Name: The #RemainstreamMedia.
Appearance: Lizards in human-suits.
What are you on about? A cabal of London-based journalists desperately trying to warp the public view of Brexit.
Is this like the neoliberal media conspiracy? No. They are rightwingers trying to divide the Labour party and make it look as if Bernie Sanders can’t still win.
Ah. The #RemainstreamMedia, by contrast, are whinging lefties. The Leave campaigner Louise Mensch coined the term to decry the outrageous bias she sees against Brexit in the media, and now against its noble queen, Andrea Leadsom.
But what if Brexit is a bad idea? Given the political instability, national humiliation, surge in racist attacks and damage to the public finances, isn’t that at least a possibility? You see? There you go. More media lies. The FTSE 100 has done fine since 23 June.
That’s because it is mainly big international companies that make money abroad, and when sterling falls that income is worth more in the UK. Shares in the more domestic companies, the FTSE 250, are down the pan. Classic #RemainstreamMedia.
Whatever. This all sounds very familiar … Perhaps you’re thinking of the Lamestream Media, a term made popular by Sarah Palin to describe reporters who suggested that she and the Tea Party were, you know …
I remember. So who are Mensch’s enemies? The BBC, for taking too long to notice fraud on that big petition. Channel 4, for airing a scathing interview with “a former colleague” of Leadsom’s at Invesco. Mensch thought the man should be “one disgruntled coworker” instead.
Did she explain her objection to his comments? No, she didn’t go into that. But others on Twitter have borrowed the term to point to other examples, such as interviews with Leave voters giving dumb reasons for their choice.
How can the media be secretly controlled by a rightwing conspiracy and a leftwing conspiracy at the same time? Simple. One of them is nonsense.
Or maybe both? Doesn’t vaguely balanced reporting always look like a conspiracy to extremists? Typical. From now on I’ll only take information from people who agree with me, so I know it’s true.
Do say: “This is just the kind of pathetic attack that I’d expect from the Blairite scum/special snowflakes at the Guardian.”
Don’t say: “Wake up, sheeple! Agent Mensch is a classic false flag operation to make Brexit supporters look like deranged obsessives.”
