Find below articles and videos about the mass media which have had deep resonance with me.
I have also written a few blog posts on the media:
Venezuela and the air of equality?, Propaganda and the BBC, Buying the war: the US medias role in the Iraq war and Don't hate the media, own the media
For a more comprehensive critique of the mainstream media, check out Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman (which focuses on the US media) or GUARDIANS OF POWER - The Myth of the Liberal Media by David Edwards and David Cromwell (which focuses on the UK media).
For up-to-date critique, Medialens produces a regular media alert critiquing the UK media (its message board is also very good) and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting offers documented criticism of US media bias and censorship.
For some alternative news sources, check out UK Watch, Miro, Indymedia, OneBigTorrent.org, Democracy Now!, ZNet, The Dominion and Brighton's very own SchNEWS
Articles and Videos:
David Edwards talking about Objectivity (and how it is impossible) on his blog
WHY WON'T BRITISH TV SHOW A FILM ABOUT MCLIBEL? IS IT REALLY SO DANGEROUS? - Franny Armstrong - The Guardian - 19/06/98 - "And so we come to the crux of the matter. Is the film libellous or are the media censoring themselves?
Over the last 15 years McDonald's have threatened legal action against more than 90 organisations in the UK, including the BBC, Channel 4, the Guardian, The Sun, the Scottish TUC, the New Leaf Tea Shop, student newspapers and a children's theatre group. Even Prince Philip received a stiff letter. All of them backed down and many formally apologised in court.
Well, if I was the BBC I wouldn't broadcast my film either. I wouldn't want to risk damages, court costs, injunctions and months in court. I wouldn't want to take on an organisation that had sued me in the past. I wouldn't want to fight a case where the burden of proof is entirely on me and I have to prove every allegation from primary sources. Despite my obligation as Britain's public service broadcaster, I wouldn't want to risk everything on one story. I would take notice of the long list of organisations who've apologised in the past. I might feel uneasy at ignoring such a high-profile case, but I would reassure myself that everyone else was too."
HACKS AND SPOOKS - Richard Keeble - Medialens - 03/03/06 - How much of the press is controlled or influenced by the British Secret Service? Takes a historical look at history of links between hacks and spooks in both the UK and US and finishes by looking at the use of journalism and leaks in the Iraq war.
The Real Casualty of War - John Pilger - 24/04/06 - "Censorship by journalism is virulent in Britain and the US - and it means the difference between life and death for people in faraway countries" and "In one respect, we are more fortunate than you in the west. We believe nothing of what we read in the newspapers and watch on television, nothing of the official truth. Unlike you, we have learned to read between the lines, because real truth is always subversive." Also talks about Iraq and Venezuela.
BBC Middle East Coverage - May 10 2006 - Arab Media Watch interviewing Tim Llewelyn about BBC self-censorship of coverage in the Middle East
Rupert Murdoch is effectively a member of Blair's cabinet - 1st July 2006 - The Guardian - Alistair Darling's deputy spills all on Murdoch's influence in government.
International Federation of Journalists condemns threat of new Official Secrets clampdown - 4th July 2006 - IFJ - "In the UK, it was revealed at the weekend that the government is planning a new crackdown to strengthen official secrecy laws to prevent whistleblowers from revealing information about government policy. Officials with access to sensitive information will no longer be able to claim they act in the public interest by exposing wrongdoing or unlawful acts by the government.
"The government has been embarrassed by a spate of leaks revealing concerns about the legality of the US-led invasion of Iraq, including concerns allegedly expressed by Tony Blair about American tactics and revelations to media of a classified memo containing comments President Bush made about bombing broadcaster al-Jazeera. The government has prohibited other media from reporting on the memo." ; "there is a concerted effort across the Western world to try to stifle voices of dissent within government and to prevent journalists from exposing wrongdoing."; credibility of democracy undermined
Bloggers For Hire - August 28, 2006 - Stephen Armstrong - The New Statesman - "One of the big advantages the blogosphere offers adland is, ironically, a function of its birth as an unregulated samizdat medium. It is admirable that editorial content can’t be controlled, but the absence of any oversight means the same is true for commercial deals. The kind of opinion sponsorship PayPerPost and Bloggers Republic are offering would be illegal in the UK if practised by any of the conventional media. And the ramifications are not just in the soft drinks sector. The US marine corps is already using the networking site http://myspace.com for recruitment and brand-building – and has form in paying for positive editorial in Iraqi newspapers. Who’s to say that the marines aren’t already slipping teen bloggers a few dollars for a bit of positive spin? Who’s to say? No one. Because the blogosphere is completely unregulated."
FOI a ‘waste’ while propaganda budget soars - August 31 2006 - Your Right To Know - Heather Brooke - "While the Government whines about the ‘waste’ of being accountable to those who fund it, there seems to be no problem with the exuberant ues of tax money for pumping out shameless political propoganda."; "Spending on Government spin has trebled under Labour and taxpayers are now supporting an army of more than 3,200 press officers."
"Slow News" - September 20, 2006 - From JohnPilger.com
- John Pilger - "On 11 September 2001, while the world lamented the deaths of almost 3,000 people in the United States, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation reported that more than 36,000 children had died from the effects of extreme poverty. They were very slow news."
"Regular news: “We have been making real progress in areas where the insurgency has been strongest,” says a US military spokesman in Iraq.
Slow news: The US military has lost all control over al-Anbar Province, west of Baghdad, inclu ding the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi, which are now in the hands of the resistance. This means the US has lost control of much of Iraq."
The Fictitious Firewall - Medialens - October 10 2006 - outlines the power that advertisers have over journalists and editors in newspapers. "For example, are you aware that last year BP and Morgan Stanley both issued directives demanding that their ads be pulled from any edition of a publication that included potentially ‘objectionable’ content? BP went so far as to demand advance notice of any stories that mention the company, a competitor of the company or the oil and energy industry in general. [FAIR, op.cit.]"; "The biggest question is whether advertising limits and reshapes the news agenda. It does, of course. It’s hard to make the sums add up when you are kicking the people who write the cheques.” (Marr, ‘My Trade,’ Macmillan, 2004, p.112)"
The ‘terror plot’ that didn’t fit - The First Post - 10th October 2006 - We’re only interested in the sort of terrorism that suits our paranoia, says Matthew Carr. "the public perception of terrorism is often shaped by selective media coverage, which concentrates exclusively on a particular version of 'terrorism', while ignoring incidents that fall outside this framework."; "In a week dominated by Muslim 'stories' in which veiled women and an unpleasant taxi driver constituted evidence of the alien, dangerous subculture in our midst, two white men accused of having explosives, a nuclear protection suit and a 'masterplan' fell outside the frame of the 'war on terror' and therefore did not get mentioned beyond local papers.
"The same kind of selective coverage has occurred in the United States in the wake of 9/11, where the media and the US government regularly proclaim alleged Islamic 'sleeper cells' as confirmation of a vast terrorist conspiracy, while passing over the arrests of men such as 'Doc Chaos', a self-professed 'anarchist-terrorist' who was arrested with large quantities of lethal chemicals in March 2003."
We can't just blame our lack of trust on Tony Blair's 'lies' - Martin Kettle - The Guardian - December 30, 2006 - "When Eurobarometer measured the level of trust in the press, Britain was back once again in our accustomed 25th and last place. A mere 19% of people in this country trust the press, compared with a European average of 44%. The next lowest score in this league is by Hungary, where 32% do not trust the press. Note the gap between their score and ours. Once again, it suggests there is something exceptional about Britain."
The ultimate nightmare becomes an everyday reality - Language Log - January 10, 2007 - this post on Language Log was written with respect to science stories in the media (but could as well apply to political and economic stories): "But it's important to note that these people are not lying, exactly. They simply don't care one way or another about what the facts are, and this shifts their work out of the category of lies and into the category for which Harry Frankfurt has suggested the technical term bullshit"; 2The only time that a- that a journalist, whether it's television or radio or newspaper uh tends to actually be subjected to really detailed scrutiny of what he or she is doing is if there's a court case."; "So if the economists are right about rational choice, you'd expect sooner or later to see some news sources that claim to tell the truth, and put real effort into ensuring that the claim is not bullshit."
Big Media is Ravenous. It Never Gets Enough. Always Wants More. And it Will Stop at Nothing to Get It. These Conglomerates are an Empire, and they are Imperial - by Bill Moyers - "As ownership gets more and more concentrated, fewer and fewer independent sources of information have survived in the marketplace; and those few significant alternatives that do survive, such as PBS and NPR, are under growing financial and political pressure to reduce critical news content and to shift their focus in a mainstream direction, which means being more attentive to establishment views than to the bleak realities of powerlessness that shape the lives of ordinary people." Also find it here
Is the BBC Marxist? - Andrew Murray - The Guardian - Jan 24, 2007 - "Marxism is the doctrine of the self-emancipation of the working class. This is a cause to which the BBC contributes absolutely nothing."; "But in the real world, the BBC is a bastion of the values which Dacre holds dear. Take the class struggle, as waged by Marx and Dacre, albeit from opposite sides. Any active trade unionist can testify how hard it is to get an equal hearing in an industrial dispute - indeed, the BBC is to axe its sole labour correspondent, who helps ensure the union side is presented."; "Last year, the broadcaster simply ignored the huge protest in London on the anniversary of the Iraq invasion, to considerable outrage."; "The BBC is on the side of those who like the world pretty much the way it is."
The State of the U.S. Media is… Compliant - January 23, 2007 - Brian Dominick - The New Standard - "a significant portion of news media coverage is devoted to relaying the words of presidents, legislators, and a cast of "officials" whose opinions are bought and paid for."; "While it is important to scrutinize the implications of policies pushed and stances taken by people in power, modern news outlets habitually relay the views and opinions of politicians, often treating them as experts on this or that matter, letting them drive the news agenda but rarely bothering to investigate what, if any, real-world impact their words have."; "It should also matter little what the president has to say about the "state of the union," especially considering how rarely members of the public, or activist organizations, or public-interest groups are given a podium from which to tell what they think are the most important issues facing the United States. And yet for the last several days, Bush has been allowed to set the agenda for the mainstream and much of the alternative press."
What happened when the Guardian editor met Piers Morgan - interview with Alan Rusbridger - The Independent - 03/03/07 - For example:
PM: What's your current salary?
AR: It's, er, about £350,000.
PM: What bonus did you receive last year?
AR: About £170,000, which was a way of addressing my pension.
PM: That means that you earned £520,000 last year alone. That's more than the editor of The Sun by a long way.
AR: I'll talk to you off the record about this, but not on the record.
PM: Why? In The Guardian, you never stop banging on about fat cats. Do you think that your readers would be pleased to hear that you earned £520,000 last year? Are you worth it?
AR: That's for others to say.
PM: Wouldn't it be more Guardian-like, more socialist, to take a bit less and spread the pot around a bit? We have this quaint idea that you guys are into that "all men are equal" nonsense, but you're not really, are you? You seem a lot more "equal" than others on your paper.
AR: Er... [silence].
PM: Do you ever get awkward moments when your bonus gets published? Do you wince and think, "Oh dear, Polly Toynbee's not going to like this one."
AR: Er... [silence].
Ex-BBC employee responds to Media Lens piece in Newsnight blog - 17/04/07 - "BBC journalism can be relatively lazy (genuine BBC, not sourced second hand from Reuters, AP, etc, though those can be even more ridiculous). Certainly that which appears on the internet tends to be an appalling regurgitation of quotes from individuals with vested interests in the issue at hand (or their corporate PR cronies). That is to say, it is about as far from objective as possible." "One thing that does amaze me is that the BBC does not roll out its own archive footage to demonstrate hypocrisy in politician's behaviour or rhetoric." "Whilst I think it's wrong to picture the BBC as governmental co-conspirators, it's very fair to accuse the institution of bias, particularly over matters of such import as going to war. The BBC cannot afford to upset politicians because the politicians are the ones signing off on the licence fee, it can't afford to upset the public too much because they validate its existance through viewing figures and, when all is said and done, the BBC is composed of a lot of individuals keeping their heads down, trying to get by."
BUYING THE WAR - excellent PBS documentary by Bill Moyers - "How did the mainstream press get it so wrong? How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 continue to go largely unreported? "What the conservative media did was easy to fathom; they had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked. How mainstream journalists suspended skepticism and scrutiny remains an issue of significance that the media has not satisfactorily explored," says Moyers. "How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?"
John Pilger: Freedom Next Time, video - "John Pilger speaking about corporate journalism, war, history and truth at a Chicago conference on Sat 16 June 2007. He really hits his stride around the fifteen to twenty minute mark, and is equally, if not more, critical of US Congressional Democrats and Clinton than of Republicans and Bush."
My suspicions about official sources - Peter Wilby - Monday July 23, 2007 - The Guardian - on Iraq - "When a body of opinion inside government - or inside the mainstream political process - challenges the official version of events, journalists will present competing analyses. But dissidents from outside the establishment lack the standing and resources to sustain an alternative narrative. Unless they have a leading position in a significant opposition party, anyone who is out of office, even if they were once in office, can be depicted as out-of-touch, deranged and embittered. American journalism's greatest triumph, Watergate, merely proves the point. Deep Throat, without whom the story would have died, turned out to be No 2 at the FBI.
"The US press, which critics such as John Lloyd of the Reuters Institute would like our papers to emulate, has the bigger problem. It propagated bigger lies - for example, that Saddam was linked to 9/11 - with greater success and, because it lacks the competitive spur of the UK market, presents a more homogeneous view. To some extent, the US press is a victim of its virtuous insistence on rigour. American journalists have it drummed into them from youth that everything they write must be properly sourced. Whatever the evidence to the contrary, newspapers tend to assume, on most subjects, that official sources are the most "proper" ones."
Video: Enemy Image How the media’s role in covering war has changed. - Particularly since the first Gulf War the mainstream media has become an active participant in conflict: with embedded journalists and careful editing making for disinfo-tainment.
Spies and their lies - David Rose - The New Statesman - 27 September 2007 - "The call came at the end of the first week of May 1992. I was the Observer's home affairs correspondent, and at the other end of the line was a man we shall call Tom Bourgeois, special assistant to "C", Sir Colin McColl, the then chief of the Secret Intelligence Service. SIS (or MI6, as it is more widely known) was "reaching out" to selected members of the media, Bourgeois explained, and over lunch a few days earlier with McColl, my editor, Donald Trelford, had suggested that I was a reliable chap - not the sort, even years later, to betray a confidence by printing an MI6 man's real name
(…)
"Even then, the conditions that Bourgeois laid down struck me as odd, and perhaps a little onerous. Not only would our conversations be off the record, attributable in print merely to an unnamed MI6 official, but in public I would have to pretend they had never happened, and if I wanted to quote or paraphrase anything Bourgeois said, I would have to use a circumlocution so vague as to make it impossible for any reader to realise that I had spoken to someone from the Office at all. Should I breach these conditions, Bourgeois made clear, I could expect instant outer darkness: the refusal of all future access. MI6, in other words, would maintain a priceless advantage, a quality regarded as essential in intelligence operations of many kinds - what spies call "plausible deniability". And if, heaven forfend, the service told me something that turned out to be mistaken, or even tried to plant sheer disinformation for who knows what purpose, there would be no comeback, no accountability. I could put up, or shut up.
(…)
"Every national paper and broadcasting outlet has one - and usually, only one - reporter to whom each agency will speak, provided they observe the niceties. For these fa voured few, there will be access likely to grow as the journalist proves his or her "worth", along with considerable perks.
(…)
"Full disclosure: both agencies decided to stop speaking to me several years ago, in circumstances that at first I found infuriating. (Quite why MI6 cut me off, I never found out, but I have been told that MI5 objected to several interviews I carried out with Britons released from Guantanamo Bay who said that MI5 staff had been complicit in their treatment and interrogation while in US custody. It wasn't that this was untrue, but it was apparently regarded as "deeply unhelpful".)
(…)
"Why have the media put up with this situation without protest for so long? One reason, aside from the lunches and limos, is that editors are extremely reluctant to lose the access they have: the spooks' stories may be unreliable, but they often make good copy, and if everyone else is peddling the same errors, it doesn't much matter if they turn out to be untrue. Another, as a seasoned BBC correspondent put it to me, may be a judgement that if MI5 and MI6 sometimes peddle disinformation, many viewers and readers may not very much care, as "we're all on the same side".
(…)
"Adopting the US model may not be the answer. Milton Bearden, the former head of the CIA's Soviet and eastern Europe division who also led the CIA's covert campaign against the Soviets in Afghanistan, warns that journalists' relationships with spooks leave much to be desired. "The energy in the UK seems to be devoted to keeping the media at bay," Bearden says. "In the US, our style has been to spin them into submission. You don't want to get starry-eyed about the way we do business [at the CIA headquarters] in Langley, Virginia." He says he knows of cases where reporters have been taken into agents' confidence - and spun pure disinformation, no less pernicious for being on the record. "There is a structural problem here. The interests of journalists and those of secret intelligence agencies just don't always coincide."
What We Say Goes: Conversations on US Power in a Changing World - 13 March 2008 - Neil Smith - TES - "Noam Chomsky is renowned for having revolutionised our understanding of language and mind, but he is mainly famous - or infamous - for his political activism and his devastating criticisms of successive US governments. The polarisation of opinion that he evokes is surprising, as his views are based on simple foundations to which all sides claim to subscribe. These foundations are the two moral truisms that we should apply the same standards to ourselves as to others, and that we are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of our own actions. Failure to adhere to these principles results in "double standards", where we use different criteria for our friends and our enemies. In fact, as Chomsky forcefully points out, there is a single standard at work: "subordination to power".
