– While Osborne delivers his budget, Real Media campaigners assert that austerity hits the poorest and minorities disproportionately
– Corporate-owned media is wrong to blame the economic hardship on immigrants and benefit claimants while the top 1%’s wealth is increasing
– Wednesday also sees a protest in the City of London by Debt Resistance group that joins the dots between austerity in Britain and Europe, reminding of banks’ role in the crisis. 2pm St Paul’s Cathedral
Websites: dailywail.co.uk / realmedia.press
Twitter: @RealMediaGB
On the day George Osborne delivers the last budget before the election, the Real Media campaign seeks to highlight growing inequality in Britain and worldwide. Instead of delivering sustainable growth, austerity is driving thousands of people into poverty, which campaigners say should be on top of the news agendas.
Kam Sandhu, spokeswoman for Real Media, said: “The billionaire media will not report on the devastating wealth disparity we are experiencing in the UK, because they are owned by the people gaining from it. Inequality and savage, unjustified cuts are pushing people into destitution. Instead of reporting on this, the media encourages discrimination against marginalized groups, who are often bearing the brunt of these cuts.”
“The media is hugely complicit in the maintenance of the status quo – where ordinary people suffer at the hands of an unjust economy, while the wealthy accumulate more – and actively campaigns against initiatives which could create a fairer or more sustainable system, from the Scottish Referendum to coverage of renewable energy sources.”
Wednesday is the third day of Real Media’s Anti-Daily Mail week in which the group highlights corporate media ownership: 80% of British press is in the hands of five billionaires. Real Media will launch an alternative news website in early April.
Campaigners point out that globally, the wealthiest 1% is set to earn more than the bottom 99% together by next year, according to the charity Oxfam. While property prices and stock markets are currently booming, only 1 in 7 people in Britain say they can feel the economic recovery [1]. The use of food banks five-folded between 2010 and 2013 [2] and has kept rising, with more than a quarter of children now living in poverty [3]. Yet these issues go unreported, they say.
Inequality has not only increased in income terms, campaigners suggest. Austerity has a disproportionate impact on minorities: according to figures released last week by Labour, the number of unemployed young BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) people has inceased by 50% under the current government [4].
Women are also hit disproportionately by austerity, a combination of cuts in services and a widening gender pay gap. Women are overrepresented in public sector jobs that have faced the hardest cuts. Oxfordshire shows a trend: funding to domestic violence services has been cut by 38% [5].
But instead of reporting how the top earners’ wealth is increasing as a result of austerity, corporate press keeps blaming the economic downturn on already marginalised groups, media campaigners say. This distorts the public’s views: in 2013, an Ipsos Mori Poll found that the public thinks that £24 of every £100 spent on benefits is claimed fraudulently, when the real estimate is £0.7. [6]
The establishment media-backed ‘Project Fear’ is also clear in suppressing alternatives, most recently in the Scottish referendum debate. The media bias towards the No side was well documented. It included scare stories of what would happen if Scotland dared to go it alone, and a silence on alternatives. For instance little discussion of the progressive vision of Scotland found in the Common Weal [7]. In reaction to the referendum, Scottish alternative media is thriving, with sites like Bella Caledonia and Wings Over Scotland filling a space of viewpoints not represented by the billionaire-owned press.
Coinciding with Real Media’s focus on inequality and budget day, there are also calls for a better understanding of the international impact of austerity. Fanny Malinen from Debt Resistance UK, the group organising the anti-austerity protest in the City of London, said: “Not only are our politicians protecting the interests of the financial sector at the expense of the public in Britain, London-based banks also have a long history of reckless lending around the world. Debt crises have destroyed economies in the global South since 1980s through very similar mechanisms that are now impoverishing the people of Greece, with British banks wielding power as creditors. Of course we do not hear this from media whose interests are tied to those in power – they are far too busy trying to make us think the economic hardship is the fault of immigrants. We need to join the dots between these crises to understand that austerity only serves the interests of the 1%.”
More info:
Real Media’s Anti-Daily Mail week focuses on the following themes:
· Monday 16th: corporate influence undermining democracy
· Tuesday 17th: climate change
· Wednesday 18th: austerity increasing inequality to record levels
· Thursday 19th: privatisation of healthcare and other public services
· Friday 20th: the arms industry’s interests driving the war on terror
· Saturday 21st: human rights
Further reading:
[1] https://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3f40be2a-6434-11e4-8ade-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl
[2] https://www.itv.com/news/update/2013-04-24/fivefold-increase-in-people-turning-to-foodbanks/
[3] https://www.cpag.org.uk/child-poverty-facts-and-figures
[4] www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-e653-Ethnic-minorities-still-bear-the-brunt-of-Tory-austerity/
[5] https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/dawn-foster/cuts-hit-home-austerity-in-oxford
[7] https://reidfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/The-Common-Weal.pdf
