Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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Media amnesia and the economic crisis
Ian Sinclair talks to Dr LAURA BASU about how the British media ‘forgot’ the real culprits of the 2008 crash and reshaped the narrative of the financial crisis to justify austerity
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
Special report by PEOPLE’S WORLD
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
EARLIER this year, Dr Laura Basu, currently a researcher with the Institute for Cultural Inquiry at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, published Media Amnesia: Rewriting the Economic Crisis. In the book, Basu provides a sharp critique of the British media’s coverage of the crisis, analysing 1,133 news items from the Guardian, Telegraph, Sun, Mirror and BBC between 2007 and 2015, and conducting interviews with journalists.
Ian Sinclair asked Basu about how this Media Amnesia relates to public opinion, the importance of Ed Miliband’s positioning of the Labour Party during the crisis, the role of the Guardian and how media reporting can be changed for the better.
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