The EU - getting it wrong
Nick Cohen: a practical example in journalism.
Nick Cohen, who gets out a lot!
Nick Cohen is normally a sensitive chap. Keen on civil liberties he, like other journalists at the Spectator, wrote in support of Paul Chambers the young man taken through the courts for making a joke on Twitter. This blog also supported Chambers, see HERE. Perhaps we still have a sort-of-reasonable press despite what Leveson, who did seem rather confused, thinks about it. For Cohen's subject, and this is in the Spectator, is the Labour party. I mean would the Guardian ever contemplate giving a regular slot to Richard North to write about the EU? Diversity is what some talk about but others do! Like a lot of his ilk, the Labour loving journalist, Cohen assumes rights for his party that are absurd. The title of his article, Can’t we even throw out Lynne Featherstone gives the game away as does the opening line:
I gave a talk to the Hornsey and Wood Green Labour Party last night -
After the plateau it's all downhill from there as Cohen goes onto to explain the view from Metroland:
I don’t want to go on about Conservative failings in the Spectator of all places, but if you people got out more you would realise that few care about EU, gay marriage and those other bugbears, which make you seem as strange as Scientologists or 9/11 truthers. If you mentioned the extortionate cost of finding a home, or jobs, or pensions, you might begin to seem like creatures from the same species as the rest of us.
It's a bit rich suggesting people should get out more if a typical entertainment in leafy North London is a talk by a leftie journo on the death throes of a political party. Also Cohen drops himself deep into the poo with his opinion that 'few care about the EU'.
The Spectator like a lot of the media is deeply worried about Leveson. Following his inquiry Leveson set out an ill-judged, if you will pardon the pun, approach to preventing further abuses related to hacking. Correctly the Spectator has judged (sorry again) these proposals to be inept, dangerous even. Then along comes this ,the EU has its own plans for the press which are as equally undesirable as Leveson. As journalists are supposed to be good at investigating things it's surprising that Cohen either knew nothing about this or did not care. The best in-depth comment by a eurosceptic on these proposals is by Helen Szamuely . And from that post a line about the EU stands out -
The problems is that the EU is not being discussed the way it should be in the national media, and therefore, the answer is to promote a European public sphere with the possible emergence of a European media, which would, obviously, be subsidized by the European tax payer or, at least, those Europeans who bother to pay tax.
And what chance is there of a debate from either point of view when the Metropolitan elite in the form of Cohen loftily declare that the EU is a subject they care nothing about, despite the fact that it threatens the independence of his profession; but then perhaps he's not bothered? The derogatory term 'useful idiot' comes to mind.
Footnote -
As for the substance of Cohen's article, the nature of local democracy, we say he's got that wrong too but will cover that in another post.
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