Mediating Truth
Well, the British elections are over with the Blair government returned with a much smaller majority and the distinction of winning the election with the smallest percentage of the popular vote (around 37%) since records have been kept. This has again raised the issue of the ‘tyranny of the minority’ with a great deal of speculation about what the political landscape could have looked like had we some form of proportional representation, with seats in parliament distributed on the basis of the percentage of the vote won. In my own electorate of Brecon the Liberal Democrat candidate’s majority increased from a mere 800 to over 6000, ample excuse for drawing the cork from a hearty bottle of New Zealand Pinot Gris. Overall it was a night for quiet satisfaction as Blair was punished for his lies about Iraq, the Liberals, the anti-war party, increased their representation at the expense of Labour, and I, having vowed after surviving the Thatcher years never again to voluntarily live under a Conservative regime, do not have to pack my bags and leave.
The role of the media appears to have been more influential than in the past, particularly as political commentators and TV hosts kept the Iraq war issues centre stage, and would not allow Blair’s campaign to marginalize it in favour of discussions about the economy to succeed. One of the most dramatic moments captured on TV was the post-result speech by one of the candidates in Blair’s own constituency, the father of a young soldier killed in Iraq who had campaigned as an Independent on an anti-war ticket. With the Prime Minister amongst the other candidates looking the most discomforted I have ever seen him, the father said that he hoped that one day the Prime Minister would apologise for the deaths he had caused, and that one day he would visit the British soldiers lying injured in hospital. It was a powerful moment.
Today’s Sunday newspapers, and political analysis TV programmes are all focussing on the way that Blair has become a liability to his party. There is a great deal of murmuring about the need for a change of leadership and the return of some kind of integrity to politics, with disaffected Labour parliamentarians, generally nameless, suggesting the possibility of some kind of coup, and Blairite loyalists proclaiming that this is all media hype with absolutely no substance. This raises the question of the ability of the media to shape the political arena and process, a theme coincidentally illustrated in last evening’s episode of Dr Who. The space travelling Time Lord of the 60’s and 70’s is back on our screens again in a new series of wonderfully crafted adventures. Last night his Tardis spaceship ended up on Satellite 5, the galactic orbiting centre of all news and information, which was actually being used by an alien life form to control the entire human race some 100,000 years hence. The new Dr Who is very much into issues of globalisation and provides a popular forum for issues of global power and control.
From an academic perspective, Noam Chomsky, anarchist fellow-traveller and one of the writers I most appreciate, has been pursuing this theme for decades. Manufacturing Consent, the book he co-authored in 1988 and later made into an award winning film, exposed how in the USA, rather than relentlessly pursuing truth, the media structures all facets of the news, selecting topics and framing issues, in order to create a consensus around American economic and foreign policy. Concepts such as ‘the free press’ and ‘free elections’ are manipulated in order to mask aggressive American domination. In one of his more recent works, Hegemony or Survival (2003) Chomsky presses his thesis further arguing that contemporary American global politics of unilateralism, the dismantling of international agreements, state terror, and the militarisation of space – in all of which the media is employed to manufacture consent – threatens to turn our planet into a wasteland. According to Chomsky, what we need to do is to develop a radical and critical way of ‘reading’ the media, in order to free ourselves from its power.
There is always of course what we refer to as the ‘alternative’ media which although it cannot be entirely free from ideological influence, does try to tell things the way they are. Who can forget the dramatic news footage from the war in Iraq shown by the Arab-owned news service al Jazeera, based in Qatar? Much to the embarrassment and increasing frustration of the American commanders, al Jazeera beamed around the world dramatic evidence which belied the sanitised version of civilian casualties which the war machine wanted people to believe. It was not surprising that after the fall of Iraq, so-called ‘Iraqi authorities’ banned al Jazeera from that country, putting an end to any challenge to the ‘victors’ version of events.
But the quest for manufacturing our consent can be far more subtle than banning alternative sources of news and comment. Buried within the news this week – after all, THE most important thing had to be the British election! - was a brief article announcing that Qatar was drawing up plans to privatise al Jazeera. For in addition to offending the US, this news service which attracts 35-40 million viewers, and has changed the face of middle-East media by offering critical coverage, has also offended most of its Arab neighbours. Unable to attract sufficient advertising revenue, it relies heavily on a state subsidy to keep afloat. The fear is that if al-Jazeera is privatised, Saudi investors and advertisers, heavily into the business of manufacturing consent, will impose censorship with the channel becoming just another medium for propaganda.
Elections, with their accompanying hype and spin, provide an opportunity for us to pause and consider just how ‘free’ our media are.
The role of the media appears to have been more influential than in the past, particularly as political commentators and TV hosts kept the Iraq war issues centre stage, and would not allow Blair’s campaign to marginalize it in favour of discussions about the economy to succeed. One of the most dramatic moments captured on TV was the post-result speech by one of the candidates in Blair’s own constituency, the father of a young soldier killed in Iraq who had campaigned as an Independent on an anti-war ticket. With the Prime Minister amongst the other candidates looking the most discomforted I have ever seen him, the father said that he hoped that one day the Prime Minister would apologise for the deaths he had caused, and that one day he would visit the British soldiers lying injured in hospital. It was a powerful moment.
Today’s Sunday newspapers, and political analysis TV programmes are all focussing on the way that Blair has become a liability to his party. There is a great deal of murmuring about the need for a change of leadership and the return of some kind of integrity to politics, with disaffected Labour parliamentarians, generally nameless, suggesting the possibility of some kind of coup, and Blairite loyalists proclaiming that this is all media hype with absolutely no substance. This raises the question of the ability of the media to shape the political arena and process, a theme coincidentally illustrated in last evening’s episode of Dr Who. The space travelling Time Lord of the 60’s and 70’s is back on our screens again in a new series of wonderfully crafted adventures. Last night his Tardis spaceship ended up on Satellite 5, the galactic orbiting centre of all news and information, which was actually being used by an alien life form to control the entire human race some 100,000 years hence. The new Dr Who is very much into issues of globalisation and provides a popular forum for issues of global power and control.
From an academic perspective, Noam Chomsky, anarchist fellow-traveller and one of the writers I most appreciate, has been pursuing this theme for decades. Manufacturing Consent, the book he co-authored in 1988 and later made into an award winning film, exposed how in the USA, rather than relentlessly pursuing truth, the media structures all facets of the news, selecting topics and framing issues, in order to create a consensus around American economic and foreign policy. Concepts such as ‘the free press’ and ‘free elections’ are manipulated in order to mask aggressive American domination. In one of his more recent works, Hegemony or Survival (2003) Chomsky presses his thesis further arguing that contemporary American global politics of unilateralism, the dismantling of international agreements, state terror, and the militarisation of space – in all of which the media is employed to manufacture consent – threatens to turn our planet into a wasteland. According to Chomsky, what we need to do is to develop a radical and critical way of ‘reading’ the media, in order to free ourselves from its power.
There is always of course what we refer to as the ‘alternative’ media which although it cannot be entirely free from ideological influence, does try to tell things the way they are. Who can forget the dramatic news footage from the war in Iraq shown by the Arab-owned news service al Jazeera, based in Qatar? Much to the embarrassment and increasing frustration of the American commanders, al Jazeera beamed around the world dramatic evidence which belied the sanitised version of civilian casualties which the war machine wanted people to believe. It was not surprising that after the fall of Iraq, so-called ‘Iraqi authorities’ banned al Jazeera from that country, putting an end to any challenge to the ‘victors’ version of events.
But the quest for manufacturing our consent can be far more subtle than banning alternative sources of news and comment. Buried within the news this week – after all, THE most important thing had to be the British election! - was a brief article announcing that Qatar was drawing up plans to privatise al Jazeera. For in addition to offending the US, this news service which attracts 35-40 million viewers, and has changed the face of middle-East media by offering critical coverage, has also offended most of its Arab neighbours. Unable to attract sufficient advertising revenue, it relies heavily on a state subsidy to keep afloat. The fear is that if al-Jazeera is privatised, Saudi investors and advertisers, heavily into the business of manufacturing consent, will impose censorship with the channel becoming just another medium for propaganda.
Elections, with their accompanying hype and spin, provide an opportunity for us to pause and consider just how ‘free’ our media are.
posted by MichaelElliott @ 3:41 AM
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