Corbyn is right to warn the press – but wrong to single out foreign owners

The spying accusations by several newspapers against Jeremy Corbyn are laughable. They amount to a smear reminiscent of the false claims made by the Sunday Times in 1995 that Michael Foot was a KGB agent. Playing the red card has long been a tactic employed by editors of the section of the press that is antipathetic to Labour. Rightly, Corbyn has dismissed the pages of nudge-nudge wink-wink in the Daily Mail, the Sun, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph as “ridiculous”, arguing that the detailing of such fantasies “shows just how worried the media bosses are by the prospect of a Labour government”.

Those bosses are surely even more worried by Corbyn’s riposte that “change is coming”, a thinly veiled hint that, should he get into No 10, his administration might well set in train a second Leveson inquiry and activate section 40 of the Crimes and Court Act. That is the law that would force media outlets that do not sign up to an officially approved regulator to pay the costs for both sides in libel or privacy claims. If that prospect is not terrifying enough for the proprietors and editors of Britain’s papers, Corbyn’s questioning of the existence of press freedom was more significant. The press is not free, he said, because “it’s controlled by billionaire tax exiles”.

Few media academics would disagree with him. They routinely quote the aphorism by the New Yorker journalist AJ Liebling: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” But the billionaires who regard themselves as the sole exponents of press freedom want people to believe otherwise. Turning reality on its head, they cast those who question their own expropriated “right” to be the guardians of press freedom as enemies of democracy.

Arguably, Corbyn’s statement amounts to the most explicit attack by a senior politician in modern times on the philosophical underpinning of press ownership. In so doing, he joins forces with the increasing number of online critics who take issue with mainstream editorial output. He also recognises that this storm has blown up at a tipping point in press history by observing that the general election result, in which he was vilified continuously by pro-Tory papers, resulted in Labour increasing its vote by the greatest proportion since 1945. Therefore, it suggests that the media barons “are losing their influence” and “their bad old habits are becoming less and less relevant”.

If so, you might well ask, why bother to go toe to toe with them. Would it not be better to turn the other cheek? Let them do their worst, let them rant, let them smear. The voters appear unmoved by the pro-proprietorial propaganda (aka fake news).

That sounds like a good idea in theory. But the reality is that the rest of the media, including the main news broadcasters, felt it necessary to follow the lead of the red-baiting newspaper quartet. It was undeniable that the Mail and its fellow travellers had set the agenda, and to have said nothing in such circumstances might well have lent credence to the accusations.

It is also obvious that, despite falling circulations and the general election outcome, these papers do retain a measure of influence. Corbyn has not created the kind of instant rebuttal unit that was a hallmark of Tony Blair’s leadership, but he cannot afford to let lies fester.

What he must avoid, however, is making too much of the foreign status of newspaper owners. Home-grown billionaires are no different in their exercise of press power, nor do they intervene any less in the editorial affairs of their titles than those who choose to live outside the country. The central charge here is not about tax, because almost every wealthy individual and every large corporation seeks to minimise what is given to the chancellor. Instead, in the specific matter of press ownership, the greatest hypocrisy is the one Corbyn has boldly dared to challenge: the proprietors’ exclusive right to speak on behalf of the people.

That is the myth they perpetuate, as they have done for the best part of two centuries. That’s why Corbyn’s three-word warning could, and should, become a pro-free press promise and slogan: change is coming.

• Roy Greenslade is professor of journalism at City University, and was editor of the Daily Mirror in 1990-91