22/08/2016 Newsnight

The voting has begun in the Labour leadership election.

So how does the mainstream media deal with Jeremy Corbyn?

That's not about the mainstream media taking against Corbyn

as the Momentumistas would have you think.

That's about Jeremy Corbyn not being up to the job.

Does he get a fair crack of the whip or a bit of a whipping?

Britain is on a sporting high after Rio but are some of the claims

about the transformative power of our medals haul just fanciful?

The man who produced this, Quincy Jones, speaks to us

before his Proms performance, about, amongst other things,

Yeah, back then, but he wasn't like that, man, at all.

He used to fly with his helicopter with his name on the bottom of it.

And that's not the only musical delight.

We have our own live performance from Zimbabwean jazz singer Eska

The ballot papers have been sent out to Labour members and supporters

all 640,000 or so of them, who have until September 21st

to make up their minds who will be the next Labour leader.

The bookies are backing Jeremy Corbyn.

But over the weekend two big hitters, Labour's Scottish leader,

Kezia Dugdale, and the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, made it clear

they are not on the basis that he wouldn't win over a majority

What I have written, and just spoken is factually

accurate, but Corbynites claim that the mainstream media's attitude

The headlines haven't been kind to Jeremy Corbyn.

From the moment he won Labour's leadership contest, some foresaw his

destruction of the country, made highly-personal assaults

on his character, and condemned him as a terrorist sympathiser.

More recently, as that leadership is threatened, the papers have

There is nothing new about attacks on politicians.

Jeremy Corbyn's predecessor, Ed Miliband, was frequently

in the firing line, as was Labour's candidate

But fans of the Labour leader argue that their voices are being silenced

and that the criticism their man faces is of an entirely different

Doctor Justin Schlosberg, a Jeremy Corbyn supporter and member

of the Momentum campaign group, has studied the media's

The coverage of Jeremy Corbyn has been deeply unfair right back

to when he was first elected, but particularly in the most recent

And the problem, you know, is not just that the press has

taken an editorial view, which you would expect them to do

in cases like this, but that those narratives have really seeped

into and disproportionately influenced the coverage

And television and online are supposed to be

the counterweights to the dominant voices of national newspapers.

The Media Reform Coalition analysed 465 articles and 40 prime-time news

bulletins on the BBC and ITV in a crucial ten-day period in June.

The team found that twice as much time was given to Corbyn critics

than supporters, journalists used pejorative language

to describe the Labour leader, and that the alleged bias

in the coverage was neither inevitable nor unavoidable.

Jeremy Corbyn's team have purposefully chosen a different

campaigning strategy, speaking to supporters

through social media rather than the more-traditional

That's not an excuse for an absence of supportive

voices in mainstream media coverage, say some.

The responsibility is on the media, the responsibility is

on journalists, trained, professional journalists,

to recognise what is going on here, to recognise the kind of agenda

building that is going on behind the scenes,

and to do their best to actually create a more balanced picture.

But rather than rely on journalists, would a different approach

towards the press be far more effective?

They've gone after Jeremy Corbyn in a very, very negative

That's what you expect from the press.

You can't stick your fingers in your ears, you've got to,

as best you can, engage with the press, because people,

they don't talk about politics on social media, they watch a bit

of TV, listen to Radio 2, if you're not there and you've just

retreated to a social-media bubble, which very few people use,

then your message won't get across and you'll be defined

Privately, many in the mainstream media completely reject the idea

that there is some kind of co-ordinated attack

against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters, like those

Some journalists point out that, whichever way you try to spin it,

the bulk of your front bench resigning and the vast majority

of MPs saying they've got no faith in your leadership,

well, that's just a bad-news day in anyone's book.

Others say there is a simpler explanation for some of the bad

It really tells you something, doesn't it, when the Guardian

and the Mirror and Channel 4, who you would have thought would be

totally on that kind of left-wing agenda,

also think that he has been a really, really terrible leader

That's not about the mainstream media taking against Jeremy Corbyn,

as the Momentumistas would have you think,

that's about Jeremy Corbyn not being up to the job.

The fact that Sadiq Khan and those kind of people are now coming out

against him and saying they want a different leader is also part

Jeremy Corbyn is not up to it, therefore he gets bad press.

Jeremy Corbyn's backers can take heart from one thing.

Despite nearly a year of media criticism, there appears to be

little if any dent to his popularity among Labour supporters,

and, as the party's members cast their ballots over the coming

weeks, his team will hope that trend continues.

Joining me now, Stephen Bush, special correspondent

Editor of the left-wing news website, The Canary,

Strategic advisor to the Jeremy for Labour campaign Jeremy Gilbert.

And former editor of The Sun David Yelland.

Good evening to all of you. What is Jeremy Corbyn's strategy with the

media? His strategy is partly what you would expect any politician's

strategy to be, to engage with it productively but he also has a

different and new agenda which is to reach out directly as far as

possible to the border constituency across the country come to

supporters through social media and independent media and I think this

is quite challenging to established mainstream media, they find it

difficult to understand and quite frightening. But I think it is a

strategy appropriate to the 21st-century. So how does the engage

with mainstream media? In the same way anybody does, when he gets the

chance to do so. He does interviews, issued statements, answers

questions, campaigns. Does he need the mainstream media? We all need it

to some extent, it is willing to do its job. We all needed to the extent

that they are willing to represent a broad swathe of opinion across the

country and population. Is the mainstream media doing its job is

far Jeremy is concerned? I think it is. The first thing to say is that

no Labour leader post war has had the support of more than 20, 20 5%

of the press apart from perhaps Tony Blair. Any Labour leader starts off

on a very sticky wicket. But Jeremy Corbyn is on an even stickier wicket

because of the news, because a good chunk of the Shadow Cabinet don't

support him. Sadiq Khan does not support him, the leader in Scotland

does not support him. The media is reporting the news and the biggest

risk for Jeremy Corbyn is that he disappears from the news agenda

which is what had begun tapping until today when the voting has

started. -- begun to happen. Not just Tory press but he been nowhere

near the front page for a long time. I had basically written him off.

Therefore what do you think the Canary does as an online forum and

paper that mainstream media does not? What we're trying to do and

becoming increasingly successful in doing is challenging some of the

dominant narratives. We have a situation here where 81% of the

mainstream media is owned by six corporations and most of the

journalists went to a handful of universities and graduated about

Digg images to the left or right to veto the politically so that if

little gap between them and it becomes a minuscule arena for

political debate -- about six inches to the left or right. People outside

of that are mocked or ridiculed or derided as mad and dangerous. And

that is a crisis. And you are backing Jeremy Corbyn to the hilt?

We are doing something slightly different, ourselves, incredible

blogs, we are saying, hang on, there is a vast spectrum of ideas, of

great ideas outside that arena. There is a vast spectrum, and would

you be as happy to report on that vast spectrum, right-wing ideas as

well as left wing? I think there is more than enough space occupied

currently reporting white ring ideas. So you are cheerleaders for

Jeremy Corbyn? Absolutely not, and saying there is a vast spectrum of

ideas and they are sadly underrepresented in the mainstream

media. What you have it essential parallel revolution is happening in

politics and in the media. In politics you have the courageous and

capable politicians of the SNP in Scotland, Plaid Cymru in Wales,

Corbyn's labour and in the media you have the likes of the canary which

did not exist a year ago, and in July with the top read new site in

the UK, taking over the New Statesman and the Economist and the

Spectator. So you feel under threat from them? I would not say it is a

website I worry about, they are doing something very different to

what we're doing. I don't want to litigate other people... But I kind

of take the view that in some ways, the mainstream media, if it fails to

represent enough people, it dies. Ultimately your readership is the

only currency that matters. When you are reporting on Jeremy Corbyn, do

you think the new statement is biased against him? No, I think we

contain, our aim is to contain the whole of the left so we have

everything from James Schneider, Michael Jefferys, who is only the

most engaging writer come all the way to people like John McDermott

who would quite like to take an ice pick to Jeremy Corbyn! We try to see

ourselves as the honest broker. And you would see the new statement at

the honest broker? I wouldn't go that far. I respect the fact they

make the effort to do what Stephen has said -- the New Statesman. I

think the range of voices is skewed, not towards the far end but to the

soft left from our point of convergence between the soft left

and the old Labour right which is essentially committed to the idea

that there is one way to do politics. That is by having a nice,

popular, marketable leader who is a big social democratic, a bit

respectable... And a bit popular in the country? I dearly but

historically it is a model of politics that has failed multiple

times. It failed for new clinic twice, for Ed Miliband and for

Gordon Brown. The question we have to ask is white so many people in

the Parliamentary Labour Party and indeed in the left liberal press

like the guardsmen -- Guardian and the new statement are so committed

to a strategy that has failed so many times. The success rate for

Corbyn isn't so far is 1983 which did not go that well, when the 16th

same trajectory, not better or worse than Ed Miliband and we know what

happened at the end of that story -- 2016, the same trajectory. The idea

that you can talk about 1983 at Corbynista is ridiculous, this is 35

years later. He got into politics as Tony Benn's closes... They leader

from that group... What bit about is quite different. Staked a particular

issue. This is almost like viewers and listeners start here. What is

the position over Trident? The Labour Party's position is one

thing, it is multilateralism, Jeremy Corbyn's is quite different.

Presumably you would say that the media should report on both

positions and have critical analysis between the two.

That is one of the issues where there has not been balance. Voices

who are critical of and hostile to Jeremy's decision have appeared

multiple times with no... Let's take that issue. The Labour Party if the

party of opposition, it has a position, Jeremy Corbyn is a

different position. We have gone through the referendum, the country

out there is a very different place from the discussion happening here,

radically different. It is not looking at the detail, and

shouldn't. People have lives. The reality is, the reason that the

Prescott aggressive with Neil Kinnock when he nearly was elected

was on his defence policy. There were people... Quite right as well,

I don't think he should have been elected, he would have been

dangerous for the West and Britain. A lot of serious people in the

country, not some sort of Rupert or anybody like that, but voters, said,

we cannot let this man, and it is the same with Jeremy Corbyn,

although there are other issues. The reason that the press have started

to ignore him, he is never going to be elected. That is interesting.

There is not a chance. Should the press make that decision? No, but

they do, they have for several elections. This is the problem with

the mentality of the coup. They are trying to fight the 2005 election

again, and the elections of the past decade or so, where you have

middling Glen deciding, because you have 40% of people who are not

bothering to vote. The last election, 76% of people did not vote

Labour, and what Jeremy Corbyn and the Green Party and the SNP are

doing is, can we please stop fighting over this 24% and go for

the 76% over Fiona? They are craving a new kind of politics. We are

facing multiple crises on multiple fronts in foreign policy, the NHS.

Opinion polls suggest that Jeremy Corbyn has a big following amongst

the people he has energised, but in terms of opinion polls, he would not

win the country. These are the same opinion polls which have been

incorrect. The opinion polls over the last five electoral cycles, the

online polls got the referendum right, all of the polls got the SNP

surge and the referendum right. If you are looking for positive things

to say about Jeremy Corbyn, that is the worst thing to say, because if

there is an error there, all of the trends would suggest it would be

underestimating... I think the excitement of the new politics is

coming from that working-class community who has tuned out of

politics for quite some time, and you have the seeds of Labour

movement happening in this country again, the likes of which we have

seen for some time. If Owen Smith was going out and having thousands

of people turning up to rallies and the Labour Party members were

surging over him, these people would say, these are some great signs of

engagement. Will we see Jeremy Ben and Owen Smith on the front pages

between now and September the 21st? A bit, but not that much.

Billions of people around the world watched one after another

after another electrifying performance by British

"A sporting superpower" - that's how the chief executive of UK

Sport describes the UK after the massive medal haul

which puts the UK second only to the US.

So how did Team GB do it and have these hard-won victories wider

Has this achievement the power to perform miracles in other

We asked Matthew Syed, a former Commonwealth

table-tennis champion, and now a leader in the science

of high performance, to make a film for us.

A gold and silver. Rio 2016 has been a triumph for Team GB. These

excesses have captivated the nation, and have been pretty broad. The 67

medals have encompassed familiar sports would also diving, tae kwon

do and hockey. Something else has happened as well. People have

extrapolated from Team GB's success, funded by ?300 million of public

money, to make broader claims about the economy, written's place in the

world, even the merits of central planning. Here are five big claims

about our sporting triumph and whether they add up. Central

planning can fix the economy. UK Sport has picked winners. Targeting

sports which promised success and cutting back on those that

historically have not made the grade. And can the idea of picking

winners be used in industrial planning as well? It is easy to lose

sight of just how complicated a modern economy is. It is ?1.6

trillion in the UK economy, 10 billion distinct products and

services. To look at an achievement like funding UK LE sport and to say

therefore we can do the same thing with the economy, it does not carry

over. It is on a different scale. The budget of UK Sport in the last

four years would not fund the National health service for one day.

British Olympians are disproportionately middle-class. In

Beijing 20's 2008, half of the gold medallist from Team GB were

privately educated. The trajectory is downwards. This year's team is

made up of 542 athletes, it is estimated that 20% went to private

school, compared with 7% of the general population. Compared with

other sectors, the gap is not as stock. 32% of MPs went to private

school, 71% of top military officers, 74% of the top judges. The

Olympics is more representative in terms of social class than other

elite professions. Lots of the professions now are much more

meritocratic, but not completely. Whereas you might not get your

training place in a law firm, your parents can go on all day like to UK

Sport and the performance director but it won't wash, because the only

thing that will get those young people into Team GB is that they are

good enough. Marginal gains can transform our public institutions.

Marginal gains has become a Team GB motto. It is all about breaking the

problem of winning, for example, a bike race into its component parts,

improving every single one, even if it is by 1%, the overall effect can

be huge. Altering the bike designed to improve aerodynamic efficiency,

optimising the skin suits, the shoes, altering the diet. Finding

the tiny witnesses in one's assumptions and turning them into

strengths. Olympians show that hard work is AK Party of success. Reality

TV is about immediate success, instant gratification, a lot of the

stars have done little more to achieve their fame than fallout of a

night up. Olympians offer a different perspective, they took

about dedication, sacrifice and a journey of real achievement. Does

this matter? Absolutely. Research has shown if children by the line

that success is instant, effortless and capricious, they lose motivation

on everything from schoolwork to sport. Why bother to persevere if

you have not made it to the top in a flash? In one experiment, talking to

children about the importance of effort and the relationship between

what you put in and what you get out used in performance on a test by

20%. This growth mindset message is important. Britain can stand on its

own two feet in the world and win. If Team GB's success proves

anything, it is that the old trope of a fading colonial power

outflanked by younger, fresher nations like Australia and the USA

is complete Tosh. The UK is not a nation of sporting losers. There has

always been immense talent, and when that is fused with an enlightened

system and an outward looking mindset, we can beat the world. Post

Brexit, this should offer at least some cause for optimism. There is no

inherent reason why Britain cannot compete and trade in science and

technology as well. Who needs a degree to

teach in the classroom? Indeed, a radical new proposal

by the Teaching Schools Council suggests that teachers can

learn their subject while teaching it to others -

everything from English to maths. All part of the Government's big

drive for more apprentices. VOICE-OVER: In the commerce class,

for example, there is no frantic squabbling over one

battered old typewriter. They've got a battery

of 36 new machines. Could you soon start training

as a teacher without a degree? That's a new proposal that

has recently emerged, one that would mark a change

in a decades-long push to get teachers to have ever higher

qualifications and it's the highest profile idea to come

from a far-reaching reform to how The big idea here is that

an apprentice teacher could start work in a school

without any postsecondary Rather than going to a university

for a few years to learn subject knowledge and then starting

to train, they would instead go straight into the classroom

and learn their subject These plans are still at a very

early stage but it's quite likely universities will stay

involved in some capacity. We are at the stage now

where we have engaged with schools, we are going to look

at what is the finished article, ie a qualified teacher,

and then work backwards. If the schools that have engaged

with this call to arms say that they want it

to be degree bearing, then the next stage is to put

the standards together and the end point assessment to submit

that to government. The Department for Education tonight

has stated this apprenticeship will need to include a degree

so apprentices will have to fit courses backed by a university

around their work as a teacher. In my experience, the immediacy

of being in a classroom with 30 learners is going to take priority

over learning about your subject. And indeed, having a good subject

knowledge is essential So I think that would take second

place, even in a situation where the headteacher had

implemented the programme well. These reforms are in part down

to a major change to the way From next year, all employers,

including those in the public sector, with a pay bill of more

than ?3 million will be forced They can get that levy back

but only if they use it to pay for apprenticeships, so there's

a strong incentive for employers to try to fit existing training

into the apprenticeship system. The funding mechanism is different

because it will be funded through the ?80 million a year that

schools will pay through the apprenticeship levy and then

the delivery model will be slightly different so it won't be

traditional four walls That's why really it plays

into the hands of the 220,000 plus teaching assistants

across the country because due to the demographics they can't

necessarily go to university, There is scepticism, however,

that teacher apprentices It's fair to say that the situation

in schools is pretty desperate financially at the moment

and teachers are very, And my worry is that this

is going to be done on the cheap and that young people

are going to be left to work in classrooms and have

very little mentoring. And my experience has shown that

mentoring is the most important relationship in schools

during initial teacher education. The Government has a target

of 3 million apprentices by 2020. If they are going to get anywhere

near that, a lot of that will be rebadging of existing training

but there are a lot of companies who hope to use apprenticeships

as a means of tapping talent pools that the universities have not

been able to attract. Many of the professions where people

will have assumed they were recruiting at degree level are now

considering recruiting at 18 and taking people through

a higher apprenticeship For example, accountancy,

management consultancy, nursing, these are areas

where they are looking already at recruiting apprentices

and many of the other professions are looking at how they might

start bringing people VOICE-OVER: A school now

of more orthodox kind, although there is not much orthodox

about this place of learning. The apprenticeship levy may only be

causing of a public argument within teaching but don't

think its effects will be Quietly, across the country,

employers are reshaping their training and recruitment

plans so they can recoup Taking a bow at the Albert Hall

in front of a rapturous Proms audience right about now

is a musical legend who says he wanted to be a gangster

until he was 11, and no, The Prom was a mash-up of the jazz,

pop and cinematic work of Quincy Jones, who's probably best

known as the producer of Now 83, he can still deliver

a pugnacious opinion. Tonight Smith meets Jones

as our culture man caught up with the composer at

rehearsals for his Prom. The last night of the Proms. Or a

Young Conservative's idea of New Year's Eve as one wag called it.

But look what they are doing to the Proms, they are dropping a bomb on

them! With the jazz song book of Mr Quincy Jones. Your sharp. I had to

make an effort! You do that every day, man. You are still out dressing

me. I got this in China, I had them made up, I like them. Every time I

go I get 28 suits! Look out, they're behind us. That was such a good time

in England in the 60s. My son was born here. We were filming The

Italian Job. I know you are asked all the time about Michael Jackson.

Do you think ultimately that is a tragic story? It is a tragic story

and we used to talk about it all the time. That's what I said a lot of

stupid things after he died. Anyway. You cannot make record like that

without extreme love, trust and respect.

There were stories of him bringing snakes and things... And

chimpanzees! I didn't like that. The snake used to wrap around me, around

my leg and I didn't like that at all. It would crawl across the

console. I'm not into snakes! So who won? He kept them. One day we went

out and I said, there is Muscles? We went downstairs and he was in the

parrot cage right there and he and the parrot didn't like it ever and

he had just eaten the parrot and his head got stuck in the cage!

We have lost some great people this year. The last two years, George

Martin, David Bowie, it doesn't stop. It is just frightening. All my

friends, I lost a lot of friends this year. Did you know David Bowie?

Can you tell us about your time with him? Every year we would rent his

yacht, he lived in Switzerland. Was he as good as everybody says? He

was, the music can never be any more or less than you are as a human

being and he was a great human being.

When it comes to the musicians the composer has known and worked

with, it's hard keeping up with Jones.

Now what about the presidential election?

I'll leave the country if that sucker won.

I assume you're referring to Mr Trump.

Very clever man and he knows how to say what they want to hear.

Uneducated rednecks, he knows how to talk to them.

I used to hang out with him. Did you?

A lot, yeah. Were you friends at one time?

Yeah, back then, but he wasn't like that, man, at all.

He used to fly with his helicopter with his name on the bottom of it.

And what about how things are in your country right now?

We keep reading reports of these difficulties

You should have seen the 30s, 40s and 50s.

In the 30s in Chicago during the depression

I wanted to be a gangster until I was 11.

Or I saw were dead bodies and Tommy guns and piles of money in back

rooms and all that stuff. This right there, I was in the wrong street and

they took a switchblade and put my hand on the fence and right there

was an ice pick. My daddy hit them in the head with a hammer.

And as for racism, Jones remembers playing in Las Vegas in 1964,

backing Frank Sinatra as part of the Count Basie Orchestra. Belafonte, in

the kitchen, they couldn't go in, and sleep in a black hotel across

town. We came there, and Frank said, we're not going to have that. The

old man wants to see you at the slot machines, there was an old man and

18 bodyguards. He said if anybody looks at him money, break both of

their legs. Frank was tough! And he stopped racism there. So it was

burgers with Sinatra on the strip but also fish with Picasso on the

French Riviera. Didn't you live near Picasso for a while? Yes, in Cannes.

We went to lunch one year. After he had finished, he would get the bones

and put them onto La Croisette Cillessen could blunt them and he

took the colours out of his pocket, blue and yellow and red and he put

his designs on them. And the cheque. -- so the Sun could burn them.

Unlike his fellow band leader, the late great James Brown, Jones said

he would not dream of finding musicians for missing a beat. So

what is the secret of getting the best out of them? It's love, man,

come on, it's not necessary to be a disciplinarian. That's what I didn't

like, what was that may be that won the Oscar? Whiplash. That is BS, no

jazz magician would take that, get out of here.

Thank you very much and thank you to Quincy Jones for the beautiful

music. But before we go we are looking

after the first in a sieve of performances from artists appearing

at this year's Proms. -- a series called tonight we have the

Zimbabwean singer Tempo magazine will be performing tomorrow. You can

catch that on BBC for tomorrow night -- who will be performing.

# Speak up cause the prophets seem to have gone to sleep

# Make a war on terror, terror is taking its war out on me

# Oh, why you gonna go and put the fuel into the middle of the fire

# It's ablaze, and the temperature is slowly getting higher

# We can talk about the heroes and the villains

# We can hear about the heroes and the villains

# Pins and needles shooting up and down all over me

# Feels like true conviction, still, it's so hard to know what to believe

# It's a game of smoke and mirrors all around me

# Do you know the heroes and the villains in this town

# We can talk about the heroes and the villains

# We can hear about the heroes and the villains

Rain pushing back across Northern Ireland overnight tonight will

spread steadily across Scotland tomorrow making for a Dell and damp

day for many bulls it could start of soggy in northern England with a

grey and misty start in the south but for most it will be a cracking

day if you like it warm and sunny with