MEDIA ALERT: INTELLECTUAL CLEANSING: PART 1 - Keeping The Media Safe For Big Business

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

October 2, 2008

Martin Tierney is one of a tiny number of mainstream journalists willing to review our book, ‘Guardians of Power’. In June 2006, he published an accurate outline of our argument in the Herald, commenting: “It stands up to scrutiny.”

He added that we “do not see conscious conspiracy but a ‘filter system maintained by free market forces.’ After all it wouldn't be appropriate to show the limbs of third world children during Thanksgiving as it would only remind consumers who was really being stuffed.” (http://www.medialens.org/bookshop/review_herald.php)

Exactly so. But if no conspiracy is involved, how on earth does the market manage to filter dissident views with such consistency? As baffled Channel 4 news reader, Jon Snow, told us:

“Well, I'm sorry to say, it either happens or it doesn't happen. If it does happen, it's a conspiracy; if it doesn't happen, it's not a conspiracy.” (Interview with David Edwards, January 9, 2001; http://www.medialens.org/articles/interviews/jon_snow.php)

In 1996, Noam Chomsky attempted to explain to an equally bemused Andrew Marr (then of the Independent):

Marr: “This is what I don’t get, because it suggests - I mean, I’m a journalist - people like me are ‘self-censoring’...”

Chomsky: “No - not self-censoring. There’s a filtering system that starts in kindergarten and goes all the way through and - it doesn’t work a hundred percent, but it’s pretty effective - it selects for obedience and subordination, and especially...”

Marr: “So, stroppy people won’t make it to positions of influence...”

Chomsky: “There’ll be ‘behaviour problems’ or... if you read applications to a graduate school, you see that people will tell you ‘he doesn’t get along too well with his colleagues’ - you know how to interpret those things.”

Chomsky’s key point:

“I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is, if you believed something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.” (The Big Idea, BBC2, February 14, 1996;
http://www.aithne.net/index.php?e=news&id=4&lang=0)

So what happens when a professional journalist does express “something different”? Is their office seat just yanked away from them and rolled under a more reliable rear end?

Consider the case of our reviewer, Martin Tierney, who wrote for the Saturday Herald for seven years. In August, Tierney reviewed Barbara Ehrenreich's book Going To Extremes (Granta, 2008). With his usual uncompromising vim, he wrote:

“It is essentially a tirade against every method used against US citizens to ensure that their wealth is systematically transferred to government and corporate elites.

“This is done, she claims, via abuse of the tax system, scapegoating immigrants; denial of Unions and Gestapo tactics used by the likes of... [a large US supermarket] to ensure this and a perennial 'Warfare State' where taxpayers money merely is used to enrich arms dealers while bludgeoning them into a unnecessary paranoia.”

Notice that Tierney merely +reported+ claims made by Ehrenreich in her book regarding the use of “Gestapo tactics”. It seems the Herald’s initial response to the review was positive - the piece was excellent, he was told. (Email to Media Lens, September 25, 2008)

But someone else on the Herald's editorial staff informed Tierney that the reference to the supermarket's “Gestapo tactics” had caused great upset and anger in the office. One senior editor in particular was deeply unamused. This last reaction appears to have been decisive. Indeed, as a result, Tierney was told, he was being asked to relinquish his column. The reasoning? His editor felt she could not feel confident that he would not make similarly extreme comments in future - comments that might slip undetected into the paper. (Email from Tierney to Media Lens, October 1, 2008)

The reference to a lack of confidence immediately recalls the work of journalist and physicist Jeff Schmidt who has studied the filtering of career professionals in some depth. The professional, Schmidt explains, “is an obedient thinker, an intellectual property whom employers can trust to experiment, theorise, innovate and create safely within the confines of an assigned ideology. The political and intellectual timidity of today’s most highly educated employees is no accident.” (Schmidt, Disciplined Minds, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000, p.16)

The question of trust is crucial - employers must be able to rely on their human property to play by the rules. This is why Tierney was fired.

The employer’s reference to Tierney’s extreme comment was ironic indeed given the extreme nature of the horrors exposed in Ehrenreich's book - titled, after all, Going To Extremes - and outlined in Tierney's review.

Tierney tells us the review was published - with the unamusing mention of the US supermarket, and all references to it, removed - on August 16. (Email from Tierney to Media Lens September 30, 2008)

If you’ve ever wondered why the press finds it so hard to find ‘space’ for the multitude of excellent, radical analyses, this incident gives an idea of the true reasons. The unwritten corporate media rule is that you can say what you like about the powerless - they can be treated with contempt, smeared and slandered without limit. But when the powerless attempt to challenge the powerful, a different rule applies.

By contrast, in May, the mighty Eamonn Butler, Director of the Adam Smith Institute, had no problems attacking the BBC in a Times article titled, ‘Watch out, the Gestapo are about.’

(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3933535.ece)

Butler was not merely reporting an accusation of “Gestapo tactics”, as Tierney did; he was himself protesting a BBC advert that sought to scare viewers into paying their licence fees. Butler commented:

“Nor are these Gestapo tactics new. Years ago, similar advertisements showed a family laughing at some comedy programme on TV. Comes the voice-over: 'If you have a TV licence, you're laughing.' In the dimly-lit street, a van draws up. Black leather boots crunch up the path, the family still oblivious. The voice continues: 'If not...' A gloved hand presses the bell. Suddenly, the family stops laughing, their faces gripped by sheer dread.”

You can bet there was no great upset in the Times’ offices.

In July 2007, Ned Temko and Nicholas Watt of the Observer reported that the wife of Downing Street's former chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, had “lifted the lid on the private fury felt by Tony Blair's inner circle over the cash-for- peerages inquiry, accusing the police of ‘Gestapo tactics’.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2007/jul/22/uk.partyfunding)

Imagine the shock if Temko and Watt had been sacked for +reporting+ the accusation.

In September 2006, Dominic Lawson wrote an article titled, ‘Gestapo tactics in freedom's name.’ Protesting the US-UK use of torture in fighting “the war on terror”, Lawson wrote:

“America is inevitably tainted - and Britain by association - with the unanswerable charge that it has used the tactics of the Gestapo in the name of freedom.” (http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/
dominic-lawson-gestapo-tactics-in-freedoms-name-415613.html)

Samantha's Christmas Cards - And Other Scandals

All around us, unseen, our media are being continuously cleansed, pore-deep, of important rational comments for the simple, crude reason that they threaten profits.

Last month, Nick Clayton, a columnist at the Scotsman for 12 years and formerly its technology editor, reported that advertisers were leaving the paper in favour of online media. He wrote: “Whether you're looking for work or a home, the web's the place to go.”

Clayton was fired for writing this. He commented on his sacking:

“I really don't understand why I've been fired... I was merely reporting what estate agents had said to me about advertising in newspapers.” (http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=42095&)

Freelancers aren’t fired, just waved away. Last month, Greg Philo of the prestigious Glasgow University Media Group submitted a powerful article, ‘More News Less Views’, to the Guardian‘s Comment is Free (CiF) website. Philo wrote:

“News is a procession of the powerful. Watch it on TV, listen to the Today programme and marvel at the orthodoxy of views and the lack of critical voices. When the credit crunch hit, we were given a succession of bankers, stockbrokers and even hedge-fund managers to explain and say what should be done. But these were the people who had caused the problem, thinking nothing of taking £20 billion a year in city bonuses. The solution these free market wizards agreed to, was that tax payers should stump up £50 billion (and rising) to fill up the black holes in the banking system. Where were the critical voices to say it would be a better idea to take the bonuses back?

“Mainstream news has sometimes a social-democratic edge. There are complaints aired about fuel poverty and the state of inner cities. But there are precious few voices making the point that the reason why there are so many poor people is because the rich have taken the bulk of the disposable wealth. The notion that the people should own the nation's resources is close to derided on orthodox news.” (http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9838#9838)

He added:

“At the start of the Iraq war we had the normal parade of generals and military experts, but in fact, a consistent body of opinion then and since has been completely opposed to it. We asked our sample [of TV viewers] whether people such as Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Naomi Klein and Michael Moore should be featured routinely on the news as part of a normal range of opinion. Seventy three per cent opted for this rather than wanting them on just occasionally, as at present.”

Matt Seaton, the CiF editor, rejected the article on the grounds that “it would be read as a piece of old lefty whingeing about bias”. (Email from Greg Philo, September 30, 2008)

This from the same website that has just published Anne Perkins’s analysis of the merits of different leaders’ wives. Sarah Brown, wife of prime minister Gordon, and Samantha Cameron, wife of Tory leader David, are doing so much better than “that awful Cherie” Blair, it seems:

“Brown is unflashy and sincere. Cameron is cool and elegant. The joke is they could be sisters, with pretty but unacademic Samantha and the older, not quite as pretty but dead brainy Sarah.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/01/cherieblair.women)

Samantha “keeps her mouth shut and looks cool and stylish”, although there have been gaffes: “no one mentions those packs of Smythson's Christmas cards (£5.70 each, £57 for 10)”. And so on...

We found this within seconds of visiting the site - there are limitless comparable examples. At time of writing, Perkins’s article has garnered 15 uninspired comments, including: “It is a very silly Daily Mail sort of article as others say, but this is the way the Guardian is going, alas.”

As we ourselves know, where dissidents can't be sacked, patronised or ignored, legal action is always an option.

CanWest, one of Canada's largest media companies, is the owner of newspapers, radio and television stations, and online properties. CanWest founder, Israel (Izzy) Asper, a strong supporter of Israel’s right-wing Likud party, reportedly told the Jerusalem Post:

"In all our newspapers, including the National Post, we have a very pro-Israel position... we are the strongest supporter of Israel in Canada." (http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18899)

The Guardian noted that Asper “was highly critical of any perceived anti-Israeli position in the media, particularly the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s coverage of the Middle East, which he suggested had anti-Semitic overtones”. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2003/oct/16/guardianobituaries)

Responding to this consistent pro-Israeli stance, the Palestine Media Collective produced a satirised version of CanWest’s Vancouver Sun newspaper on the theme of the 40th anniversary of the Israeli Occupation in 2007. This included stories such as: "Study Shows Truth Biased against Israel, By CYN SORSHEEP." (http://redstaterebels.org/2008/09/profits-and-free-speech-in-Canada/)

In response, CanWest hit the media collective with a SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) claiming a violation of trademark law. Because the writers were initially anonymous, CanWest sued the printer and another activist, Mordecai Briemberg, who had passed out copies. Robert Jensen, professor of journalism at the University of Texas, takes up the story:

“Such a suit is legitimate only when the plaintiff can show there's a reasonable likelihood that people will confuse the fake with the real and that some harm will result. In this case, there clearly is no confusion and no harm, and hence no serious claim. But CanWest presses on.

“Calling the [Palestine Media] Collective's paper 'a counterfeit version' that amounts to 'identity theft,' CanWest seems to want to frame this as a kind of intellectual-property terrorism: 'This piece was not satirical. It was not a clever spoof. It was a deliberate act to mislead and misinform thousands of people by using the actual Vancouver Sun masthead, logo and layout," reads a company statement on the case.” (Jensen, (http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18899)

Briemberg initially sought coverage of his plight from the Canadian press without success. He then approached the international press, including the Guardian, with an opinion piece. The Guardian directed him to their Comment is Free website, which has ignored him.

The Index Censorship has run an edited version of his op-ed here:
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/?p=560

A Seriously Free Speech Committee has also been formed to help with honorary members such as Naomi Klein, John Pilger, Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman, and many others: http://seriouslyfreespeech.wordpress.com/

There has so far been no mention of this story in any UK newspaper.

MEDIA ALERT: INTELLECTUAL CLEANSING - PART 2

Former Guardian and Observer Journalist Jonathan Cook Responds

In response to Part 1 of this alert (www.medialens.org/alerts/08/081002_intellectual_cleansing_part1.php), the former Guardian and Observer journalist, Jonathan Cook, emailed us:

“I woke up after four hours sleep my head buzzing with recollections of my early years in journalism. I've been sitting and writing ever since, trying to make sense of it all. It's quite therapeutic and more revealing about how the media work than I had appreciated before. Your alert really has set off processes in my head.” (Email to Media Lens, October 3, 2008)

A short piece Cook initially sent us on this theme was brilliant, in fact one of the most honest and insightful media analyses we have seen. The key point he made is that crude sackings of the kind we highlighted “are a great rarity”:

“Editors hardly ever need to bare their teeth against an established journalist because few make it to senior positions unless they have already learnt how to toe the line.”

But Cook didn’t stop there. He appears to have spent most of the weekend October 4-5 writing a 6,500-word piece which had the effect of “reframing my career in a way that finally makes sense to me”. We have published an edited version of this below. The full article is available on our website: http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2860

We would like to express our sincere thanks to Jonathan Cook for the time, energy and thought he has put into his response.

Introduction

Jonathan Cook is a British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His reports on Israel-Palestine have been published in numerous journals and websites including the Guardian, the Observer, the Times, Al Jazeera, New Statesman, International Herald Tribune, Al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo), The National (Abu Dhabi), Electronic Intifada and Counterpunch. His new book, published this month, is ‘Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair’ (Zed Books). His two earlier books are ‘Blood and Religion’ (Pluto Books, 2006) and ‘Israel and the Clash of Civilisations’ (Pluto Books, 2008). He has his own website at www.jkcook.net.

Cook started out writing for the Southampton Advertiser and then Southampton's Daily Echo. He comments on his early career:

“Most ambitious journalists start out on a daily local newspaper (I would soon end up on one), owned by one of a handful of large media groups. There, as I would learn, one quickly feels all sorts of institutional constraints on one’s reporting. As a young journalist, if you know no better, you simply come to accept that journalism is done in a certain kind of way, that certain stories are suitable and others unsuitable, that arbitrary rules have to be followed. These seem like laws of nature, unquestionable and self-evident to your more experienced colleagues. Being a better journalist requires that these work practices become second nature.”

These “rules” were constantly reinforced:

“Promotion meant moving on from the lowly beat reporter, covering community issues, to other posts: the city or county council correspondent, who depended on council officials and councillors for information; the court reporter, who loyally regurgitated court proceedings; the business staff, who tried to liven up advertisers’ press releases; and the crime correspondent, who spent all day hanging out with policemen.

“In other words, success at the newspaper was gauged in terms of obedience to figures of authority, and the ability not to alienate powerful groups within the community. Ambitious journalists learnt to whom they must turn for a comment or a quote, and where ‘suitable’ stories could be found. It was a skill that presumably stayed with them for the rest of their careers.

“Those who struggled to cope with these strictures were soon found out. They either failed their probationary periods and were forced to move on, or stayed on in the lowliest positions where they could do little harm.”

In the guest media alert below, Cook describes his experience of intellectual cleansing.

There Is No Home Of The Brave

Like many British journalists, my ambition was to reach the national media. I had been working for several years at the Echo, learning my craft, proving I was a professional, slowly moving up the hierarchy in terms of promotion but not much in terms of responsibility. I seemed to have a hit a glass ceiling, and I had a vague sense of why.

A damning criticism I have often heard in newsrooms was that someone is not a "team player". Nobody said this to my face at the Echo but I had no doubt that it was a suspicion held by the senior staff. I thought of them as cowardly, failing in their role as watchdogs of power. Maybe my contempt showed a little.

In those days, my experiences at the Echo did nothing to shake my faith in the profession. I assumed that these failings were restricted to the paper and its lily-livered editors. Were new editors to be appointed, or were I to move to another paper, I would find things were different. The national newspapers, I had no doubt, were braver.

Working on a national is seen as the pinnacle of a professional journalist’s career. Very few make it that far. The competition is fierce, and acceptance is slow. There are many stages in the early career of journalists designed to handicap and weed out those who do not conform or who question the framework within which they work. Noam Chomsky refers to this as part of a "filtering" process. Are the nationals different?

It is worth examining how a journalist who works for the Guardian, Independent, BBC or any other major media institution gets a job. There are several stages on the way to a secure position in the national media.

The most common requirement is to have completed several years in the local media. Turnover of staff at the local level is high, with most "non-team players" identified very quickly. Those who survive tend to share the professional values of the editors they serve. If there is any doubt in the case of a particular individual, the national media can always check his or her track record of published articles.

A tiny number of privileged individuals manage to avoid this route and come direct from university. At the Guardian, where I worked for several years, it was seen as a mild amusing idiosyncrasy that the newspaper recruited the odd trainee direct from Oxbridge, and more usually from Cambridge. It was generally assumed that this was a legacy of the fact that the paper's editors had traditionally been Cambridge graduates. These journalists invariably worked their way up the paper's hierarchy rapidly.

This preference for untested Oxbridge graduates can probably be explained by the filtering process too. The selected graduates always came from the same predictable backgrounds, and were the product of lengthy filtering processes endured in the country’s education system. The Guardian appeared to be more confident that such types could be relied on without the kind of "quality control" needed with other applicants.

For a journalist like myself who was well trained and had spent several years in the local media, getting a foot in the door of the nationals was relatively easy. Keeping my feet under the desk was far harder. Few recruits are given a job or allowed to write for a paper until they have completed yet another lengthy probationary period.

On national newspapers, this usually means spending considerable time as a sub-editor, as I did, a role in which the journalist is slowly acclimatised to the newspaper's "values". The sub sits at the bottom of the newspaper's editorial hierarchy, editing and styling reports as they come in for publication. Above him or her are the section editors (home, foreign etc), a chief sub-editor (usually an old hand), and a revise sub to check their work. Subs invariably spend years as freelancers or on short-term contracts.

The subs’ primary task is to stop errors of fact and judgment getting into the newspaper. But their own judgment is constantly under scrutiny from editors higher up the hierarchy. If they fail to understand the paper's "values", their career is likely to stall on this bottom rung or their contract will not be renewed.

Reporters who avoid a period of sub-editing are in an equally insecure position. They are usually taken on as a freelance writer before getting a series of short contracts. During this period news reporters are mainly restricted to the night shift, when their job is to update for the later editions stories that have already been filed by senior reporters during the day. Writers offering material from abroad fare little better. The best they can usually aspire to is being taken on as a stringer, retained by the paper for an agreed period.

Hollywood films may perpetuate the idea of reporters, even junior ones, regularly initiating new stories for their papers, but actually it is relatively rare. In truth, reporters are more usually directed by senior editors on which stories to cover and how to cover them. Unless they are senior writers, usually specialist correspondents, they have little input into the way they cover events.

If they are to survive long, writers must quickly learn what the news desk expects of them. Newcomers are given a small amount of leeway to adopt angles that are "not suitable". But they are also expected to learn quickly why such articles are unsuitable and not to propose similar reports again.

The advantage of this system is that high-profile sackings are a great rarity. Editors hardly ever need to bare their teeth against an established journalist because few make it to senior positions unless they have already learnt how to toe the line.

The media's lengthy filtering system means that it is many years before the great majority of journalists get the chance to write with any degree of freedom for a national newspaper, and they must first have proved their "good judgment" many times over to a variety of senior editors. Most have been let go long before they would ever be in a position to influence the paper’s coverage.

Journalists, of course, see this lengthy process of recruitment as necessary to filter for "quality" rather than to remove those who fail to conform or whose reporting threatens powerful elites. The media are supposedly applying professional standards to find those deserving enough to reach the highest ranks of journalism.

But, of course, these goals – finding the best, and weeding out the non-team players – are not contradictory. The system does promote outstanding "professional" journalists, but it ensures that they also subscribe to orthodox views of what journalism is there to do. The effect is that the media identify the best propagandists to promote their corporate values.

It is notable that there is not a single large media institution dedicated to providing a platform to those who dissent or express non-conformist views, however talented they are as journalists. Only at the very margins of what are considered to be left-wing publications such as the Guardian and the Independent can such voices very occasionally be heard, and even then only in the comment pages.

Surprisingly, most national newspapers talk a great deal about their "values" and the special character that marks them out from their rivals. And yet when I was seeking a job on the national newspapers, it was striking how interchangeable the staff were. I spent periods working freelance for the Guardian, Observer and Telegraph, and kept meeting the same aspiring journalists trying to get work at these apparently very different newspapers.

As freelancers we quickly became aware of what each newspaper expected from us in terms of story presentation, and the differences were not great; it was more about nuance (that favourite term of professional journalists). Similarly, the nationals regularly poached senior staff from each other.

Journalists like to argue that this is not surprising in a "professional" environment. After all, the point of "professional" standards is that all newspapers should apply the same principles of supposed neutrality and objectivity.

Where, then, is this difference of character to be located in our media? According to most journalists it is to be found in the commentary pages and in the selection of news stories. This is where a paper reveals its true values. (We will gloss over the problematic fact that the need for stories to be selected – by whom and according to what criteria? – in itself undermines the idea of impartiality.)

In fact, despite their claims to having distinctive characters, newspapers closely follow the same news agendas, trying to mirror each other’s story lists. One of the jobs I once had on the foreign desk was to scan the pages of the first editions of rival papers to see if they had any stories we had missed. All national papers do this compulsively.

Success Comes With The Herd

The mirroring by newspapers of each other’s news agendas is often attributed to human nature, in the form of the herd instinct or the tendency to follow the pack. In truth, this is the way most reporters work out in the field. They attend press conferences, they chase after celebrities together, they speak to the same official spokespeople.

I learnt this myself the hard way when I moved to Israel to report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Naively, I assumed that, in line with my vision of the ideal journalist as an investigative reporter, a Woodward or a Bernstein, that I should be trying to find exclusives, stories no other reporter knew about. After all, most newspapers still include as their motto some variation on the claim to be "First with the news".

What I discovered, however, was that, when I rung up the news desk back in London, the editor would always start by asking me where else the story had been published. Paradoxically, when I said it was an exclusive, I could hear his interest wilt. Even though he knew I had a great deal of experience, he did not want to take a chance on a story that no one else had reported.

On run-of-the-mill stories too, the demand from the news desk was the same: could I get an official source to confirm the story? It happened even when I had seen something with my own eyes. And an official source meant an Israeli source. It felt almost as if the Israeli government and army had to give their seal of approval before a story could be published.

In fact, more than 95 per cent of the reports filed by Britain’s distinguished correspondents in Jerusalem originate in stories they have seen published either by the world’s two main news agencies, Reuters and Associated Press, or in the local Israeli media. Exclusives are almost unheard of. The correspondent’s main job is to rewrite the agency copy by adding his own "angle"; usually a minor matter of emphasis in the first paragraphs or an addition of a few quotes from an official contact.

This reliance on the wires is in itself a very effective way of filtering out news that challenges dominant interests. The agencies, dependent for survival on funding from the large media groups, are extremely deferential to the main Western power elites and their allies. This is for two chief reasons: first, large media owners like the Murdoch empire might pull out of the arrangement, or even set up their own rival agency, were Reuters or AP regularly to run stories damaging to their business interests; and second, the agencies, needing to provide reams of copy each day, rely primarily on official sources for their information.

The minnow in the battle between the agencies is AFP, the French news agency. And much like the Advertiser in its golden days, AFP needs to beat the Reuters-AP cartel by finding other readers / buyers for its wire service. It does this by trying to provide a limited supply of alternative news, especially of what are called "human interest" stories.

In the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict this sometimes translates into sympathetic reports of Palestinian suffering at the hands of the Israeli army or the Jewish settlers, stories hard to find in Reuters or AP. Not surprisingly, the media in countries that do not subscribe to the Western corporate view of world affairs are the main subscribers to AFP.

The main other source of information, the Israeli media, reinforces the coverage trends of the big agencies. Israeli newspapers are subject to all the usual institutional constraints we have considered in the case of the evening paper in Southampton. But they also reflect the dominant values of a highly ideological and mobilised society. The British media’s reliance on partisan Israeli news gatherers for information severely undermines their own claims to objectivity and neutrality.

Being a foreign correspondent in Israel, it should be underlined, is no different from being one anywhere else in the world. The same issues apply.

The inadmissibility of many important details of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – especially when they concern the weaker, Palestinian side – is not confined to news reports. Even the opinion pages of newspapers are closed off to the full spectrum of human, mainly Palestinian, experience and relevant political context, as I have repeatedly discovered.

Through personal contacts and fortuitous circumstances, I managed in the early stages of the second intifada, which began in 2000, to publish several commentaries in the International Herald Tribune. All were critical of Israel’s behaviour in a way that is rarely seen in any American media.

After a short time, Israel’s powerful lobby, realising that I had evaded the normal safeguards, moved into action. After one of my commentaries, the lobby organised the largest postbag of complaints the IHT had received in its history, as a sympathetic editor confided in me. I was forced to submit a lengthy defence of my article to counter the campaign of pressure from the lobby groups, with the IHT eventually accepting that there were no errors in my piece and refusing to publish an apology. However, they severed all links with me: another triumph for the lobby.

Subsequent efforts by the main Palestinian media organisation in the US to get my commentaries published in American papers and journals have failed dismally. Even publications regarded as progressive by American standards refuse to consider my pieces.

The use of institutional power to silence dissident voices is more savage and ugly in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than elsewhere, but similar obstacles face any journalist anywhere in the world who tries to break out of the narrow confines of mainstream reporting, analysis and commentary.

It’s Not Really About Readers

How is it then, if this thesis is right, that there are dissenting voices like John Pilger, Robert Fisk, George Monbiot and Seumas Milne who write in the British media while refusing to toe the line?

Note that the above list pretty much exhausts the examples of writers who genuinely and consistently oppose the normal frameworks of journalistic thinking and refuse to join the herd. That means that in Britain’s supposedly leftwing media we can find one writer working for the Independent (Fisk), one for the New Statesman (Pilger) and two for the Guardian (Milne and Monbiot). Only Fisk, we should further note, writes regular news reports. The rest are given at best weekly columns in which to express their opinions.

However grateful we should be to these dissident writers, their relegation to the margins of the commentary pages of Britain’s "leftwing" media serves a useful purpose for corporate interests. It helps define the "character" of the British media as provocative, pluralistic and free-thinking – when in truth they are anything but. It is a vital component in maintaining the fiction that a professional media is a diverse media.

Also, by presenting these exceptional writers as straining at the very limits of the thinkable, their host newspapers subtly encourage a view of them as crackpots, armchair revolutionaries and whingers, as they often are described in the paper’s feedback columns.

The case of Fisk is instructive. All the evidence is that the Independent might have folded were it not for his inclusion in the news and comment pages. Fisk appears to be one of the main reasons people buy the Independent. When, for example, the editors realised that most of the hits on the paper’s website were for Fisk’s articles, they made his pieces accessible only by paying a subscription fee. In response people simply stopped visiting the site, forcing the Independent to restore free access to his stories.

It is also probable that the other writers cited above are among the chief reasons readers choose the publications that host them. It is at least possible that, were more such writers allowed on their pages, these papers would grow in popularity. We are never likely to see the hypothesis tested because the so-called leftwing media appear to be in no hurry to take on more dissenting voices.

Finally, it should also be noted that none of these admirable writers – with the exception of Pilger – choose or are allowed to write seriously about the dire state of the mainstream media they serve. Sadly, it seems self-evident that were they to do so they would quickly find their employment terminated.

We are fortunate to have their incisive analyses of some of the most important events of our era. Nonetheless it is vital to acknowledge that even they cannot speak out on an issue that is fundamental to the health of our democracy.

How then do I dare write as I have done here? Simply because I have little to lose. The mainstream media spat me out some time ago. Were it otherwise, I would probably be keeping my silence too.

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

Part Three Self-Deceits Held In Common - Groupthink

October 15, 2008

MEDIA ALERT: INTELLECTUAL CLEANSING: PART 3 - Comment Is Closed

In Part 1 of this alert, we noted how journalists who threaten their employers’ interests - and the interests of their key political and corporate allies - tend to be unceremoniously dumped. We also described how the force of the law can be deployed to silence dissidents seeking to expose chronic media bias.

In Part 2, we hosted journalist Jonathan Cook’s splendid analysis in response. Cook’s main point was that media managers rarely have to take such extreme measures because few journalists “make it to senior positions unless they have already learnt how to toe the line.”

An interesting question arises, then, in the age of the internet: To what extent will these same ultra-sensitive media companies tolerate public criticism? For example, will they allow visitors to their websites to post material that is critical of their journalism, and perhaps even damaging to their interests? Last month, we tested the limits of dissent on the Guardian's Comment Is Free (CiF) website.

On September 20, we posted a message on CiF in response to an article written by Guardian journalist Emma Brockes. Brockes had commented wryly on Tania Head, a 9/11 survivor, “of whom it has been alleged that she was not on the 78th floor of the South Tower on September 11th as she claimed, but may have been in Spain at the time...”

Brockes added:

"But well below the level of mental illness a lot of low-level fakery is actively embraced and rewarded." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/20/uselections2008.
usa?commentpage=1&commentposted=1)

We posted the following comment:

“This is from the same journalist [Brockes] who wrote in October 2005:

"'[Noam] Chomsky uses quotations marks to undermine things he disagrees with and, in print at least, it can come across less as academic than as witheringly teenage; like, Srebrenica was so not a massacre.'”

In our post, we described Chomsky's outrage at the suggestion that he had denied that the Serb killings of Bosnians at Srebrenica in 1995 constituted a massacre. In 2005, Chomsky wrote to us of Brockes's article:

“Even when the words attributed to me have some resemblance to accuracy, I take no responsibility for them, because of the invented contexts in which they appear... her piece de resistance, the claim that I put the word 'massacre' in quotes. Sheer fabrication.”

Chomsky described his treatment by Brockes and the Guardian as "one of the most dishonest and cowardly performances I recall ever having seen in the media.” (See our media alerts: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/051104_smearing_chomsky_the_guardian.php and http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/051121_smearing_chomsky_the_guardian.php)

We were interested to see how these comments would be received by the Guardian website. In the event, our message remained in place for 48 hours but was then deleted. The site moderator explained in an email:

“The article that Medialens replied to was about emotional fakery and its role in American political culture. The comment that was removed did not address this topic but instead raised a past journalistic error by the author.” (Email to Media Lens, September 23, 2008)

In fact, while Brockes +had+ discussed emotional fakery, focusing on “self dramatisation”, she had also written: “fakery no less shameless goes on every day in the political debate and the way we the audience internalise it. McCain flatly contradicts himself within the space of a single day.”

Political fakery and self-contradiction were exactly the themes of our post, but it was deleted as “off topic” by the Guardian gatekeepers.

Only a handful of comments had been posted in response to Brockes’s article. When we and one or two other people posted messages protesting the deletions, these were also deleted and someone called the Community Moderator shut down the debate, writing: “This discussion will now close, as it has mostly been off topic.” A final message appeared: “Comments are now closed for this entry.”

The website shows five messages deleted alongside just nine posts remaining. Other posts had been removed altogether: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/20/uselections2008.usa?
commentpage=1&commentposted=1

We have seen how the propaganda system is filtered by a range of carrot and stick pressures: professional training, selection for obedience, promotions and demotions, sackings, legal pressures, and the rest. The final piece of the jigsaw is much more elusive and mysterious. 

In his book Vital Lies, Simple Truths, psychologist Daniel Goleman examined the human capacity for self-deception. According to Goleman, we build our version of reality around key frameworks of understanding, or “schemas”, which we then protect from conflicting facts and ideas. The more important a schema is for our sense of identity and security, the less likely we are to accept evidence contradicting it. Goleman wrote:

“Foremost among these shared, yet unspoken, schemas are those that designate what is worthy of attention, how it is to be attended to - and what we choose to ignore or deny... People in groups also learn together how not to see - how aspects of shared experience can be veiled by self-deceits held in common." (Goleman, Vital Lies, Simple Truths - The Psychology of Self-Deception, Bloomsbury 1997, p.158)

Goleman concluded: "The ease with which we deny and dissemble - and deny and dissemble to ourselves that we have denied or dissembled - is remarkable."

Psychologist Donald Spence noted the sophistication of this process:

“We are tempted to conclude that the avoidance is not random but highly efficient - the person knows just where not to look.” (Ibid, p.107)

This tendency to self-deception appears to be greatly increased when we join as part of a group. Groups create a sense of belonging, a “we-feeling”, which can provide even greater incentives to reject painful truths. As psychologist Irving Janis reports, the 'we-feeling' lends “a sense of belonging to a powerful, protective group that in some vague way opens up new potentials for each of them.” (Ibid, p.186)

Members are thus reluctant to say or do anything that might lessen these feelings of security and empowerment. In this situation, even pointing out the risks surrounding a group decision may seem to represent an unforgivable attack on the group itself. This is 'groupthink'. Individual self-deception, combined with groupthink, helps explain why journalists are able to ignore even the most obvious facts.

In our September 16 Media Alert, we wrote that the Independent had devoted 153 words in the first two weeks of September to the flooding catastrophe in Haiti. By that time, 1,000 people were reported killed with 1 million made homeless out of a population of 9 million. (http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/080916_not_very_interesting.php)

In response, the Independent's former Washington correspondent, now Asia correspondent, Andrew Buncombe, wrote to us:

Dear Davids, Hello and best wishes. Hope all is well. Your latest alert about Haiti is as thought-provoking as ever but I think there are a couple of clear errors you've made that ought to be cleared up. Firstly you say The Independent did not report the hurricanes raging down on the country and that "the Independent has not mentioned Haiti since September 5. But the paper has at least helped explain its own prejudice". That simple point clearly is not true. Guy Adams filed on September 7 a page lead pointing out the chaos facing untold thousands.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/haiti-in-crisis-after-tropical-storm-claims-more-than-500-lives-921716.html

But beyond that you also claim "This indifference has led to an appalling level of non-reporting, not just of the latest floods, but also of the killing of unarmed civilians by United Nations forces (Minustah), the Haitian National Police, and death squads". You say a raid in Cite Soleil in July 2005 was reported only by a few US newspapers but that is not the case. The Independent reported on the raid and revealed evidence collated by Kevin Pina that unarmed civilians were killed.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/peacekeepers-accused
-after-killings-in-haiti-500570.html

This was followed up in Feb 2007 by more details of civilians being killed by UN troops.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/civilians-caught-in-crossfire-
during-portauprince-raids-434723.html

You're correct in saying that Haiti does not get as much coverage as the US but your claim that the paper has not reported on Haiti, its problems and its ongoing challenges is not true. A simple search on Google for articles about Haiti over the last few years would quickly show that. Best wishes, Andy Buncombe

Andrew Buncombe

Asia Correspondent

The Independent

We replied on September 21:

Dear Andrew

Many thanks for your email. You're right about Guy Adams' September 7 article. For some reason, that wasn't picked up by our LexisNexis search. We note, though, that the piece devoted 360 words to the disaster in Haiti. At the time we wrote the alert, that figure could have been added to the 153 words mentioning Haiti in the paper that month. That would have totalled 513 words for a 16-day period when perhaps 1000 people died and utter catastrophe befell the island.

You write:

"You say a raid in Cite Soleil in July 2005 was reported only by a few US newspapers but that is not the case."

In fact we weren't commenting on UK reporting in that section. We were describing research presented in Dan Beeton's report on +US+ media performance: 'Bad News From Haiti: U.S. Press Misses the Story.' We wrote:

"... only a few US newspapers mentioned the incident. These mostly portrayed the incident as a successful UN attempt to eliminate gang members - reports of civilian deaths were ignored.

"The US press has given similar treatment to atrocities committed by the Haitian National Police."

We thought it was clear that we were referring to Beeton's analysis solely of the US press, but perhaps we could have been clearer.

It's hard not to reflect on the deeper significance of your response. You're right that the Independent devoted 513 rather than 153 words to the devastation of Haiti from September 1-16. But, really, so what? Would you be focusing on this tiny difference in assessing the Independent's performance if you were not working for the paper? Wouldn't a dispassionate, rational observer join with us in criticising the Independent's appalling indifference to the disaster this month rather than arguing that "your claim that the paper has not reported on Haiti, its problems and its ongoing challenges is not true"? We did not argue that the Independent has "not reported on Haiti". We argued that its performance, particularly this month in offering a few hundred words - less than one word per death - was pitiful. We have a great deal of respect for you. But isn't your response on this occasion an example of a kind of corporate 'groupthink'?

Best wishes

David Edwards and David Cromwell

It is painful for a journalist to be aware of both his or her employer's shortcomings and his or her powerlessness to remedy them. As Daniel Goleman has noted, “when one can't do anything to change the situation, the other recourse is to change how one perceives it.”  (Goleman, op. cit, p.148)

This, finally, is the key human trait that enables "brainwashing under freedom" - journalists are able to perceive as important only that which allows them to thrive as successful components of the corporate system. The price is high, as Norman Mailer noted:

"There is an odour to any Press Headquarters that is unmistakeable... the unavoidable smell of flesh burning quietly and slowly in the service of a machine." (Mailer, The Time of Our Time, Little Brown, 1998, p.457)

SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to Matt Seaton, editor of the Guardian’s Comment is Free website. Ask him why he rejected Greg Philo’s excellent piece.

Email: matt.seaton@guardian.co.uk

Write to the the Sunday Herald. Ask them why Martin Tierney will no longer be reviewing books for them:

Email: letters@theherald.co.uk and books@theherald.co.uk

Please send a copy of your emails to us

Email: editor@medialens.org

Please do NOT reply to the email address from which this media alert originated. Please instead email us:

Email: editor@medialens.org

This media alert will shortly be archived here:

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/1015_intellectual_cleansing_part3.php

The Media Lens book 'Guardians of Power: The Myth Of The Liberal Media' by David Edwards and David Cromwell (Pluto Books, London) was published in 2006. For details, including reviews, interviews and extracts, please click here:

http://www.medialens.org/bookshop/guardians_of_power.php

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