalism, University of Leicester
15. The pursuit of truth… or not
Dorothy Byrne, former Head of News and Current Affairs, Channel 4
Section 3: Covid, journalism and society
The vaccine may be working on the population, but what about the
health of the media?
John Mair
16. When the politics of science met the science of politics
Juliet Rix, science and current affairs journalist
17. The virus and journalism: Telling truth to the hacks?
Alan Rusbridger, Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; former editor,
The Guardian
18. The view from the hospital frontline
Dr Julian Barwell, Clinical Geneticist and Honorary Professor in
Genomic Medicine at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust
19. Covering Covid reveals uncomfortable truths
Mark Easton, BBC Home Affairs Editor
v
20. Populism, anti-system politics and the media: A spotlight on Covid-19
Robert Dover, Professor of Criminology, University of Hull
21. Now you see ‘race’, now you don’t: The hyper-visibility and hyper-invisibility
of race and Covid-19 in political and public health discourse
Paul Ian Campbell, Lecturer in Sociology, University of Leicester
22. Messengers as well as messages in the spotlight
Raymond Snoddy, media journalist
Section 4: Outside the metropolitan elite
Introduction: The future of this United Kingdom is in the hands of those
far removed from those who think they rule us
Neil Fowler
23. The pandemic and the provincial press
Tor Clark, Associate Professor in Journalism, University of Leicester
24. How Britain ends
Gavin Esler, former presenter, BBC Newsnight
25. Who was the godfather of the new populism? Archie Gemmill
or Alex Salmond?
Maurice Smith, Scottish business journalist
26. Political reality and the issue of perception between Boris and Nicola
John McLellan, former editor of The Scotsman, director of communications
for Scottish Conservatives 2012-13 193
27. Upper-case Unionism vs lower-case unionism: Populism on the streets
of Northern Ireland
Gail Walker, Editor-at-large, Belfast Telegraph
28. How populism turned against devolution in Wales
Martin Shipton, Political Editor-at-large of the Western Mail
29. Life the other side of the Red Wall
David Banks, former editor, Daily Mirror
30. A tale of two challenges: How did the media report Brexit and
Covid in South Asian communities?
Barnie Choudhury, Professor of Professional Practice, University of Buckingham
and former BBC broadcast journalist
vi
Section 5: Boris and Brexit
The role played by the beastly Europeans and their Euromyths
John Mair
31. Are the ‘beastly Europeans’ really ‘trying to do us in’?
James Mates, Europe Editor, ITV News
32. How Britain was let down by its press over Brexit –
and how that can change
Will Hutton, former Principal of Hertford College, Oxford and columnist,
The Observer
33. Did the British ever understand the European project?
Deborah Bonetti, UK correspondent, Il Giorno and director of the
Foreign Press Association in London
34. Al promised you a miracle – Life under ‘greased piglet’ Johnson
Steven McCabe, Associate Professor and Senior Fellow, Centre for Brexit Studies
and Institute of Design and Economic Acceleration, Birmingham City University
35. Deceptively silly – the role of the cucumber in Boris Johnson’s ideology
Imke Henkel, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, University of Lincoln
36. Getting Brexit done and the future of the UK-EU relationship
Alistair Jones, Associate Professor in Politics, De Montfort University, Leicester
Section 6: The new populism and the media
The undermining of truth in a changing and unreliable media environment
Raymond Snoddy
37. Artificial intelligence and extremist content: a recipe for insurgency
Alex Connock, Fellow in Management Practice (Marketing),
Said Business School, Oxford University
38. ‘Enemies of the people?’ Will populism be the death of
impartial journalism?
Richard Tait, Professor of Journalism, Cardiff University
39. The populist press: Conservatism, ‘common sense’ and culture wars
Julian Petley, Professor of Journalism, Brunel University London
40. Journalism ethics in a populist age
Sara McConnell, University Teacher in Journalism, University of Sheffield
41. Journalism safety in the time of populism: A cautionary tale from the US
Elena Cosentino, director of the International News Safety Institute
42. Insurrection or over reaction? One afternoon in Manchester
Jim White, sports writer, the Daily Telegraph
43. Over here, over there: Lessons from the USA on why British TV
journalism needs to stay fair and impartial
Clive Myrie, BBC BBC News journalist and presenter,
RTS Journalist of the Year, 2021
44. Misinformation and the decline of shared experience
Ken Goldstein, President of Communications Management Inc,
based in Canada
Biography
This is John Mair’s fortieth book as an editor. All have been ‘hackademic’ volumes
mixing the work of leading journalists and academics. He invented the genre with
Richard Keeble. In the last year he has edited 11 books, five on the pandemic,
three on the future of the BBC, two on Boris and Brexit for Abramis and one on
‘Oil Dorado’ in Guyana. His previous books have covered a wide piste from the
Arab Spring, the Leveson Inquiry, data journalism and the works of VS Naipaul.
He invented the Coventry Conversations which attracted 350 media movers and
shakers to Coventry University. Six million have downloaded the podcasts. Today
he runs the weekly My Jericho events in Oxford (myjericho.co.uk) which attract
local and national movers and shakers. In previous lives he was an award-winning
producer/director for the BBC, ITV and Channel Four and a secondary school
teacher.
Tor Clark is Associate Professor in Journalism, BA Journalism programme
director, Deputy Head of the School of Media, Communication and Sociology
at the University of Leicester, UK, and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education
Academy. After studying Politics and History at Lancaster University, he worked
for the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph, before becoming editor, first of the
Harborough Mail in Leicestershire, and then of Britain’s oldest newspaper, the
Rutland & Stamford Mercury. Previously he was Principal Lecturer in Journalism
and Associate Director of Learning and Teaching at De Montfort University in
Leicester. As a political journalist he has covered eight UK general elections, the
last four for BBC Leicester, where he is a regular commentator on politics and
media.
Neil Fowler has been in journalism since graduation, starting life as trainee
reporter on the Leicester Mercury. He went on to edit four regional dailies,
including The Journal in the north east of England and the Western Mail in Wales.
He was then publisher of the Toronto Sun in Canada before returning to the UK
to edit Which? magazine. In 2010/11 he was the Guardian Research Fellow at
Oxford University’s Nuffield College where he investigated the decline and future
of regional and local newspapers in the UK. From then until 2016 he helped
organise the college’s prestigious David Butler media and politics seminars. As well
as being an occasional contributor to trade magazines he now acts as an adviser to
organisations on their management, external and internal communications and
media policies and strategies.
xi
Raymond Snoddy OBE, after studying at Queen’s University in Belfast, worked
on local and regional newspapers, before joining The Times in 1971. Five years later
he moved to the Financial Times and reported on media issues before returning to
The Times as media editor in 1995. He is now a freelance journalist writing for a
range of publications. He presented NewsWatch on the BBC from its inception in
2004 until 2012. His other television work has included presenting Channel 4’s
award-winning series Hard News. In addition, he is the author of a biography of
the media tycoon Michael Green and of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which
looked at the UK national press in the 1990s. He was awarded an OBE for his
services to journalism in 2000.
Richard Tait CBE is Professor of Journalism at the School of Journalism, Media
and Culture, at Cardiff University. From 2003 to 2012, he was director of the
school’s Centre for Journalism. He was editor of Newsnight from 1985 to 1987,
editor of Channel 4 News from 1987 to 1995 and editor-in-chief of ITN from
1995 to 2002. He was a BBC governor and chair of the governors’ programme
complaints committee from 2004 to 2006, and a BBC Trustee and chair of the
Trust’s editorial standards committee from 2006 to 2010. He is a Fellow of the
Royal Television Society and the Society of Editors, and a board member of the
International News Safety Institute.
