The media conveys a society where everything is slowly getting worse. Public services are failing, tax is wasted etc.

65% think their local NHS is good but only 25% think "the NHS" as seen on television is in a good state. There is the same gap in attitudes to crime and education. Bad anecdotes are told of more than good experiences in the NHS, which is incredibly demoralising to the psyche of the public.

I am not just posturing when I say that right-wing press barons are largely responsible for this. Does anyone seriously believe that the Sun, is concerned about ordinary people? Whatever Murdoch says, goes. If they cared about ordinary people, every editorial would have ranted about the poll tax. Instead, a tax that redistributed money from the poor to the rich was supported by the (shock, horror) rich Murdoch.

If the EU was actively supporting Thatcher's ownership structures of the media, then Murdoch would be an ardent Europhile. Obviously, saying to ordinary voters that his £300 million profits would be threatened by the EU isn't a good way of generating euroscepticism. So lies saying that our UN veto and foreign policy independence would be taken away, and that the Lisbon treaty would guarantee a United Europe (it increased democratic accountability to the UK) have to be perpetrated.

The press exploit our worst instincts. As put so eloquantly by Abe Simpson:
 
"We're not allowed newspapers. They angry up the blood."

It isn't sexy for the Sun to say that the vast majority of people on incapacity benefit want to get into work. So every other headline screeches of a 'benefit scam', 'benefit scrounger' etc.

Furthermore, why would papers want to talk about the deserving poor, when they're appealing to Middle England? Middle England pass the poor in the streets, but they don't have poorer friends. Well, some seem to think that the worst element of inequality is that middle-class people can't currently afford homes. That is why the Daily Mail will never have a screeching headline about 2 million pensioners being taken out of poverty, or 600,000 children being taken out of poverty.

The Sun would never talk about the fact that benefit dependency is virtually non-existant among youths, as there are only now 5,000 youths in long term unemployment.

I was born on the eve of the 1992 general election. While my mum was in the maternity ward, the floors were being mopped with brown water. If that happened now, every paper would report it (it doesn't). I had to almost travel to the next county, having to travel from south Cornwall to the border of Devon, to get to a special needs unit. Clinics, hospitals and schools are almost unrecognisable from the shabby disrepair Labour inherited. Ten years ago roofs leaked, Portakabins, Nissen huts housed overcrowded services. Where's the money gone, the opposition asks? It can be seen in every public service, public building and open space, if juxtaposed with the state of our services 10 years ago.

Every paper barrages us with statistics about how our children are getting dumber, and how education standards our getting much, much worse. This is a lie. The amount of children being able to add up, and count up well rose from 59% to 79%.

The same papers barrage us with statistics about the clogged up NHS. it doesn't work, and it is incredibly inefficient. We may not have the best health service yet, but it is certainly the most efficient. Cancer and heart deaths fell sharply and waiting times for operations plummeted: in 1997 283,866 people waited over six months, but by March 2007, this was down to just 199. The BMA mourns the fact that private medecine and insurance is falling.


I know this seems like an advertisement for Labour, but it is to advertise the fact that the media knows that a freak operation, or one benefit fraudster, is far more exciting than a more objective analysis, that is a more genuine reflection our society.

The left-wing media is no better. If world peace was declared, the Independent would still have their pessimistic headlines:

"On the day world peace was declared, a cat killed a mouse, thereby ending the peace."

Some of the papers are ok. Despite my loathing of Murdoch, the Times is a good paper. The Torygraph isn't so overtly dystopian, but still engages in pessimism.

They need to hit the government where it hurts. I propose that every centre-left paper should have a headline with words to the effect of: "Murdoch fails to pay A PENNY of £300 million profits in taxes", on days that the right-wing rags have headlines denouncing those on benefits. I find it easier to be shocked by Labour's housing policy, if the papers exposed the worst elements of the right-to-buy, and how in the long term it was a gift to private property developers, and had devestating long-term effects upon council home tenants.

Why don't the papers do this? Because it is far easier to find a housing scandal perpetrated by a rich person, than by a poorer person.

But the best way of ending this dystopian imagery that permeates from right-wing papers, is to restore pre-Thatcher media ownership laws. It isn't capitalism that generates wealth. It's competition, but is should be matched by a strong welfare state. The best privatisations were off industries that allowed competition: e.g. telecoms, airlines. The very worst have been in industries where there have been private monopolies, notably in the rail and water industries.

Those two industries should be reviewed, and we should find alternative forms of common ownership for them. But an easy way to start this, would be to first trigger an end of private monopolies in the media.