#like when replying on knock-off twitter to a critique you 'agree with' by saying 'oh yeah i agree. wish we could've done something else'

[vernonfielding]

Life Writes Its Own Stories

Chapter 3! (And at AO3.)

Amy was deep in thought, eyes gone unfocused as she stared at her computer screen and tried to will a new lede to reveal itself, when a thunk to her forehead snapped her back to reality.

“Ow!” Amy looked up and found Gina already preparing another ball of paper, probably weighted with something like a rock, or an actual paper weight.

“I wasn’t trying to hit you. But I’m also not sorry that I did,” Gina said. She tossed the next ball, which Amy managed to duck. The third one hit her phone and knocked the headset off the receiver.

“What the hell, Gina?”

“I need to kill that horrible machine.” Gina launched another paper ball, which bounced an inch from the police scanner on Amy’s desk. “Oh, so close!”

“Knock it off,” Amy said. “I need that.”

“It’s distracting,” Gina said.

“Just ignore it. Everyone else does.”.

“No we don’t,” Charles called from across the newsroom.

“Come on! Every newsroom has a police scanner.” Amy glanced around at her coworkers, looking for a friendly face, and paused hopefully on Terry.

“It’s not 1985,” Terry said. “Just follow the news online like everyone else, Santiago.”

“You all are terrible journalists.” Amy grabbed the scanner and moved it to a more protected spot on her desk, right beside her hard copy of the Associated Press Stylebook and a stack of battered Yellow Pages.

She’d had no idea everyone else was bothered by the scanner. It spit out a constant stream of static and mumbled police jargon, but to Amy it was like white noise. She’d grown up around police scanners and had developed an innate ability to ignore them when nothing was happening and hone right in when the chatter got interesting. Apparently it was not a skill hardwired into all reporters.

“Why do you need that anyway?” Gina said, approaching Amy’s desk and snapping up the scanner. “Doesn’t your Deep Throat give you all your stories now?”

“He’s not my Deep Throat,” Amy said. She reached for her scanner and Gina pulled it away.

“Whatever, Bernstein.” Gina dropped the scanner in Amy’s trash can and walked away.

“And I’m not the Bernstein!” Amy called after her. “I’m totally the Woodward!”

Terry came up and plucked her scanner out of the trash, setting it back on her desk. “Just ignore her,” he said. “She’s always wanted a Deep Throat.”

In truth, Amy was secretly thrilled that she had a real-life “deep throat” in Peralta, even if their interactions weren’t nearly as cool as the ones from All the President’s Men. They hadn’t once met in a creepy parking lot after midnight. She didn’t have a gross but admittedly cool code name for him. And the tips he gave her weren’t exactly going to save democracy.

Still, he was texting her. Kind of a lot. And okay, most of it was immature and needling – he especially liked giving her a hard time when her stories were buried in the back of the paper or failed to get any traction on Twitter. But every now and then he’d pass on something useful.

It had started soon after the Poloski story ran. Peralta had texted her the next day to congratulate her, which she had taken as a polite way for him to acknowledge that he wasn’t mad at her for calling him. Then a week later he’d texted again, in response to a short story she’d written about a local bank robbery – he’d suggested that she ask if the latest robbery was connected to a series of thefts from the previous year, and sure enough, Scully confirmed they were. She hadn’t gotten on the front page, but it was information no other reporters had.

After that, the texts started coming more regularly. Often it was just feedback – or, more precisely, critical commentary. And it wasn’t always her articles. After Hitchcock wrote a piece about NYPD overtime expenses pulling money out of city programs for public health and homeless services, Peralta sent Amy a three-paragraph text asking whether he and his partner should have just clocked off at 5 when they were pursuing that serial stabber last year. Amy wrote back: “Send a letter to the editor.” Peralta replied with a zombie emoji.

A few times he texted about Gina’s columns, mostly to complain about her liberal use of anonymous sources – a critique that Amy privately agreed with. When Charles wrote an unsigned, negative review of Sal’s pizza in the Bulletin’s restaurant column, Jake demanded a retraction. She didn’t reply.

His comments on her stories tended to be more specific. Once, he texted her an hour before the print deadline to tell her she’d misspelled another detective’s name in a story he’d read online; she’d had time to fix it for the next day’s newspaper, saving herself an embarrassing correction. Another time he wrote that a headline on her story was obviously biased against cops, and though Amy had texted back “I don’t write the headlines,” she’d agreed with him, and asked Charles to revise it online.

They’d had one honest-to-goodness text fight. She’d written an article about two officers accused of threatening a man and forcibly removing him from his home during a robbery investigation. In his formal complaint, the man said the officers had been drunk, and the interactions he described made the officers look at best incredibly unprofessional, and at worst criminally derelict. The NYPD wouldn’t comment except to say that it was conducting an internal investigation.

“Those are good cops you just trashed,” Peralta wrote to her that night.

“Give me their side of the story and I’ll write it,” Amy texted back. She was crashed on her couch, exhausted after spending the day trying to track down the two officers for comment and arguing with Scully – who was either secretly brilliant at evading questions, or the most inept public information officer in all of the NYPD.

“You know I can’t do that,” Peralta texted.

“Then tell me what I’m supposed to do if no one will talk,” Amy wrote, stabbing at the letters.

“So its better to write a one-sided, inaccurate story than not publish at all? That’s crap.”

“”It’s,” Amy wrote, and immediately felt like an asshole.

Peralta texted back an eyeroll emoji, which she deserved.

“It’s my job to hold people in power accountable for their actions,” Amy wrote. “I’m not going to apologize for that. NYPD wants its side in the paper, they have to talk to me.”

She watched her screen as he worked on his reply.

“It’s not fair,” he wrote.

Amy thought for a moment and finally wrote, “No. It’s not.”

She didn’t hear from him for a few days after that and she thought maybe that was it. He’d probably figured out that he had way more to lose than gain by talking to her. Then, before she’d even gotten out of bed one morning, he texted a name and a link to a short item she’d written about a dead body found in the East River. And that was how Amy was the first to report that a highly placed mafia boss had been shot and killed, his body dumped in the water.

Two days later he gave her an exclusive on a Park Slope millennial family being arrested for dealing methamphetamine through a fake moms group.

(He also tipped her off to a Greenpoint storefront selling organic, gluten-free, sugar-free Twinkies, but Amy replied that wasn’t a crime. Peralta texted back a handcuffs emoji. She ended up writing the story for the features section. It went viral on Facebook.)

Eventually, Amy decided he needed a fake name in her contacts. She called him Pineapples – for some reason it just popped into her brain  – and every time a new message from him appeared on her screen, she felt a little jolt of adrenaline.

She told herself it was just the anticipation of the next big story.

+++

“And his name is…Pepper! Officer Pepper O’Pigeon. I’ll take questions now.”

Scully swept his hands toward the giant pigeon in question and a few of the littler kids at his side clapped politely. Amy sighed and turned off her voice recorder. One of the TV reporters weakly asked if Officer Pepper O’Pigeon was a boy or girl pigeon and Amy didn’t stick around for the answer.

Free of the clutch of reporters looking for a cheap and easy feature story for the day, Amy took one last glance around the scene. She’d come to this press conference against her better judgment mostly because it was being held at the 99th Precinct. Scully liked to shift these kinds of “community building” press conferences among the various precincts so they all got a share of positive media attention, and normally Amy skipped them. She’d told herself yesterday that she was coming to this one because the precinct was between her apartment and the Bulletin offices – it was just a stop along the way to work – but if she was honest, she’d come because she was hoping to spot Detective Peralta.

Now, she realized that had been dumb. There were no cops here at all except for Scully and two uniforms who looked so young they might well have been interns. Except she didn’t think the NYPD did interns. She’d have to look that up later.

Amy shoved her phone in her purse and headed back toward the subway, trying to decide if she should take the train the rest of the way in or just walk the mile and a half. She passed a coffee shop and the smell of fresh ground beans hit her brain like something illegal. She’d found herself out of coffee at home that morning and decided to try skipping it altogether, but clearly she was not meant for cold turkey. Amy neatly sidestepped into the coffee shop.

She recognized it immediately as a cop hangout. There were two uniforms in line at the register, and a couple of plain-clothes with badges snapped to their belts perched on stools at the front window. A parking patrol officer sat at a corner table with a newspaper – sadly, The Times – spread out before her.

Amy walked up to the register just as the uniforms finished ordering and asked for a large coffee with room. At the side counter, she reached for the nonfat milk to the far right, just as someone came up beside her and made a move for the full-fat in front of her.

“Excuse me-”

“Sorry-”

Amy glanced up and stopped, hand in midair. She stared into the wide, brown eyes of Detective Peralta.

“Detective-”

His eyes widened even more and he shook his head. Amy snapped her mouth shut. Peralta quickly looked back over his shoulder to the rest of the coffee shop, then turned and said under his breath, “We can’t talk.”

“Oh-”

“Here you go,” he said, in a slightly louder than necessary voice, and handed her the milk she’d been reaching for.

“Oh,” Amy said again. “Thanks. Thank you.”

“No problem.” Peralta darted a quick glance in her direction.

They topped off their drinks in silence, and Peralta left first. Amy followed a minute after, feeling dazed. Her heart was hammering in her chest and her face felt warm, like she was blushing. She looked toward the 99th Precinct when she stepped outside the coffee shop, but Peralta was nowhere in sight. Her heart sank, and Amy thought back to the panicked look on his face, and also the fact that he was actually much cuter than she’d remembered.

She glanced down the street toward the precinct one more time, then moved on in the opposite direction. She was definitely going to have to walk to work now, just to burn off this weird adrenaline rush. Amy pulled out her phone to check the time – and saw a text on the screen.

“Bailey Fountain. 20 min.”

Amy didn’t think twice. She spun on her heel and headed toward Prospect Park.

+++

Jake jogged most of the way down Flatbush toward the park, glancing at his cell phone as the trees came into view. He’d had to check in at the precinct before ducking out again, and it had taken him a few minutes to shake Rosa. She’d asked him outright why he was acting so weird and he’d said he was acting totally normal and she’d given him that terrifying eyebrow sneer and he knew he’d be answering more questions later. At least he’d have some time to devise answers.

He slowed to a walk as he crossed Plaza Street and stepped into the park proper, the hum of traffic now muffled by the trees. He looked around for Santiago as he climbed the steps toward the fountain, and spotted her right away, on the closest bench. He was ten minutes late, but he paused anyway, then stepped a few feet to his right, so he was partly behind a tree. He wasn’t sure why, but he wanted a moment to watch her, before she knew he was there.

When he’d met her, very briefly, at the press conference a few weeks ago, he’d had just a few seconds to look at her and notice that she was cute. Now, as he walked the thin line between cop and creep and watched her from behind a tree, he had to admit that the Vulture was right: Santiago was hot. Except that wouldn’t have been the first word he’d use to describe her. She was, simply, beautiful. A woman who would catch his attention in a crowded bar or in line at the corner bodega, who would probably be as gorgeous in an evening gown as she would yoga pants and a hoodie.

At the moment, she was wearing a bright blue button-down shirt and black slacks, and her hair was down, part of it cascading over one shoulder and literally shimmering in the morning sunshine. He was standing close enough to see she had her phone in her hands and was typing on it, thumbs tapping away. She had her bag still slung over her shoulder and tucked into her side, which was sensible given how common purse snatches were in the park.

Though her head was bent to look at her phone, her back was straight, her shoulders squared, and she gave off a distinct ‘don’t mess with me’ vibe that Jake respected. But there was something about her that made him feel strangely precious toward her nonetheless – the pout of her lips, or the faint line between her eyebrows, some softness that he couldn’t quite articulate.

She looked up from her phone suddenly, and Jake neatly stepped out from the tree before she could catch him being a weirdo. He gave a little wave as he approached.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, as he sat beside her on the bench.

“It’s fine.” She set her phone in her lap and turned slightly toward him. “I’m sorry about, well, the whole not playing it cool thing at the coffee shop. I wasn’t expecting to see you there.”

“Right, the coffee shop across the street from a police precinct is a totally weird place to run into a cop,” Jake said, but he was grinning.

“I was expecting cops, but not my cop,” Santiago said, which caused Jake to snort-laugh.

“Oh, so I belong to you?”

“You know what I mean,” Santiago said with a hint of exasperation, though he could tell she was trying not to smile.

They lapsed into silence, the bubble of the fountain unnaturally loud to Jake. He wished he’d brought his coffee with him just so he’d have something to do with his hands. Beside him, Santiago was turning her phone over and over, until she finally seemed to realize what she was doing and stuffed it in her purse.

“So, what-”

“Look, I-”

They both stopped and laughed a little.

“You go,” Santiago said.

“I was just going to ask if there was something you wanted to talk about,” Jake said. “I mean, something in particular. I know I was the one who said we should meet here but I got the impression you had something on your mind. At the coffee shop.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, it was just a look on your face, like you were about to ask a question.”

“Oh.” Her eyes crinkled in bemusement. “Well, I guess I did. Only actually, no, it wasn’t a question. But I did have something I wanted to say. I mean, not like a speech or anything, just something that’s been on my mind lately.”

Jake bit his tongue to keep from teasing her about being flustered. Instead he gave her what he hoped was an encouraging smile.

Santiago pursed her lips and frowned for a moment, then turned to fully face him.

“I guess I just wanted to say thanks. For, you know, helping me out so much.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked him in the eye. “I know you’re putting your career on the line by talking to me, and meanwhile I’m getting all this credit at work. And there’s not really anything I can do to change that, I mean, short of offering you bribes, which would be totally unethical and I would never do. So, yeah, there’s nothing I can do, except just acknowledge what you’re doing and say thanks.”

She paused and took a deep breath. Jake stared into her eyes, which were sparkling in the sunlight. He realized he should probably say something in response.

“You’re welcome.” And then he thought over everything she had just told him, and he added, “But you’re not the only one benefitting. As much as it pains me to admit this – and believe me, it really, truly does – your articles have helped put away a few bad guys. That’s all I’m trying to do at the end of the day.”

Santiago offered him a small smile and shrugged. “I’m glad to hear that, but I still feel like I’m the only one really getting anything out of this relationship.”

Jake startled at that, and Santiago’s eyes went wide and her cheeks flushed.

“Transaction,” Santiago said, quickly. “I’m getting everything out of this transaction. Not a relationship. It’s a professional thing. Totally-”

“Transactional?” Jake supplied, when she trailed off.

Santiago nodded weakly, her whole face now glowing pink. He started laughing, and then found he couldn’t stop. Santiago buried her face in her hands, but when he was still laughing a minute later she slapped him on the shoulder, and then hit him a couple more times until he caught his breath.

“I’m sorry,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “I’ve just never seen anyone blush that hard, that fast before.”

“I can’t help my physical reaction,” Santiago said, indignant.

“Title of your sex tape!”

“What?” Santiago’s forehead creased in confusion until she figured out what he meant, and then she hit him again. He just grinned back at her.

“I had no idea you were such an immature jerk,” Santiago said, but there wasn’t any real spite in her tone.

Still, he softened his smile. “It was only a matter of time.”

They fell into another silence, this one less tense. Jake thought again about what she’d said in her oddly poignant speech, turning the words over in his head. He turned to face her, leaning an elbow on the back of the bench.

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “I haven’t had to deal with a lot of reporters firsthand, but from what I’ve seen they’re usually pretty useless. Like, getting stuff wrong and just being lazy, sometimes actually working against us.”

“Like with that story I did, on the drunk cops,” Santiago said.

Jake bristled – he hadn’t meant to accuse her of anything. “Not exactly. Look, I’m sorry I lost it with that story, but I know those guys, and they’re good cops.”

“I get it,” Santiago said. “I mean, I wish I could get all the facts too. I don’t like having to write only half the story.”

“And that’s the crazy part – I believe you.” Jake let them both sit with that a moment, and then he cleared his throat, feeling suddenly shy about oversharing. “Usually I just avoid journalists.”

Santiago chuckled. “You haven’t avoided me,”

“No,” Jake said. “Kind of the opposite, right? I guess trust you.”

She flashed a smile at that, then turned thoughtful. “Do you mind if I ask why?”

Jake shrugged, and thought it over. “That first time, I was just pissed about what was happening with that asshole cop who’d killed his ex, and I wanted to tell someone. And you were there.”

Santiago gave a short laugh. “Thanks, that makes me feel so special.”

“But then,” he said, grinning at her, “you wrote that story and it actually worked, and you wrote the next one and that helped too. And I guess I realized – we were kind of on the same side.”

He paused and bit his lip, unsure whether he should say more. He looked off in the distance, at the fountain water sparkling in the sunshine. “I like helping people. And I like doing it with you.”

Jake could feel Santiago staring at him, but when he looked over she ducked her head as she smiled. She was blushing again.

“Title of your sex tape?” she said.

Jake doubled over laughing.

+++

Amy had a literal spring in her step as she jogged down the stairs to the subway to head into the newsroom. She was hardly even surprised when her train happened to arrive just as she got to the platform – it felt like the kind of day for pleasant coincidences – and she smiled to herself as she climbed on with a few other passengers and found an open seat halfway down the car.

Talking with Peralta had been unexpectedly exhilarating. For a moment she’d been taken aback by how attractive she found him – the mess of curly hair, the tech-bro hoodie, the scuffed sneakers, and what looked like a honey-mustard stain on his plaid shirt wouldn’t usually add up to her type. But there was something charming and easy about him, in his smile and his eyes that practically glowed with warmth. She’d blushed more times with him on that bench in 20 minutes than she could recall in all of the previous year. But it had been a good kind of blush, the kind that came from friendly teasing and not embarrassment or shame.

And in between the sex-tape jokes and the laughter at her expense, she’d been genuinely touched by what he’d said about trusting her. Trust was a journalist’s most valuable commodity, and it was something Amy knew had to be earned, more in this day and age than ever before. That she’d earned it from him – someone she’d already decided was smart and decent, whom she trusted too – was wonderful.

He’d even given her another tip, just before they wrapped up their impromptu rendezvous.

“I can’t vouch for this one personally,” he said. “I’m not involved. I’ve just heard some stuff like, third-hand.”

“That’s all right,” Amy said, as she dug through her purse for her pen and notebook. “It’s actually easier for me to ask questions if I don’t have to worry about protecting my source’s identity.”

He flicked up his eyebrows in surprise.

“What?” Amy said. “I mean, I’ll still be careful.”

“No, of course.” He scratched at the back of his neck. “I guess I just didn’t realize how much thought you might have to put into protecting me.”

There had been something in his tone of voice, almost timid, that made him seem suddenly vulnerable. It had sent a jolt of what Amy could only describe as affection straight to her gut.

On the subway, Amy pulled out her notebook and read over the notes she’d jotted down from Peralta. He was right, his information was more rumor than fact, and it would take a lot of digging to prove it.

What he’d heard was that corrections officers at the Brooklyn Detention Center were sometimes covertly recording confidential conversations between inmates and their lawyers, then sharing those recording with the district attorney’s office. If it was true, that was a major civil rights violation.

The city’s jails were overseen by the Department of Correction, not the NYPD, but Peralta said that aside from being appalled by the abuse of prisoners’ rights, he and other detectives were worried that the correction officers were putting their NYPD cases in jeopardy.

Amy took some more notes as the subway rumbled through the tunnels, writing a list of questions she’d need to ask and sources she’d need to contact. This story would take some major reporting, which meant she was going to have to ask Terry for permission to step back from her daily crime-writing duties. She flipped a page in her notebook and started crafting a memo for him, detailing why the story was important and what she’d need to report and write it.

By the time she got to the newsroom, Amy was feeling pumped. She stopped by Terry’s desk before she even went to her own and told him she had a big story and would send him details right away. She’d emailed her memo by noon.

“Charles,” she said, picking up her purse and marching over to his desk. “I’m feeling brave today. Let’s get lunch – you choose.”

+++

Amy’s good mood lasted through lunch; she hadn’t actually thrown up from the sheep-muzzle soup, after all.

But she was instantly wary when she saw who was waiting at her desk when she returned. Gina sat slouched in Amy’s own chair, flipping through the notebook that Amy hadn’t realized she’d left on her desk. Amy took a moment to berate herself for leaving the newsroom without a notebook, then braced herself for Gina.

“What’s up?” Amy said, trying to play it casual.

“I hear you’ve got a big story.”

“Maybe. Holt hasn’t signed off on it.” Amy stared down at Gina, who just smirked back up at her. “Can I have my desk back now?”

“Is this another one from your little tipster? You’re getting a reputation, you know.” Gina snapped shut Amy’s notebook but made no move to get up.

Something in Gina’s tone made Amy’s hackles rise, and she planted her hands on her hips and said, “What do you mean by ‘reputation’?”

Gina just smirked some more. Amy could feel the anger pooling in her stomach and she was gearing up to lay into her about how entirely unprofessional, unacceptable and just plain mean it was to accuse a reporter of exchanging sexual favors for information when Gina burst out laughing.

“Girl, I’m kidding,” she said, and tossed Amy’s notebook on her desk.

“You- what?”

“Look, honestly, I’m pretty impressed you’ve developed such a good source so fast. It took me twice as long to get my first and I’m at least four times as attractive as you.” Amy just gaped at her as Gina stood up and gave her a little punch in the shoulder. “Seriously, if you need any help working this one, let me know. I’ve got some contacts at Brooklyn Detention. Most of the guards hate me but the ones who like me love me.”

“Er, thanks,” Amy said. “I mean, I still don’t know if Holt’s going to-”

“Oh, he will.”

And as if on cue, Holt called out from his office, “Santiago. Jeffords.”

Gina winked and sashayed back to her desk. Amy stood staring after her, mind reeling from the Linetti roller coaster, until Terry walked up and took her by the elbow.

“C’mon,” he said, “our captain calls.”

“Right,” Amy said, shaking her head. She grabbed her notebook and a pen, and followed Terry.

Holt hadn’t actually been with the Bulletin for much longer than Amy, and his office was largely bare of the personal knick-knacks and ethically acceptable gifts that most journalists seemed to hoard – though whether that was because he was still new or he just wasn’t the type to collect stuff, Amy couldn’t have said. She and Terry took seats opposite Holt’s desk, and he folded his hands over what Amy assumed was a printout of her memo. She was surprised he’d not only read it already, but was ready to discuss it with her.

Holt tapped a finger on the top page. “These are some serious allegations.” 

“Yes, they are,” Terry said. Amy forced herself not to fidget.

“And you don’t have much proof of anything, is that correct?” He was looking right at Amy, so she nodded.

“No, sir,” she said. “Not yet.”

“Proving this is going to take some extensive reporting – public records requests, interviews with inmates. You’re going to need someone with actual information to go on the record,” Holt said.

“Yes.” Amy nodded again. “Um, Gina, she said she might have some contacts for me. And I know a couple people in the public defender’s office.”

Holt studied her for a long moment, and she fought the urge to bounce a leg or wring her hands. Amy understood why he was hesitating – to get this story, she’d have to take a break from her regular police beat, which would put pressure on the rest of the staff to cover for her. Stories like this one were an investment of time and people and, therefore, money, and a newspaper like the Bulletin didn’t have much of any of that.

And on top of that, Amy was a rookie. She hadn’t even been a journalist for more than a few months, and this would be her first big investigation. A few big scoops in recent weeks were marks in her favor, but she knew she hadn’t proven herself yet, not really.

“Your source on this, you trust him? Or her?” Holt said.

Amy nodded at once. “I do.”

“Very well,” Holt said. “You have three weeks.”

Amy clenched her jaw to keep from screaming with joy, and nodded her head in quiet acknowledgement. Outside Holt’s office, Terry gave her a high-five.

“Pressure’s on now, Santiago.”

Amy’s stomach was already in knots and her pits were starting to sweat, but she said, seriously, “Pressure’s what I eat for breakfast.”

She ignored Gina’s snicker and the paper airplane that hit the back of her head.

CHAPTER 4

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Last week, Jeremy Corbyn humbled the entire political and corporate media commentariat. With a little help from Britain’s student population. And with a little help from thousands of media activists. Without doubt this was one of the most astonishing results in UK political history. Dismissed by all corporate political pundits, including the clutch of withered fig leaves at the Guardian, reviled by scores of his own Blairite MPs (see here), Corbyn ‘increased Labour’s share of the vote by more than any other of the party’s election leaders since 1945′ with ‘the biggest swing since… shortly after the Second World War’. He won a larger share of the vote than Tony Blair in 2005. Corbyn achieved this without resorting to angry lefty ranting. His focus was on kindness, compassion, sharing, inclusivity and forgiveness. This approach held up a crystal-clear mirror to the ugly, self-interested cynicism of the Tory party, and transformed the endless brickbats into flowers of praise. On Twitter, John Prescott disclosed that when Rupert Murdoch saw the exit poll ‘he stormed out of the room’. As ever, while the generals made good their escape, front-line troops were less fortunate. Outfought by Team Corbyn, out-thought by social media activists, outnumbered in the polls, many commentators had no option but to fall on their microphones and keyboards. LBC radio presenter Iain Dale led the way: Let me be the first to say, I got it wrong, wholly wrong. I should have listened more to my callers who have been phoning into my show day after day, week after week. The Guardian’s Gaby Hinsliff, who had written in January, ‘This isn’t going to be yet another critique of Corbyn, by the way, because there is no point. The evidence is there for anyone with eyes’, tweeted: This is why I trust @iaindale’s judgement; he admits when it was way off. (As mine was. As god knows how many of ours was) Hinsliff promised: Like everyone else who didn’t foresee the result, I’ll be asking myself hard questions & trying to work out what changed… Annoying as ever, we asked: But will you be asking yourself about the structural forces, within and outside Guardian and corporate media generally, shaping performance? And: Is a corporate journalist free to analyse the influence of owners, profit-orientation, ad-dependence, state-subsidised news? Taboo subjects. Presumably engrossed in introspection, Hinsliff did not reply. Right-winger John Rentoul, who insisted four weeks ago in the Independent that, ‘we are moving towards the end of the Corbynite experiment’, appeared to be writing lines in detention: I was wrong about Jeremy Corbyn – The Labour leader did much better in the election than I expected. I need to understand and learn from my mistakes. Channel 4 News presenter and Telegraph blogger, Cathy Newman tweeted: Ok let’s be honest, until the last few weeks many of us under-estimated @jeremycorbyn Translating from the ‘newspeak’: many corporate journalists waged a relentless campaign over two years to persuade the public to ‘underestimate’ Corbyn, but were wrong about the public’s ability to see through the propaganda. Piers Morgan, who predicted the Conservatives would win a ’90-100 seat majority’, wrote: I think Mr Corbyn has proved a lot of people, including me, completely wrong. In a typically dramatic flourish, Channel 4’s Jon Snow’s summation was harsh but fair: I know nothing. We the media, the pundits, the experts, know nothing. Guardian columnist Rafael Behr, who wrote in February, ‘Jeremy Corbyn is running out of excuses’, also ate humble pie: Fair play to Jeremy Corbyn and his team. They have done a lot of things I confidently thought they – he – could not do. I was wrong. In March, Observer columnist Nick Cohen graphically predicted that ‘Corbyn’s Labour won’t just lose. It’ll be slaughtered.’ In an article titled, ‘Don’t tell me you weren’t warned about Corbyn’, Cohen indicated the words that would ‘be flung’ at Corbynites ‘by everyone who warned that Corbyn’s victory would lead to a historic defeat’: I Told You So You Fucking Fools! Apparently frothing at the mouth, Cohen concluded by advising the idiots reading his column that, following the predicted electoral disaster, ‘your only honourable response will be to stop being a fucking fool by changing your fucking mind’. Awkward, then, for Cohen to now ‘apologise to affronted Corbyn supporters… I was wrong’; presumably feeling like a fucking fool, having changed his fucking mind. Tragicomically, Cohen then proceeded to be exactly as ‘wrong’ all over again: The links between the Corbyn camp and a Putin regime that persecutes genuine radicals. Corbyn’s paid propaganda for an Iranian state that hounds gays, subjugates women and tortures prisoners. Corbyn and the wider left’s indulgence of real antisemites (not just critics of Israel). They are all on the record. That Tory newspapers used them against the Labour leadership changes nothing. Former Guardian comment editor and senior columnist Jonathan Freedland spent two years writing a series of anti-Corbyn hit pieces (see our media alert for discussion). Last month, Freedland wrote under the title, ‘No more excuses: Jeremy Corbyn is to blame for this meltdown’, lamenting: What more evidence do they need? What more proof do the Labour leadership and its supporters require? Freedland helpfully relayed focus group opinion to the effect that Corbyn was a ‘dope’, ‘living in the past’, ‘a joke’, ‘looking as if he knows less about it than I do’. Freedland has also, now, had no choice but to back down: Credit where it’s due. Jeremy Corbyn defied those – including me – who thought he could not win seats for Lab. I was wrong. Like Freedland, senior Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee has relentlessly attacked Corbyn. On April 19, she wrote of how ‘Corbyn is rushing to embrace Labour’s annihilation’: Wrong, wrong and wrong again. Was ever there a more crassly inept politician than Jeremy Corbyn, whose every impulse is to make the wrong call on everything? This week, Toynbee’s tune had changed: Nothing succeeds like success. Jeremy Corbyn looks like a new man, beaming with confidence, benevolence and forgiveness to erstwhile doubters… Apparently channelling David Brent of The Office, Toynbee added: When I met him on Sunday he clasped my hand and, with a twinkle and a wink, thanked me for things I had written. With zero self-awareness, Toynbee noted that the Mail and Sun had helped Corbyn: ‘by dredging up every accusation against him yet failing to frighten voters away, they have demolished their own power’. Former Guardian political editor Michael White, yet another regular anti-Corbyn commentator, admitted: I was badly wrong. JC had much wider voter appeal than I realised Former Guardian journalist, Jonathan Cook, replied: Problem is you *all* got it wrong. That fact alone exposes structural flaw of corporate media. You don’t represent us, you represent power. White responded: You’re not still banging on, are you Jonathan. You do talk some bollocks. Guardian, Telegraph, Independent and New Statesman contributor Abi Wilkinson tweeted: Don’t think some of people making demands about who Corbyn puts in shadow cabinet have particularly earned the right to be listened to… We paired this with Wilkinson’s comment from June 2016: Any hope I once held about Corbyn’s ability to steer the party in a more positive direction has been well and truly extinguished. Wilkinson replied: ‘oh fuck off’, before concluding that we are ‘two misogynistic cranks in a basement’, and ‘just some dickheads who aren’t actually fit’ to hold the media to account. When a tweeter suggested that Corbyn’s result was ‘brilliant’, New Statesman editor Jason Cowley replied: ‘Yes, I agree.’ Just three days earlier, Cowley had written under the ominous title: The Labour reckoning – Corbyn has fought a spirited campaign but is he leading the party to worst defeat since 1935? In March, Cowley opined: The stench of decay and failure coming from the Labour Party is now overwhelming – Speak to any Conservative MP and they will say that there is no opposition. Period. Like everyone else at the Guardian, columnist Owen Jones’ initial instinct was to tweet away from his own viewspaper’s ferocious anti-Corbyn campaign: The British right wing press led a vicious campaign of lies, smears, hatred and bigotry. And millions told them where to stick it. And yet, as recently as April 18, Jones had depicted Corbyn as a pathetic figure: A man who stood only out of a sense of duty, to put policies on the agenda, and who certainly had no ambition to be leader, will now take Labour into a general election, against all his original expectations. My suggestion that Corbyn stand down in favour of another candidate was driven by a desire to save his policies… Jones has now also issued a mea culpa: I owe Corbyn, John McDonnell, Seumas Milne, his policy chief Andrew Fisher, and others, an unreserved, and heartfelt apology… I wasn’t a bit wrong, or slightly wrong, or mostly wrong, but totally wrong. Having one foot in the Labour movement and one in the mainstream media undoubtedly left me more susceptible to their groupthink. Never again. We will see! To his credit, Jones managed to criticise his own employer (something he had previously told us was unthinkable and absurd): Now that I’ve said I’m wrong…so the rest of the mainstream commentariat, including in this newspaper, must confess they were wrong, too. Despite the blizzard of mea culpas from colleagues, George Monbiot also initially pointed well away from his employer: The biggest losers today are the billionaires who own the Mail, Sun, Times and Telegraph. And thought they owned the nation. And: It was The Sun wot got properly Cor-Binned’. And: ‘By throwing every brick in the house at Corbyn, and still failing to knock him over, the billionaire press lost much of its power. After receiving criticism, and having, of course, seen Jones’ mea culpa, Monbiot subsequently admitted that anti-Corbyn bias is found ‘even in the media that’s not owned by billionaires’: This problem also affects the Guardian… Only the Guardian and the Mirror enthusiastically supported both Labour and Corbyn in election editorials. But the scales still didn’t balance. This is a change from Monbiot’s declared position of three years ago, when he rejected the idea that the Guardian was part of the problem. This week, he recalled his own dumping of Corbyn in a tweet from January: ‘I have now lost all faith.’ The full tweet read: I was thrilled when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, but it has been one fiasco after another. I have now lost all faith. Monbiot blamed media bias on the way journalists are selected – ‘We should actively recruit people from poorer backgrounds’ – and wrote, curiously, ‘the biggest problem, I believe, is that we spend too much time in each other’s company’. We suggested to Monbiot that this was not at all ‘the biggest problem’ with ‘mainstream’ media, and pointed instead to elite ownership, profit-orientation, advertiser dependence and use of state-subsidised ‘news’, as discussed by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in their ‘propaganda model’. Jonathan Cook responded to Monbiot, describing the limits of free speech with searing honesty: This blindness even by a “radical” like Monbiot to structural problems in the media is not accidental either. Realistically, the furthest he can go is where he went today in his column: suggesting organisational flaws in the corporate media, ones that can be fixed, rather than structural ones that cannot without rethinking entirely how the media functions. Monbiot will not – and cannot – use the pages of the Guardian to argue that his employer is structurally incapable of providing diverse and representative coverage. Nor can he admit that his own paper polices its pages to limit what can be said on the left, to demarcate whole areas of reasonable thought as off-limits. To do so would be to end his Guardian career and consign him to the outer reaches of social media. The same, of course, applies to Jones, who made no attempt at all to account for corporate media bias. Media grandee Will Hutton, former editor-in-chief of the Observer, now Principal of Hertford College, Oxford, wrote of ‘How the rightwing tabloids got it wrong – It was the Sun wot hung it’. On Twitter, we reminded Hutton of his own article, one month earlier: Er, excuse us..! Will Hutton, May 7: “Never before in my adult life has the future seemed so bleak for progressives. Tragicomically, given the awesome extent of his employer’s anti-Corbyn bias, John Cody Fidler-Simpson CBE, BBC World Affairs Editor, tweeted: I suspect we’ve seen the end of the tabloids as arbiters of UK politics. Sun, Mail & Express threw all they had into backing May, & failed. We replied: Likewise the “quality” press and the BBC, which has been so biased even a former chair of the BBC Trust spoke out. Sir Michael Lyons, who chaired the BBC trust from 2007 to 2011, commented on the BBC’s ‘quite extraordinary attacks on the elected leader of the Labour party’: I can understand why people are worried about whether some of the most senior editorial voices in the BBC have lost their impartiality on this. Conclusion – The Corporate Media Monopoly Is Broken ne week before the election, the Guardian reported that ‘a new force is shaping the general election debate’: Alternative news sites are run from laptops and bedrooms miles from the much-derided “Westminster bubble” and have emerged as one of the most potent forces in election news sharing, according to research conducted for the Guardian by the web analytics company Kaleida. These alternative articles were ‘being shared more widely online than the views of mainstream newspaper commentators’. Remarkably, ‘Nothing from the BBC, the Guardian or the Daily Mail comes close’ to the most-shared alternative media pieces. The Canary reported that it had doubled the number of visitors to its site to six million in May. A story by Evolve Politics, run by just two people, was shared 55,000 times on Facebook and was read at least 200,000 times. These websites ‘explicitly offer a counter-narrative to what they deride as the “MSM” or mainstream media’. Indeed, the evidence is now simply overwhelming – the 100-year big business monopoly of the mass media has been broken. It is obvious that the right-wing press – the Daily Mail, the Sun, The Times and Telegraph – play a toxic role in manipulating the public to favour elite interests. But many people are now realising that the liberal press is actually the most potent opponent of progressive change. Journalist Matt Kennard commented: The Guardian didn’t get it “wrong”. It is the mouthpiece of a liberal elite that is financially endangered by a socialist program. In truth, the Guardian sought to destroy Corbyn long before he became Labour leader (see here and here). This means that it did not target him because he was an ineffective leader imperilling Labour. And this hostility was no aberration, not a well-intentioned mistake that they got ‘wrong’. To this day, the Guardian remains Blair’s great cheerleader, despite his awesome crimes, just as it was Hillary Clinton and Obama’s cheerleader, and just as it was Bill Clinton’s before them. While employing a handful of compromised fig leaves, the Guardian has ruthlessly smeared anyone who has sought to challenge the status quo: Julian Assange, Russell Brand, Hugo Chavez, Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, John Pilger, George Galloway and many others. It has also been complicit in the great war crimes of Iraq, Libya and Syria – accepting fake government justifications for war at face value, ignoring expert sources who made a nonsense of the claims, and propagandising hard for the West’s supposed ‘responsibility to protect’ the nations it so obviously seeks to destabilise and exploit. In our view, the corporate journalists who should be treated with most caution are precisely those celebrated as ‘dissidents’. Corporate media give Owen Jones, George Monbiot, Paul Mason and others immense outreach to draw 100,000s of progressives back to a filtered, corporate version of the world that favours established power and stifles progressive change. Above all, as Jonathan Cook says, the unwritten rule is that they will not speak out on the inherent structural corruption of a corporate media system reporting on a world dominated by corporations. This is crucial, because, as last week confirms, and as we have been arguing for 16 years, if change begins anywhere, it begins with the public challenging, exposing and rejecting, not just the right-wing press, but the corporate media as a whole, the ‘liberal-left’ very much included. In the last month, we witnessed astonishing numbers of people challenging all media, all the time on every bias – we have never seen anything like it. The young, in particular, are learning that they do not need highly-paid, privileged corporate employees to tell them what to think. We don’t need to tolerate a corporate-filtered view of the world. We can inform ourselves and each other, and we can do so with very much more honesty, courage and compassion than any corporate journalist. If there is one message from last week, it’s a simple one – dump the corporate media; all of it. http://clubof.info/