MEDIA reform campaigner Ann Field spoke out in support of Jeremy Corbyn today after the Financial Times (FT) attacked him for pledging to break up media monopolies and tackle unethical journalism.

Ms Field of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom told the Star that “far from threatening to tame so-called press freedom,” the Labour leader’s speech last week sought to open up discussion on “curbing abuses of privacy and personal freedom.”

An FT editorial on Mr Corbyn’s speech accused him of being “ill-suited” to campaign for reform because he is “so enamoured of Iran’s Press TV, Russia’s RT and the communist-leaning Morning Star.”

It added that his call to clamp down on fake news, boost the public’s trust in the press and make tech giants fund independent journalism are “less about freeing the press than taming it.”

Ms Field said: “The FT response is a knee-jerk reaction, including the silly ‘anti-red’ smear, which would be less hypocritical if the business peoples’ paper had printed Corbyn’s speech in full.” 

Star editor Ben Chacko said the FT claim that Mr Corbyn is “enamoured” of RT or Press TV because he may have appeared on their shows is “as absurd as claiming he’s a Rupert Murdoch fan because he’s done Sky News interviews.”

“Questioning his commitment to a ‘free and honest’ media because he contributes to the Star – a reader-owned co-op – repeats an old slur that media owned and controlled by ordinary people is less trustworthy than media owned and controlled by a super-rich few,” Mr Chacko continued.

“But as the flood of misinformation aiming to discredit Mr Corbyn keeps flowing from the mainstream press, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that it’s the Establishment we need to worry about when it comes to fake news.”