See the main interview with Corbyn here.
The BBC and the Guardian were not very favourable to #Jeremy Corbyn# and were on the more ‘liberal’ centre of the #media. The conservative newspapers were, as expected, worse. How, in Corbyn’s words, did the media work in the process before the elections?
«The highest vote this century for the left in Britain.»
«Well, the hostility I received from the media from the moment I was elected as leader of the #Labour Party# was unbelievable. Then, there was the scale of it, as I was personified as being an evil on two legs. My family was abused. My house was under siege for five years by the media. One of the more right-wing papers on election day in 2017, ran 14 pages of abuse about me, page after page after page.
We must try to get past all this abuse in media by campaigning, mobilizing people, using #social media# and everything else. To some extent, we got past it and in 2017 received the highest vote in this century for the left in #Britain, but the abuse was considerable.
I raised many complaints against the BBC for their blatant bias. For example, they ran a 45-minute debate on television on NEWSNIGHT, a big BBC nightly news program in which they had a picture of me with a Greek sailor’s hat on, superimposed over the #Kremlin – showing behind the discussion about me, saying this man is a stooge of Russia.
In fact, the only time I ever went to #Russia was on a #human rights# delegation to speak up in support of the people of #Chechnya. Apart from much later, a vacation in #St Petersburg# with my two sons. So that was what we had to contend with from the BBC, which sees itself as a paragon of all journalistic virtue…»
What about the Guardian, which is seen as a centre-left respected paper?
«Sorry, this is not my experience of the Guardian at all. They had more unattributed unsourced attacks on me than almost any other newspaper, always put with the nicest use of language.
But I don’t ask for favouritism from the media – I just ask for honesty and reporting. I just want them to report what we actually say and what we’re actually trying to do.»
From outside of politics, we can always be suspicious of what is happening behind the curtains. In #Norway, the prime minister and Labour Party leader #Thorbjørn Jagland# was toppled by the mentioned Stoltenberg and his companions (later #NATO Secretary).
What would be Corbyn’s suspicion of what his opponent in the Labour party, #Keir Starmer# (who later made his way as party leader) was doing back around the election and later?
«I’m always a bit wary of getting involved in conspiracy theories because it can lead you into all kinds of strange imaginations. But this seems to be a similarity and a collectiveness of the attacks upon me. And since I stepped down as Labour leader in 2020, my treatment by the new leadership of the Labour Party has been pretty bad.
I don’t want claim any great personal thing about this, but in attacking people who are elected, you’re actually attacking the #democracy of the party and the democracy of our society. And I have been elected ten times to the British Parliament for Islington North. I am very proud to represent this in the north. And that is exactly what I’m doing at the moment, representing my community.»
And as one who’s been active in political activity all his life, Corbyn underlines that he will continue to be for the rest of my life: «I’m not going away. I’m not disappearing.»
