Sir, – Your editorial is right: "Media hostility to Labour . . . has been a constant of British politics for decades and is something that the party simply has to find ways of dealing with" ("The Irish Times view on British Labour: a battle for the party's future", January 7th).
However, you ignore the unprecedented intensity and ferocity of media attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and Labour during the 2019 UK election campaign.
For example, Loughborough University has conducted an independent news audit of the 2019 campaign. It found that the editorial negativity of newspapers towards Labour in 2019 was more than double from the 2017 general election. In contrast, overall press negativity towards the Conservatives reduced by more than half in the same period.
Mr Corbyn was, of course, widely considered a no-hoper in 2017 and the media took his defeat for granted. The Loughborough University study shows that they were not going to make the same mistake twice. – Yours, etc,
JOE McCARTHY,
Arbour Hill,
Dublin 7.