Political Bias

Well, I exercised my civic duty and cast my votes in today's local elections. Sadly, as I don't live in London, I wasn't allowed to cast an anti-Boris vote. Really, if that tosser is elected as London mayor, the end times really will be upon us. More seriously, if Johnson does become Mayor, it will be another victory for the power of the press in this country. There can be little doubt that his poll standings are solely the result of the relentless anti-Livingstone campaign waged by the Evening Standard. Whilst the Standard's owners and editor might claim that their exposures of the incumbent mayor were 'in the public interest', these claims would hold more water if the paper had similarly held other candidates - Boris Johnson, for instance - to account in the same way. But they didn't. Of course, the right-wing bias of the Standard wouldn't matter so much if there were other daily newspapers in London which presented alternative viewpoints.

But there aren't, and this situation is reflected nationally. The print media in the UK is predominantly conservative - it's a miracle that non-Tory governments ever get elected. Still, at least we're not in the position of Italy yet, where a right-wing press baron can not only use his newspapers to gain re-election as Prime Minister, but his TV stations as well. Now that he's back in power, Berlusconi will doubtless also try to employ the state-owned TV stations as propaganda tools, just he did the last time he was in power. At least in this country we still have (relatively) independent and unbiased TV news reporting. However, I fear that alone might not be enough to stop that old Etonian buffoon Johnson from stealing the election against Livingstone.