The Day After Corbyn’s Surprise Surge, NPR Would Rather Talk About Buckethead

That’s odd, because surely one of the most noteworthy aspects of the election was the surprisingly strong showing of the Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. Widely expected to lead his party into an electoral disaster, the unapologetic leftist instead achieved the biggest gain in vote share for a British party since 1945.

Labour’s surge caused Conservatives to lose 12 seats and their absolute majority in Parliament, forcing them into a coalition government with the far-right Democratic Unionist Party. If it weren’t for the Scottish National Party’s decline in popularity, which produced 13 new Conservative MPs in Scotland, the election would have been a rout for Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May, and we would likely see Corbyn moving into the prime minister’s spot today.

The day after the British elections, NPR.org showed considerably more interest in a candidate who ran dressed as a “space lord” than in the leader of the Labour Party.

None of that, apparently, was found noteworthy by NPR London correspondent Frank Langfitt.

Corbyn’s name did come up a few times in a day-after story on NPR‘s blog The Two-Way (6/9/17). The post quoted 60 words of reaction from Corbyn—comparable to the 51 words attributed to German Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Roth.

The Two-Way showed considerably more morning-after interest in another of Theresa May’s opponents—running a 400-word post (6/9/17), complete with two photos and a video, on a joke candidate named Lord Buckethood who ran in May’s constituency, winning 249 votes.

h/t Sam Husseini

You can contact NPR ombud Elizabeth Jensen via NPR’s contact form or via Twitter: @EJensenNYC. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.