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CURRENT SOCIETAL AND POLITICAL CLIMATE
The media bridges the gap between human rights as expressed by European and UK legal and political institutions, and human rights as experienced by individuals and communities. Within the context of a decision by the latter to change their relationship with the former, analysis of the media as a framework for popular conception of human rights is crucial. In addition to identifying misinformation within reporting on human rights, its capacity to skew expectations and realities of Britain’s exit from the EU can be addressed, albeit with the limitations of focus upon one European policy debate among many misrepresented by the media. The HRA, ECHR, Charter, and European institutions like the ECtHR and CJEU have been presented, often without much distinction between them, as providing undeserved protection for those who have been excluded from society. Eager and non-legalistic mainstream coverage of each court success by a suspected terrorist or imprisoned criminal has characterised the mechanics of European human rights protection as an expensive, anti-British defender of these groups, presented as contrary to the intentions of the original ECHR as drafted in 1950. Vindicating the ECtHR, the factual gap between the The Sun’s statement that “Euro judges go against the UK in 3 out of 5 cases” and the reality of a much small figure (around one in 50)1052 serves to support this view. Yet further, reports massively over-reporting the cost of complying with the ECtHR have been used to legitimise hackneyed economic arguments for Brexit; the Daily Mail’s claim that compliance with the ECtHR costs £42 billion to date1053 draws its figures from the a Taxpayers’ Alliance report containing serious statistical flaws drawn attention to by researchers at the LSE’s Human Rights Futures Project1054. Evidence of empirical falsity is often presented in support of the characterisation of the ECHR as the protector of the “terrorists, rapists, killers and pedophiles [who] have won at the court”1055. Indeed, the Daily Mail’s disdain for the success of “91.5%” of foreign criminals in avoiding deportation between July 2013 and 2014 relies on a massive statistical exaggeration, and a more realistic estimate of 24% has been provided for the same twelve-month period by David Mead.1056 This coverage of the ECHR stands within a much larger, and often easily conflated, litany of misinformation; the incorrect claim that serial killer Dennis Nilsen was allowed to receive gay pornography in prison was penned under the “madness” of the HRA by The Sun and the Daily Mail1057 is a
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Adam Wagner, “UK loses 3 out of 4 European human rights cases? More like 1 in 50, actually,” UK Human Rights Blog, https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2012/01/12/uk-loses-3-out-of-4-european-humanrights-cases-more-like-1-in-50-actually/, (12 January 2012). 1053 “Human Rights Laws Cost Britain £42bn,” The Daily Mail, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article1336330/Human-rights-laws-cost-Britain-42-bn-rulings-payouts.html, (7 December 2010). 1054 LSE, Human Rights Futures Project, Human Rights Act Reporting in the Media: Corrections and Clarifications (November 2011), http://www.lse.ac.uk/humanRights/documents/2011/KlugHRAMedia.pdf: 4. 1055 Craig Woodhouse, “Euro Judges Go Against the UK in 3 Out of 5 Cases,” The Sun, https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/politics/1053158/euro-judges-go-against-uk-in-3-out-of-5-cases/, (24 August 2014) 1056 David Mead, ‘You Couldn’t Make It Up’: Some Narratives of the Media’s Coverage of Human Rights (United Kingdom: Hart Publishing, 2015). 1057 “How Do You Label a Goat?”, The Daily Mail, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-
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