Exchange with Daniel Simpson re Blair and The Independent

[johnwhilley]

An exchange with Daniel Simpson concerning Blair’s attack on the Independent
Links to the Independent’s actual responses to Blair are noted here:

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2651061.ece

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2648615.ece

http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/steve_richards/article2650966.ece

---------------------------------

First, my posting at the Media Lens message board:

Is it safe?

Posted by John Hilley on June 13, 2007

“All that said, we welcome Mr Blair's contribution to what is an important debate. He is right to say that relations between the media and the political establishment need to be repaired.”
Simon Kelner

This type of remark really brings home the crass duplicity of the Independent in its respectful treatment of Blair. How jolly ‘welcome’, also, to see Andreas Whittam-Smith, Peter Oborne and John Lloyd assume the mantle of Blair’s ‘interrogators’ on last night’s Newsnight.

The Independent might be revelling in its ‘moral riposte’ to Blair on today’s front page, but it has said nothing seriously damning since March 2003 about the key reasons for the war, Britain’s military conduct in Iraq or the actual case for Blair’s prosecution. Like its liberal media associates, the Independent is a signed-up member of the ‘it was all a regrettable mistake’ club.

We needn’t detain ourselves with Blair’s own ‘hurt’ and ‘disillusionment’ with the press. The sheer brazenness of the man is all too obvious. The real subtext here is about his own ‘good name’ and whether he will still be protected by the liberal media once out of office.

It rather reminds me of that scene from Marathon Man where Laurence Olivier, playing the hidden Nazi war criminal, has to break cover to ‘test’ Dustin Hoffman’s possible ‘intentions’, risking the safe-keeping of his identity and war crimes, in the process. Blair’s dark ‘questioning’ of the Independent might be read in a similar sense, with regard to his legacy: is it safe?

If the test of that question is Kelner’s “welcome” engagement of Blair’s comments, and Whitton-Smith’s version of press ‘dissent’, then the answer is reassuringly clear for our outgoing PM: yes, it’s very safe.

John

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Wed, 13 Jun 2007

Subject: "It is, are you?"

Dear John,

You write of the Independent:

"it has said nothing seriously damning since March 2003 about the key reasons for the war, Britain's military conduct in Iraq or the actual case for Blair's prosecution. Like its liberal media associates, the Independent is a signed-up member of the 'it was all a regrettable mistake' club."

Flawed as its coverage may be, ducking the criminality question except on its letters page, your assertions fly in the face of evidence you yourself have made use of. With respect to the points you list above, the Independent was the first to publish the Platform report ("Crude Designs") on the great Iraqi oil swindle, it's given prominent coverage to every publicly highlighted case of abusive military conduct that I'm aware of (including, a year after the fact and after some prodding and misstating of the facts, the White Phosphorus in Falluja story) and it was also, as far as I know, the only paper to publish Carne Ross's full testimony to the Commons Select Committee on what he knew about the bogus case for war.

The case for Blair's prosecution seems to be the one thing it's failed to spell out in any meaningful way. Even if its performance in the framing of other stories isn't quite to your liking, I think you'd be hard pressed to sustain your claim that it has said nothing seriously damning, or reported a slew of information that you depend on in your attempt to discredit it.

Perhaps if you actually refined your arguments to focus on something
tangible (as opposed to your own propagandistic framing to sell a story) that might be done to improve reporting, your assertions mightn't be so easily ridiculed.

Best wishes,

Daniel

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Thu, 14 Jun 2007

Subject: Re: "It is, are you?"

Hi Daniel.

Thanks for writing.

What the Independent hasn’t dare mention in any of its editorials or front-page comment is that Britain has been party to the supreme international war crime in Iraq; a crime subject to the legal instruments
established at Nuremberg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials#Influence_on_the_development_of_international_criminal_law

Now, you say that, apart from not discussing Blair’s criminality, the Independent has still carried "seriously damning" criticisms of the war. But, real damning criticism would have to acknowledge the fundamental truth of Blair’s criminality as axiomatic. It’s a pity you can’t see that elementary point. The invasion of Iraq is illegal. Blair has been directly
involved in that illegality and mass murder. Thus, any fitting comment from the Independent would have to start with this basic truth of Blair’s villainy. Their refusal to indict Blair in this way means that such criticism falls, by definition, distinctly short of "seriously damning".

We can, as you have done, cite laudable instances of critical pieces in the Independent, notably in the writings of Robert Fisk. But, the real test of any “principled” media organ lies in its editorial willingness to state boldly that Blair and his cohorts should be in the dock. Where was that “principled” suggestion even caveated in the ‘debate’ with Blair
and the rest of the media? Behind the ‘badge of honour’, self-awarded by some at the Independent for taking ‘Blair’s flak’, is an editorial line that the
war was not a criminal enterprise, just a ‘great mistake’. So much of the Independent’s reporting of Iraq is safely tempered by this kind of ‘fall-back regard’ for Blair.

As “documented endlessly” in Media Lens comment and Alerts, “the Independent’s reporting on Iraq has been, not just average, not just poor – it’s been simply appalling. They can crow and self-deceive all they like, but there are probably a million people dead in Iraq and that blood is all over their hands.” (ML Editors, message board, 13 June 2007.)

One is very ‘touched’ by Kelner’s desire for a healing rapprochement between the media and the political establishment. That remark speaks volumes about the extent of his journalistic independence.

Whittam-Smith has also defended the use of front-page comment to criticise the war. So, why not use that vital space to make the really damning statement on Blair: that there can be no gentlemanly debate with a man whose only evidence and ‘mitigation’ on the media should come from an international court.

That’s not my “propagandistic framing to sell a story”. (Your suggestion that I “focus on something tangible…to improve reporting” is a standard trope used by those who think the problem of media distortion can be ‘sorted-out’ with a bit of journalistic tweaking.) It’s a view based on
established principles of international law. Indeed, have a look at what that other media establishment figure William Rees-Mogg has just written about the reality of Blair’s fragile legal standing – a concern understood very acutely by his spouse and ‘house’ lawyer, Cherie Blair.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/william_rees_mogg/article1913297.ece

As noted, Blair’s attack on the Independent was, if nothing else, a useful test of Kelner’s critical resolve. The tepid response reveals just how far his paper really is from "seriously damning" criticism of Blair and the war in Iraq.

I’d like to share this exchange at ML. Would it be OK to publish your e-mail to me?

Best wishes,
John
--------------------------------

Thu, 14 Jun 2007

Subject: Re: "It is, are you?"

Dear John,

You're welcome to publish our exchange if you like - thanks for asking first. If you do, please also quote the original posting to which I responded: http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1181733515.html

Our difference seems on the one hand to be minor and on the other hand fundamental. You claim in your response that "real damning criticism would have to acknowledge the fundamental truth of Blair's criminality as axiomatic", but it doesn't follow, as you originally asserted, that The Independent "has said nothing seriously damning since March 2003 about the key reasons for the war, Britain's military conduct in Iraq or the actual case for Blair's prosecution," as you appear to concede (before redefining your terms to make the seriousness of any damning contingent on the primacy of the last of your three points).

You claim I "can't see that elementary point", but that wasn't your original point, which is why I didn't, as you claim "say that, apart from not discussing Blair's criminality, the Independent has still carried 'seriously damning' criticisms of the war." Instead I said "I think you'd be hard pressed to sustain your claim that it has said nothing seriously damning", which appears to be the case, since you've had to change your claim in your effort to sustain it.

I hold no brief for Simon Kelner and have no intention of defending
his self-congratulatory front page, or his performance more generally, having written to him on many occasions to criticise it. As you rightly ask, "why not use that vital [front page] space to make the really damning statement on Blair" and call for his prosecution, spelling out the case to answer and the obstacles to bringing it before a court? [1]

Despite our fundamental agreement on this point, give or take some
quibbling on the way there, it seems at the same time that this is
where we differ fundamentally.

As a committed "Propaganda Modelist" (for want of a better expression), you seem to think that the most important objective is to make a circular argument about the absence of the reporting you most want to see. As a former journalist, I see no point in making this case unless the ultimate objective is to "focus on something tangible…to improve reporting". Your suggestion that this is "a standard trope" is revealing in itself of an apparently dogmatic mindset that prioritises only the revealing of chosen truths about the absence of truth as a device for framing arguments, presumably with the intention of radicalising readers. [2]

I can only conclude, therefore, that this is what prevents you from stating plainly from the outset that your principal beef with the Independent's coverage is its failure to mount a front-page campaign for Blair's incarceration as a (prima facie for now) war criminal, or at the very least to spell out the Nuremberg principles and the clear conclusions we have to draw from them. [3]

In other words, it appears that you have a problem with making your criticism specific, and therefore in theory rectifiable, since you appear in practice not to want the problem to be rectified, even if that's what in theory leads you to devote so much time to studying media distortion. If tha latter can't, as you put it, "be 'sorted-out'with a bit of journalistic tweaking", then what other conclusion can we draw except the need for revolution? Yet were that day to come, what is the evidence that distortion would be, so to speak, erased from the pages of time? History suggests otherwise, suggesting that "journalistic tweaking" is something we ought to think about very carefully if we're actually interested in improving media performance (as opposed to developing rhetorical devices with other objectives).

None of this should be taken to imply, however, that the tweaking might easily be brought about. But if you can't actually define what needs tweaked and how, why should anyone take your comments seriously as media criticism (as opposed to what I called it in my initial email: "propagandistic framing to sell a story")?

On the subject of Media Lens having "documented endlessly" that "the Independent's reporting on Iraq has been, not just average, not just
poor – it's been simply appalling", I refer you to my email to the Editors. [4] "They can crow and self-deceive all they like, but there are probably a million people dead in Iraq and that blood is all over their hands," they claim. If so, it's over theirs, yours and mine in equal measure.

Best wishes,

Daniel

REFERENCES:

[1] To quote something I wrote elsewhere:

The UN Charter outlaws military force unless in self-defence or backed by the Security Council. Neither applied to Iraq, so the war was illegal, as Kofi Annan said. But what is international law in practice? Opinions vary. In any case, aggression can't be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court: it's yet to agree on a definition of the crime, although the UN did years ago. UK courts are powerless too: aggression is not a crime in English law. The ICC has jurisdiction over genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity but it rebuffs requests to investigate specific incidents. In Britain, meanwhile, the Court of Appeal says the Executive's actions in declaring and waging war were "a lawful exercise of its powers under the prerogative", an archaic authority bestowed by the Queen.
Prosecution may still be possible in a country that has criminalised
aggression, perhaps via extradition if Blair were arrested, like General Pinochet, in a friendly nation. Otherwise, all that remains is "the Al Capone option": finding a lesser charge that could be pinned on the Prime Minister for the sake of seeing him in court. This may be more feasible but it would carry far less weight as a precedent.

[2] Quoting from a different piece of writing, which I believe you've
already read here:
http://danielsimpson.blogspot.com/2006/04/news-as-if-people-mattered.html

Media Lens and its subscribers berate journalists for pushing facts through an interpretive framework that obscures their significance; for sacrificing analysis on the altar of novelty; for accumulating information without joining up the dots. Editors tend to favour news stories that recycle the idées fixes of conventional wisdom in their presentation of background material. These are regarded as unbiased, while those structured on alternative interpretations arouse suspicion. Newspapers consequently devote forests of column inches to supposed scepticism, which takes as its starting point the premises of those it purports to challenge. This "feigned dissent", according to Edwards and Cromwell, is the stock-in-trade of liberal commentators, whose heft and vigour belie their conformity to established opinion. More outspoken dissidents, whether opinionated reporters like the Independent's Robert Fisk, or investigative columnists like George Monbiot at the Guardian, survive in pockets, but they don't get to take editorial decisions. As such, the Media Lens editors argue, they may do more harm than good. "Dissident appearances in the mainstream act as a kind of liberal vaccine," they assert, "inoculating against the idea that the media is subject to tight restrictions and control."

This is an absurd claim, predicated on the assumption that there could, even in theory, be any such thing as a truly free press. The repeated references to this holy grail suggest, however, that it is necessarily elusive, serving as a kind of Trotskyist transitional demand with a Situationist twist. "Be realistic, demand the impossible," as the sloganeers of 1968 would have it. Or, more bluntly: "No replastering, the structure is rotten", as if it might somehow crumble of its own accord once enough people noticed. Chomsky and Herman's propaganda model identified five filters distorting media coverage: the interests of parent companies, pressure from advertisers, dependence on official sources, flak from the government and other powerful lobbies and an ideological belief in free-market capitalism. Media Lens seeks to raise awareness of these issues by
demonstrating that there are limits to what many journalists are prepared to discuss. More honest reporting is impossible, Edwards and Cromwell argue, unless the filters blurring their vision are removed. "We cannot change the mass media," they write, "until we change the culture, which cannot change until we change the mass media." Their objective is to lobby for a revolutionary restructuring of society by highlighting flaws in journalism, which they ascribe to an all-encompassing theory passed off as axiomatic fact. In effect, then, they are manufacturing dissent.

[3] The Nuremberg judgment was unequivocal: "To initiate a war of aggression," the tribunal ruled, "is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson was equally clear: "While this law is first applied against German aggressors," he warned, "the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment."

[4] Email to the Editors of Media Lens in response to their posting
(attached below):

Dear David and David,

You write "nothing would be sufficiently servile" for Tony Blair, claiming that "the Independent's reporting on Iraq has been, not just average, not just poor - it's been simply appalling."

Perhaps, once your chests have collapsed, you'd care to define your terms. Average as a function of what? Poor in relation to what? Appalling on what scale? Surely it can't be the case that nothing would be ufficiently hyperbolic for your meaningless assertion?

The Independent's coverage may be flawed and the paper may duck the
whole question of criminality. But if its reporting has been appalling, perhaps you'd like to define what it ought to do differently. And what distinguishes it from, say, The Sun. And, while you're at it, you might hazard a guess at the number of Independent stories you've cited uncritically since 2002.

Finally, in what meaningful sense is "blood [...] all over their hands"? Without any evidence to back up your assertion I can only presume you mean that they, like you, failed to stop the invasion.

Shame on you.

Sincerely,

Daniel Simpson

--

Re: Cementing the myth of a liberal media
Posted by The Editors on June 12, 2007, 10:21 pm, in reply to
"Cementing the myth of a liberal media"

"I regard what Blair said as a vindication of our stance on Iraq," Mr Kelner said.

Notice Kelner is delighted to receive and respond to this criticism from Blair. Criticism from the right is highly system-supportive - it helps increase the pressure on more honest journalists while allowing the liberal media to further deceive the public: 'Hey, we MUST be doing a great job - he hates us!'

Criticism from the left, by contrast, is meaningful and threatening - left critics are not allowed to be recognised, or exist, and so responses are muted as far as possible, or non-existent. Kelner, for example, has never responded to any of the dozens of emails we've sent him.

Blair's comments are a vindication of nothing because nothing would be
sufficiently servile for him. As we have documented endlessly, the
Independent's reporting on Iraq has been, not just average, not just poor - it's been simply appalling. They can crow and self-deceive all they like, but there are probably a million people dead in Iraq and that blood is all over their hands.

Eds

------------------------------------------

Thu, 15 Jun 2007

Subject: Re: "It is, are you?"


Dear Daniel,

Thanks for responding and taking-up my points.

You say:

[johnwhilley]

A reply from Daniel Simpson

Subject: Re: "It is, are you?"

Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007

Dear John,

Thanks for responding at Media Lens. I think you've sidestepped the
crux of the matter by creating a false dichotomy. There is no either/
or involved in recognising the clearly identifiable trends in media
coverage and the need to define what better would actually look like
and, ideally, how it might be brought into being.

You write that "Kelner is only there saying the mediated things that
he does because the system selects him to do so – as the
Independent’s proprietors would want to know: is it (our profit
margin) safe?" It appears you think this is as conclusive an
observation as Noam Chomsky's oft-repeated comment to Andrew Marr
about where he's sitting. But both hint at more profundity than they
actually convey.

Of course it's Kelner's job to make money (and he's not doing it all
that well - The Independent has only a loss margin at present), but
there's no evidence to suggest that a more radical editorial policy
wouldn't sell (especially not if puffed out with the same old fluff
in between the sharpened-toothed news and comment). If anything the
audience for documentaries suggests the opposite, as John Pilger
noted this week:

"They were still clapping Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 two months
after it opened in this country. Why? The answer is uncomplicated. It
was a powerful film that helped people make sense of news that no
longer made sense. It did not present the usual phoney "balance" as a
pretence for presenting an establishment consensus. It was not
riddled with the cliches, platitudes and power assumptions that
permeate "current affairs". It was realist cinema, as important as
The Grapes of Wrath was in the 1930s, and people devoured it."

http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2101520,00.html

This is going off at a tangent, however. The key point remains the
same: demonstrating a trend in structural biases doesn't actually
show us anything about what causes them, for all that there may be a
process whereby radicals get weeded out of the upper echelons of most
news organisations (for reasons that we can only guess at without
specific information to go on). So demonstrating a trend tells us
nothing about how to undo it (unless you subscribe to the five
filters dogma, which is actually unsupported by evidence of which
filter is supposedly at work).

Showing us what better coverage would look like, on the other hand,
lays out a way forward. If no one takes it, at least there can be
meaningful dialogue about why not. Without that specific focus, all
that your challenges generate are dialogues of the deaf.

That many of your interlocutors are as self-deluding as Steve
Richards about the nature of their job (which they see as being to
look at the world like a policymaker and explain it to the masses)
and the nature of facts (which like the policymakers whose heads they
seek to inhabit, they have a convenient habit of misremembering to
accord more conveniently with changing spin) hardly makes more
insightful and productive communication likely, I appreciate. But
others are less closed-minded to reason, if they're being asked to
engage with something other than a dogmatic insistence that they're
going to be incapable of engaging (which is in any case patent
nonsense, of course, since there are exceptions to the rule).

I'm sure we could both dig up countless examples of Independent
editorials and front pages that were "seriously damning" (albeit not
highlighting the supreme crime, as we've already noted), but this
isn't going to take us anywhere because you think the priority is to
expose "the liberal media" as a sham and leave it that, presumably
under the impression that you're raising awareness of something
important. But if all you can actually tell people is "journalists
tend to see the world like the powerful interests whose agendas they
relay to us" then it's not going to stop them reading the papers or
watching TV in search of the latest news, which still has to be
reported and digested, even if it needs deconstructing. So, even if
you want to kick off every communication (or posting) by restating
that basic point (which isn't after all unenlightening when first
grasped), it would surely be more insightful to start laying out what
you think ought to be done differently. After all, someone (whether
"mainstream", "alternative", "independent", "radical",
"compassionate", "corrupt" or otherwise) might actually do it.
Someone probably is in any case, so you could always highlight that,
assuming you want to communicate something other than the same old
point about the pointlessness of trying to reform the corporate media
(as if its non-existence would somehow be more enlightening, just
like that).

Incidentally, you may or may not be amazed to know how often simple
ignorance generates the sort of coverage that warrants the label
"appalling". Of course, a certain mindset, and sense of where the
boundaries lie if you want to avoid rocking the boat, helps to steer
people in certain directions and away from certain other
interpretations. But there's much more to it than that, or else the
ranks of the media would be stuffed with better actors than Blair,
which wouldn't be hard, but isn't really the case, since the majority
are more transparent hams than he (and they're generally only
covering up what they don't know rather than what they do but need to
hide).

Anyhow, since I don't actually disagree with your observation that
there are (to quote myself) "structural constraints that deter
corporate media from serving as more effective watchdogs over the
powerful, or guides to the way the world works", I see little point
continuing this exchange. You can read a fuller exposition of my
arguments in the essay I linked in my previous email. This passage is
probably the most pertinent to our discussion:

"Edwards and Cromwell not only have no answer, they argue it's
unreasonable to expect one. 'The highlighting of important issues for
discussion is in itself an important and legitimate activity,' they
write. This is true, but the discussion has to take place some time.
In the meantime, they suggest, Media Lens is an embryonic solution
per se, but it is difficult to see how if it only reports on
reporting, and does so with dogmatic insistence that the corporate
media are irredeemably corrupt. If so, surely action would speak
louder than critique, since the only pressure that editors can't
ignore is competition. 'You must be the change you wish to see in the
world,' as Gandhi put it. At its best, Media Lens does this, hosting
rational debates and disseminating marginalised perspectives, backed
up by evidence. But, like bloggers, they piggyback on the work that
profit-oriented businesses have paid for."

The argument will always be circular unless it seeks explicitly to
address the Media Lens editors' stated aim: to "democratise the
setting and content of news agendas, which traditionally reflect
establishment interests". Simply demonstrating the reflection of
establishment interests will not democratise the setting and content
of news agendas. And even if spelling out how they ought to look
isn't going to get them implemented, it will help to build a
blueprint for the sort of alternative that might one day change that.
It will also contribute to an evolution beyond the sort of lazy
repetitive posturing that fills the Media Lens message board,
yielding such statements of self-congratulatory self-delusion as Ed
Murray's response to your posting of our exchange: "They don't like
the "blood on their hands" thing up'em do they?"

Not only has Ed failed to register that I'm not a working journalist,
never mind an Independent staffer, he's also overlooked the
elementary moral truism I was repeating in my message to the two
Davids. It would indeed a bitter irony if the denizens, and
proprietors, of a Chomskyite website were unable to grasp this.

In conclusion, you conclude by saying that "in its editorial policy
and key comment, the Independent is still a long, long way from what
I would understand as a purveyor of 'seriously damning' criticism".
My challenge to you is to demonstrate, even if only for a single day,
how the paper ought to be edited differently. It could perhaps be a
collective Media Lens exercise. In futility, you will doubtless
respond. Perhaps so. But I think it would be less futile than stating
ad infinitum that the corporate media are irredeemably unreformable.

Of course, all of this assumes an interest in media output in and of
itself, as opposed to regarding it merely as a tool to be used for
constructing arguments for radical social change. If your priority is
only the latter, then I can see why the niceties of what's actually
reported may seem like a sideshow when compared to the "no
replastering the structure is rotten" project of fomenting
revolutionary potential. Nevertheless, the latter is unlikely to be
sparked by some emails to Peter Barron, whereas some more informative
media coverage might.

Thanks again for the exchange.

Best wishes,

Daniel

[johnwhilley]

A reply to Daniel Simpson:

Sat, 16 Jun 2007

Subject: Re: "It is, are you?"


Thanks Daniel,

You believe that:

[johnwhilley]

A further exchange:



Sat, 16 Jun 2007
Re: "It is, are you?"


Dear John,

Thanks again for writing. I'll respond very quickly if you don't mind as I'm busy with other work.

[johnwhilley]

Re: "It is, are you?"
Sat, 16 Jun 2007

Thanks John.

Just to be clear I'll address this line in your response:

[Peter Fainton]

John asked if I'd like to put my message board comments on this thread in the forum and so I've copied them below. Apologies that they're out of sequence with the general discussion between John/Daniel. In summary, I support the medialens approach of raising awareness about the objectives of corporate media and their relative role in the power hierarchy of our social structure.

Corporate media exist to promote the established power world view and support corporate interests and profits above the interests of ordinary people, in my view. As Bill Clinton said: "it's the economy, stupid".

This phrase encapsulates the corporate interests of the ruling class above those of ordinary people, in my view. Structurally, the corporate media is a part of the controlling elite triumvirate, which seeks to establish dominance over the rest of the population. Business finances the political leg of the triumvirate and promotes it into power through the corporate media. In turn, the political leg supports corporate interests above those of ordinary people and the corporate media promotes their agenda and narrative world view.

Alternative media tends to focus on the consequences on ordinary people's lives resulting from this form of privileged-class domination and social control.

I don't think people need to subscribe to Chomsky's propaganda model theory in order to realize that they are lied to day-in-day-out by the corporate media.

It seems to me that Daniel is really asking what would an alternative media be or look like? Well one already exists and is growing, but essentially, to me, the issue is one of focus and whose interests are being served.

Established corporate media promote the interests of existing power bases and social control systems. Alternative media tend to focus on the interests of ordinary people who suffer the consequences of established power, in my view.
=====================================

Re: Exchange with Daniel Simpson re Blair's 'attack' on The Independent

Posted by Peter Fainton on June 15, 2007, 9:54 pm, in reply to "Exchange with Daniel Simpson re Blair's 'attack' on The Independent"
User logged in as: peter fainton

An interesting exchange, John. I share your view that there are 'structural' problems which are systemic in our society. There is a holy trinity or three-legged stool upon which our social control system operates. This is business, political and media in a mutually symbiotic relationship which is class-based in origin. Business finances the political leg and promotes it through its own media corporations. The constitutional monarchy provides the heredity institutions within which the political leg of the triumvirate operates and the media role is to promote the establishment world view. Changing journalistic standards will not really alter the privilege-based social control mechanism, in my view.

One of the things Blair was carping about the other day in his speech about the press was the democratization of information. This is because, as Blair noted: "...the reality is that the viewers or readers have no objective yardstick to measure what they are being told." But if they (the ordinary people) can talk amongst themselves on the internet, between different countries, they can quickly find out when they are being lied to. Of course, to someone who lies as much as Blair this would be a cause for concern. Ringing alarm bells amongst elites that the brainwashing propaganda leg (media) of their three-legged stool is coming off so a 'repair' job is needed to keep the people from knowing the truth. I suspect that it's this area for which he has new legislation in mind, rather than the press itself. Hence his talk of 'kite marks' for websites that have establishment approval. He really doesn't need a new 'kite mark' to indicate this, the BBC logo is an established brand for the establishment world view.
=========================================

Re: Exchange with Daniel Simpson re Blair's 'attack' on The Independent

Posted by Peter Fainton on June 16, 2007, 12:41 am, in reply to "Re: Exchange with Daniel Simpson re Blair's 'attack' on The Independent"
User logged in as: peter fainton

Thanks John. I've no real beef with the point Daniel makes about an alternative media. I think the issue is one of scale, for example, BBC News employs 2,000 journalists and has a £90 million budget, covering everything from Radio One to the World Service. That's just the pro-establishment world view of news funded by taxpayers. The corporate media is also huge, both broadcast and press. An operation of this scale is needed to promote the political leg of the triumvirate into existing power structures and entrench domination by a privileged oligarchy.

For this reason I tend to agree with the medialens approach of raising awareness. It reminds me of Orwell's tale about when he got the idea to write Animal Farm. He saw the little boy whipping the cart-horse down a country lane and he thought to himself: "if only the cart-horse realized how much more powerful he was than the little boy he'd no longer be able to treat him in such a cruel manner." He carried the metaphor in his head for six years throughout the Spanish civil war, before he could write the story down. As a writer, Orwell tended to look for metaphors to explain things. In his mind the little boy represented oligarchic controlling elites and the cart-horse was the ordinary people. He wrote Animal Farm to raise awareness amongst ordinary people of how they were being controlled. I tend to regard medialens as a similarly motived endeavour.

Interestingly, Orwell pointed out that the pigs became just like the human masters before, which mirrors what Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx observed in the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848. Basically that popular revolutions occur throughout history but the people that assume power begin to behave just like those that they overthrew.

I don't think the triumvirate will be dislodged from power by force, but I do think its ability to deceive is going to be reduced by new technologies, raising awareness, and genuinely democratic interaction of ideas. Alternative news media will have a role in this, but so does raising awareness of what is wrong with the existing system of social control by the privileged-class dominant triumvirate. I don't see the two activities as mutually exclusive but complimentary in nature and purpose.

Cheers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto
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Re: Exchange with Daniel Simpson re Blair's 'attack' on The Independent

Posted by Peter Fainton on June 16, 2007, 12:29 pm, in reply to "Re: Exchange with Daniel Simpson re Blair's 'attack' on The Independent"
User logged in as: peter fainton

Thanks John. As I said earlier: "I share your view that there are 'structural' problems which are systemic in our society. There is a holy trinity or three-legged stool upon which our social control system operates. This is business, political and media in a mutually symbiotic relationship which is class-based in origin. Business finances the political leg and promotes it through its own media corporations. The constitutional monarchy provides the heredity institutions within which the political leg of the triumvirate operates and the media role is to promote the establishment world view."

This triumvirate forms what Gramsci would term a 'Dominant Social Group' that essentially manages society as a whole - a social control mechanism.

As Gramsci noted: a leading social group aspires to and maintains hegemony:

"...the supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as 'domination' and as 'intellectual moral leadership'. A social group dominates antagonistic groups, which it tends to 'liquidate', or to 'subjugate' perhaps even by armed force; it leads kindred or allied groups."

In the UK, access to a small number of millionaires who are prepared to exchange substantial sums of money for peerages is an essential feature of a 'leading social group.' The money is used to brainwash inferior social groups in order to secure their subjugation by peaceful means, known as elections. The media perform an essential role in this process, as John Dewey noted:

"The smoothest road to control of political conduct is by control of opinion."

When a leading social group establishes dominance then all the tools of state are at their disposal and may be deployed to control inferior social groups through various methods of coercion. Gramsci observes:

"The school as a positive educative function, and the courts as a repressive and negative educative function, are the most important state activities in this sense: but, in reality, a multitude of other so-called private initiatives and activities tend to the same end - initiatives and activities which form the apparatus of the political and cultural hegemony of the ruling classes."

And:

"A study of how the ideological structure of a dominant class is actually organised: namely the material organisation aimed at maintaining, defending and developing the theoretical or ideological 'front'. Its most prominent part is the press in general: publishing houses (which have an implicit and explicit programme and are attached to a particular tendency), political newspapers, periodicals of every kind, specific, literary, philological, popular, etc., various periodicals down to parish bulletins...The press is the most dynamic part of this ideological structure, but not the only one. Everything which influences or is able to influence public opinion, directly or indirectly, belongs to it: libraries, schools, associations and clubs of various kinds, even architecture and the layout and names of streets...Besides providing a living historical model of such a structure, it would accustom one to a more cautious and exact estimate of the forces acting in society."

A dominant social group can be said to be legitimate when it deploys the whole range of coercive methods of the state and successfully induces passivity within the inferior social groups of the wider public within that society.

The media perform an essential role in providing the sensational narrative which has been designed to explain the actions and motives of the dominant social group to those from inferior and subjugated classes.
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So I tend to agree with you that 'tinkering' with elements of journalistic presentation is not really going to address the wider structural issues of entrenched, unaccountable power of the triumvirate or how they use their resources to establish dominance and social control over the wider population.

As Spengler noted the role of the media is crucial in establishing dominance of the triumvirate political leg:

"... the "contemporary" English-American politics have created through the press a force-field of world-wide intellectual and financial tensions in which every individual unconsciously takes up the place alloted to him, so that he must think, will and act as a ruling personality somewhere or other in the distance thinks fit... Man does not speak to man; the press and its associate, the electrical news-service, keep the waking consciousness of whole peoples and continents under a deafening drum-fire of theses, catchwords, standpoints, scenes, feelings, day-by-day and year-by-year, so that every Ego becomes a mere function of a monstrous intellectual something."[3]

"Today we live so cowed under bombardment of this intellectual artillery that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has accomplished its task so well that the objects sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed. What is truth? For the multitude, that which it continually reads and hears… The public truth of the moment, which alone matters for effects and successes in the fact-world, is today a product of the Press. What the Press wills, is true. Its commanders evoke, transform, interchange truths. Three weeks of Press work, and the “truth” is acknowledged by everybody."[4]

"No tamer has his animals more under his power... The reader neither knows, nor is allowed to know, the purposes for which he is used, nor the role that he is to play. A more appalling caricature of freedom of thought cannot be imagined. Foremerly, man did not dare to think freely. Now he dares, but cannot; his will to think is only a willingness to think to order, and this is what he feels is his liberty. The dictature of party leaders supports itself upon the press. The competitors strive by means of money to detach readers - nay, peoples - en masse from the hostile allegiance and bring them under their own mind-training. And all that they learn in this mind-training is what is considered that they should know - a higher will puts together the picture of their world for them."[5]
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Of course alternative media promotes a different world view than corporate media because it has different objectives. Corporate media exists to establish dominance and social control over whole societies in the interests of the triumvirate.

http://peterfainton.typepad.com/peter_faintons_blog/2007/01/dominant_social.html
http://peterfainton.typepad.com/peter_faintons_blog/2007/06/oswald_spengler.html

[johnwhilley]

[johnwhilley]

Daniel asked if I'd post the contents of this e-mail to me, which I'm pleased to do.

John

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Thanks for your email John,

It's been helpful for me to reflect on these issues and your openness to discussion has made for an enjoyable and ultimately insightful exchange. It's heartening to have moved beyond our initial sparring to serious consideration of each other's arguments and a willingness to go beyond simply defending our positions.

To clarify mine, I don't quibble with structural analysis for the sake of it, or question its ultimate utility, or think its proponents are misguided. I'm just a stickler for accuracy, I suppose, although I'm as prone as anyone else to lapsing into hyperbole when I think I'm on the side of the angels, as the hard-boiled old pro who taught me reporting used to put it.

As important as I think it is to emphasise the structural constraints on journalists, I also think it's vital not to overstate what we might think we know about them. Or to lapse into simplistic "us and them" thinking, which is why I'm keen to encourage people to consider how to put their case in a way that supports the development of more insightful journalism. This necessarily involves an engagement with the process of reporting and ways in which it might be differently codified to unembed it from its current framework (which basically consists of relaying to us what those with power are doing, saying about what they're thinking, or planning to do next). Above all, though, we need to encourage more people to bring to light the facts from which less embedded narratives are constructed. That means primary reporting, which is of value, even if the reporter doesn't follow through their work to the conclusion that others might if they were to produce something more akin to commentary or analysis. Ideally, though, there'd be a way of defining the job of the journalist that both keeps it focused on reporting and builds a different range of assumptions into how it's presented. I don't think it's quite as simple as Peter suggests when he says "alternative media tend to focus on the interests of ordinary people who suffer the consequences of established power", not least because the world doesn't neatly categorise itself into powerful and powerless, or oppressors and oppressed, but I would agree that this is the sort of prioritisation that's needed to produce journalism that supports more activist politics without needing in itself to be activist.

I suppose that's something I've always found difficult to understand about Media Lens - it criticises the liberal media for not being radical media, which they themselves don't seriously claim or want to be, for all that they may like to assume the mantle from time to time (such as when Blair decides to lash out at the smallest circulation mainstream daily in the country). Nevertheless, there are many points on which we can agree and I certainly share the stated aim of this site's editors (which I quoted earlier). Thanks again to them for providing the space for these sorts of discussions to take place and to you and Peter for taking the time to share your thoughts and consider my points. I've appreciated the opportunity to reflect on these issues and to remember why I started reading Media Lens in the first place.

Best wishes,

Daniel