New Media Lens Book And An Interview With The Editors

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New Media Lens Book And An Interview With The Editors

 

 

 

 

 

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

 

January 4, 2006

 

 

MEDIA ALERT: NEW MEDIA LENS BOOK AND AN INTERVIEW WITH THE EDITORS

 

 

Media Lens is happy to announce that our first book, Guardians Of Power

- The Myth Of The Liberal Media, is now available:

http://www.medialens.org/bookshop/guardians_of_power.php

 

John Pilger says:

 

" Guardians of Power ought to be required reading in every media

college. It is the most important book about journalism I can remember. "

 

Noam Chomsky says:

 

" Regular critical analysis of the media, filling crucial gaps and

correcting the distortions of ideological prisms, has never been more

important. Media Lens has performed a major public service by carrying

out

this task with energy, insight, and care. "

 

Edward Herman says:

 

" Media Lens is doing an outstanding job of pressing the mainstream

media to at least follow their own stated principles and meet their

public

service obligations. "

 

 

Media Lens Interview With UKWatch

 

Alex Doherty of UKWatch recently asked us about the new book

(http://www.ukwatch.net/article/1282)

 

Alex Doherty: Your new book is called 'Guardians of Power' who are the

Guardians of Power? Who are they protecting

and why?

 

Media Lens: The guardians are the corporate mass media. They are

protecting the powerful state-corporate interests on which they depend

and of

which they are a part. In this book we specifically focus on the

`liberal' guardians of power - the Guardian, the Observer, the

Independent,

the BBC and so on. They are essentially protecting their own interests.

For example, many people consider the BBC a bastion of honest

reporting. On December 2, the media reported that Newsnight presenter

Kirsty

Wark and her husband Alan Clements netted £1m each from the sale of IWC

Media, the television production company, to RDF Media, maker of Wife

Swap, for £14m. The other presenters of Newsnight - Jeremy Paxman, for

example - are also millionaires.

 

Irish billionaire Sir Anthony O'Reilly, who is chief executive of

Independent News & Media Plc, the multinational company that publishes

the

Independent and Independent on Sunday in London, is estimated to be

worth £1.3 billion, making him the richest man in Ireland.

 

A Guardian Weekend supplement in March 2004 consisted of 128 pages. Of

these, 90 were taken up in advertising, some of it aimed at society's

wealthiest elites. The " chiffon halterneck dress with metal sequin

overlay " advertised on page 74, for example, cost £5,890. The country's

leading liberal newspaper described this as " absolute glamour " .

 

The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group (GMG), which has only

one bottom line - making money. The GMG website enlightens anyone who

thinks the Guardian is a dauntless liberal force for truth and

compassion in a money-grubbing world:

 

" Guardian Media Group has a wide portfolio of media interests. The

flagship titles - the Guardian, the Observer, the Manchester Evening

News,

and Auto Trader - are strengthened and supplemented by a range of

successful businesses which together from one of the most vibrant media

organisations in the UK. Our investments in the Internet, electronic

publishing and radio give us a broad and successful commercial base.

Guardian

Media Group is owned by the Scott Trust. " (http://www.gmgplc.co.uk)

 

These are obviously just a few small examples; but this is an elite

media system that has been designed, and has evolved, over many

decades to

defend the interests of the top 5% of the British population who own

45% of the nation's wealth and who run the country. The idea that this

system reports neutrally between the interests of corporate titans like

O'Reilly and impoverished civilians in the Third World, for example in

Iraq, is just absurd.

 

AD: The focus of your book is the liberal media. Why have you chosen

this target rather than the right-wing media which many would consider

far worse?

 

ML: As Joel Bakan notes in his book, The Corporation, the current

status quo is fundamentally psychopathic - it systematically subordinates

people and planet to profit. Much of the suffering in the Third World is

the result of deliberate military, economic and other interventions to

subordinate the interests of local people to Western corporate profits.

Much of the destruction of the environment - for example of the climate

- is the result of the same psychopathic set of priorities.

 

Even now the websites of major business front groups like the US

National Association of Manufacturers and the US Chamber of Commerce

are full

of climate scepticism, Kyoto rejectionism and so on. Unfortunately, a

profit-oriented corporate media system owned by wealthy people and/or

parent companies, dependent on advertisers, linked with any number of

business enterprises, has every interest in maintaining this psychopathic

status quo. Phil Lesley, author of a handbook on public relations and

communications, advises corporations:

 

" People generally do not favour action on a non-alarming situation when

arguments seem to be balanced on both sides and there is a clear doubt.

The weight of impressions on the public must be balanced so people will

have doubts and lack motivation to take action. Accordingly, means are

needed to get balancing information into the stream from sources that

the public will find credible. There is no need for a clear-cut

`victory'. ... Nurturing public doubts by demonstrating that this is

not a

clear-cut situation in support of the opponents usually is all that is

necessary. "

 

This is the main function of 'professional' news reporting. The main

function of the 'liberal' arm of professional journalism is indicated by

Australian media analyst Alex Carey:

 

" There is evidence from a major wartime study that, for the best

results, one side only of an issue or argument should be presented to

poorly

educated people. Two-sided presentations, however, are more effective

in influencing better educated people and those initially opposed to the

desired view. "

 

The liberal media tell both sides of the story - kind of. They

emphasise the state-corporate version of the truth, particularly in news

reporting. This is then `balanced' by commentary that presents

superficial or

trivial counter-arguments that do not seriously challenge the official

view. So, for example, on the issue of Iraqi WMD, the official view -

that Iraq was a threat that had to be disarmed, by force of necessary -

was countered with a superficial, trivial view - that this may well be

true, but any action should be endorsed by the UN. The real

counter-argument - that Iraq was clearly not a threat and that any

attack on Iraq,

with or without UN approval, would be the supreme war crime - the

launching of a war of aggression - was almost nowhere to be seen.

 

The result is what Edward Herman describes as " normalising the

unthinkable " . The liberal audience - the section of the population

that might

be expected to be most compassionate, most fiercely opposed to

government crimes - was subject to endless liberal propaganda

persuading them of

the basic reasonableness and respectability of the US-UK government

position. This consistently has the effect of pacifying and neutralising

the most concerned and motivated section of society - people drawn to

progressive, liberal ideas. By contrast, the right-wing press preaches to

the converted, people who are happy with the status quo and keen for it

not to be challenged.

 

AD: The liberal media do allow some genuine dissenting voices. The

Guardian and the independent for instance publish articles by principled

radicals such as George Monbiot, Mark Curtis, Naomi Klein, Robert Fisk

amongst others. If the liberal media are truly " Guardians of Power " why

let these dissenting voices be heard at all?

 

ML: This is not actually true. The liberal media do +not+ allow genuine

dissent when it comes to analysing the structural corruption of the

corporate media system. Monbiot, Klein and Fisk have written essentially

nothing about this topic in the Guardian and Independent. Last time we

checked, Curtis had not mentioned the role of the media at all in his

Guardian articles. Fisk never criticises the Independent - in fact he

praises it, as he does the British media generally. He does not focus on

the appalling performance of the liberal media - he seems to believe

that the Independent really is independent; an astonishingly naïve view.

Recall that these are our most honest writers.

 

Serious media analysis is a completely taboo subject within the

mainstream. We published one article on the issue in the Guardian in

December

2004 but that was a one-off gesture in response to intense criticism of

the Guardian from Media Lens readers - it took us four months to place

the article and we haven't been invited back.

 

The only journalist who has been consistently honest about the media is

John Pilger. It`s interesting to consider how he`s treated. In our view

he's the country's most powerful dissident - his writing is superb, and

the depth and breadth of his insight is beyond most of the other

writers you mention. But it seems there's no place for him in any of the

quality papers! People talk about the Guardian comment editor Seumas

Milne

as a radical force - but he won't publish Pilger. We've asked Milne why

and he refuses to answer. So our best living dissident - obviously one

of the all-time greats - is required to write a fortnightly column in

the New Statesman which reaches a few thousand people. So why is he

treated differently to Klein and Monbiot? Because he's honest about the

media - he criticises the Guardian, he draws attention to the vital role

of the entire liberal media establishment in crimes against humanity. So

he is persona non grata. The same is true of Chomsky.

 

American dissidents are traditionally much more honest about the media

- here it's just understood that you don't talk about it - and so they

are not welcome in our press. It couldn't be more obvious. By the way,

the media in other countries are sometimes far more honest. Papers in

places like South Korea and the United Arab Emirates publish material

that is sometimes far more critical of the media. It matters more here -

we're closer to centres of real power - so it's more tightly

controlled.

 

Readers are not stupid. In the USSR it was obvious to much of the

public that the media was heavily controlled and censored. As a result

most

people realised they were not free and so they sought out honest

sources of information (like Samizdat) and energetically pushed for

greater

political freedom - the clear fact of media oppression motivated

progressive change. By contrast, in the West, occasional examples of

honest

commentary and reporting create the powerful illusion that we have access

to an open, independent press. It is like a vaccine that inoculates

people against the truth of thought control.

 

AD: Why do you think the UK media does not behave more like the United

States media where dissenting voices are almost totally excluded? Which

system do you think is more effective in controlling the domestic

population?

 

ML: Bush and Blair are both currently in office rather than in jail, so

we conclude that both systems must be extremely effective. The US is an

unusual and extreme case. Historically, US corporate elites have waged

a very intense and conscious kind of class warfare - really huge,

centrally directed campaigns of propaganda manipulation and political

control designed to stifle opposition. The British public are largely

unaware

of this, but the very large and popular socialist movements in the US

in the first half of the 20th century were deliberately targeted and

destroyed by business power. The propaganda campaigns were like something

out of Stalinism or Maoism (see Elizabeth Fones-Wolf's remarkable work,

Selling Free Enterprise, for details) - really vast attempts to

brainwash society.

 

Things were initially not that different here. From the early days of

the nineteenth century, business and government were resolutely

determined to stamp out the free expression of ideas. The first resort

were the

seditious libel and blasphemy laws, which essentially outlawed all

challenges to the status quo. When these failed to have the desired

effect,

elites turned to newspaper stamp duty and taxes on paper and

advertisements to price radical journals out of the market. Between

1789 and

1815, stamp duty was increased by 266 per cent, helping to ensure, as

Lord

Castlereagh put it, that " persons exercising the power of the press "

would be " men of some respectability and property " ; the point being that

these more " respectable " owners of the press " would conduct them in a

more respectable manner than was likely to be the result of pauper

management " , as Cresset Pelham observed at the time.

 

The rise of a parliamentary socialist opposition - which was never

successful to the same extent in the US - naturally supported a

left-leaning press. This has been under remorseless attack ever since.

With the

convergence of Labour and Tory parties in the style of the US political

system, the pressure on left elements within the media has increased

markedly. There are signs that the press, too, is converging - the

Observer is now essentially a right-wing propaganda organ. The

Guardian also

makes no bones about rejecting radical causes in favour of " the centre

ground " . The centre, now, in fact is the hard, corporate right. It is

ruthless realpolitik dressed as humanitarian intervention. It's

noticeable that, despite being proved right in almost everything they

said,

several high-profile anti-war journalists and politicians have lost their

jobs since 2003 - cruise missile columnists like Aaronovitch, Cohen and

Hari have not been touched. That's surely a sign of the times.

 

AD: Tell us a bit about Medialens. How did the project begin? What were

your hopes for it?

 

ML: We had both published books on radical politics/media analysis. We

had also managed to publish a few articles and book reviews in the

mainstream press. But it was agonising work - it was clear that tests of

servility were being set up, hoops were being held out, punishment for

honesty was being administered. Naturally, we were expected to play the

same game as everyone else - notably, don't even +dream+ of subjecting

the corporate media system to serious criticism. DC had set up a

website for his book, Private Planet (www.private-planet.com), and DE

suggested a similar website on media analysis. Our initial thought was

to just

send out useful analysis and information to a small circle of

interested friends - the idea of how to reach more people than did not

initially

occur to us. We assumed we'd be ignored and blanked, and remain pretty

much unknown.

 

We thought it would be interesting to conduct an experiment - what

happens if you give no thought to the sensitivities of mainstream

commissioning editors and just tell the truth, as we see it, about the

media? So

we very consciously decided to burn any media career bridges we might

have, to abandon any thought of making money from writing, and just

write what seemed most important. We consciously set out to reject all

forms of compromise. We are both strongly drawn to the idea that

motivation

is crucial - we believe that it is vital that our work should be rooted

in a compassionate motivation rather than in a personal concern for

career security, status, and so on.

 

AD: An important part of what you do is getting people to regularly

challenge journalists and editors. Do you think these challenges have had

an impact on the way the news is reported?

 

ML: It's very difficult to judge, and maybe we`re not the best people

to give an opinion. There have been clear examples where readers have

changed outcomes in the media - questions have been asked of senior

politicians on BBC radio and TV that otherwise would not have been asked.

 

AD: Medialens has understandably focussed on the crimes of the media

and on raising consciousness on this issue. To turn to another side of

the problem what kind of media would you like to see? In what ways should

the media change and how is change to be achieved?

 

ML: We are an example of the media we would like to see. Forget for a

moment issues of structure and so on - what is it we really need? We

need individuals motivated by compassion for suffering rather than

greed -

people who are willing to write honestly about the causes of that

suffering. We need journalists who are not compromised by their

aspiration

for money, status, respectability and power - people who find the idea

of rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous repulsive if it means they

have to subordinate the interests of the suffering and defenceless to

their own career progression. We need journalists who understand that

personal happiness and social welfare are ultimately rooted in concern

for others - in personal qualities of kindness, generosity, compassion,

patience and non-violence.

 

We are not trying to pretend we are exemplars of these qualities, but

we +do+ aspire to be motivated by them, and we do think they should be

at the heart of honest journalism. It's reasonable to say that one-half

of our focus is on challenging greed, hatred and ignorance with facts

and arguments. The other half is to maintain and increase a

compassionate motivation for what we're doing.

 

AD: What do you think of the state of alternative media in this

country? Is it capable of ever supplanting the mainstream?

 

ML: It already has for some people to some extent. Quite a few people

who want to understand the truth of Haiti, Colombia, Iraq and so on turn

to alternative media rather than seek confusing, misleading,

compromised accounts in the mainstream. We have written often of how

we hope that

increased public awareness of the limits of political and media freedom

will generate truly democratic, alternative media with the power to

impose a news agenda on the mainstream, or to replace it as source of

news. Ideally, beyond even this, powerful alternative media should aspire

to inform and motivate large popular movements, and even new,

libertarian political parties, which might then be in a position to

reform media

structures to limit the influence of corporate interests.

 

AD: What are your hopes for the book? What do you want people will take

away from it?

 

ML: People will never seek liberation from a situation of oppression if

they believe they are already free. The illusion of media freedom is

incredibly potent. It is backed up by high-tech power, endorsed by

endless celebrities and global heroes telling us, or implying, that

the media

system is fundamentally benign, free, open and honest. It's very

difficult to step outside this propaganda and think for ourselves.

 

We have collected the most powerful and relevant examples we can find

showing how even the best media systematically impose a false,

controlling, pacifying, oppressive and lethal version of the world on the

public. Of course, we have read this stuff 100 times, so we assumed the

impact on us personally would be pretty minimal, even tedious. We were

both

pleasantly surprised to find that, after reading the book in proof and

final form, we came away with an unusually clear sense of just how

obviously compromised and destructive the media system is. It opened our

eyes! If the book has a similar effect on other readers, that would be a

positive result.

 

Readers may also be interested in the following interview we did with

Gabriele Zampirini:

 

http://www.thecatsdream.com/blog/2005/12/guardians-of-power.htm

 

 

Write to us at: editor

 

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