MANIPULATING THE BREXIT ISSUE IN THE ENGLISH-WRITTEN MASS-MEDIA

The mass media exposure of its readership to the burning problems of nowadays, internationally or a country-confined, has always been questioned for a degree of manipulation involved. For the British people, the Brexit vote and its largely overlooked complications have been the most urgent national problem for which there is no immediate solution in the foreseeable future. The British press coverage of Brexit is a crucial agent in shaping the public and an individual’s stand to the Brexit issues. The research problem being dealt with in this paper is a multitude of journalistic views on Brexit and a scope and effect of counter-manipulative Brexit-related publications in the British press. The purpose of this research is to get a profile of The Guardian political columnists writing on the problems of Brexit as well as to analyse a couple of relevant counter-manipulative publications. We made use of the following methods: data collection methods – observation, survey, textual and content analysis, classification; qualitative and quantitative analysis; theoretical construction method. The results obtained show that the British mass media have been at their best to provide their audiences every possible angle, or nuance, of the formidable Brexit structure. In respect of Brexit vote, there is a cleat watershed between the two formative clusters of the British press. While the ‘prestige press’ (also known under the terms ‘broadsheet’ or ‘quality’ newspapers) – the Independent, Times, Guardian, Financial Times, Mirror and Telegraph – have been following the course of restrainedanalytical approach to tackling Brexit issues without antagonizing Leavers and Remainers, giving both sides their due in their argumentation, daily ‘popular’ and ‘working class’ newspapers in the UK –The Sun, Daily Mail, the Mirror and Express (categorized as tabloids) – systemically reproduce an openly hostile stand to the Remain platform of voters, openly and unrelentingly criticizing the EU as an international institution jeopardizing British sovereignty. It was ascertained that all the versatile techniques aimed at manipulating Brexit in press and other media, social networks included, have been effectively counteracted and exposed in academic research and investigative journalism. Conclusion. In this paper it has been ascertained that the readers of both categories – average readers who are not engaged professionally or otherwise in politics