Monday 27 December 2010

Media Lens challenge academic book on media's 'independent' coverage of Iraq

Media Lens have been involved in a most illuminating exchange with Piers Robinson from the University of Manchester.  In his co-authored book, Pockets of Resistance, Robinson claims to have identified significant  "variations" in the media's coverage of the Iraq war.  The ML Editors have challenged this assertion, raising related issues about academic 'objectivity' and the ways in which 'scholarly' output often comes to serve the interests of power.

The Alert, What Happened to Academia?, can be read here:
 
A letter to Piers Robinson on the issues:

Dear Piers

Thanks for engaging so earnestly with Media Lens over the content and claims of your book.

I suspect from the detailed defence offered that you are rather concerned about how its core message might be received by those, like the ML Editors, who closely observe and scrutinise such texts.

I haven't read the book, so can't offer an in-depth opinion. But it seems not unreasonably clear - as gleaned from the exchanges - that its central premise concerning the reporting of the Iraq war is deeply flawed.

As ML put it:
"Far from offering an "admirably wide range of coverage", the media facilitated an audacious government propaganda campaign while offering a strictly enfeebled version of dissent. Obvious facts and sources that had the power to derail the government case for war were essentially nowhere to be seen."
That lamentable truth is also repeated many times in John Pilger's film, The War You Don't See, where even key media figures were bound to acknowledge that if journalists were doing their job, the war might never have happened.

Parts of the media made the outright case for war. But there's also countless examples, archived at the ML site and elsewhere, of much more copy which offered only token and restrained 'questioning' of the invasion, occupation and US/UK war crimes - including The Guardian, Independent and Channel 4 News.

That, I presume, is what constitutes your "admirably wide range of coverage".

You note in your updated reply:
"At the same time, coverage of the war was not uniform. Understanding that there were important variations as well as establishing why that occurred is also part of developing the kind of knowledge that can lead to change. Even if CH4 and the Mirror were NOT doing enough, the fact that they were doing something different demands investigation in order to understand why, if only to explore ways of building upon that. We do this in the book."
I wonder whether the focus on these "important variations" is not just another scholarly acceptance of the prevailing narrative that there is supposedly real differentiation and plurality of thought within the corporate-run media. Where is the more fundamental assessment of the structural forces behind such media outlets and the ways in which those forces still constrain and temper these media "variations"?

You also discuss Chomsky, seeking, by inference to others' criticism of his "pejorative" "polemic," to problematise such output as "making an argument in a way which disregards the rules of scholarship".

Part of that objection seems to be saying that there's no room for 'subjective emotion' in 'scholarly' analysis. Or, where it occurs, it devalues the 'objective' impact of the analysis.

There's something about that kind of conditional 'defence' of Chomsky and reference to "the rules" of academic output which betrays, I think, the self-important claims of your study - and, perhaps, what purports to be 'social science' more generally.

The real problem here is that your book, claiming to identify significant variations in the reporting of war, will become textual truth for many of the media students who will come to read it. Of course, some may be aware of, or be made aware, of Chomsky/Herman, Pilger and Media Lens, but the tendency will be to place these as 'alternative', 'secondary' and 'subjective' 'polemics' to the kind of 'core', 'objective' 'scholarship' to be grasped in texts like your own.

Your own conditional 'recognition' of that 'polemical' output, as noted in the exchange with ML, is in itself a kind of subtle direction to the reader and prospective media student: 'yes, it's valid discourse, but only as a questionable, over-radicalised take on the issues, not one that should obstruct serious, objective enquiry.'

This is how academia encourages 'respectable scholarship' and the safe indulgence of seminar room 'dissent', a process which produces 'suitable' candidates for the 'profession' and reliably restrained views, resulting in the kind of safely-critical, self-satisfied journalism that allowed the barbaric assaults on Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Thus, as ML note: "the scholar's obsession with objectivity tends to promote the interests of power.

Perhaps those reading this ML Alert and exchange will be encouraged towards their own subjective study of how academics come to profess on behalf of power. How, they might ask, do scholars manage to commend the media's "admirably wide range of coverage" while claiming 'regard' for Chomsky, Media Lens et al? Fittingly, such prevarication mirrors the kind of journalistic war coverage under discussion.

I wonder if you can see the paradox?

Kind regards

John Hilley

---------
 Dear John,

Thanks for this. Some of the initial exchanges reflect matters surrounding the press release and there is not a clear picture of what we actually are arguing. I've attached the conclusion to the book. Best to read and then perhaps the rest of the book before finalizing your opinion.

best,

Piers

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

My thanks to Piers for passing this on.  There's not enough space here for a full dissection, but it's worth citing this central message from the concluding chapter:
"On television, the coverage provided by Channel 4 News conformed largely
to the independent model. Among newspapers, a majority of coverage in
the Guardian, Independent and Mirror could be categorised as consistent
with both the independent and oppositional models, and each of these titles
adopted an anti- war, oppositional editorial stance. Indeed, the diversity of
newspaper coverage that we were able to identify represents one of our most
remarkable findings: the 2003 invasion of Iraq was certainly not reported
in a uniform fashion by Britain’s press. Overall findings for negotiated and
oppositional coverage suggest that news media performance is, at the very
least, more nuanced and varied than is argued in the major works..."
While it was the case that certain press and TV outlets took an anti-war position, does this really indicate crucial variations in how the media reacted to the invasion and occupation?  Were many of the Guardian editorials really independent or oppositional in their criticism of Blair and his co-warmongers?  Where was the Guardian's outright call for Blair to be arraigned for war crimes? 

Contrary to the underlying message of this book, there are no media outlets in the UK that can be said to be truly "independent" or "oppositional".

We do, of course, refer to, and often rely upon, academic-based studies to help illustrate media bias and service to power - the Glasgow University Media Group work on Palestine- Israel, for example, or the Lancet study on deaths in Iraq. 'Social science' does have a key role in addressing, quantifying, collating and interpreting vital social phenomena.  The Chomsky/Herman Propaganda Model provides yet another set of qualitative-based criteria for understanding media subservience to power and how that facilitates corporate control over society.

Yet, Chomsky and other critical academics have also spent much of their scholarly lives identifying corporate-establishment constraints on academia itself, notably the ways in which it promotes, supports and cultivates conformity, including the belief that academia is an autonomous place for free investigation. 

The Pockets of Resistance thesis, in contrast, claims to identify a picture of serious media autonomy, editorial plurality and differentiated reportage.  The effect of this is to plant and encourage a basic acceptance of this liberal claim,  nullifying, in many students' and other readers' minds, the bigger context of how the corporate order still drives and informs all such media output, even that of the Trust-owned Guardian.  

The book's claims of 'greater nuance' in the reporting of Iraq also promotes the view that "the major works" are overly-polemical and monolithic.  It's offering a kind of headline statement on 'media freedom', concluding that due to certain variations in the reporting of the Iraq war, these media outlets are acting as "independent" or/and "oppositional" bodies.

The result is this social science 'tick-a-box' exercise, awarding labels to given media outlets based on what liberal media itself would regard as "independent" or "oppositional". It's similar to the ways in which the US-friendly political/electoral 'monitor' Freedom House offer ratings on whether a country can be called 'democratic', 'semi-democratic' or 'non-democratic'. 

Robinson and his co-authors may reject the conclusion that this study comprises any blatant service to power, but such close attention to scholarly 'evidence' of liberal 'media independence' in the coverage of Iraq lends itself precisely to this establishment-serving end.

John   

2 comments:

Piers said...

John ignores the following lines in the conclusion:-

At an aggregate level, many of the findings described in the preceding chapters are consistent with the predictions of the elite-driven model, as Table 8.1 shows. Among most news media outlets, coverage was largely supportive of the coalition with military progress reported positively, particular reinforcement given to the humanitarian rationale for war and heavy reliance on coalition sources.

... so the coverage that the majority of people read and watched was supportive of the coalition and consistent with the elite-driven model. If we consider the regulatory expectations regarding balance and impartiality to which it is subject (see Chapter 4), our aggregate-level finding of supportive coverage makes it impossible to sustain a claim that the majority of British television news succeeded in achieving balance once war was underway.

In other words, the existence of multiple justifications for war ensured that there was ‘something in it for everyone’. Given the outcome ... it seems difficult not to conclude that the combination of aggressive perception management (or marketing) by the UK government, and the uncritical acceptance of dubious justifications by much of the news media and political establishment, made for a particularly dismal event in British democratic history.

Finally, I would add that John Pilger also identifies some parts of the UK media as being independent of government:

For two years, the Mirror represented a majority of the British people, whose critical understanding of Blair's pre-invasion charade was always ahead of journalists'. The Mirror did what a newspaper is meant to do: it kept the record straight. Instead of channelling and amplifying official lies, the Mirror more often than not challenged and exposed them to a readership often dismissed or patronised by those claiming to know what "the public really wants".

Piers

Piers said...

John ignores the following lines in the conclusion:-

At an aggregate level, many of the findings described in the preceding chapters are consistent with the predictions of the elite-driven model, as Table 8.1 shows. Among most news media outlets, coverage was largely supportive of the coalition with military progress reported positively, particular reinforcement given to the humanitarian rationale for war and heavy reliance on coalition sources.

... so the coverage that the majority of people read and watched was supportive of the coalition and consistent with the elite-driven model. If we consider the regulatory expectations regarding balance and impartiality to which it is subject (see Chapter 4), our aggregate-level finding of supportive coverage makes it impossible to sustain a claim that the majority of British television news succeeded in achieving balance once war was underway.

In other words, the existence of multiple justifications for war ensured that there was ‘something in it for everyone’. Given the outcome ... it seems difficult not to conclude that the combination of aggressive perception management (or marketing) by the UK government, and the uncritical acceptance of dubious justifications by much of the news media and political establishment, made for a particularly dismal event in British democratic history.

Finally, I would add that John Pilger also identifies some parts of the UK media as being independent of government:

For two years, the Mirror represented a majority of the British people, whose critical understanding of Blair's pre-invasion charade was always ahead of journalists'. The Mirror did what a newspaper is meant to do: it kept the record straight. Instead of channelling and amplifying official lies, the Mirror more often than not challenged and exposed them to a readership often dismissed or patronised by those claiming to know what "the public really wants".

Piers