A pattern is emerging on the BBC, on ITV News, and on Sky News.
Manchester's biggest ever demonstration, in defence of the NHS at last year's Conservative Party Conference: ignored. June's 50,000-strong March Against Austerity outside those broadcasters' front doors: ignored.
12th July's 100-150,000-strong Durham Miners' Gala, which was at least 10 times the size of all Orange Parades put together: ignored. The following weekend's Tolpuddle Festival: ignored. 19th July's tens of thousands of people marching through central London against the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip: ignored.
And now Saturday's huge rally in Trafalgar Square, at the culmination of the three-week People's March for the NHS along the route of the 1936 Jarrow Crusade and joined by several Members of Parliament: ignored, like its causes, which are the Health and Social Care Act and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
How are these events not news? Lying by omission is still lying.
It is very common to meet students and new staff members at Durham who have never even heard of the Gala. There is no other country where an event of that size and distinctiveness could exist and not be universally known. Nor would the threats to its financial viability be permitted anywhere else. Durham is on the East Coast Main Line, yet the London media find it easier to cover the most remote areas of the United States.
The March for the NHS could even have done as purely a human interest story. That would have been better than nothing. But it got nothing. If the stars of Strictly Come Dancing or The Great British Bake Off had staged a charity or even just a publicity walk to London from, necessarily, a lot nearer than Jarrow, then that would have received saturation coverage of the most obsequious and sycophantic kind.
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