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It is important to periodically remind yourself of who the corporate media serves and how that focus bends what is reported and how it is reported into the fantastical shapes we observe today. Critical thinking, news triangulation and a healthy dose of skepticism are all required to make sense of what is actually happening in the world. One of the sources that I have found helpful in my quest for media awareness have been by the folks over at Media Lens – David Edwards and David Cromwell.
“Media Lens focuses on the media in the UK mostly, but the same lessons can be applied to your media consumption. I excerpt from their latest alert and recommend that you subscribe and support these two journalists who have the audacity to authentically practice their trade.
“In the last year, Media Lens has dissected corporate media performance on a host of topics including climate change, Iraq, the death of Hugo Chávez, the case for challenging corporate journalism, Israel and Palestine, WikiLeaks, Syria, Libya, the pharmaceuticals industry, US imperialism, the Leveson inquiry, North Korea, the NHS and Iran. We also publish Cogitations which look at the philosophy and spirituality underpinning our work, issues which are so often ignored and even derided by progressive commentators.
We were asked recently by author and journalist Ian Sinclair to contribute to a roundtable discussion for Peace News on the pros and cons of working with, or in, the ‘mainstream’ media. We first pointed out that we should dispense with the misleading term ‘mainstream’. Why? Because the corporate media is a powerful but mostly extremist fringe that supports the humanly-catastrophic goals of a ruthless, unaccountable elite. This system is not in business to alert humanity to the real risk of climate catastrophe and the need for immediate action to avert disaster. The corporate media has a proven, indeed astonishing, track record of suppressing public awareness on these crucial issues.
For years, left and green activists have argued that we should work with, or within, corporate media to reach a wider public. And for a long time the argument seemed reasonable. But after decades of accelerating planetary devastation and rapidly declining democracy, the argument has weakened to the point of collapse. By a process of carefully-rationed corporate ‘inclusion’, the honesty, vitality and truth of both the greens and the left have been contained, trivialised and stifled.
But while the internet remains relatively open, there is a brief window to break away from the corporate media, to build something honest, radical and publicly accountable. The first step is to build public motivation and momentum for this shift by exposing the corporate media for what it is. Climate crisis is already upon us, with much worse likely to come. The stakes almost literally could not be higher.”
Media Lens is well worth your time and support.
“Nothing is free.” Remember that golden nugget of advice given back when you were young? Of course you do, it made you wary of deals that seemed just perfect and produced nothing but unicorns and butterflies and the separation of you and your money once you made the agreement with the con artist in question. The idea that nothing is free needs to be extended further because the deception continues on a much larger trans-national scale. Citizens of democratic counties are bombarded with messages about the “free market” and the “free press” two terms that will not lose their scare quotes until they actually start representing what the words purportedly mean.
We’ll confine analysis to the “free press’ part of the equation, as Media Lens focuses on the unseemly bias toward the dominant power structures by the media in society today. Objectivity? Fairness and Accuracy in reporting? You will not find it inside the mainstream media of western countries, as shocking a revelation that is for many. It is tempting here to go down the left-wing/right-wing bias arguement black hole at the juncture, but really the left versus right debate is but a mere flickering candle compared to the supernova-like malfeasance of the courtier “free press” fawning to whomever hold the levers of power in society.
The article we’ll be looking at appears on the Media Lens website. Significant sections will be reviewed here, but to see the work in full: “The Golden Rule of State Violence: Terrorism is What they Do; Counterterrorism is What We do.”
“A defining feature of state power is rhetoric about a ‘moral’ or ‘ethical’ role in world affairs. Errors of judgement, blunders and tactical mistakes can, and do, occur. But the motivation underlying state policy is fundamentally benign. Reporters and commentators, trained or selected for professional ‘reliability’, tend to slavishly adopt this prevailing ideology.
Thus, on the ten-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, an editorial in the Independent on Sunday gushed about ‘Bush’s desire to spread democracy as an end in itself’. It was, the paper said, ‘the germ of a noble idea’. There was ‘an idealism’ about Blair’s support for Bush. The drawback was that the execution of the righteous vision had been ‘naive, arrogant and morally compromised by torture and the abrogation of the very values for which the US-led coalition claimed to fight’.”
Who in their right mind actually thought that we were “spreading democracy” in Iraq? But I guess whatever it takes to sell the idea of war to enough people to make it popular.
“Note that the invasion-occupation of Iraq is described as a ‘mistake’, not the supreme international crime as judged by the standards of the post-WW2 Nuremberg Trials.”
We come to point very early in the article is really damning and says so much about the pablum we are fed by the media. The Nuremberg Trials established rules for the world to follow after WW2 in attempt to head off another costly world catastrophe, they were to be followed not only by the losers of the war but by the victors as well. We broke these conventions, actually we ripped them up used them as toilet paper, and an actual “free press” would brought this and kept this fact in the world’s eye for all to see. But instead, only reputations are tarnished:
“The horrendous murder of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi civilian, by British soldiers ‘was a reminder of how much the Iraq war tarnished Britain’s reputation abroad.’ The implication is that Britain’s ‘reputation’ is fundamentally decent, only occasionally ‘tarnished’.
The paper concludes:
‘there is a hope that Britain, with a more realistic understanding of its capability, could regain some of the ethical role in the world that it lost after its mistaken response to 9/11.’
In the wake of all that has happened in the past ten years (and more), it takes a committed form of self-deception to cling to the shredded image of Britain’s ‘ethical role in the world’.”
Ah, self-deception, we all practice it to a certain extent. When left unchecked on the level of societies and countries though, it becomes a malevolent, destructive force.
Upset about troop movements and diplomatic cables being exposed to the public? Accountability and public oversight is *such* a pain. Notice how much coverage Wikileaks has been receiving from the media as of late, close to zero-ish, by my accounting and it is not accidental. Reporting actual news and happenings is dangerous and requires dedication to qualities other than the corporate bottom line.
Do your part to help keep Wikileaks alive and well, as it is a source of what is actually happening in our world, as opposed to the carefully crafted image we are constantly bombarded with.
A big thanks to Moe for posting this video :) Visit her blog Whatever Works when you can, it is most worth your while.
Media Lens has been around for ten years now, continually challenging the view the corporate media presents to people. The authors answer a few common questions as to why they do what they do in a very clear and structured way. Defining the problem is always the first step to finding a solution, so I reprint their words here with the goal of defining the problem for people to see.
“Question: Why did you start Media Lens?
Answer: The media presents itself as a neutral window on the world. We are to believe that the view we see through the window is ‘the world as it is’. It’s ‘All the news that’s fit to print’ because ‘Comment is free but facts are sacred’. What’s to challenge? When you take a closer look at the ‘window’, you realise it’s not a window on the world at all; it’s a kind of painting of a window on the world. And the ‘painting’ has been carefully produced using colours, textures and forms all selected by the media arm of a corporate system that has very clear interests and bias.
And the one issue the media will not seriously discuss is the idea that it is not a neutral window on the world. This silence protects every deception promoting war, destruction of the climate, and the general subordination of people and planet to profit. It has to be challenged.
Q: Are there any media systems in the world that you think work well?
A: Compassion and honesty are found in individuals, not in systems. There are individuals who are sensitive to the suffering of others, to the importance of compassion for the welfare of themselves and others, and who, to a greater or lesser degree, subordinate self-interest (wealth, status) to rational analysis and truthful communication. Honest individuals reject the idea that they need to be trained to understand, and respond productively to, the suffering of others. They understand that the great enemy of dissent is the desire to participate comfortably as part of a system, herd, corporation, which inevitably demand conformity and compromise. They understand that the sense of comfort is illusory and actually a condition of great suffering. The self-centred mind is inherently stressed and dissatisfied. A life spent in the self-centred herd is not a happy one, it comes at great cost to the soul. Norman Mailer observed:
‘There is an odour to any Press Headquarters that is unmistakeable… The unavoidable smell of flesh burning quietly and slowly in the service of a machine.’ (Mailer, The Time Of Our Time, Little Brown, 1998, p.457)”
It is nice to see others engaged in the same struggle fighting the same battles. Cheers Media Lens and may you have 10 more successful years after this.
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