Media Lens taking on the Guardian again

The latest Media Lens Alert (with a wonderful title) takes yet another timely, courteous and thoughtful swipe at the Guardian and its prized writers:

Silence Of The Lambs: Seumas Milne, George Monbiot & ‘Media Analysis’ In The Guardian Wonderland

There's been no reply, as yet, from Seumas Milne or George Monbiot - the latter, with no apparent sense of irony or shame, busy just now damning Julian Assange.

Meanwhile, a kindly note to Milne:

Dear Seumas,

I trust you're keeping well.

The latest Media Lens Alert poses some crucial questions about your output at the Guardian - much of it valued - and the extent to which you are able or willing to discuss your own role there as a senior writer.

You make the proud claim that the Guardian has an exceptional record in permitting stories and opinion shunned by other media, a most questionable assertion and one that certainly doesn't extend to any critique from journalists working within the paper itself.

One can well understand the reticence of any employee to 'bite the hand that feeds'. That's not a crude jibe. It refers to the multiple ways in which people are naturally averse to taking unnecessary risks. Yet, consider how that circumvention serves to insulate influential media like the Guardian from serious scrutiny.

Given the sobering charge sheet produced by ML, listing the Guardian's serial failings/complicities on climate change, Iraq, Blair, Afghanistan, Libya and now Iran, don't you think it vital that the paper's record on such matters and your own interpretation of them be urgently and openly debated?

I do hope you will make time to address the issues raised by Media Lens in their patient and informed correspondence.

Kind regards

John Hilley

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Update:

Michael White of the Guardian responds to Media Lens Alert.

In reply, the independent journalist Jonathan Cook, who once wrote for the Guardian, offered these observations at the ML message board:

"Yes, of course Michael just stumbled across your piece on Milne and Monbiot during a bored moment outside the National Gallery. It's only because I lack a "worldy" head on my shoulders that I can't stop doubting the truth of that claim. What to do when an "irritant" unsettles you? Unleash the ad hominems - lots of references to how "childish" you are – while trying to shore up his and the Guardian's credentials as worldly and self-deprecating. It's a master-class in how to belittle an argument and avoid dealing with it entirely. As for the "they may grow out of it", doesn't that cut both ways? I was one of the lentil-eating Guardianistas in my early 20s and a devoted Michael White wannabee in my 30s, when I was working there. I'm now 46, seen a bit of the world, and sense I may be nearly all grown-up. And my verdict: they're starting to run scared. Keep up the good work. All best, Jonathan"

Savvy, worldly comments from Jonathan.

We can but speculate on the actual 'chat' within the senior Guardian cabal about Media Lens and their latest Alert, how the White piece emerged and why it was White who, seemingly, 'undertook the task'.
 

Perhaps White and his associates really do believe that the defence/protection of Milne, Monbiot and the Guardian at large is best effected through such admonitions from the Guardian's 'grown ups'. Step forward White himself, the most 'grown up' of all the paper's notables, someone who has been around 'real' press politics and 'grown up' politicians. Delusions of grandeur can be a powerfully motivating force.

Again, we may never know the truth of such things - unless Milne himself one day 'does a Cook' and helps reveal more about the Guardian's inner circle and their increasing fear of the Media Lens 'irritant'.

Well done to the ML Eds.

John

BBC: travelling in the West Bank

"John McCarthy looks at travelling in East Jerusalem and the West Bank." http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qjds A rare and welcome discussion of life in the West Bank from Radio 4's Excess Baggage. It doesn't deal in a direct political sense with Israel's brutalities, but there's a lot of great insights, very sympathetically hosted by McCarthy, looking at the rich and welcoming nature of the society and the daily problems for Palestinians under occupation - notably in Hebron. Expect a flood of complaints from irate Zionists. Thanks to Hugh Humphries at Scottish Friends of Palestine for flagging this. Hugh also notes:

"The one aspect of travel in the West Bank not explored by the programme, is access to the West Bank. If recent experience is anything to go by, a traveller boldly stating that he/she intends to travel to Palestine has a greater chance of being refused than given the right of free passage. Consider taking up this point with the BBC and the programme's editor."

John

Media Lens and Pilger: Western distortion and the fiction of 'democracy'

As another Iranian scientist is murdered by Israel, in flagrant violation of every international law on such matters, the latest excellent Media Lens alert charts the West's selective outrage and denunciations.

In a further timely piece, John Pilger delivers a landmark review of the West's relentless attack on democracy, including a reminder, in this presidential election year, of Obama's warmongering, corporate-serving record.

These lines from Pilger's piece brilliantly encapsulate the vast lie at the heart of our 'democracy', the economic injustice underlying it and the sham propaganda needed to reinforce the myth that we have serious 'political choices':

"America is now a land of epidemic poverty and barbaric prisons: the consequence of a “market” extremism which, under Obama, has prompted the transfer of $14 trillion in public money to criminal enterprises in Wall Street. The victims are mostly young jobless, homeless, incarcerated African-Americans, betrayed by the first black president. The historic corollary of a perpetual war state, this is not fascism, not yet, but neither is it democracy in any recognisable form, regardless of the placebo politics that will consume the news until November. The presidential campaign, says the Washington Post, will “feature a clash of philosophies rooted in distinctly different views of the economy”. This is patently false. The circumscribed task of journalism on both sides of the Atlantic is to create the pretence of political choice where there is none."

Pilger and Media Lens, ever-inspiring.


John

Tom Harris in the bunker

Glasgow South MP Tom Harris has been forced to resign as Labour's adviser on new social media after parodying Alex Salmond as Hitler in the film Downfall.

Sparking much media debate over the permissable bounds of 'Nazi humour', anxious party chiefs were quick to distance themselves from Harris's latest blog indulgences.

Another mission statement, we must assume, of 'pristine' Miliband's New Improved Labour.

Yet, this is a petty offence, and paradoxical fall, when set against Harris's other defence of war criminals and reactionary outpourings.

The send-up is not particularly offensive. The subtitled dialogue in this fine movie has been changed by many pranksters, some to comic, if now cliched, effect.

There's no endorsement of the Nazis in Harris's spoof, no trivialising of the Holocaust. Nor, despite protests from some Jewish organisations, could its use be remotely construed as anti-Semitic. There's only the infantile depiction of Salmond and the SNP, hardly a crime, political or otherwise. Some of the lines are actually quite funny.

I suspect Harris is having a quiet chuckle and enjoying the limelight, despite having to make the mandatory mea culpa and relinquish his position.

The use of a war theme by a noted warmonger to castigate a noted anti-war politician is darkly ironic, serving, in a perverse way, to mask Harris's own complicities.

It's much less likely that 'Bomber Harris' will ever apologise over his promotional part in the catastrophic downfall of Iraq or his resilient support of Tony Blair.

There's also Harris's shameless record of defending Israel. From the murderous bombing of Gaza to the piracy killings of convoy peace activists, this 'constituent' has never been able to obtain any statement from Harris, a Labour Friend of Israel, condemning Israeli actions or advocating for Palestinian rights.

Factor in his rabid castigation of asylum seekers and other 'social flotsam' and we find a politician with little moral right to use any such smear devices.

Remarkably, amid this little 'fuhrer furore', none of the mainstream media has seen fit to mention these much darker aspects of Harris's CV - not even in the Guardian's Comment page. How telling.

Harris's fall from grace over this affair, rather than the aforementioned higher crimes, is symptomatic of what the liberal media and parliamentary class rank as 'offensive'.

His own mini 'downfall' may elicit some satisfaction, a certain schadenfreude. But it goes nowhere near exposing Harris's much more serious bunker politics.

On which useful word-associational note, Jonathan Cook has just written an excellent piece on Israel, Welcome to the World's First Bunker State.

With a little extra time now on his hands, perhaps Mr Harris might want a look at the darkening apartheid policies of the Netanyahu regime.

John

Happy New Year from the IDF - Palestinians excepted

As preparations continue for another murderous assault on Gaza, the IDF's own in-house propaganda unit issues its customary New Year Greetings, assuring everyone that it will go on defending Israel with love and care.

Which, of course, means another very unhappy year for occupied Palestinians.

Viewers may prefer an alternative version of the video, featuring more accurate takes on what that 'defence' really entails, including disturbing examples of how the IDF really act when "lending a helping hand".

John

Samoa day - or just loving all the time we have

 A little whimsical suggestion for 2012.

When things seem just too much, when the thought of tomorrow brings feelings of dread or apprehension, why not simply skip it and take a 'Samoan day out'?

Well, if a country can just jump across the international dateline and lose a day from its existence, why not do the same?

Or maybe not. Better valuing every day, every minute of one's life, good times and bad.

A peaceful and precious New Year to one and all.

John

North Korea and the BBC myth factory

Kim Jong-il dies, North Koreans weep and the Western media deride it all as contrived hysteria and crude propaganda, warning of a dangerous new threat to international security.

The BBC seek to establish the authenticity of the mass wailing. But its constant focus on the public emotion helps reinforce the image of a brainwashed people led by a mad and unpredictable regime.

In a typical exchange (News at One, 29 December), BBC newsreader Matthew Amroliwala presses senior correspondent John Simpson on the problems now for "the international community grappling with this rogue nation."

Simpson responds to this open bias with another rambling 'analysis' of the 'unstable, unknown intentions' of the regime. We learn little, other than 'we have to wait and see' and the implicit message that 'they are not to be trusted'.

In other reports, we hear of the Pyongyang regime's responsibility for mass starvation and see impoverished people eat grass to survive in a country isolated from the rest of the world. Meanwhile, many go hungry, poverty-stricken and without hope here in one of the richest nations on earth. Which economic system is worse?

A nuclear-laden North Korean military sucks the country dry as it guards itself, with some fair reason, against surrounding enemies. With no obvious Cold War or other 'external threat', an already nuclear-burdened Britain orders new multi-billion pound replacements while schools and hospitals are forced to close. Which military expenditure is worse?

North Korea issues token threats and tests an occasional conventional missile. Britain, in contrast, leads in mass wars of aggression, leaving over a million victims in its wake, in order to plunder countries' resources and maintain a perpetual arms economy. Which war-ready state is worse?

A youthful heir, Kim Jong-un, assumes the political leadership, with no notion of a democratic mandate, issuing the same autocratic edicts as before. Meanwhile, we in the West are offered a succession of youngish clone-type leaders, all smart suits, all beholden to the same corporate powers, all ready to hand-down brutal austerity measures that nobody wants, all leading us into more bloody wars we never voted for. Which political deceit is worse?

Kim Jong-il's eccentricities and indulgences are derided as unaccountable indifference to his 'adoring', suffering people. Yet, an 'accountable' Cameron, Clegg, Osborne and the rest of the 'we're-all-in-this-together coalition' have helped elite bankers continue their luxurious lifestyles, while people lose their homes and jobs in record numbers. Which hypocrisy is worse?

Writing from Seoul, BBC correspondent Lucy Williamson said of the North Korean state media:

"It is a myth-making factory that, for most of its audience, is their only source of news."

That can also be seriously said of the BBC, an institution so astute at preserving the myth of 'benign/sane us, menacing/disturbed them' that its audience see it as, if not the only source of news, the only source of 'impartial' news. Which media is worse?

Of North Korea's successor, Williamson asserts:

"Untried and untested, he will perhaps depend even more on the power of his lineage, and the personality cult created by his country's unique cultural machine."

Think, alternatively, of how the unique cultural machine that's the BBC has helped popularise the elite Oxbridge lineage of Cameron and Osborne. Think, also, how that cultural machine has given establishment cover to the "untried and untested" version of 'coalition politics' being used to impose the most brutal assault on the poor since the 1920s.

But this is not just about comparing/contrasting systems, societies and leaders. It's about the ways in which hegemonic legitimacy here is asserted through media vilification and derision of the 'strange and volatile' other.

While eager in its parody of North Korea's personality cult and state propaganda, liberal correspondents have very little to say about the illusions we live and internalise as a 'free and democratic West' - and certainly nothing about their own central part in that vital mythology.

Just try to imagine Amroliwala and Simpson on the BBC news labelling Britain a "rogue state" for the mass crimes it has committed around the world. The possibility is even more far-fetched than the odd claims of regime-supporting 'natural phenomena' coming out of North Korea these past days.

North Korea's myth-making factory may be in full-scale creative production right now, but it can't compete with the BBC's smarter range of state-approved Orwellian lines. That many would consider the comparison facile rests, of course, on the BBC's own mythical branding of itself as a free and neutral product. Crucially, while Pyongyang depend on industrial-scale output of its reinforcing myths, the BBC need only keep turning out that simple and more effective conceit.

John