Media Lens Q&A: Blogs as alternative news sources

[David Edwards]

Q&A with David Edwards: Blogs as alternative news sources - for Steve Roberts, MA student at the Open University


1. How are blogs a space for public debate?

They allow low cost public access to open discussion and organisation. Incidentally, I’m not keen on the term ‘blog’, which sounds derogatory to me. I prefer to talk in terms of internet-based media, non-corporate media and websites.

2. Do you think that blogs and websites such as ‘medialens’, ‘Digg’ and ‘Twitter’ provide a viable alternative to ‘mainstream media news’? Please give reasons for your response.

The question should be reversed: Do the mainstream media provide a viable alternative to non-corporate sources of news and commentary? The answer is they don’t and never have. The media would have us believe that reporting on current affairs is primarily a matter of collecting hard facts on the ground, much as a geologist might collect rocks for research. Reporting is presented as an almost technical task. But in fact, when it comes to current affairs, truth-telling is primarily dependent on rare human qualities such as compassion, critical thought, the willingness to disobey authority, and a disregard for the rewards of conformity (status, wealth, privilege, power). The Israeli attack on Gaza that began on December 27, 2008 is a good example of what I have in mind. Hundreds of well-resourced journalists across the media ‘spectrum’ failed to explain why the Israeli army were massacring hundreds of Palestinian civilians. Only Noam Chomsky, in an article on the ZNet website, made sense of Israel’s actions (http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20316
).

The truth is very ugly and ugly truths are deemed ’biased’ by the corporate press when they apply to our government and its leading allies. Endless media claims that the Israelis were “targeting Hamas”, “seeking to end Qassam rocket attacks”, and so on, were not a viable alternative to Chomsky’s far more rational and honest analysis.

3. Blogs could be considered as ‘sites of resistance’ to, what in some cases is being identified as an increasingly corporate and passive ‘mainstream media’? What are your views on this?

The mainstream media are part of ever more concentrated centres of corporate power, but they’re far from passive. They are extremely active in promoting an agenda favouring powerful interests. These are not occasional slips; they are systematic distortions right across the media ‘spectrum’ on every issue that concerns powerful interests. It’s not a conspiracy - ours is much closer to a free market analysis of media performance - but it is staggeringly consistent. Non-corporate media are increasingly able to challenge this propaganda. In response to the BBC’s recent refusal to broadcast a DEC charity appeal for Gaza, 10,000 people emailed complaints to the BBC. The offices of BBC Scotland were occupied by 100 anti-war protestors, some of them media activists who contribute regularly to our message board. The scale of the response to the BBC is surely a sign of the increasing power of non-corporate, internet-based media. For the first time, dissidents are able to challenge state-corporate propaganda to a global audience, instantly, at very low cost. That’s a change of potentially enormous political significance. I suspect that the massive anti-war marches around the world in early 2003 were also strongly empowered by internet-based media.

But these media are also providing more credible and useful analysis and commentary than the mainstream. If I want to understand the situation in Gaza, Iraq, Haiti, Venezuela, I will turn to Democracy Now!, ZNet, FAIR, the Venezuela Information Centre, Media Lens, and so on. When I have to learn about a topic that is new to me, as happens often, I will always turn to the non-corporate media first. By contrast, the Guardian/BBC version of events will likely be heavily distorted, or incomprehensible.

4. How important do you think ‘the information war’ of news reporting from areas of conflict is in contemporary global conflicts?

Governments and the military are more determined than ever to keep honest journalism away from the battlefield - hence the fraud that is ‘embedded’ journalism. The British government has worked hard to suppress the truth of how many Iraqis have been killed in Iraq since 2003 - a performance that has included outright lying and concocted smears The corporate media have done little to challenge this. By contrast, internet-based journalists have often exposed the truth, even from terribly dangerous places like Fallujah in 2004, and now in Gaza.

5. How would you say ‘medialens’ utilises blogs?

As mentioned above, much of our basic understanding about what is happening in the world is derived from internet-based sources. Without them we simply wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing. Our media alerts tend to be posted on different blogs, which help us reach many more people.

6. Can you give an example of a ‘medialens’ blog that has been subsequently quoted or used as a source by other media, including mainstream media?

Journalists are generally keen +not+ to mention us by name as a source, so they often refer to our work surreptitiously. But our work has been openly mentioned by BBC’s Newsnight, Peter Wilby in the Guardian and John Pilger in the New Statesman. Les Roberts, the leading epidemiologist and co-author of the 2004 and 2006 Lancet studies on Iraqi mortality, participated in a Newsnight discussion in response to our work. In the Guardian, George Monbiot has discussed our work criticising mass media reliance on fossil fuel advertising in a time of climate change. So has the Guardian’s reader’s editor. Both the Guardian and Independent readers editors have repeatedly responded in their papers to mass complaints from readers initiated by our work. We were described by Peter Beaumont in the Observer as “a curious willy-waving exercise where the regulars brag about the emails they've sent to people like poor Helen Boaden at the BBC - and the replies they have garnered. Think a train spotters' club run by Uncle Joe Stalin.” (Beaumont, ‘Microscope on Medialens,’ June 18, 2006; http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1800328,00.html)

7. How would you describe the status of blogging as a source of news and information?

The evidence seems to be that more and more people are turning to non-corporate media for analysis and commentary.

8. What are the pros and cons of blogging?

It’s very low cost and you can reach a mass audience instantly. As discussed, that’s an enormous change. The problem remains a lack of resources. Also, the free access to this kind of communication means there’s an awful lot of rubbish - quite a lot of conspiracy theorising, for example.

9. What does blogging mean to you?

It’s an effective way of challenging the illusions that cause unnecessary human and animal suffering. The state-corporate system has always used propaganda to camouflage its violence and exploitation - internet-based media are a way of exposing these illusions to a large audience. The hope is that it can help build a more rational, compassionate society - one that is rooted in concern for others rather than in self-interest.

10. Do you have any other general comments or views on blogs and blogging in connection with news sources and news distribution?

As the Canadian lawyer, Joel Bakan, has commented, corporations are driven by essentially psychopathic motives. It is literally illegal for corporate managers to prioritise concern for human suffering over the maximisation of shareholder profits. Non-corporate media (empowered by the accessibility and low cost of the internet) provide the hope of a non-psychopathic media rooted in compassion and reason rather than greed.


David Edwards

[Raoul Djukanovic]