Charlemagne has an essential blog posting today about EU, the British media and Open Europe.
He’s asking why the British media are almost uniformly sceptical or even hostile when it comes to the EU, and traces it back to the lobby group Open Europe and some characteristics of the British press:
Open Europe feeds on three big facts about the average London based journalist. They are very, very lazy, so love being spoon-fed stories. They are pack animals: once the EU has become a target for vitriolic abuse in one paper, all the others follow, because it winds readers up into a nice frenzy and there is no danger of anyone from the EU suing them. The EU also alarms journalists in London at some level, because they do not understand it and it makes their brains hurt to try, so they yearn for someone to explain to them in simple terms why it is (as they suspect) a plot by foreigners to run Britain.
Do read the whole thing, it’s essential to understand Britain and the EU!
I just wish somebody in favour of the EU would take over a few British newspapers and create a pro-EU lobby group to counterbalance Open Europe.