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(Copyright/image credit: The Sun)
I don’t read The Sun. Besides the crass treatment of all news, language level of the average 8 year old, and a target readership of the ignorant and ill-informed, I just don’t wish to endorse the narratives they stir.
At UK Immigration Solicitors we are politically neutral since it is only immigration law that we focus on. Therefore, regardless of which party is in power, our solicitors will position themselves at the front of current immigration law. However, we have to remain aware of the climate around us and how that might affect the way the Home Office might change its approach to the law.
That’s why it doesn’t help anyone when newspapers like The Sun print front pages like this:
It has been very clear for some time now that the media have been set against Jeremy Corbyn. First, they called him an unworthy leader who had no mandate to lead the party. After a huge wave of new members joined the party and voted him back it, such a claim had to be abandoned. Then they decided to attack the idea that he could lead a country. In the past weeks he has stormed around the country stirring up the fires in people’s bellies. He has even marched into Tory strongholds and addressed a stadium of people. The message of For the many, not the few is attracting great passion.
Add this to the amazing number of young people registering to vote – who are expected to be Labour biased – the criticism that he cannot lead the country is on shaky grounds. After all, what is a leader but the one who has the followers?
However the media has also put lots of effort into calling Jeremy Corbyn a terrorist sympathiser who facilitated the IRA (despite even the Sinn Fein leader openly praising him for his peace-process work). It’s hard enough wading through all the news at t
In the wake of so many dead and injured, including children, printing a front page that refers to a blood bath and references Corbyn being in cahoots with the IRA (i.e. terrorism) is tasteless on so many levels. The worrying element in it is that The Sun are clearly prepared to profit from tragedy by hooking onto the issue of terrorism, use emotive language and phrases…
…and to what ends? To stir fear? Or is it to try and make us connect Jeremy Corbyn with the narrative of Terrorism in order undermine him as a potential leader?
Furthermore, is the intention to make any policy that Jeremy Corbyn that might be pro-immigration connect with terrorism by tying into the fears people have connected to Islam as part of the attacks? The Sun is playing a very dangerous game stirring up these multi-layered narratives just for the sake of selling a few more papers. They intend to profit as much as they can, and appear not to care if they do that on the back of the murder of children.
This is why I feel it is relevant for those in immigration law to keep a close watch on the way media narratives are used to stir up political fear, anger, and other emotive responses. Fear leads to knee-jerk changes in law, and if we consider the amount of u-turns the Conservatives have made these past few months, the uncertainty is troubling.
With the election looming ever close, and Corbyn racing with momentum, The Sun have most clearly stated their hand by posting such a front page. The will dig deep into the depravity of tabloid techniques in order to try and sway political opinion by adding to political climate so negatively.
That is why their front page – and I would suggest their entire paper – is less about the news, and more about selling dangerous media fear to swing the vote.
