Cook: media review, the Guardian and covering the Israeli lobby

Due credit to Peter Oborne's Dispatches film this week for offering a rare mainstream glimpse into the power and influence of the pro-Israeli lobby in Britain. The collective parliamentary Friends of Israel were duly named, a selection of the wealthy Zionist network got listed and a fairly damning stab was made at the BBC hierarchy for running scared of the all-pervasive lobby. Beyond the usual misrepresentation of Israel's attacks on Lebanon and Gaza as 'responsive' actions, Oborne shone a surprisingly bold light on the collective operation, providing a reasonable basis for further, fuller media investigation.

The standard backlash has, of course, begun, with warning claims that the programme will fuel anti-Semitic feeling. Uncomfortably for the Zionist scaremongers and the wider hasbara network, such critics will also have to handle the awkward sentiments of those Jews interviewed in the film who completely reject Israel's oppressive behaviour. One noted rabbi was unequivocal in condemning Israel as "an apartheid state." He, of course, brave man, awaits the "self-hating Jew" denunciation to come.

But why did it take a softish Tory-type like Oborne to make this programme? Why not a 'crusading' liberal type, someone like the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland? The answer lies somewhere in the 'don't-delve-too-deeply' reticence of the liberal media itself.

Sure, we had Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger recalling in Oborne's film how he had been 'visited' and leaned upon by lobby elites to spike stories critical of Israel - with Rusbridger coyly assuming the mantle of champion editor in his defence of a two-page Guardian feature on the 'separation wall'.

But, beyond doing what the Guardian and others should be doing as standard - reporting the occupation, the wall, the siege of Gaza and so on - where is the wider and more sustained exposure of this most powerful lobby by our 'vanguard' media?

Which lack of editorial and journalistic attention returns us to the legitimising function of Guardian-liberalism.

Freelance-independent journalist Jonathan Cook has just produced a fine comparative review of Flat Earth News, by Nick Davies, and Newspeak from the Media Lens editors David Edwards and David Cromwell. I cannot recommend Cook's article strongly enough, taking apart Davies's ten point thesis on why daily reportage has been reduced to "churnalism", while strongly commending Newspeak with its more searching study of the media's systematic service to corporate power.

A key illustrative part of Cook's essay examines the Guardian's war positioning, showing that the issue is not just about the extent of critical output over Iraq and Afghanistan, but the ways in which that comment forms part of a safe set of assumptions about 'our' leaders' base 'moral' intentions. It's an assumed consensus, notes Cook, shared across the media 'spectrum':

"One of the problems for dissident journalists that very effectively excludes them from expressing an opinion of this sort in the corporate media is what might be termed a manufactured “climate of assumptions”. This climate of assumptions is shared by all western media whatever their ostensible political orientations. Thus, the Guardian, like the rightwing Telegraph or Mail, holds that western governments are led by those who have the best interests at heart not only of their own people, but of other peoples around the globe and even of the planet itself. In Iraq, Tony Blair and George Bush made mistakes – they thought there were WMD when there were not; they misread the intelligence; they misunderstood international law – but they did not act in bad faith or actively pursue goals that they knew to be illegal, immoral or damaging to the delicate fabric of global relations. They are not war criminals, even when all the evidence shows that this is precisely what they are.

Edwards and Cromwell make a useful point about the media’s vital role in reinforcing a set of assumptions that “our” leaders are morally superior to “their” leaders. “Controlling what we think is not solely a matter of controlling what we know – it is also about influencing who we respect and who we find ridiculous. Western leaders are typically reported without adjectives preceding their names... The leader of Venezuela, by contrast, is ‘controversial left-wing president Hugo Chavez’.”

In practice, this means that, although the British liberal media have run commentary hugely critical of the Iraq war and of Blair, the criticism is almost entirely restricted to the government’s handling of the details of the war rather than questioning the war’s goals or the motives of those who led it. Jonathan Steele has been one of the war’s harshest opponents in the Guardian but has always maintained that Blair and Bush, and their neocon advisers, wanted to bring democracy to the Middle East. They were badly advised and unrealistic in adopting that position, says Steele, but they were never less than idealistic. They may have used immoral means (doctored intelligence and so on) but they never pursued immoral ends. Or as Edwards and Cromwell argue, “balance” in the commentary pages “tends to involve presenting a ‘spectrum’ of views ranging from those heavily supportive of state policy to those mildly critical”."

Continuing his critique of Flat Earth News, Cook also specifies the purpose and appeal of maintaining the contracts of selective dissident writers:

"If Davies ignores the fact that there are many critical thinkers excluded from our media, he still has one trump card up his sleeve. How do those who support the propaganda model explain the existence of dissident writers in the British liberal media? If Chomsky’s theory is right, how is it that Seumas Milne and George Monbiot write for the Guardian, Robert Fisk does so in the Independent, and John Pilger has a platform in the small magazine the New Statesman?

It should be noted that this list is almost exhaustive. Genuine progressive writers are extremely thin on the ground, even in the liberal media. (Rightly, I suspect, Fisk would not want to be included alongside these other progressives. His key concern, justice for the peoples of the Middle East, is not unrelated to fairly traditional liberal Arabist positions long adopted by officials in the Foreign Office, though ignored by other branches of the British establishment. He is certainly on the extreme margins of this group, but closer to them than he is to Pilger or Milne.) In fact, the inclusion of a few progressive thinkers in the liberal media, it can be argued, actually serves its corporate interests. Using the propaganda model, it is possible, I would suggest, to identify several goals newspapers like the Guardian and Independent achieve by including occasional dissident voices.

First, they gain extra circulation by attracting a small but still significant readership of progressives. In doing so, they also diminish the danger that these readers might search elsewhere for more consistently progressive news and commentary. A trend that, if realised, might eventually lead to the emergence of more prestigious radical internet publications, or to the development of different kinds of new media that could challenge the power of the corporate media. A fringe benefit, at least for the corporate interests behind our media, is that progressive readers who are persuaded to buy liberal newspapers because they include a Monbiot or a Milne are likely over time to have their views tempered simply from being constantly bombarded with the non-progressive news and views contained in the rest of the paper.

Second, the existence of dissident writers in the liberal media usefully persuades its core readership that their newspaper of choice is genuinely liberal and tolerant, and that it offers a platform even to those who subscribe to heterodox opinions. It reassures the bulk of readers that the newspaper is upholding the values it espouses. Importantly for the liberal readership it offers what might be termed the “smugness factor”: I do not agree with you, but I’ll defend to the death your right to be wrong.

And third, the inclusion of a few progressive voices – and the extra readers they [sic] buy the paper – actually comes at very little cost to the corporate interests the media represent. The arguments adopted by dissident writers challenging the goals of western power sound so alien to readers daily tutored in the manufactured climate of assumptions that they are hard to stomach for most readers. The very “strangeness” of such views simply highlights the extent to which they have been excluded in the first place. Because Monbiot or Milne’s columns appear in an ideological vacuum, because they remain isolated dissidents surrounded by more conventional opinions, their arguments appear to most readers as extremist, driven by conspiracy theories, or crackpot, and are therefore easily dismissed."

Having identified the expedience of such dissident inclusions, Cook goes on to consider our liberal-investigative media's failure to address and expose the Israeli lobby. Again, he concludes that, while Flat Earth News has singled-out the lobby as a particular "electric fence" issue, Davies's theory is not up to the job of explaining why this is so. Endorsing Newspeak, Cook places the reasons within a more structural context than simply one of editorial fear and journalistic compliance. It's not just the avoidance of the Israeli lobby, argues Cook, but the deeper set of assumptions held by the liberal media about corporate life and, ipso facto, all big powerful lobbies that deters or precludes serious media challenge and exposure:

"What is it, does he [Davies] think, that makes the Israel lobby so powerful and able to exert such absolute control over its favoured cause? How is this lobby capable of exercising so much influence when the size of Britain’s Jewish population is so small and Israel’s significance to the UK relatively marginal? And if the pro-Israel lobby can shape British (and western) media coverage so decisively, why does Davies not presume that other more obviously important lobbies – particularly the banking and finance lobby, and the military industries lobby – are able to exert at least as much, if not more, influence?"

"And here lies the crux of the problem with Davies’ theory. In promoting a view of journalistic failure that can be explained only by laziness, cost-cutting and public relations pressures he grapples with the visible but marginal problems of our media. The much larger structural issues – the media’s selection processes, its ideological strait-jacket, its profound connectedness to the interests of a corporate capitalist society – are invisible to him. Our media cannot engage in a debate about the merits of the current orthodoxy – that corporate capitalism represents the summit of human material and moral achievement – precisely because its very rationale depends on the maintenance of that orthodoxy."

The value of Cook's article for media students and interested others lies not just in his sharp comparative review of these two books, but in his impressive abilty to match the theoretical critique with first-hand experience and understanding of what's actually going on inside top media offices. This ranges from a very cold-comfort message about Davies's and the Guardian-liberal media's inability to even see the corporate imperatives shaping media output to a final alert on just how wedded the Israeli media is to the core aims of Zionism.

All of which requires not just more searching exposés of the pro-Israel lobby, but of the liberal media's own inhibitions in asking itself why this and other powerful lobbies get to exert the power they do.

John

The Guardian's fig-leaf function

A question.

The capitalist system we live under is sustained by the vital propaganda function of the mainstream media. The media is the message. The liberal component of that media, so we're told, is free and open to debate/self-criticism on these matters. Yet, if critical journalists able to see through this fiction are conducting such discussions, we should be seeing significant exposure of them in the 'most open' of that liberal media, the Guardian and Independent. It's not there. Why not?

A series of (rather intense) exchanges appeared recently at the Media Lens message board regarding the value and effect of dissident writers appearing in the Guardian and other liberal media.

In one such thread, I was asked to consider the 'regular' appearance of anti-war and other 'critical' material found in the Guardian's pages and to recognise the 'usefulness' of such content.

My principal response was that, yes, indeed, there is evidence of much instructive writing in these organs, but that:

a) the appearance of such is always token and well policed; and
b) we have to recognise the legitimising function of such 'critical' inclusions - the 'fig-leaf factor'.

In short, the Guardian, Independent and their peer media are a key part of the propagandist myth that we have an 'open media' to complement our 'open democracy'. In truth, we have neither.

The Guardian's principal writers are all there precisely because they subscribe to, and believe in, those falsehoods. The inclusion of George Monbiot - as with Robert Fisk at the Independent - offers a more 'radical' veneer, feeding the convenience for much of the left that these are primary and indispensable spaces for dissenting views, when, in fact, the space is token, managed and non-threatening to the bigger corporate order of which these organs are a part.

Such writers do often hit home with excellent articles. But, the crucial question persists: where's the critical analysis of the media industry and their own appointed roles within it?

As illustrated multiple times in Media Lens Alerts, the ML books Newspeak and Guardians of Power and contributions to the ML board, such writers have a blind spot when it comes to seriously dissecting this 'awkward' issue.

Against this view, some advise a balance sheet analysis of 'good' and 'bad' Guardian content to help illustrate the Guardian's utility as a conduit of useful information. Perhaps. But, what would that, still subjective, exercise really prove, other than to show that the Guardian is carrying a range of views, some of which are instructive, but most of which are within the Guardian's comfortable boundaries?

What we can safely say from years of reading the 'good' content is that most of it is 'safely good', and rarely good enough to alarm those in power. The occasional serious leftist pieces that do appear are largely overshadowed by the Guardian's 'star' writers, such as Jonathan Freedland, Simon Tisdall and Polly Toynbee, all safely good, safely reliable, particularly over the war in Iraq and the current scaremongering on Iran.

Contrary and more critical anti-war voices do get their say. Yet, how radical is the Guardian in permitting anti-war expression over Iraq when most people were, from the outset, against the US/UK-led aggression?

In truth, much of the Guardian's anti-war 'dissent' has been of the soft-liberal variety, accompanied or smothered by editorial and main in-house journalist claims that the war was an 'error of judgement'. Laced with expressions of support for Blair/Blairism, countless leader comments (see below) rationalised the case for war without having to come out and openly endorse it. That's the kind of invaluable service to power the Guardian performs.

The fig-leaf function

Thus, the associated question: does leftist participation in that power-serving media serve to legitimise it, thereby neutralising dissidents' ability or willingness to challenge the massive corporate worldview such media supports?

That, in essence, is what's being asked of regular left-leaning Guardian columnists like George Monbiot.

Monbiot's green-related articles, in particular, provide a sharp reminder of the unfolding environmental calamity and the need for 'now' action. He also gets to the uncomfortable truth about comfortable green human behaviour, as in this illuminating comment from a recent article, We cannot change the world by changing our buying habits:

"So I wasn't surprised to see a report in Nature this week suggesting that buying green products can make you behave more selfishly than you would otherwise have done. Psychologists at the University of Toronto subjected students to a series of cunning experiments (pdf). First they were asked to buy a basket of products; selecting either green or conventional ones. Then they played a game in which they were asked to allocate money between themselves and someone else. The students who had bought green products shared less money than those who had bought only conventional goods.

The researchers call this the "licensing effect". Buying green can establish the moral credentials that license subsequent bad behaviour: the rosier your view of yourself, the more likely you are to hoard your money and do down other people.

Then they took another bunch of students, gave them the same purchasing choices, then introduced them to a game in which they made money by describing a pattern of dots on a computer screen. If there were more dots on the right than the left they made more money. Afterwards they were asked to count the money they had earned out of an envelope.

The researchers found that buying green had such a strong licensing effect that people were likely to lie, cheat and steal: they had established such strong moral credentials in their own minds that these appeared to exonerate them from what they did next. Nature uses the term "moral offset", which I think is a useful one.

So perhaps guilt is good after all. Campaigners are constantly told that guilt-tripping people is counterproductive: we have to make people feel better about themselves instead. These results suggest that this isn't very likely to be true. They also offer some fascinating insights into the human condition. Maybe the cruel old Christian notion of original sin wasn't such a bad idea after all."

It's a fine insight from the researchers and a timely reminder from Monbiot, published in a paper read by a supposedly discerning green public. The utility of the piece seems obvious. And it is. But it also suggested to me this extended thought (as noted at ML):

"The researchers decided to extend the test to the Guardian's editors.

They calculated how much fossil fuel advertising space they felt good about allowing in their paper, given their inclusions of George Monbiot's climate articles and other environmental coverage. Consistent with the inclinations of ethical consumers to purchase more carbon goods and services, the Guardian also displayed a marked feelgood tendency to permit extensive ad room for gas-guzzling cars, cheap flights and other consumer encouragements to destructive climate change.

Monbiot was reported to be thinking about discussing these fascinating insights into the Guardian's editorial condition in his next article."

Some still insist that Monbiot is doing an essential job in conveying the basic message of climate destruction and the need for urgent action. I agree. Indeed, the need for emergency measures are so critical that all such appeals to action should be welcomed. Yet, this makes it all the more vital to expose and challenge the Guardian's own facile claims to being a green vanguard.

Asking, likewise, whether Monbiot should quit the Guardian and devote his time to alternative media is not the issue. The question, rather, concerns his and others' readiness to include in that emergency discussion the big elephant in the room: the media and its legitimising function.

Inhabiting the mainstream

Yet, some still object. If the media is, indeed, the message, at least the message is getting through to those in most need of hearing it: the viewing public. This, they argue, includes the need to get the left's main figures, like Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky, into mainstream consciousness.

One such example cited in the Media Lens discussion was approval of Chomsky's appearance in a recent BBC Hardtalk interview. Yet, consider that Chomsky, one of the world's most prestigious and widely-followed intellectuals, was barely recognised or reported by that mainstream while visiting the UK recently. His appearance on Hardtalk - rather than Newsnight or an invite on to Question Time - allows the BBC to say it has 'covered Chomsky'. Leaving aside interviewer Stephen Sackur's thinly-veiled hostility on Hardtalk, the fig-leaf purpose of this inclusion should be obvious to anyone conversant with Chomsky's own work.

Note also that Chomsky generally doesn't do much open challenging from within the US mainstream, because, as he's often said, he's virtually ignored there, for obvious reasons.

However, there's a more fundamental point to Chomsky's 'participation' in the mainstream. When nominally permitted, he does direct his considerable intellectual thoughts via more popular outlets, which, as with other serious left writers, is commendable. But he also makes it his dedicated business to criticise and expose the mainstream and liberal media in the process.

Thus, there's no essential argument against any left voice having their say in the pages of the Guardian or the BBC. The issue concerns the cognitive understandings of those appearing there and the extent to which they are able to highlight and criticise that process.

It's also useful to remind ourselves just what often passes in the liberal media for 'regular' 'radical' content. Here's a little sample of that content (offered in a spirit of constructive criticism, rather than the heated discussion at Media Lens which followed its publication).

The article, Demanding a new British foreign policy, was posted at the Guardian's Comment is Free section by ML contributor David Wearing.

An apparently sincere and well-written statement, it sets out the case for, in essence, a more enlightened British foreign policy, accompanied by a call to activist engagement, yet speaks in a register of soft-liberal correctionism, safely palatable to other soft-left Guardian readers.

The suggestion of such lies in much of the key words and phrases used: “fresh start in foreign policy”; “our international relations”; “change foreign policy for the better”; “failure of the democratic system”. Not invalid as literal terms. But signifiers of a need to protect and correct 'our' 'lost', but otherwise legitimate, system of 'democracy'.

The intonation and essence: Britain's foreign policy is in need of urgent 'reform' and 'overhauling' in order to 'improve/restore' the “democratic deficit”.

Again, seemingly obvious. Yet, this is standard liberal-speak for avoiding real radical discussion of the true issue: corporate-determined 'democracy' and, by crucial extension, the liberal media's key part in maintaining that dominant order. Thus, any inclusion of the media's and, by significant example, the Guardian's own vital part in serving that political/foreign policy “deficit” is either unconsciously missing or intentionally avoided.

Wearing should be fairly commended for itemising nuclear disarmament, the arms trade, climate change, the greedy financial sector, Britain's aggressions in Iraq/Afghanistan and support for Israel (a note advocating Britain's support for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) might also have been appropriate here.)

The article's appeal, in this sense, for a more “enlightened" foreign policy seems beyond reproach, either from those who wish to see such 'improvements' or/and those who believe that such pieces, at least, help raise 'serious' debate on the matter. Thus, the article speaks as a set of 'noble concerns' felt across a range of 'decent opinion'. Again, all 'reasonable' liberal argument welcomed by the Guardian – indeed, sought out by it in this case, so we're told by the author.

Yet, content-wise, there's nothing particularly risqué in the suggestion points noted. They are all up for regular discussion in the Guardian. Though well-motivated, it's the classic liberal-left 'polemic' the Guardian delights in publishing, the definitive fig-leaf 'assault' on politicians or a 'deficient' policy, all helping to 'prove' the paper's 'left-on' credentials.

Seriously risqué dissection, on the other hand, would show how the Guardian itself has specifically contributed to Britain's foreign policy “deficit” through its war-rationalising editorials. The point was duly highlighted by the Media Lens Editors at the board discussion:

"A Guardian leader commented in 2004 that Iraq was “a country invaded in order to depose a cruel dictator and give its people a better life". (‘Harvest of death,’ Leader, The Guardian, December 6, 2004)

We're not sure that any of us should be supporting, in any shape or form, a newspaper that can write that. We could provide any number of similar examples. In 2005, a Guardian leader commented:

“While 2005 will be remembered as Tony Blair's Iraq election, May 5 is not a referendum on that one decision, however fateful, or on the person who led it, however controversial.” (Leader, ‘Once more with feeling,’ The Guardian, May 3, 2005)

The public’s “wounded anger” has “haunted this campaign”, they continued: “But does this mean that we recommend a vote against Labour? No."

Their conclusion:

“We believe that Mr Blair should be re-elected to lead Labour into a third term this week."
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050503_walking_over_corpses.php

How bad does it have to get before we refuse the crumbs of access offered by these toxic media?

Eds"

Even more risqué would be Editor Alan Rusbridger permitting any such criticism within the paper's own pages. That's the true content measure of dissent.

The net effect of this and other such output? The political class have been duly 'rebuked', the Guardian has reaffirmed its 'radical mantle' and 'comment remains free'.

In truth, comment is not so free for those who might more usefully try, in such pieces, to address the 'let's-not-go-there' link between Guardian output – editorials, articles, selective comment page writers – and the perpetuation of 'our' foreign policy aggressions.

Still, the objection persists that, at least, such 'useful' comment is being allowed a certain access via the Guardian and other liberal outlets. As another contributor insisted at ML: "I think the point is that “advocating a truly free and untainted journalism” is advocating an ideal."

It's a fair point. Yet, its' not so much about desiring the "ideal" as encouraging understanding that, with the whole corporate-fixed media calling the shots on what's permissible, reportable and viewable, any advance towards a media built on non-corporate principles will be a difficult and incremental process.

Significantly, we are seeing that shift just now with the decline in newspaper readership, in inverse relationship to people obtaining their information and influenced views from more independent online sources. Thus, the task of encouraging an alternative media lies not just in the optional sourcing of information, but in moving away from the left's comfortable dependency on nominal liberal-Guardian space.

This is not a case of wanting the Guardian and Independent to simply disappear. Rather, it's about how we might build towards something which transcends that corporate-determined media. The argument is not that dissenting voices shouldn't have their pieces published in the Guardian. Rather, it's a question of whether they have the willingness and/or freedom to openly criticise their host media - the hand that feeds - in the process.

The Guardian remains a vital arm of the propaganda system, serving to rationalise state aggression – which means supporting big power – and helping to police the parameters of safe comment/debate. The exposure of its crucial system-preserving function is, arguably, much more pressing than having that 'all-important' access for token and diluted comment.

Consider a scenario where people like Monbiot, Fisk and others did, individually and collectively, start to take on the issue in a serious and challenging way. Wouldn't that, and the potential reaction of the Guardian, be a significant contribution in itself to radical instruction?

Compassionate conduct

A last thought. Some of the discussion which took place at the Media Lens board regarding the above issues was conducted in a rather combative and, in places, openly hostile spirit. It's understandable. But not, on reflection, very satisfying. Positions are taken and defended with sincere conviction and the desire to make one's point. But that can often result in over-defensiveness and the feeling of personal attack. While endeavouring to restrict one's comments to the realm of constructive criticism, a certain hubris, real or perceived, often permeates such exchanges, serving to foster and entrench little animosities. Again, it's one of the by-products of cut-and-thrust debate. Yet, it makes this writer aware of the need to keep a vigilant check on how one engages in such criticism.

On which timely, and I suppose ironic, note, comes this little piece of compassionate wisdom on Socratic dialogue from Karen Armstrong, published at, yes, of course, the Guardian:

"Furthermore, a truly Socratic dialogue must be conducted with gentleness and without malice. It was a joint effort to obtain new understanding: you expressed yourself clearly as a gift to your debating partners, whose beautifully expressed arguments would, in turn, touch you at a profound level. Socrates once described himself as a midwife whose task was to help his conversation partner engender a new self. By learning to inhabit each other's point of view with honesty and generosity, participants were taken beyond themselves, realised that they lacked wisdom and longed for it, but knew that they were not what they ought to be."

John

*Much of the above was adapted from my comments and exchanges at Media Lens.

Palestinian firefighters in Scotland

Glasgow Palestine Human Rights Campaign were delighted by the visit last Saturday of eight firefighters from Nablus, accompanied by Scottish Fire Brigades Union organiser Ken Ross. The group are here on a month-long training exercise initiated by Ken and the FBU.

Ken was part of the STUC delegation which visited Nablus and other West Bank locations recently to document (view youtube film) the plight of Palestinians and compile a report on the case for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The subsequent motion to the STUC conference arising from the report was carried overwhelmingly.

It was particularly uplifting to have the Palestinian firefighters -none of whom have ever been out of their occupied land before - stand with us for pictures and exchanges on life in Nablus. GPHRC retain a special fondness for the city, particularly Balata refugee camp.

The assistance and hospitality of the FBU and other organising bodies helps illustrate the growing solidarity felt for the Palestinian people across Scottish civil society.

Likewise, visits by trade unions and other civil groups to the West Bank and Gaza are helping to illuminate the brutal and humiliating conditions of Palestinian life.

As one FBU member recalled following another recent visit:

"Israeli settlements, checkpoints, road closures, land seizures, military exclusion zones and unequal access to water. I instantly understood that the rest of the world is not being told about what is happening in Palestine.

"The wall and checkpoints impact on every aspect of daily life, turning the West Bank into one huge prison with people penned in like cattle, having to form queues in order to do routine chores such as shopping, working or even going for medical treatment.

"We saw the refugee camps in Bethlehem and Nablus, where thousands of families are packed together in conditions totally unsuited for human occupation. As a firefighter I could only imagine the horror of a property fire in these conditions. As a firefighter I also watched aghast as a fire engine, responding to an emergency call, was stopped and delayed at one of the checkpoints. Firefighters we met in Nablus told me this is not uncommon, nor is it uncommon for one of these vehicles to be detained for up to an hour. Pumps – and firefighters – also received bullet holes when providing emergency deliveries of water to hospitals.

"I carry these images with me, and everyone I meet will be told about them otherwise the Palestinians’ story and struggle for everyday existence and dignity will remain hidden and forgotten.

Kevin Brown, Regional Secretary"

The FBU's excellent film of this visit offers more graphic testimony of the occupation and pressing need for training and support for Palestinian firefighters.

John

Palestinian resistance: it's a rap

Sometimes (I may well have said this before) one just has to marvel at the wonderful stoicism and resistant spirit of the Palestinian community. I got a new dimension of that human enterprise last night watching the fine docu-film Slingshot Hip Hop (at my little cinema paradiso, the GFT).

Directed and part-produced by US-Palestinian Jackie Reem Salloum, it tracks, musically and politically, the daily endurances of young, aspiring rappers living under occupation and finding expression for their imprisonment through Palestinian hip hop. Listeners and viewers will be particularly impressed by the rich fusion of Arabic-Western beat and the poetic, literary language of Palestine that helps amplify the message of non-violent, politicised resistance.

Another poignant theme throughout the movie concerns the close connection developed between the variously featured rap artists in Gaza, the West Bank and Lyd inside Israel - or, as the rappers in "67" (Gaza/West Bank) call the latter, our brothers and sister still living in "48". We also get painful insights into the difficulties of being permanently trapped in Gaza and the longing of young Palestinians to simply ever visit Jerusalem.

Together, DAM and the other groups have built a mass following, providing release and a little sense of cool empowerment for Palestinian kids, male and female. The engaged and supported role of female rap artist, Abeer, gives added nuance to the negotiation of 'liberal' artistic expression in a still Islamic-based society.

In the post-film Q&A, the director and lead role rapper from Dam offered sobering accounts of life under occupation and Israeli obstructions in making the film - Salloum endured lengthy detentions on entering Israel and had her cameras broken by Israeli soldiers. But, with good grace, she dismisses it as token inconvenience compared to the daily grind and humiliations faced by the rappers and their families in the slums and refugee camps.

Salloum also made particular reference to the amazing calmness of Palestinians in the face of adversity, for example in being kept for endless hours at checkpoints.

It's a picture that helps break more of the Israeli-fed stereotypes of vengeful Palestinians. Indeed, as related, Palestinian rap is a virtuous model of peaceful, humanist appeal compared with much of the right-wing, aggressive version that predominates in Israel.

As the father of one of the film's rappers reminds us, peaceful cultural resistance is still the Palestinians' greatest asset.

John

*In loving memory of Jacqui

The Guardian and Blair: props for each other

You couldn't, as they say, make it up: Tony Blair for EU President.

From David Miliband and his Westminster clones to Guardian and other media aplogista, a preparatory case is being made to install Blair in any Lisbon-created post.

Yet, beyond sager nods to the death of satire, the latest exercise in making the unthinkable not only thinkable but spinningly attractive offers a reflection point on the very usefulness of the liberal media as a conduit of critical information and dissent.

The Guardian's comment pages are not only home to those who would have us support Blair, but also that seemingly vital space within which to conduct serious debate over the issue. While we might rightfully rail against those journalists seeking to excuse or 'rehabilitate' Blair, there's also the, less considered, problem of how 'dissenting' journalists help maintain the corporate order and nullify more expansive debate by using the Guardian and other liberal media as supposedly unimpeachable outlets.

Let's deal first with the apologists. Here's the Guardian's Jackie Ashley making the case for Blair's appointment in typically soul-contorting form:

"Is this [the EU] a rising new quasi-country, ready to shoulder its way more assertively on to a world stage dominated by the US and China? Or is it an undemocratic fix, which will fall apart unless it exercises tact and modesty? If you take the former view, then Blair – with all his faults – may be your man. If you take the latter, then it is essential the EU leaders choose a less obtrusive figure, a grey servant of the elected nation-state politicians who would then continue to dominate and represent this part of the globe.

"Like many, my first instinct is: not Blair, not at any price. I think the Iraq war was such a big error that, morally, nobody who led us into it should be able to return to a position of leadership. There should be some mistakes too big to recover from. But while that is satisfying to say, it is not quite the end of the matter. If politicians have to struggle with competing evils in an untidy world, so should the rest of us. The truth is that with a weakened economy, and in a declining quarter of a world menaced by global warming, terrorism and instability, Britain needs the EU – and needs it to work.

"He would not be able to drag Europe anywhere its main national politicians didn't want to be dragged. He'd have no army. He'd be able to start no wars. He'd be a persuader and a deal-maker only. On climate change, the Middle East peace process and Africa, he is on the right side of the argument. But on the financial boom and bust, he's been too close to the super-rich and is too free-market in general. Looking at the debates to come, rather than at the stained recent history, I conclude he comes out, on balance, just ahead."

The tortuous balancing of Blair's minimally-noted 'downsides' - nominally, his "error" over Iraq - against his considerably-noted 'upsides' - mainly, his 'non-Tory Euro enthusiasm' and 'assertive leadership qualities' - are achingly wrung-out until, finally, we get to Ashley's 'amazing' endorsement:

"On climate change, trade, the developing countries and human rights, we do need an assertive EU. So, although I'd have to grit my teeth and swallow my irritation, perhaps the notion of Blair as its mouthpiece, frontman and cheerleader is not, after all, the worst option. He would have no compunction about taking a non-elected presidency. As a Roman Catholic convert, he knows all about conclaves and leaders emerging with a puff of white smoke. This is one of those issues where there is no perfect outcome. To my amazement, I come down narrowly on the side of President Blair. But I still wish David Miliband would think again."

If the narrative here is about weighing Blair's 'political skills', the subtext is liberal 'pragmatism'; the 'more immediate need' to leave behind all those 'worn' and 'rhetorical' cries about Blair's lying and war crimes in order to deal with 'the case in hand'.

In similar selective form, Newsnight's (26 October 2009) main feature on the gathering objections to Blair's candidacy all refer to the machinations of party politics and speculations on which Euro elites he can count on. The big gaping bit in Blair's CV concerning war criminality is never discussed.

The nearest mention of such was Kirsty Wark asking one of the party spokesmen whether Blair has "too much baggage over Iraq?" As with Ashley's turgid rationalising in the Guardian, Wark's 'jousty' exchanges, alongside Michael Crick's jovial-style report, helped frame the issue as one of 'political cut-and-thrust', rather than one of moral disgrace, helping to turn Blair's part in mass murder into an irrelevant side issue.

We should, as a 'media-informed' public, be outraged at the very suggestion of Blair standing for public office rather than at the International Criminal Court. Instead, the liberal media keep us comfortably shielded from the real truth of Blair's "errors" and 'civilised interventions'.

But what of those Guardian and other liberal media writers who take objection to their peer apologists?

Responding in the same Guardian pages, George Monbiot not only denounces Blair but sees any Blair presidency as a potential opportunity to effect a citizen's arrest:

It's just possible that an investigating magistrate, like Baltasar Garzon, the Spanish judge who issued a warrant for the arrest of General Pinochet, would set the police on him. But our best chance of putting pressure on reluctant authorities lies in a citizen's arrest. To stimulate this process, I will put up the first £100 of a bounty (to which, if he gets the job, I will ask readers to subscribe), payable to the first person to attempt a non-violent arrest of President Blair. It shouldn't be hard to raise several thousand pounds. I will help set up a network of national arrest committees, exchanging information and preparing for the great man's visits. President Blair would have no hiding place: we will be with him wherever he goes.

It's an honourable indictment, seeking practical means of putting Blair in a dock at the Hague. Yet, for all its sincere content, Monbiot's piece, like so many others he's penned, fails to address the Guardian's own part in helping to keep people like Blair safe and the system intact.

As the Media Lens Editors argue at the site's message board:

Monbiot, like Mark Thomas, like Naomi Klein, in recent articles also in the Guardian, has nothing to say about the media, much less about the Guardian. This at a time when the corporate media, for the first time in 100 years, is losing ground to non-corporate, not-for-profit sources of information newly available on theinternet . For the first time in a century we have a realistic opportunity to support, build and entrench powerful non-corporate media able to challenge the worldview of the powerful as communicated endlessly through the Guardian, the Independent, the BBC and the rest. So why isn't it happening? Because people still have not woken up to the fact that these media are a huge obstacle to progressive change, that we should not be supporting them with our coins or our writing. Why are they not waking up?

A key reason is that high-profile, much-loved dissidents (we love them, too!) like Monbiot, Klein and Thomas publish their work in media like the Guardian. This has a massive impact on readers' sense that the corporate media is full of dissent, is a supporter of progressive change. It isn't; it's a propaganda system for power - but a little dissent goes an awful long way in giving people the wrong idea. Their appearances stifle the idea that there is a need to turn elsewhere, to develop new forms of media. The more dramatic the better, from the media's perspective - arrest Blair! Marvellous! This is just what they want to see - tiny doses of high-profile dissent keeping us all in our corporate media consumer boxes. This is actually a disaster for progressive change.

If once there was no choice, that argument is fast becoming absurd. Democracy Now! ZNet, Realnews.org and others are showing what is possible.

Monbiot's article is excellent (apart from the crucial media omissions on the Downing Street memo - we devoted a whole chapter to them in Newspeak) - but it's appearing in the +wrong+ place.

Imagine if Monbiot, Klein, Thomas, Pilger, Milne, Fisk and co created a website together dependent solely on donations. Imagine if their fingers were finally free to tap the truth about the corporate media - imagine if they took them apart, utterly, as they are well capable of doing. Do you think people wouldn't support them?

Eds

In short, the Guardian, in itself, remains a key part of the problem. Never, as Media Lens remind us, has there been a better opportunity to promote, support and read honest, alternative media.

The cosy option is remaining with the same self-perpetuating system, which depends, crucially, on the same self-perpetuating media. Many, particularly progressive leftists, argue that, whatever its faults and limitations, we still need that liberal space to argue and push for realistic change. That's certainly Monbiot's view. Yet, what's the point of advocating a truly free and untainted journalism - that is, one unbound by corporate demands, editorial-political constraints and journalists' own self-denying cautions - if we don't, at some point, make that decisive effort to expose and undermine the Guardian, Independent, BBC and other fictitious claimants of radical output?

John

BNP at the BBC

And so, the BBC will tonight allow the British National Party that most coveted (for them) prize: a seat among the Question Time 'notables'. Not even a late plea to consider the legal implications of including a party with a still illegal constitution could make the BBC hierarchy change their minds. To revoke Griffin's invite, Director General Mark Thompson says, would be unacceptable "censorship". Only governments, he thinks, can make the decision on which organisations to ban. Yet, the same institution which refused to air a public DEC appeal for the broken children of Gaza has, unilaterally, decided to hand gifted publicity to a party intent on fostering hate, division and violence.

As with other liberal arguments, Thompson's and the BBC Trust's defence of this "editorial judgment" is unconvincing. As previously noted, the real issue here is not about the right to be heard, it's about the legal rights of citizens not to be subject to public speech which castigates and intimidates them.

Discrimination based on ethnic or religious identity is not just immoral, it's illegal. It's illegal in the workplace. It's also illegal to peddle racist speech in the high street - even if the BNP now do this surreptitiously. So, why should the same incitement to racist intolerance be allowed amplification on a BBC panel?

What's the difference, some might say in response, between Griffin appearing on QT and being interviewed on, say, Newsnight or Channel 4 News? In both cases, he's getting that much-valued exposure.

Firstly, it's not entirely obvious that news outlets do, in fact, require to give the BNP a platform for their views, even when reporting issues regarding the BNP.

But if there is a distinction, it lies in the kind of criteria used by QT and the BBC to defend the invite. They argue that it's in recognition of the BNP's electoral standing - namely, its two MEPs and a few local councillors. But this is still to accept that a party permitted to run for political office is doing so by using inflammatory language, namely illegal hate-speak, against 'non-indigenous' groupings. While a media interview, ideally conducted, should serve, in a critical, news-oriented context, to identify and expose perpetrators of hate-speak and war crimes alike - for example, Mark Regev, Tony Blair, John Bolton, to name but a few - this kind of appearance allows Griffin, as well as the aforementioned warmongers, a more formal and populist form of legitimacy. That's a kind of propaganda 'upgrade' well understood by all spinners of hate, violence and war.

Of course, beyond the core 'free-speech' argument, some rightly insist that Griffin is a mere amateur when compared to all the ministerial war villains who sit on soft QT chairs - including Peter Hain, who has tried to get the invite revoked. So, why target Griffin, in particular? It's a valid point, a measure of the political-normalising effect of QT and other safe BBC debate that the directors of vast, murderous war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere can be safely ensconced among Dimbleby's select while this storm rages around Griffin.

Yet, that still doesn't quite deal with the BNPs own promotions of localised hatred. Those involved, directly and indirectly, in high war crimes could, and should, still be subject to just indictment by an international court. But so should people like Griffin be continually targeted, through national courts, for incitement to hatred and violence.

Which returns us to the issue of the BNP's status as a party and whether a legal case exists for banning it as a purveyor of illegal hate-speech. I believe such a case does, indeed, exist. The real question is: where is the political and judicial willingness to effect it?

The impact of Griffin's appearance? It will disgust many. It will satisfy the 'let's have a debate' liberals - as if there really should be any 'debate' about the 'validity' of the BNP's poisonous claims and language. It will prompt more pious denunciations, from the media and politicians to those lofty warmongering generals who rank themselves morally above such 'common' racists.

But it will also make hate-speak just that little more respectable. It allows those who would normally be that bit reticent in coming out with their malignant prejudices against the foreign 'other' to do so with just that added degree of comfort, knowing that the man who articulates their own usually muffled views is now sitting in a smart suit on a selective BBC set.

The result, whatever the righteous rejections of Griffin from Straw et al, of this precedent-setting invite will be a nod to the tolerance of intolerance. Besides the potential for increased racist attacks, a lot more 'quietly intolerant' people will feel better for the appearance of a man intent on spreading hateful suspicion against all those 'non-indigenous' citizens. And the BBC will feel ennobled at having dispensed its 'impartial' duty.

John

BBC Trust decision on al-Kurd family and ongoing complaint over Gaza coverage

The BBC Trust has issued its final rejection of my appeal regarding the BBC's 'coverage' of the al-Kurd family eviction from their home in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem.

It comes, of course, as no surprise. The Trust exists as a last protective cover for loaded BBC output and establishment interests.

The complaint and appeal in support of the family was not initiated in expectation of any serious investigation or censure of the BBC's Jerusalem bureau. Rather, it was intended to highlight the kind of selective editorial and journalistic agenda which circumvents daily reporting of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Trust's explanatory ruling helps indicate its own part in the closure of this story:

"The Committee also noted the responses of the BBC Executive in which it was stated that the decision not to cover the al-Kurds’ eviction was based on the editorial merit of the story and the resources available at the time.

The Committee also noted that, regarding the different functions of the BBC Trust and Executive, it was the responsibility of the Executive to handle the day-to-day running of the BBC and, therefore, to manage the BBC’s creative and editorial output."

The Trust, in effect, took convenient refuge behind the Executive's editorial remit, thus excusing itself from proper questioning of any editorial decisions and practices.

In a separate, still ongoing, complaint, BBC News Online have, again, denied my charges of biased reporting during Israel's 23-day assault on Gaza. And they're still refusing to acknowledge that it was Israel alone which broke the truce, despite multiple evidence documenting pre-planned Israeli aggression and Hamas restraint.

However, they have issued two rather laboured admissions, as contained in this part of the reply:

"However, I would like to revise two aspects of the reply I gave you, largely in the light of the recent Goldstone report on the Israeli assault on Gaza:

We should be saying that Israel says. We often do use this form of wording and were very careful to during the conflict, but we should be doing it all the time

The Goldstone report concluded that Israeli operations "were carefully planned in all their phases as a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population". We’ve reported this widely and will be part of our characterisation of the war in the future. "

Behind these tortured concessions lies, I suspect, a deep embarrassment over this particular finding in Goldstone's report. For it completely undermines the BBC's repeated line of a specific attack on Hamas rather than all Palestinians.

While not expecting serious dissemination now of the quote and its characterisation, it's still a useful statement to invoke whenever the standard language of 'Israel's defensive attacks on Hamas' does appear at BBC news outlets.

On which testing note, here's a message just sent in response to BBC Online's latest pronouncements on the matter:

Dear Editor
Middle East desk,

Your recent letter to me stated:

"The Goldstone report concluded that Israeli operations "were carefully planned in all their phases as a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population". We’ve reported this widely and will be part of our characterisation of the war in the future."

Today's Online piece, 'Allies push Israel for Gaza probe' (15 October 2009) notes:

"The Goldstone report accuses Israel of using disproportionate force and deliberately harming civilians during the 22-day conflict which began on 27 December 2008."

Is this the informed "characterisation of the war" promised in your letter? Why didn't you, for accuracy and proper characterisation, simply cite Goldstone's words? Or is this the moderated version we're more likely to see in "future" BBC reports?

Regards
John Hilley

Another character example of the BBC diluting the language and masking the truth.

John