Tag Media

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People lose their moral compass over Israel

Jan 26, ’09 9:57 AM

It sur­prises me to the degree that many people lose their moral com­pass over Israel. We’ve come to expect it from Israelis; cur­rently they’re prom­ising to pro­tect their war crim­in­als from inter­na­tional pro­sec­u­tion over their recent mas­sacre of Gazans.

But, then there’s people like Mark Thompson, the BBC’s dir­ector gen­eral, who has been instru­mental in the BBC’s recent refusal to broad­cast an appeal for the cit­izens of Gaza. How does one man­age to become so detached from the plight of other human beings? How is it that the per­son who heads the BBC is com­pletely duped by the idi­otic “war on ter­ror” pro­pa­ganda that so dehu­man­ises people like the Palestinians?

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The Daily Show: Speaking truth to power or setting the boundaries of acceptable debate?

Nov 1, ’08 12:15 AM

I enjoy watch­ing Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show but some­times the con­fines of his lib­eral naiv­ety drives me nuts.

Ian Sin­clair on the prob­lem with Jon Stew­art:

Stew­art is surely right to state the main­stream news media in the US is “hurt­ing Amer­ica”, as he did dur­ing a heated exchange on CNN’s now-defunct Cross­fire in 2004. How­ever, as a pro­gramme that is adversarial but always within very strict ideo­lo­gical bound­ar­ies, surely it is also true The Daily Show has its own role to play in what US dis­sid­ent Noam Chom­sky calls ‘the man­u­fac­ture of con­sent’: “Thus far and no further”.

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Contrasting a prank call with invading a country

Oct 30, ’08 8:23 PM

A huge con­tro­versy has blown up in the UK after a couple of comedi­ans made a lewd phone call and it was broad­cast on BBC radio. The broad­cast received two single com­plaints on the day but after The Mail on Sunday lead with the story a week later that even­tu­ally bal­looned into the tens of thousands.

As of tonight one of the comedi­ans has resigned, one is sus­pen­ded for twelve weeks and a senior BBC man­ager has also resigned.

The pub­lic out­rage has more to do, prob­ably, with their obscene pay pack­ets than the any­thing else but what I find so repuls­ive about all this is the con­trast between the account­ab­il­ity of people involved in a petty prank and the account­ab­il­ity of people involved in the unspeak­ably more hor­rendous mat­ter of the inva­sion of Iraq.

Here we have a silly but ulti­mately harm­less prank gone wrong. A few com­plain and people are apo­lo­gising and resign­ing left right and centre.

Tony Blair, Gor­don Brown and mob launch a war of aggres­sion, the “supreme war crime,” on a pack of lies, res­ult­ing in the destruc­tion of a coun­try and untold people’s lives des­troyed or ended. The largest protest in human his­tory ensues and not only have these people never apo­lo­gised, resigned or been brought to justice but a plur­al­ity of Brit­ish voters re-elected them.

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U.S. spending $100 million a year on propaganda in Iraq

Oct 4, ’08 12:24 AM

Wash­ing­ton Post:

U.S. to Fund Pro-American Pub­li­city in Iraqi Media

The Defense Depart­ment will pay private U.S. con­tract­ors in Iraq up to $300 mil­lion over the next three years to pro­duce news stor­ies, enter­tain­ment pro­grams and pub­lic ser­vice advert­ise­ments for the Iraqi media in an effort to “engage and inspire” the local pop­u­la­tion to sup­port U.S. object­ives and the Iraqi government.

I love how they refer to it as “Pro-American Publicity.”

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The media and the market economy

Oct 3, ’08 9:24 AM

Many of you will know I’m not exactly a fan of the mar­ket eco­nomy. In fact I think, one day, it may come to be known as the single worst inven­tion humans have devised. And one area where it does the most dam­age is the main­stream media.

I’ve had argu­ments with news­pa­per edit­ors and other com­ment­at­ors about the homo­gen­isa­tion of dis­course in the main­stream media and invari­ably I’m accused of prof­fer­ing con­spir­acy the­or­ies. While I have noth­ing against the prof­fer­ing of con­spir­acy the­or­ies you don’t need a con­spir­acy the­ory to explain the fil­ter­ing that takes place in the media. People get to their pos­i­tions for many reas­ons but one reason you’ll find per­vas­ive in the main­stream media is pass­ive agree­ment of the idea that profits are largely sac­rosanct. Chal­lenge this idea in any sig­ni­fic­ant way and won’t find your­self part of the main­stream media. It ends up fram­ing our entire discourse.

Check out the latest on this from Media Lens: Intel­lec­tual Cleans­ing: Part 1, Keep­ing The Media Safe For Big Business

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The Fear and the closed internet

Oct 3, ’08 8:55 AM

Dar­ing Fireball’s John Gruber explains why he thinks the man­age­ment of some of the closed aspects of Apple’s iPhone App Store are flawed.

And if that interests you, you might also be inter­ested in this inter­view with Jonathan Zit­train and a review of his new book, The Future of the Inter­net — And How to Stop It.

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The mechanisms of propaganda in a “free press”

Sep 5, ’08 7:18 PM

Ben Kuch­era, of Ars Tech­nica, writes about the rela­tion­ship between game soft­ware developers and game review­ers, and the mech­an­isms each have at their dis­posal to manip­u­late the other, namely paid advert­ising and access to information.

It’s a good prac­tical example of some of mech­an­isms that cor­rupt a “free press” in a cap­it­al­ist soci­ety and, of course, sim­ilar mech­an­isms are at play with gov­ern­ments and news media.

The writer says there is no easy solu­tion except for reader beware. He’s cor­rect, there is no solu­tion under cap­it­al­ism, because it’s an inher­ent prob­lem of cap­it­al­ism. The only pro­posed solu­tion I know of is under a dif­fer­ent eco­nomy.

Update, 7 Sep 2008: Here’s a recent example of a politi­cian doing the same thing. i.e. manip­u­lat­ing news media by with­hold­ing access to inform­a­tion, thus ulti­mately lower­ing the abil­ity of the tar­geted new media organ­isa­tion to make profits.

Davis insisted that “there are no strings attached” to media access to McCain. Yet just this week, McCain abruptly can­celed an inter­view with Larry King as pun­ish­ment for a tough CNN inter­view with one of his spokes­men. What’s more, top McCain aide Mark Salter said that “only the good report­ers” would get the best seats in the new cam­paign plane. “You have to earn it,” he said.

Update, 22 Sep 2008: Changed Pare­con link from Wiki­pe­dia to Znet.

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It’s a good thing, Jane

Aug 19, ’08 10:23 PM

Jane Clifton muses on the emer­gence of blog­ging and it’s rela­tion­ship with old fash­ioned journ­al­ism, com­plain­ing that “it’s hard to tell whether the inform­a­tion pro­viders are accur­ate, biased or simply malicious.”

“The Blo­ger­ati” responds in good fash­ion, but what I like that blog­ging brings to the table is exactly what Clifton fears: uncer­tainty about who is telling the truth. One of con­ven­tional journalism’s biggest traps is that it pur­ports to be the con­duit of truth, when in fact — and cer­tainly from my exper­i­ences of being repor­ted on as part of a story — this claim couldn’t be fur­ther from the truth.

Journ­al­ism, espe­cially in the form of for-profit media, should have never staked this claim, and it now has much to answer for.

Blog­ging and the inter­net encour­ages us all to treat everything we read with a crit­ical eye; not simply to accept some­thing because it’s writ­ten down. And that’s a good thing Jane.

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A glitch in the media matrix

Aug 7, ’08 9:37 AM

The NZ Her­ald has pub­lished a remark­able edit­or­ial today which offers rare insight into just how well our “free” media sys­tem serves to under­mine demo­cracy, while the back­ground story offers great insight into how much National Party politi­cians deplore demo­cracy and how deplor­ably dis­hon­est they can be in the lead up to an election.

As an aside: the only politi­cians I know of that don’t deplore demo­cracy are the Greens.

The back­ground story, if you haven’t heard, is that National Party politi­cians have been secretly taped admit­ting that they need to say whatever it takes to get elec­ted, then, once in power, they can get their real agenda through of redis­trib­ut­ing the New Zea­l­and people’s wealth to a tiny minor­ity of rich. Here’s Bill English’s and here’s Lock­wood Smith’s.

What’s remark­able about the Herald’s edit­or­ial isn’t simply that it tries to spin the story by pre­tend­ing National is simply “com­prom­ising on its desired policies,” rather than that National is actu­ally lying about its policies so it can drive them through once it’s in power:

The coun­try now knows, if it did not before, that National has com­prom­ised some of its policy desires for the sake of its elect­oral prospects.

It isn’t simply that uncov­er­ing a party’s real agenda — some­thing of vital pub­lic interest in the run up to an elec­tion — is dis­missed as “par­tisan politics”:

First, it is not fair to release a reporter’s tape or tran­script unless … the record­ing could serve a pub­lic interest some­what more com­pel­ling than par­tisan politics.

It isn’t simply that it admits the means of report­ing on politi­cians is broken:

Second, the pub­lic­a­tion would dam­age the gath­er­ing of fur­ther inform­a­tion. Once bit­ten, a pub­lic fig­ure is twice shy.

It isn’t simply that it admits to keep­ing secrets:

Noth­ing revealed from National’s con­fer­ence sneak so far offers insights to its inten­tions that could not have been obtained by a journ­al­ist trus­ted to use a private con­ver­sa­tion responsibly.

No, what I find remark­able about this edit­or­ial is that by put­ting for­ward this argu­ment it is openly admit­ting that it can be trus­ted by politi­cians but can’t be trus­ted by its read­ers and that it is com­pletely inef­fec­tual in doing the job of report­ing politics.

External links:

Gotcha! | 4 August, 2008
Choos­ing words | 5 August, 2008
Whoops, they did it again | 6 August, 2008
The Her­ald sup­ports secrecy | 7 August, 2008

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Iran is not the belligerent party

Jul 2, ’08 8:08 AM

The media in the West has a lot of blood on its hands already. Is it going to have more blood on its hands in Iran? Iran is not the bel­li­ger­ent party:

When it comes to demon­ising Iran, the US, Israel and Bri­tain have a uni­fied mes­sage and a com­pli­ant media, which has learned noth­ing from its mis­takes dur­ing the run-up to the inva­sion of Iraq, and seems happy to con­tinue to act as a gov­ern­ment pro­pa­ganda arm in some cases.

Thanks to the duti­ful cor­por­ate mouth­pieces, most Amer­ic­ans and Bri­tons have no idea that Tehran is act­ing within its rights under the NPT.

They don’t know that in Decem­ber, a US intel­li­gence estim­ate stated cat­egor­ic­ally that Iran is not cur­rently devel­op­ing nukes or that the nuc­lear watch­dog, the Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which mon­it­ors Ira­nian facil­it­ies, has no proof it seeks to do so.

The West’s pro­pa­ganda cam­paign is so effect­ive that the major­ity of West­ern­ers believe that Iran is the bel­li­ger­ent even though the facts sup­port the con­trary argument.

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