Dear BBC, ITN, and Sky News,
As you know, voters in last month’s referendum were repeatedly lied to about the fundamental realities of the UK’s proposed exit from the European Union. Although there were undoubtedly untruths and exaggerations on both sides of the argument, it was clear then, and it is painfully clear now, that the balance of these untruths lay firmly on the Leave side.
Presumably, in the run-up to the referendum, you felt (rightly or wrongly) that impartiality rules prevented you from pointing out this disparity. Indeed, it appears that you felt duty-bound to constrain any fact-checking efforts to relatively trivial, tit-for-tat factoids, rather than focusing on any of the fundamental lies underpinning many of the Leave side’s arguments.
Much of the analysis following the referendum has focused on the deep divisions revealed by the demographics underlying the result—young versus old, educated versus uneducated, the haves versus the have-nots. But few have focussed on the true division—between those who understood the likely catastrophic consequences of Brexit and those who did not.
For example, whatever the relative importance placed by Leave voters on curbing immigration, taking back control, or dishing out imaginary cash surpluses, how many of those voters understood that they were voting for a process that will take several painful years before it even begins to completely fail to deliver any of what they were promised?
It is likely that the UK’s media, or at the very least the electoral impartiality rules under which it operates, are partly to blame for the lack of knowledge and informed debate that resulted in the UK’s unexpected and counter-productive vote to leave the EU.
There is now an urgent need for the British broadcast media to shake off any residual impartiality concerns and fully embrace the overriding moral imperative of its duty to inform. The British people need a news media willing to step beyond the he-says-she-says paradigm to accurately—and yes, sometimes one-sidedly when the facts dictate it—inform people about the realities underlying an issue. In this case, this means explaining the perilous situation the UK now finds itself in and providing a thoughtful and un-blinkered analysis of the various options now available to us.
Having duped sufficient numbers of British voters into inadvertently voting so catastrophically against their own and their country’s interests, it is not surprising that the Leave campaign are keen to portray the referendum as an incontrovertible bedrock of the democratic process that cannot be questioned, let alone undone. But, as you know, this is not the case.
Far from being a bedrock of our democracy, referendums have long been regarded as undesirable and deeply flawed, particularly when applied to complex or emotive issues—of which the EU referendum is indisputably both. Last month’s referendum was explicitly non-binding. This, coupled with the unprecedented acrimony and dishonesty that pervaded the pre-referendum debate, means that the referendum’s narrow result cannot be regarded as a true reflection of the people’s will. Particularly as it is already clear that if the referendum were re-run it would be likely to produce a very different outcome.
I appeal to the broadcast media to resist the magnetic pull of multiple party leadership battles and re-double their efforts to inform. Otherwise, it is easy to imagine that the UK could walk blindly off the cliff into an Article 50 notification with only a few plaintive and largely unread op-eds sounding the alarm.
