Public Lecture by Honorary Professor & Journalist Nicholas Jones

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Hosted by JOMEC’s Dr Andy Williams, and building on our existing research interests in media coverage of European affairs, former BBC Politics Correspondent and Cardiff University Honorary Professor Nicholas Jones traces the role of the UK’s biggest-selling newspapers and examines the roots of their anti-EU agenda.

Did the endless tabloid scare stories over immigration swing the Leave vote? What role is the press playing in selling Brexit to the British people? Why do Brexit-supporting newspapers continue to plug a “Britain is booming” narrative despite mounting evidence of an economic slowdown, and worse to come? Is the press simply reflecting what voters think, or are the tabloids helping shape public opinion? And did our impartial broadcast news balance out the propaganda?

With the help of a tide of images featuring an array of infamous front pages, Jones will chart how the media has helped nudge Britain towards the Brexit end game: the rapid advance of Nigel Farage and UKIP was boosted by press support, “Project Fear” was encouraged and sustained with such venom that the voices that should have been heard were too frightened to speak out, and in the post-Brexit brouhaha, the tabloids dismiss or ignore the “bad news” of lost industrial, economic and academic investment.Unlike the USA, Britain doesn’t have hyper-partisan broadcast news, but its Brexit-supporting press proved to be as partisan and slanted as Trump-supporting Fox news and American TV attack ads. The Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Express are in no doubt: it was their campaigning journalism that helped secure Leave’s victory and has downplayed the dangers of the UK leaving the EU without an agreement. And this strident partisan journalism has affected radio and TV news, too. After a lifetime in broadcasting, Jones believes broadcast coverage of the Referendum and Brexit has failed to meet the challenge. All too often broadcasters have allowed the press to set the agenda.