Despite this last weekend being far quieter on the political front than the previous one, I still had quite a sour taste in my mouth over the news media coverage of the Article 16 issue that previous weekend.
Even now, ten days later, I have yet to see any evidence that Article 16 was in fact triggered.
The is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the EU considered it, but that does not justify claims in the British News media that they had triggered article 16 or the one-sided frenzy that the media subsequently created with virtually no mention of Boris Johnson’s threat to trigger article 16 a few weeks earlier.
Since then, a Parliamentary Petition calling for Article 16 to be triggered has been created and is being heavily pushed by Arlene Foster. And yet the News Media has said next to nothing about that.
Sadly, neither this inaccuracy or bias is news to the Rejoin Community. I am sure I have no need to give names but several of the more popular daily newspapers are very based towards the Pro Leave argument and accuracy is not something that certain of those newspapers have a reputation for.
The inaccurate and biased reporting over article 16 however appears to have extended well beyond newspapers into other media, including the BBC.
Not only does this whole affair demonstrate the need for the system of press regulation to be overhauled as I suggested in my last blog post on this subject, but it also demonstrates that there is a need for the Rejoin community to be more proactive in this area and actually do something about it rather than just moan about it amongst ourselves.
To that end I have put together and submitted a new parliamentary petition on the issue which hopefully will be accepted and we can lush to highlight these issues.
But we do need to do far more as a movement, and one of the things we need to do is complain to the relevant organisations and regulatory bodies every time we see a story that is wrong or in the case of the BBC, biased.
IPSO, who look after complaints about newspapers and organisations, have put together the very useful graphic I am posting with this, but here are a few other useful links.
This is the article where I found the graphic which outlines the whole process of complaining about the news media
https://www.ipso.co.uk/complain/
This is IPSO’s complaint form
https://www.ipso.co.uk/complain/complaints-form/
This is where you start a complaint about the BBC’s news coverage
https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint/#/Complaint
This is OFCOM’s complaint form https://ofcomforms.secure.force.com/formentry/SitesFormCSLEStandardsComplaints
So next time there is something in the news media that is factually wrong or inaccurate rather than just moaning about it we must be proactive and formally complain. If enough of us do we might actually get something done!
