flippinada I thought that the woman from GOSH was pointing out that lack of EU funding would have an impact on medical research into childhood illness, thereby impacting on availability of treatments, not wishing illness on anybody's children.
She actually said she really hoped those people's children got ill. Watch the clip from QT.
Redtoothbrush It is the force that leads the way and drives it and is merely a reflection of the world because it is the thing that sets the agenda for people to talk about. The bottomline is people can not talk about something if they do not know about it or are directed to it somehow. Can they?
This is the fundamental mistake. And a very Soviet point of view. You are assuming that people consume the media to make sense of their realities, while living their lives with their eyes closed, ears muffled and never talk to their mum or mates.
There are millions of people in Britain who do not consume news media on a regular basis. The readership of the Sun is only 5.6 million; the Daily Mail only 4.5 million. Very few people watch broadcast news. BBC News at Ten only gets 4.6 million viewers.
Now consider that the size of the British electorate is 46.5 million.
People primarily make sense of their realities by what they experience directly in their day-to-day lives, and by talking about it with others -- with friends, family, colleagues, neighbours, community groups. There is a "British street" in much the same vein as the "Arab street". If people read something in a newspaper that does not fit with their personal experience of reality, they question it. They don't just accept it blindly. And the more they read that contravenes their personal experience, the more they distrust the newspaper. It rarely works the other way round. People trust their own experiences first.
Direct experience and word of mouth is far more powerful than any media channel. If someone suddenly finds themselves stuck in traffic every morning, they are not going to believe a politician that then proclaims there is no congestion on British roads, no matter how many times the BBC declares it to be true.
Again, the media cannot create a campaign nor change public perception through sheer force of medium. Rosie Boycott's cannabis legalisation campaign at the Independent in the 90s was a perfect example of this. There has to be an already existing groundswell of public concern or support; an idea has to have resonance on the "British street" already. Notice the failure of the media across the entire spectrum to force the resignation of Corbyn, for example.
Influencing opinion is done on the ground, and it spreads even faster these days with the advent of social media. Politicians know this, which is why campaigns have strong door to door and telephone canvassing teams in swing seats.
You are fundamentally forgetting that people do not live in isolated cubes with only a TV or newspaper to access the outside world. They live in a society, and interact with other individuals outside the reach of the media and the state.