IT'S been four years since RMT general secretary Mick Lynch left Sky's Kay Burley speechless when he called out her line of questioning on rail strikes.
"Well we will picket them, what do you think we will do? We run a picket line and we'll ask them not to go to work. Do you not know how a picket line works?"
The interview was derailed as Burley scrambled to try and insinuate an RMT picket line could turn into scenes we saw during the miner's strike of the 1980s.
It was a rare sight to see an interviewee turn on a high-profile journalist live on air, but it is something we are now seeing more often.
Green leader Zack Polanski clashed with Good Morning Britain presenter Ed Balls last month when he questioned why a former Labour cabinet minister – who is married to a current one in Yvette Cooper – was acceptably allowed to interview him.
As with Burley, images of Balls losing control of the interview and looking increasingly apoplectic as his authority was questioned spread quickly.
Lynch again appeared this week in an interview with The Telegraph saying they were "on the way" to explicitly supporting Reform UK as the paper is "making space for racism".
Speaking to a Telegraph journalist, who attempted to speak over him throughout, he said: "The Telegraph seems to be preparing itself to become a fully signed up affiliate of Reform and all of the racism and disunity that's going to cause.
"What I see coming out of the Telegraph every day is making space for racism."
For years, many who have felt frustrated by the elitist mainstream media have been crying out for this to happen, so why are we suddenly seeing more left-wing figures put their head above the parapet to explicitly call them out?
For media expert Thomas Chivers, vice chair of the Media Reform Coalition, it's about politicians and activists on the left realising they have to "smash through" mainstream media outlets if they want to get their message across, rather than attempt to work with them.
“The Telegraph... is making space for racism.” Former RMT general secretary Mick Lynch told senior Telegraph journalist Camilla Tominey that her newspaper is “on the way” to explicitly supporting Reform. "The Telegraph seems to be preparing itself to become a full signed up… pic.twitter.com/LUnibU5t4z
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He told The National: "We've had years of left or soft left or centrist political projects which have promised progressive reform, fixing the failures of the past, but they’ve always tried to do that through a cosy compact with the media in this country.
"The media in this country is dominated by the right-wing corporate press, by oligarchs. Any political projects that have tried to talk about political change while not offending the interests of the media have always come up against a brick wall.
"I think what’s happening now is that progressive or more left-wing or more radical political movements in this country are realising that you can’t make a cosy compact with the media in this country when it is dominated by a corporate, right-wing agenda that is becoming more extreme.
"What we’re seeing from Mick Lynch and Zack Polanski and various political movements like Extinction Rebellion is they are recognising you have to smash through the media rather than work with it if you want to get your message across."
Chivers said some on the left have felt emboldened by an increasingly prevalent and influential independent media scene, with more spaces open to them now to talk about political alternatives.
He went on: "I think what we’re seeing from some of these national political leaders is a recognition that the media are part of the problem. They’re not this neutral, ambivalent space where we go and talk about ideas but it is, in many parts of the national press and the broadcasting space, a hostile actor and an opponent to progressive change."
However, Des Freedman, a media and communications expert at Goldsmiths University of London, said it is still a rare sight to see legacy media called out on their own programmes.
But plummeting levels of trust, he said people are becoming more confident in calling out "abuses of power".
"People are just far more willing to criticise what they might previously have deferred to," he told The National.
"Also, I think it reflects the rise of – in particular on the left – people who are willing just to call out what they see as abuses of power and there are more spaces in which they can call them out.
"I think it is still very rare where you find a critique of journalists on their own programmes. That GMB incident with Zack Polanski was very unusual and all the more powerful because of it.
"People are now more confident to take on what would’ve previously been seen as these unassailable institutions whose credibility you should never doubt."
On the back of a Polanski interview carried out by Sky News' Trevor Phillips, Freedman also told The National last month the way the Green leader was being vilified by the media is similar to the way Jeremy Corbyn was treated as Labour leader.
He said there is "a full on demonisation and vilification where the individual is presented effectively as a threat or a danger to the country.”
