Media: power of the narrative

By Richard North - January 11, 2026

Events in Iran seem to be well-covered by the legacy media for the moment, allowing a short intermission while we explore the latest developments of the Maccabi “ban” saga, as the Telegraph digs up further evidence of malpractice by West Midlands Police.

The claim is that, on the match day, the police became aware of “Asian youths looking to fight”, heading in the direction of the stadium, yet police documents show that officers asked for the police’s social media posts to state that the day had been “largely peaceful” in an attempt to “dampen down any online sentiment and prevent this being over-dramatised”.

This is straight out of the “grooming gangs” playbook, where details of Asian crimes were supressed to maintain “community cohesion”, demonstrating that the police in this case had learned nothing from experience, thus reinforcing calls for the resignation of chief constable Craig Guildford over what the paper calls “the force’s decision to bar Maccabi fans from the game”.

The paper elaborates on this assertion by going on to state that, “In November, West Midlands Police and Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG) banned supporters of the Israeli club from attending the match in Birmingham”.

It adds: “The force claimed this was “exclusively” because of the “behaviour of a subsection of Maccabi fans”. In reality, though, it states that “reports have indicated that police retrospectively produced false and exaggerated evidence to justify this predetermined decision”.

It is this that brings me back into the fray. As we now know, there was no ban and, in particular, the police could have no part in imposing a ban as the fact remains that the authority of record was not the police but the local authority, Birmingham City Council (BCC).

What we are thus seeing is a common phenomenon, explored at great length by a university team back in 2005, best described as the “power of the narrative”.

The phenomenon is described as a process whereby the media encapsulate events into a story-like structure that is meaningful to their audiences which then becomes fixed in time as a marketable product, constructing a “reality” which may or may not have any connection with the real world.

I was commenting on this in the EUReferendum blog back in 2010, when I referred to a report I had published on the acquisition of protected patrol vehicles for Iraq and Afghanistan to replace the lethally vulnerable Snatch Land Rovers then deployed.

By 2010, the prevailing narrative was that our troops had been unnecessarily exposed to danger as a result of penny-pinching on defence by the then Labour government.

But I was able to show that the Army was actually spaffing away hundreds of millions of pounds on entirely unsuitable vehicles and the delay in securing replacements for the Snatch was entirely down to the Army’s lack of enthusiasm for the right kind of protected vehicles.

There was a similar story to tell over the shortage of helicopters in both theatres which again was put down to government parsimony but which turned out to be entirely due to the RAF rejecting immediately available machines, holding out for a new squadron of Merlin helicopters which, once acquired, the RAF promptly declared that they were unsuitable for active service.

Yet, to this day, the narrative remains – repeated even in recently published books – that the drivers in each case were shortage of funds, despite the evidence to the contrary.

We had another particularly egregious example of the narrative about the same time when then prime minister David Cameron supposedly went to Brussels to veto an EU treaty which simply didn’t exist and therefore could not be vetoed.

But, by 2012, this had become so locked into the alternative reality that it was being freely referred to as David Cameron’s “historic veto”.

There are many other examples of the narrative at play, right up to press with the Maccabi ban that never was. And while constantly to rail against the phenomenon may be quixotic, these false narratives are not a zero-sum game.

In the context of the Maccabi non-ban, on the grounds stated for imposing a ban – even with the falsified evidence – there was no law that could be applied because the concerns related to disorder outside the stadium and Birmingham City Council (BCC) only had powers to intervene under the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975 in relation to events inside the stadium.

Therefore, it didn’t matter what West Midland Police had advised or what evidence they offered – bearing in mind that none was offered at the first meeting of the Council’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG).

From the very outset, the chair of the SAG should have told the police that there were no powers to ban Maccabi fans on the grounds stated. If the chair had acted correctly in the first instance, the police would have been forced to confront the issue that theirs was the responsibility to deal with the threat of violence against Maccabi fans, without resorting to a ban.

As it was, the chair of the SAG either failed to understand the limitations of the powers conferred by the Act, or he actively conspired with the police falsely to imply that they had powers to ban the fans when they had no such powers.

Thus, when the SAG wrote to Aston Villa FC telling them that no away fans would be permitted to attend Villa Park for the fixture, it was acting outside its powers and its letter had no status in law. Effectively, there was no ban because no powers existed to impose a ban

In any event, it was not for the SAG to write to AVFC – the SAG’s role was advisory only. The power to take formal enforcement action such as a ban resided only with the local authority, not with the SAG which is a non-statutory body.

Before even the SAG wrote to AVFC, therefore, BCC should have intervened to prevent the SAG exceeding its powers. It should have reviewed the proposed action and, had it properly reviewed the legal base, it would have realised that there was no scope for formal action. That this was not done represented a serious failure on the part of BCC.

Despite the lack of as legal base, had it gone ahead with formal action, with the service of a prohibition notice, AVFC would have had a right of appeal, and the legal base would have been tested in court. This did not happen because Maccabi Tel Aviv voluntarily chose not to take up its allocation of tickets, thereby preventing its fans from attending. But for that action, the whole charade would have come tumbling down.

The central point that emerges from this is that the local authority was equally responsible for the debacle and, had it acted properly, Maccabi fans would have been able to attend and the police would have been forced to do their duty out in the open.

However reprehensible the police action, BCC’s response represented a dereliction of duty on its part and a major system failure. Thus, while action needs to be taken against the police, the local authority’s role should not be ignored as it is least equally responsible for the debacle and could have prevented it from happening.

The danger is that, by focussing almost exclusively on the resignation of chief constable Craig Guildford, a major system failure is being ignored. The problems will not be resolved simply by a change in the police leadership as the rot goes much deeper than the police action.

Sadly, not only has it infected the legacy media, the mind virus that is the slavish adherence to the “narrative” has also spread to social media. Thus, I find that the more time I spend on X, the less appealing it becomes.

Aside from the torrent of unwanted trivia and clickbait, it is being dragged down by a dynamic where much of the news and opinion is dominated by a “Twitter Royalty” – often legacy media or political “stars” – who seem driven primarily by the prevailing narrative rather than a search for the truth.

This is hardly surprising as these “stars” are most often fishing in the same pool as the legacy media. Mostly, they have very little in the way of original material to offer. Their thought processes are constrained by being too close to the media claque and the need to stay within the bounds of received wisdom.

Despite this, their celebrity status often ensures that their postings swamp the offerings from smaller accounts, many of which offer more useful material and are more inclined to challenge the prevailing narrative. In contrast with the “royalty”, they are also more likely to engage with their followers.

The “royalty” accounts are mostly typified by large numbers of followers while themselves following very small numbers of accounts. As such, they are more or less on permanent “broadcast mode”, engaging only with a favoured few whom they deign to treat as equals. In that sense, they are as bad as the legacy media, which they often claim to supplant.

Such news value as X provides – which is considerable – often comes from smaller, less prominent accounts, while the “royalty” posts are often derivative and reactive. They follow news cycles rather than leading them, reinforcing the narrative rather than challenging it.

Out of self-defence, I do not follow (and sometimes block) most of these megaphone accounts: they interfere with the utility of X, obscuring rather than assisting the understanding of events. They add to the burden of selection by littering the platform with chaff which must be sorted from serious content.

If social media (and particularly X) is to continue to have real value, users need to wean themselves off the “royalty”. They need to be more critical of what are most often contrived narratives, the pre-packaged simplistic stories used to explain complex events, more often supporting the “establishment” line than challenging it.

I believe it is too late for the legacy media, which is succumbing to a terminal dose of the mind virus. There is hope still for social media although the trend is not encouraging. Such is the power of the narrative that it will likely end up as an echo-chamber for the establishment it aims to supplant.