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People still cling to the idea that we have a liberal news bias in the media – Let’s look to the problem of global warming in an example from Media Lens.
“[...] Equally disturbing is the variation in media performance across the globe. A wide-ranging Reuters study on the prevalence of climate scepticism in the world’s media – Poles Apart – The international reporting of climate scepticism – focused on newspapers in Brazil, China, France, India, the UK and the USA. The periods studied were February to April 2007 and mid-November 2009 to mid-February 2010 (a period that included the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen and ‘Climategate’). Remarkably, the study concluded that climate scepticism is ‘predominantly an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon’, found most frequently in US and British newspapers:
‘In general the UK and the US print media quoted or mentioned significantly more sceptical voices than the other four countries. Together they represented more than 80% of the times such voices were quoted across all six countries.’
The study concluded:
‘In general, the data suggests a strong correspondence between the perspective of a newspaper and the prevalence of sceptical voices within it, particularly in the opinion pages. By most measures (but not all), the more right-leaning tend to have more such voices, the left-leaning less.’
But in all ten UK newspapers studied, there was an increase ‘both in the absolute numbers of articles with sceptical voices in them and the percentage of articles with sceptical voices in them’.
And so we find that Britain and the US – the two countries responding most aggressively to alleged ‘threats’ to human security in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – are also the two countries least interested in responding to the very real threat of climate change.”
Could it be that because we are actually securing access to fossil sources that we’re not really focusing on the downside of their use?
“As the Reuters study suggests, media reporting is heavily influenced by editorial stance which, in turn, is heavily influenced by commercial interests. In October, the former Daily Star journalist Richard Peppiatt told the Leveson inquiry into the culture and ethics of the British press the truth about about the UK’s newsroom culture:
‘In approximately 900 newspaper bylines I can probably count on fingers and toes the times I felt I was genuinely telling the truth, yet only a similar number could be classed as outright lies. This is because as much as the skill of a journalist today is about finding facts, it is also, particularly at the tabloid end of the market, about knowing what facts to ignore. The job is about making the facts fit the story, because the story is almost pre-defined.
‘Laid out before you is a canon of ideologically and commercially driven narratives that must be adhered to. The newspaper appoints itself moral arbiter, and it is your job to stamp their worldview on all the journalism you do… The ideological imperative comes before the journalistic one – drugs are always bad, British justice is always soft.’
Peppiatt noted:
‘Tabloid newsrooms are often bullying and aggressive environments, in which dissent is simply not tolerated. It is difficult to stand up and walk out the door with a mortgage to pay, knowing another opportunity is unlikely to be waiting beyond.’
The issue that is not being discussed by Leveson is the extent to which these observations generalise to the ‘quality’ corporate media, and why. By contrast, in soft-pedalling the level of interference from owners and advertisers, the Guardian’s Nick Davies wrote:
‘Journalists with whom I have discussed this agree that if you could quantify it, you could attribute only 5% or 10% of the problem to the total impact of these two forms of interference.’ (Davies, Flat Earth News, Vintage 2008, p.22)
Compare this with corporate escapee Peppiatt’s unfettered conclusion:
‘Capitalism is trampling on journalism.’
I happen to agree with this statement. The answer – I suggest more outlets like Al-Jazeera the BBC and the CBC that, although still heavily influenced by corporate and government pressure, they can occasionally still report the truth of matters.
Like this:
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.
Governments keep secrets. Some important, some not so important. Hopefully with the ushering in of a second major “leaks” site governments around the world will begin to revise their agendas with the threat of pubic examination of the actions they commit and suppress “for interests of the state”.
“A former co-worker of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange plans to launch a rival website Monday called Openleaks that will help anonymous sources deliver sensitive material to public attention.
In a documentary by Swedish broadcaster SVT, to be aired Sunday and obtained in advance by The Associated Press, former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg said the new website will work as an outlet for anonymous sources.”
More is better. The efforts to smear/silence Julian Assange have kicked into overdrive and rest assured, Berg will be under similar pressure as well.
“The WikiLeaks site has come under attack, while Assange, who is now in a British jail fighting extradition to Sweden on sex crime allegations, has been threatened. Swiss Postfinance, MasterCard Inc., Visa Inc., PayPal Inc. and others have cut ways to send donations to the group, impairing its ability to raise money.”
Clearly, you can see which side Corporate interests lie. It is unsurprising, as Corporations like States have many ugly secrets that they do not want the public to know about. Wikileaks is a grassroots organization, and I suggest you support an agency (see the side bar for links to the main and mirror wikileaks sites)that is dedicated to increasing the publics knowledge of the workings of their governments. The idea of government for the people by the people should be more than just a mumbled platitude.
Update: Find the openleaks page here, nothing to see yet but a logo.
Busy weekend folks, blogging was low on the list of priorities. Therefore I steal the Media Lens Email alert and repost it for your viewing pleasure. It is a meaty one, many links and a nice take down of the corporate media.
MEDIA ALERT: WIKILEAKS – THE SMEAR AND THE DENIAL
PART 1 – THE SMEAR
“Journalists don’t like WikiLeaks”, Hugo Rifkind notes in The Times, but “the people who comment online under articles do… Maybe you’ve noticed, and been wondering why. I certainly have.” (Hugo Rifkind Notebook, ‘Remind me. It’s the red one I mustn’t press, right?,’ The Times, October 26, 2010)
Rifkind is right. The internet has revealed a chasm separating the corporate media from readers and viewers. Previously, the divide was hidden by the simple fact that Rifkind’s journalists – described accurately by Peter Wilby as the “unskilled middle class” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/dec/10/comment.pressandpublishing) – monopolised the means of mass communication. Dissent was restricted to a few lonely lines on the letter’s page, if that. Readers were free to vote with their notes and coins, of course. But in reality, when it comes to the mainstream media, the public has always been free to choose any colour it likes, so long as it’s corporate ‘black’. The internet is beginning to offer some brighter colours.
If Rifkind is confused, answers can be found between the lines of his own analysis:
“With WikiLeaks, with the internet at large, power is democratised, but responsibility remains the preserve of professionals.”
This echoes Lord Castlereagh’s insistence that “persons exercising the power of the press” should be “men of some respectability and property”. (Quoted, James Curran and Jean Seaton, Power Without Responsibility – The Press And Broadcasting in Britain, Routledge, 1991, p.13)
And it is with exactly this version of “responsibility” that non-corporate commentators are utterly fed up. We are, for example, tired of the way even the most courageous individuals challenging even the most appalling crimes of state are smeared as “irresponsible”.
Thus, Rifkind describes WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as “a frighteningly amoral figure”. In truth, journalists find Assange a frighteningly +moral+ figure. Someone willing to make an enemy of the world’s leading rogue state in order to expose the truth about the horrors it has inflicted on Afghanistan and Iraq is frightening to the compromised, semi-autonomous employees of corporate power. Assange’s courage is the antidote to their poison.
A separate Times editorial comments:
“Nowhere in WikiLeaks’s self-serving self publicity is there a judgment of what the organisation is achieving for the Iraqi nation, and what it hopes to achieve… Its personnel are partisans intervening in the security affairs of Western democracies and their allies, with a culpable heedlessness of human life.” (Leader, ‘Exercise in Sanctimony; The release of military files by WikiLeaks is partisan and irresponsible,’ The Times, October 25, 2010)
Again, the truth is reversed – it is The Times, together with virtually the entire mass media, that is notable for its “heedlessness of human life”, for its endorsement of the West’s perennial policy: attack, bomb, invade, torture, kill based on any crass pretext that can be got past the public. As WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson politely told the WSWS website this week:
“The media is getting much too close to the military industry. They are not following the changing moods of the general public who are increasingly opposed to the wars.” (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/wiki-n02.shtml)
In the Daily Mail, Edward Heathcoat-Amory’s article raised the important question:
“Paranoid, anarchic. Is WikiLeaks boss a force for good or chaos?”
After all, “The Wikileaks supremo lives a bizarre peripatetic life, with no house and few belongings…” He also has “disciples” whom “he ruthlessly manipulates”. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1297917/Is-Wikileaks-boss-Julian-Assange-force-good-chaos.html)
As for Assange’s motivation: “His critics says he’s motivated by a desire for personal publicity.”
Like Rifkind, Heathcoat-Amory is appalled by Assange’s lack of “ethical judgments”, his “cult of secrecy, with no accountability to anyone”. Lack of accountability can indeed be a problem. Heathcoat-Amory, it should be mentioned, is of the Heathcoat-Amory Baronetcy, whose humble “family seat” was at Knightshayes Court in Tiverton, Devon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightshayes_Court
In The Times, passionately pro-Iraq war commentator David Aaronovitch recalls the main theme of his questions to Assange: “from where did WikiLeaks derive its authority and to whom was it accountable”. And from where exactly does The Times derive its authority? To whom is +it+ responsible? Its advertisers? Rupert Murdoch? Aaronovitch continued:
“And this is where something strange happened. Questioners wanted to know from Assange just how he and his team decided which documents to publish, which to redact, which to leave unpublished… Not only would Assange not answer these questions, it was almost as though he regarded them as illegitimate… I could tell that the overwhelming reaction was surprise at Assange’s refusal to engage in any discussion about himself as anything other than an uncaped crusader.” (Aaronovitch, ‘Enigmatic WikiLeaks chief keeps his guard up,’ The Times, October 2, 2010)
Strange indeed, because in fact Assange has addressed these questions numerous times (See here for a recent example: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/26/wikileaks_founder_julian_assange_on_iraq). Aaronovitch focused on Assange’s jacket, his shirt, his shoes – “incredibly long and pointy black winkle pickers”. The very fact of the focus suggested something was not quite right. The unsubtle implication: Assange was unsavoury, strange, sinister.
A Daily Mail reporter described Assange as “somewhat bizarre-looking”.
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1323433/Murder-rape-final-proof-Britain-fought-shaming-war.html)
An Independent news report referred to the “sometimes erratic behaviour of Wikileaks’ founder”. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/secret-war-at-the-heart-of-wikileaks-2115637.html)
In an interview with ABC News (Australia), the Independent’s Robert Fisk derided Assange as “some strange code-breaker from Australia”. (http://is.gd/gzdKc)
Dan Jones wrote in the Evening Standard: “Assange is slippery. He is a master of the moral non sequitur… Do we really want the definition of what constitutes the public interest resting in the hands of a highly politicised neo-anarchist like Assange?” (Jones, ’There are limits to the freedom of the internet,’ Evening Standard, August 2, 2010)
Again, the level of self-awareness hovered around zero.
The Daily Telegraph observed: “the publication of classified documents risks endangering the lives of both soldiers and those who collaborate with them.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/8084891/Wikileaks-A-very-leaky-argument.html)
+Failure+ to publish the documents risks the lives of the inevitable next target of the US-UK killing machine in Iran, or Yemen, or Syria, or Venezuela. At this point, the only people capable of stopping the “coalition” is the public they are supposed to represent.
The New York Times’ Hit Piece Read the rest of this entry »
Behaving as media should.
Whistle-blowers usually take great risks to get out information to the public. I suspect that it was not WikiLeaks fault that this individual has been arrested, but rather a reverse engineering by the US military of who had access to what and where.
“The army intelligence specialist charged with leaking U.S. military secrets to the WikiLeaks website has been moved from Kuwait to a military jail in Virginia.
In a statement issued Friday, the U.S. army said Pte. Bradley Manning was flown Thursday to Quantico Marine Base, where he will be held while awaiting trial for leaking top-secret military intelligence to WikiLeaks, a site devoted to publishing leaked government and other sensitive documents.”
Mr. Manning, allegedly, has been a very naughty and very busy bee, apparently he is also responsible for the video from the gun cameras of attack helicopters shooting up civilians in Iraq along with the thousands of documents made available on WikiLeaks.
“White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the leak of tens of thousands of secret military documents already has jeopardized the lives of Afghans working with the U.S. and its war allies.”
If our media had actually been doing its job and reporting about what was happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, we would not have had the need for this particular leak. Instead through our journalistic mandarins continue to go meekly through their routines of obedience toward elite power. Journalism is not performing its original function any more, that is bringing the news to the people. Battered by calls for “objectivity” and “balance” what we get is a tendentious smear of propaganda; this vile pap masquarading as “news” for consumption by the public.
A side note, Mr.Manning will probably be publicly drawn and quartered for his heroic actions Al Jazeera opines in their article about the WikiLeaks source:
“In a statement, the defence department said Manning was transfered to the US “due to a potentially lengthy pre-trail confinement because of the complexity of the charges and an ongoing investigation.”
Our correspondent said that the US military wants to use Manning to send a message to future whistleblowers.
“If you violate the trust of security clearance, you will be prosecuted,” she said.”
A rational decision by the US military, but I do not think it will really help their security situation much in the long run. Too much malfeasance, for too long involving so many individuals, one will always have the temerity to challenge the system. This may not have happened if our media was less complacent when it came to analyzing and presenting facts about the current military imbroglios. There is some hope though.
The media is being slowly replaced, people can see the inherent bias in the system and now are cross checking and consulting many sources for a better view of what is happening in the world. So when I hear the newspapers bleating about their costs going up and advertisers leaving them I have no sympathy. If they did their job, people would buy their product. As is, who needs to see elite opinion reiterated for the nth time only in a different medium?
I never write posts during the week, but I saw this and had to get it up it is Robert Fowler’s speech to the Canada 150 conference. What he says is what most people want to have happen in the middle east; at least until politics happens
Robert Fowler’s speech to the Canada 150 conference.
A paradigm for reading news and following events that should really become more popular. Triangulation. That grab the same story from several feeds and see what is reported and emphasized and more importantly, what is *not* reported in the story in question.
In our case we have the instance of Hakimullah Mehsud either being allegedly dead or really just doing fine. The answer depends on whether you look at the report from the CBC, or the report from English Al-Jazeera.
The CBC says:
“The militant leader’s death would be an important success for both Pakistan, which has been battling the Pakistani Taliban, and the U.S., which blames Mehsud for a recent deadly bombing against the CIA in Afghanistan.
The army’s disclosure came shortly after Pakistani state television, citing unnamed “official sources,” reported that Mehsud died in Orakzai, an area in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region where he was reportedly being treated for his injuries.
“We have these reports coming to us,” army spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas told The Associated Press. “We are investigating whether it is true or wrong.”
Versus
Al-Jazeera:
“There has been a call to a local television station and Qari Hussein, a senior commander of the Pakistani Taliban, is said to have denied reports of the death of Hakimullah Mehsud,” Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said.
“There is no concrete evidence to suggest that Hakimullah Mehsud is dead, but there is also some suspicion because there has been no video message to prove that he is alive.”
The AFP news agency reported that a senior Taliban spokesman had said that Mehsud was “alive and safe”.
Now, it is hard to evaluate who has a more accurate reports, as who has information about the sources. We have to base much of our news on the veracity of sources that we cannot easily verify.
So is the Taliban leader alive or dead? Who do you believe?
The Arbourist
The Intransigent One
Mystro
bleatmop
Your opinions...