Press Loses It Over This Morning

Our free and fearless press has a disproportional view of how important breakfast and daytime TV is to the nation: it was not so long ago that the Mail targeted ITV breakfast offering Good Morning Britain, indulging in a series of viciously personal attacks on its new co-host Susanna Reid. Those attacks ended when former Screws and Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan arrived.

This was, of course, nothing to do with Morgan being one of their own, and also that he was at the time an “editor at large” for Mail Online. Now the Mail, along with the Murdoch Sun, has gone off the end of the pier in no style at all at another ITV offering, This Morning, after co-host Phillip Schofield was the subject of a series of personal revelations, and left the show.

He’s left the show. Departed. Gone. Not there any more. No longer on the scene. But this counts for nothing with those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet: the time has come for another attempt to test ITV and its morning programming to destruction. It’s a competitor to the papers, so when it was announced the programme would continue, off they went.

Yes, we continue to endure a cost of living crisis, with energy bills not reducing very much, food inflation still racing ahead, the NHS continues to be in its own rolling crisis, there is still uncertainty over a deal to raise the debt ceiling in the USA, rents and mortgages become more expensive, yet the press wants to kick ITV hard enough to do some damage.

Hence today’s edition of the Sun telling readers “Schofield Backlash … ITV loses millions as sponsors quit … Staff fear for jobs if show is axed … WE’VE AD IT WITH THIS MORNING” (geddit?!?!?). There is also the obligatory made-up quote “A source said ‘Brands do not feel ITV is a safe bet at the moment’”. So what is the source for the “loses millions” claim?

“[The show’s] main sponsor, car dealers Arnold Clark, announced they would not be renewing their mega-money deal”. Worth how much? We don’t get to find out. Also, let’s have that in full, with context, shall we? “Arnold Clark said its existing multi-million pound sponsorship will end this autumn as planned”. AS PLANNED. No other evidence is ponied up. None. Zip. Zilch. Nil. Nada.

All we get is “A source said”, which is the Murdoch goons making it up on the fly. So can the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker manage anything marginally more credible? “TV DOCTOR HITS OUT AT ‘TOXIC’ THIS MORNING” thunders the headline. But once more we don’t get the context: that should read “Doctor who left the show two years ago”.

And had Ranj Singh spoken to the Mail? Er, no: they lifted it all from a post he put up on Instagram. Still, the Mail insists “Calls for an independent inquiry into the scandal gathered pace, with ITV's most senior bosses under increasing pressure to admit what they knew and when about Schofield's relationship”. No. Shit-stirring from vindictive Mail bosses gathered pace.

Meanwhile, the Mail has also invented a source. “One source said: 'It's time for some truths to be told now, this has been brushed under the carpet for so long and it has to come to an end. The younger man has got to the point now where he won't lie for anyone but actually, he says he was never asked by ITV about any relationship. It is time that people were held to account, or at the very least explain themselves.’” And so the barrel-scraping continued.

“Ex-Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries joined the calls for an independent investigation … 'How did that young boy, so young, get a job at ITV? What were the processes involved? What was the safeguarding in place for someone so young at that age?’” He was 18 when he started work for ITV.

The fragrant Nadine seems to have no problem with the irretrievably corrupt figure of disgraced former occasional Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who appears to have been on good terms with a series of much younger women, one of whom is now his third wife. Bozo has been shown to be a congenital and shameless liar, but hey ho.

Millions of Britons have no interest in what happens behind the scenes at ITV. They are hard at work, in call centres, cleaning, waiting on table, delivering take-aways, on the road with lorry loads of goods, looking after elderly and disabled people, nursing, driving buses and trains, out there on building sites, mending the plumbing, fixing cars and vans, keeping the country moving.

The Sun and Mail have no interest in them. Because they are not newspapers. News is not their game. Propaganda, monstering, bullying and otherwise working over their targets, stoking hatred against minorities, smearing those they judge do not have the means to fight back, and otherwise exercising more Power Without Responsibility. That’s their game.

They showed what they are. Believe them that one time. But don’t buy them.

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