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The media lie factory
Flat Earth News
By Nick Davies
Published by Chatto & Windus, 2008
£17.99
Has the media ever been as rotten as it is now? Of
course, the media is part of society and defends the current system. But
within limits, there has been room for probing, investigative
journalism. Today’s news stories, however, are dominated by repetitious,
unchecked stories usually in the cynical service of political spin and
naked profit. PETER TAAFFE reviews a devastating book which lifts the
lid on the workings of the media.
THERE ALREADY EXISTS in Britain a fairly widespread
suspicion, if not a clear conviction, that the capitalist media –
television, press, radio and, increasingly, websites allied to these
information outlets – are biased and lack veracity. The ‘red tops’, the
tabloid press, are the greatest sinners, with Rupert Murdoch’s Sun in
the vanguard. Its journalists generally adhere to the maxim: ‘Make it
short, make it snappy and make it up’.
Yet, if Nick Davies’s book was circulated in
millions of copies – as it deserves to be – with sections of it
presented in a popular fashion, this suspicion of the media would be
translated into outright scorn and revulsion. For this reason, and the
fact that it challenges every facet of the so-called ‘free press’, it
will probably be briefly reviewed, commented on and forgotten, maybe
becoming a kind of samizdat (underground journal) for media aficionados,
journalists, etc. Some outraged reviewers have already attacked ‘Saint
Nick’ for his book. Yet his revelations – which are sensational in their
detail – should serve as a starting point for a widespread debate on how
to eliminate the colossal undemocratic power wielded by this so-called
‘fourth estate’ in setting the agenda of society.
Davies calls his book Flat Earth News as a metaphor
of the recycling by the press of unproven stories such as the
‘millennium bug’. This failed to materialise and yet the government
spent between £396 million and £788 million to combat its expected
effects!
Right at the beginning, he states that his
investigation led to the conclusion that "almost all journalists across
the whole developed world now work within a kind of professional cage,
which distorts their work and crushes their spirit. I’m talking about
the fact that finally I was forced to admit that I work in a corrupted
profession".
And why is this so? Nick Davies does not provide the
obvious answer which flows from his analysis; that it is because of the
ruthless control operated by a handful of billionaires to determine what
we read, see and hear. This can be easily deduced from the detail he
provides of the ownership of this powerful medium: "The American media
critic Ben Bagdikian has traced the corporate takeover. In 1997, he
wrote about the corporations producing America’s newspapers, magazines,
radio, television, books and films: ‘With each passing year… the number
of controlling firms in all these media has shrunk: from 50 corporations
in 1984 to 26 in 1987, followed by 23 in 1990, and then, as the borders
between the different media began to blur, to less than 20 in 1993. In
1996 [it] is closer to ten’. By 2004, he found the US media was
dominated by just five companies: Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News
Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany and Viacom".
Conversely, the number of people employed in the
industry fell by 18% between 1990 and 2004. In one twelve-month period
in 2004-05, some 450 journalists were pushed out of their jobs in the
New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, etc. At the same time, the
average operating profit margin of these media corporations was 20.5%,
approximately twice as high as the level among Fortune 500 companies.
The situation in Britain is no better, with the domination of the likes
of Murdoch: "The more I looked, the more I found falsehood, distortion
and propaganda running through the outlets of an industry which is
supposed to be dedicated to the very opposite, ie to telling the truth".
He points to the hypocrisy of the Fleet Street
hierarchy: "Executives whose papers support the war against drugs are
shoving cocaine up their nostrils in the office toilets; reporters who
attack the sexual adventures of others while routinely dropping their
own trousers at the first scent of a willing secretary". These are the
kind of people – Murdoch’s Sun and News of the World – who pursued Tommy
Sheridan over allegations about his personal life, then, when they were
defeated, systematically conducted a vendetta against him. This was an
attempt to legally destroy a symbol of one of the most successful mass
struggles in British labour movement history, the mass anti-poll tax
battle.
Churnalism
A SUBSTANTIAL PART of the book deals with the plight
of journalists who, through relentless pressure, have been reduced to ‘churnalists’,
merely passing on unchecked stories from outlets such as the Press
Association (PA), Reuters and Associated Press (AP). Davies recognises
that there was no golden age when journalists were free to honestly
report on events, present both sides of an argument, and reflect ‘the
truth’. But a certain latitude did exist in the past, which allowed
some, particularly well-known figures, many of a left persuasion, to
find a platform for airing views which questioned, if not the system of
capitalism, the consequences that flowed from it.
Now, as with other professions, the remorseless
pressure of neo-liberalism has reduced journalists to mere cogs who
churn out information force-fed to them. There is an additional factor
not recognised by Davies. In the past, the pressure of a powerful trade
union movement allied to widespread support for socialist ideas
compelled the capitalist press to reflect this in their coverage. They
were compelled to give a platform to leading left Labour and trade union
figures, including strike leaders and even the occasional Marxist. Some
newspapers like the Daily Mirror tilted to the left, towards Labour,
when it was at bottom a workers’ party. This, in turn, gave a space for
radical journalism. All this was squashed by the advent of ‘Murdochism’
and the brutal capitalist methods he personified.
And this does not apply just to the tabloids. In a
Cardiff University investigation, commissioned by Davies, of the
so-called ‘quality press’ – The Times, The Guardian, The Independent and
the Daily Telegraph – 60% of "quality-print stories consisted wholly or
mainly of wire copy and/or PR material". Only 12% of stories, the
researchers said, were generated by the reporters themselves. Sixty-nine
per cent of news stories in The Times were mainly wire-copied (from the
PA and other agencies) or public relations (PR). Seventy per cent of the
stories which claimed to be fact passed into print without any
corroboration. The researchers concluded: "These data portray a picture
of journalism in which any meaningful independent journalistic activity
by the press is the exception rather than the rule". Some journalists do
check their stories but the past ‘everyday practices’ of journalism are
"now the exception rather than the rule".
PR has grown astronomically since the 1980s, by
companies and political parties. There are now 48,000 PR representatives
compared to 45,000 journalists in Britain. PR today, as Davies shows, is
part of the web of dirty tricks, the judicious selection of ‘truths’ and
issues, and "the skilful manipulation of reporters to persuade them to
focus only on chosen angles". Allied to this are ‘pseudo-groups’ who
pump apparently independent stories into the media, masquerading as
grassroots organisations – known by cynical PR advisers as ‘Astroturf’
because their grassroots are not real! Typical of this mass of groups is
Cancer United, used to push anti-cancer drugs, and Americans for
Constitutional Freedom (sections of the porn ‘industry’).
There is also the appearance of an array of think
tanks, the ‘intellectual’ monasteries of the modern era, which are
funded by big business and whose spokespersons award themselves
pseudo-titles such as ‘senior fellow’ or ‘research director’. One such
individual popped up in Fleet Street as a multi-talented ‘expert’ – head
of research at the Economic Research Council, director of the Efficiency
in Government Unit, author of The Official Guide to British Quangos,
author of a Centre for Policy Studies report, and the environment
director of the Stockholm Network.
New Labour manipulation
OF COURSE, FRONTLINE in the rogues’ gallery of the
PR ‘industry’ are those in the employ of capitalist parties and leading
politicians. New Labour front men like Peter Mandelson – who was the
initiator of his party’s skills in the ‘dark arts’ of manipulation – and
Alistair Campbell have occupied first place as arrogant, seemingly
untouchable exponents of PR. The essence of PR was summed up by William
Clark, press adviser to Anthony Eden at the time of the Suez crisis:
"Public opinion could not be ignored. It had to be fooled. The power of
government to deceive is so immense that fooling all of the people some
of the time can successfully and easily lead to fooling them all of the
time". Since this was written, PR has expanded enormously and succeeds
in bending the truth on a vast scale.
With the help of PR and the kept press, Campbell, on
behalf of the Blair government, used every dirty method in order to
suppress the colossal criticism which had built up over the war in Iraq.
The monstrous lie over Saddam’s weapons of mass destructions used to
justify the war is a tale often told. However, Davies gives even more
graphic detail about this, the attack on the journalist Andrew Gilligan
over the ‘sexed-up’ intelligence report justifying the war, and many
other examples of New Labour’s responsibility for the war. Davies shows
clearly that Campbell’s attack on Gilligan was a decoy to deflect
attention away from Blair. Campbell waited four weeks after Gilligan’s
Radio 4 Today programme story before he pounced. Davies says that the
infamous storming of Channel 4 by Campbell – when he attacked the BBC
for daring to challenge the truthfulness of Blair over the war – was "so
aggressive that political columnists started to wonder out loud whether
the prime minister’s press secretary might be cracking up under the
strain". However, Campbell was successful in diverting attention from
the original question about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which
was now "shunted into the sidings".
His bullying, even of capitalist journalists, was
taken to unheard of lengths by his New Labour acolytes. Davies reports
that ministers in the government approached some newspapers with
"explicit invitations to sack Andy McSmith, the political editor of the
Independent, Paul Eastham, the political editor of the Daily Mail,
Christian Wolmar, the transport editor of the Independent… and Andrew
Marr, when he was editor of the Independent". Unbelievably this list
included Mark Mardell – an inveterate anti-left figure – who was then a
political correspondent for Newsnight. Even the Financial Times was not,
it seems, free from New Labour control freaks like Mandelson. After a
story which irritated him, he called the girlfriend of the offending FT
journalist, Ivo Dawnay, "late on the night of its publication with a
simple message: ‘Just tell Ivo he’s dead’."
The advent of new technology, of websites which are
now run by major media organisations, have reinforced the tendency
towards ‘churnalism’. Studies found that "34% of what they published in
2001 was simply reproduced from the two big agencies [Reuters and AP]
and their smaller competitor, Agence France-Presse". The same goes for
‘Google News’ which "does not even pretend to be checking its stories or
exercise any kind of journalistic judgement".
Avoid the electric fence
ANOTHER HUGE BARRIER to honest journalism is what
Davies calls the "rules of production". Some commentators trace the
collapse of investigative journalism from its peak of the Watergate
scandal in the mid-1970s. Now, ‘I-teams’ on American television "steer
clear of tough subjects involving government or the abuse of power".
Instead, local television news often employs its I-teams in such
challenging stories as "… ‘dangerous doors’, reporting on the hazards of
opening and closing doors; or ‘inside your washing machine’." The same
approach infiltrates current affairs television in Britain. One
experienced commentator told Davies: "We’ve done ‘F*** me, I’m fat’.
We’ve done ‘F*** me, I’m thin’. We’re just working on ‘F*** me, I’m f***ed
up".
One of the most important journalistic rules is, it
seems, ‘avoid the electric fence’, which means play it safe, do not
offend the powers that be. The most important ‘fence’ is media law,
particularly the Official Secrets Acts and libel. The latter’s
protection, as Davies points out, applies only to the rich and powerful
because it costs a lot of money to sue, and legal aid has never been
available for libel actions. It is therefore common for newspaper
lawyers confronted with a potentially libellous story to ask the
reporter: ‘Does this chap have money?’ If you have, like the late Robert
Maxwell, no matter how big a crook you are, you can effectively repel
any reporting of your crimes for fear of a costly libel action. But if
like Tommy Sheridan and other leading left figures you do not have
shedloads of cash to defend yourself then any calumny can be deployed
against you. This is the background against which journalists are
expected to fulfil their mission in reporting objective facts,
investigating their truthfulness or otherwise, as well as being
creative. Given the conditions in which they operate, this is an
impossible task today.
The author gives a devastating picture of how even
former outposts of objectivity, such as the Sunday Times’s
highly-regarded Insight team was smashed up when Murdoch took over. Its
pioneering role was systematically undermined, first of all becoming the
‘Hindsight’ team and eventually being wound up. The case of the Observer
newspaper is, if anything, even more damning. Here is a liberal journal
that stood out against the invasion of Egypt at the time of the Suez
crisis of 1956, but was recruited by Blair and Campbell, via the paper’s
pliable editor Roger Alton, to support the obscene Iraq war.
In fact, the intensification in the workplace,
allied to the savage reduction in the number of journalists, means the
media, in the main, has overwhelmingly become a money-making machine in
the service of the status quo. One graduate journalist, within a few
months of starting on a regional paper, sent an email back to her
university tutor: "I feel like I am turning out a load of shit… I’m
starting to dislike the job… It is a sweatshop". Davies comments:
"Journalism without checking is like a human body without an immune
system… But… that essential immune system has started to collapse. In a
strange, alarming and generally unnoticed development, journalists are
pounding out stories without checking them – stories which then circle
the planet". But how else can journalists act if, like some, they are
expected to write ten stories every shift?
The concentration of media ownership has now
produced a situation whereby ten corporations own 74% of the private
media. This monopolisation meant that 8,000 journalists working outside
of London lost their jobs between 1986 and 2000. This is a blow not just
against journalists as such but also news gathering in general. The same
process has continued systematically at the BBC and other television and
radio outlets. At the same time, there is a mania with speed which
undermines accuracy. One news chief reported on a test that timed
readers’ access to different news sites. He told his staff: "Our site
came on top with a load time of 0.85 seconds to beat the likes of ITV
and Sky (1.63 secs)". Davies comments: "That’s a saving of 0.78 seconds
he’s cheering there". All of this, he comments, results in a recycling
of ‘ignorance’.
It is difficult to fault Nick Davies’s forensic
analysis of a sick media. But what conclusions does he draw? He
correctly identifies the crushing of the print unions in the Wapping
dispute as a turning point, not just for print workers but for
journalists as well. He says that Murdoch’s establishment of his new
‘fortress’ at Wapping in 1986, "broke the print unions and removed the
final obstacle to the rule of the corporations ‘who thought greatly
about commerce and casually about journalism’." But then, reflecting
popular prejudice, he makes the unwarranted statement: "Those unions
were notorious for their greed and bad practices".
There was nothing ‘greedy’ about the print workers.
Through the force of their unions and many hard-fought battles in the
past they had extracted from ruthless bosses favourable wages and
conditions. They had established norms which other workers dreamed of
and, moreover, hoped to attain in the future. But the defeat of the
print workers, together with the miners, discouraged millions of workers
and, to some extent, still does today. Despite his misleading comments
on the print unions, Davies admits: "But they [the print unions] were
also the only force strong enough to resist the new corporate owners.
And without them, the journalists’ union, which had always relied on the
printers to stop the paper coming out when they were in dispute, lost
its power too. Now, the grocers could rein in all the warhorses".
This points up the crucial role of the working class
as the leading force in industrial and social struggles, not just in the
print unions or other industries but in general. It graphically
underlines the dependency of other intermediary layers – although they
might appear more ‘educated’ and ‘culturally’ advanced – and the
majority of the middle class on the struggles of the workers. Moreover,
historical experience has shown that journalists can be drawn into the
whirlpool of social upheaval and move to the left, sometimes in a
decisive fashion. Witness the radicalising effect on journalists of the
Russian revolution – with John Reed as one striking example – or the
Spanish, Chinese and Portuguese revolutions. Upheavals in Britain, which
loom, can exercise a similar effect on British journalists, especially
as many are now subjected to the same neo-liberal, brutal sweatshop
conditions as workers in general.
Political power
THE ONE WEAKNESS in this book is that despite the
battle at Wapping and what flowed from it, and all the evidence that
Davies himself provides, he is reluctant to draw the conclusion that the
media is in the service of ‘political power’, particularly that which
defends the already existing capitalist system. He freely admits that
the press barons of the past were "in love with political power" and the
demands of the system. Lord Northcliffe used his newspapers to topple
the Asquith government in May 1915 and "create another (led by Lloyd
George in December 1916)". His brother, Lord Rothermere, infamously
through the Daily Mail, cheered on the fascists in Germany and Britain
in the 1930s. Lord Beaverbrook bluntly stated that, as owner of the
Daily Express, "I run the paper for the purpose of making propaganda and
with no other motive".
Davies tries to argue, unsuccessfully, that the new
corporate owners interfere far less than their propagandist
predecessors. Proof of this, he says, is that most journalists "nowadays
will tell you they have never written a story on the instructions,
direct or indirect, of an owner or of any editorial placemen employed by
an owner". He misses the point that such ‘instructions’, open
censorship, are generally not necessary because most journalists have a
censor sitting on their shoulders. They know very well by the tone that
is set, by the prevailing views within a particular newspaper and
society as a whole, what is ‘permissible’ and what is not.
Davies honestly points out that Tiny Rowland, an
infamous financial mogul, "repeatedly meddled in the inner workings of
the Observer to win political favours in Africa, where his company,
Lonrho, had vast business interests. Robert Maxwell did the same".
Conrad Black, now relaxing in prison, attacked the leader comments in
the Daily Telegraph when he was its owner. Its editor at the time, Max
Hastings, confessed: "I’ve never really believed in the notion of
editorial independence… I would never imagine saying to Conrad, ‘You
have no right to ask me to do this’, because Conrad is… richly entitled
to take a view when he owns the newspaper". Andrew Neil, right-wing
lickspittle of Murdoch and Thatcher, when he took over the Sunday Times
from Harry Evans, described Murdoch as "an interventionist proprietor
who expected to get his way… Why should the owner not be the ultimate
arbiter of what was in his paper?" Davies argues that today mainly
commercial considerations have taken over in the production and slant of
newspapers. Undoubtedly, everything, including news and information, is
today globalised; neo-liberal capitalism reduces everything to the ‘cash
nexus’, as Carlyle said. Murdoch and Rothermere will stoop to every base
method in order to increase their circulations and their viewers, in
order to boost their profits.
Snapshot of a cancer
BUT THE MOST crucial question raised by this
tremendous book is the one posed at the end by Davies himself: ‘what is
to be done?’ He shows that the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) is a
toothless body incapable and unwilling to take on the press moguls in
the declared interests of truth and objectivity. It rejects 90% of all
complaints on ‘technical grounds’ without investigating them. But his
weakness is a harking back to an imaginary time when journalists wrote
not to the agenda of the owners of the press but to the honest
principles of journalism. It is true that there were some, such as The
Times pre-Murdoch, which were journals of record, reporting events
objectively, in the main to forearm the class it represented, the
capitalists.
It is a revelation to consult copies of British
newspapers – not just The Times but also The Guardian – from the 1930s,
1940s and 1950s, and compare them to their contents today. Then,
journalists gave fairly objective reports; for instance, of the Spanish
civil war, sit-down strikes in France in 1936, etc. The editorials were
different, reflecting the class standpoint of the editors and owners.
But the journalists did report what had taken place. Today, bigger and
bigger papers are short on real facts but large on opinion, usually of
the most superficial, shallow and, of course, pro-capitalist kind.
Leon Trotsky once declared that The Times told the
truth nine times out of ten, the better to lie on that crucial tenth
occasion when its vital class interests were at stake. This was
demonstrated in The Times’s stance in the 1926 general strike, as it was
with the BBC, which became propaganda arms of the government against the
working class. In every major social confrontation since that has been
the case. The difference today is that Murdoch’s The Times, with the
rest of the press, only rarely allows the truth to be reported. The
result is numbing uniformity in the coverage of news. To read The
Independent, The Guardian and even the Financial Times (outside of its
specific economic and financial content) on the same day is often to be
confronted with almost identical reports, with the same phrases. It is
obvious – particularly after the revelations in this book – that this is
because the ‘news’ is taken from the same (unchecked) source.
Therefore, while Davies is penetrating in his
diagnosis of the disease – the degeneration of the press and the media
in Britain and worldwide – his solutions are an idealisation of that
sector he represents, journalists, who occupy a position between the big
boss proprietor, capitalist governments and the working class. This
middle position is untenable, particularly in periods of high social
tension, as has been demonstrated in the past. This does not mean to say
that there are not courageous journalists and commentators today who do
their best to inform us of the truth, to seek to champion the oppressed,
downtrodden and working class. But theirs is a muted voice compared to
the past, with attempts to push them to the margin, as with the
courageous likes of John Pilger, Robert Fisk, etc.
Davies places his hope in ameliorating this ‘cancer’
in alternative sources of news, which have been set up particularly on
the internet. There is no doubt that the internet has been partially
successful in countering the capitalist media’s distortions and lies.
But, as we have seen, the Murdochs and the rest, ever adaptable, are
trying to colonise even this medium. Davies praises Ignacio Ramonet,
editor-in-chief of Le Monde Diplomatique, who stated: "We intend to stay
faithful to the fundamental principles of our way of making the news…
presenting news and information not often published and, indeed, often
concealed; and daring to go against the tide of the dominant media".
This is commendable. But Davies pessimistically adds: "In the real
world, however, it is unlikely we will find any way of bringing the
media back on track". This begs the question whether it was ever ‘on
track’. To paraphrase Karl Marx, the ruling ideas of any epoch are
ultimately those of the ruling class. This is the real role of the media
in capitalist society.
On the last page of his book, Davies declares: "I am
afraid that I think the truth is that, in trying to expose the weakness
of the media, I am taking a snapshot of a cancer. Maybe it helps a
little to be able to see the illness. At least that way we know in
theory what the cure might be. But I fear the illness is terminal". Yes,
the illness of the capitalist media is terminal. But the solution
ultimately is to create a real alternative. This means creating
alternative, democratically controlled sources of information,
particularly about the struggles of the oppressed, the activities of the
working class, the labour movement and the trade unions. This means
independent papers, hopefully in time radio stations, and demands for
access to TV.
The workers’ voice
DAVIES SAYS THAT one of the greatest sins of the
media today is ‘omission’. He gives some examples of this but does not
mention the complete absence of any comment in the media on the trade
unions. Corporations and big business, the inner workings of the
boardrooms, are commented on but there is no discussion of what is
taking place in the workplace – the boiling anger of the working class,
the deterioration in their conditions, etc. This task will not be
fulfilled by the present media. All strength to those conscientious
journalists who seek, through the cracks that exist, to find a road to
the truth and objectivity. But it will be by building up a powerful
workers’ and socialist press that the real alternative to the
‘cancer-ridden’ media of Britain and the world will be created.
This must be accompanied by raising now the need for
the nationalisation of the printing presses, television and radio, under
popular management and control, as the most democratic means of
overcoming the dictatorial stranglehold presently exercised by the press
moguls and their acolytes. This is not to suggest ‘state control’ of the
press. We, the working class and the labour movement, do not want to
take over the Sun, the Daily Mail or even the august Guardian. We oppose
the state monopoly of news and information as existed in the Stalinist
states of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. We were even opposed
during the 1974-75 Portuguese revolution to the undemocratic takeover by
Communist Party militants and others of the journal República, which
leaned towards the Socialist Party. This action allowed the right to
mobilise – behind the Socialist Party of Mario Soares – not just against
this measure, which was pictured as dictatorial, but against the
revolution itself. Similarly, we opposed the recent actions of Hugo
Chávez against the right-wing television station RCTV, which was used as
a handle by the right to picture his government as taking a step towards
dictatorship. This was a factor in the defeat of Chávez in last
December’s referendum.
The real alternative is democratic working-class and
popular control of the press and media in general. This would not result
in a monopoly for the government or one party but allow access to the
media in proportion to political support. Trotsky wrote 70 years ago, in
relation to Mexico where the issue of press freedom and nationalisation
was being discussed: "The real tasks of the workers’ state do not
consist in policing public opinion, but in freeing it from the yoke of
capital. This can only be done by placing the means of production –
which includes the production of information – in the hands of society
in its entirety. Once this essential step towards socialism has been
taken, all currents of opinion which have not taken up arms against… the
proletariat must be able to express themselves freely. It is the duty of
the workers’ state to put in their hands, to all according to their
numeric importance, the technical means necessary for this, printing
presses, paper, means of transportation".
Capitalism and Stalinism defend undemocratic control
of the media by a minority. Scientific socialism, Marxism, socialism and
democracy stand for taking the ‘production of information’ out of the
hands of a minority to put it in the hands of a majority and allow full
freedom of discussion. If Nick Davies’s book is used to further this, it
will have fulfilled a great progressive mission. He has, in any case,
provided the political ammunition for such a campaign embracing
journalists, the working class and the labour movement as a whole.
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