Newsflash: Media "speechless" at distrust

I do mean to come back to Dr Wayne Cartwright's talk on strong sustainability - it'll find it's time. But my day started with a brief segment on tV3's "Sunrise" programme with Oliver Driver and co and a couple of media mavens discussing a poll of "only 750" who said they hated/distrusted the media.

Driver blamed the focus on selling and rating, and the celebrity focus. Some tried to blame "us" for not understanding how hard it was for them to put together the news, while "only a poll of 750" was scoffed at several times. Like they ever headcount any other poll that makes a story.

And despite all the noise and talking over each other, they were actually at a loss to explain it. Speechless. And, almost contemptuously dismissive of their low standing. Like they knew better.

Fortunately for them, Media Lens also put out a story today, and it answers their exact question. Why the media are so utterly unworthy of our trust.

A quote: (emphasis mine)

Last month, Milton Coleman, senior editor at The Washington Post, sent a memo to staff on the issue of use of “individual accounts on online social networks, when used for reporting and for personal use”. The memo warned staff to "remember that Washington Post journalists are always Washington Post journalists". It added:

"All Washington Post journalists relinquish some of the personal privileges of private citizens... Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything—including photographs or video—that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility. This same caution should be used when joining, following or friending any person or organization online.”

These rules echo BBC editorial guidelines. In 2005, we asked the BBC's World Affairs correspondent, Paul Reynolds, if he thought George Bush hoped to create a genuine democracy in Iraq. Reynolds replied:

"I cannot get into a direct argument about his policies myself! Sorry." (Email to Media Lens, September 5, 2005)

Reynolds explained to one of our readers:

"You are asking for my opinion about the war in Iraq yet BBC correspondents are not allowed to have opinions!" (Forwarded to Media Lens, October 22, 2005)

As these comments suggest, media guidelines require that journalists relinquish, not just "personal privileges", but also moral responsibility.

Journalists are not free to declare their “bias” even in abhorring mass murder, war crimes and climate chaos, if doing so "could be used to tarnish" their employers' "journalistic credibility". The problem is that the people with the power to do the tarnishing are overwhelmingly of the right - big business and political centres of power dominated by big business.

In reality, the demand for ’balance’ means that journalists can say pretty much what they like in favouring powerful interests, but they will be severely castigated for losing ‘balance’ when they criticise the wrong people. Thus we find that it is not ‘biased’ to suggest that Britain and America are committed to spreading democracy around the world, but it +is+ ‘biased’ to suggest that they are responsible for crimes in the Third World. In short, the demand for ‘balance’ is a weapon of thought control - it is a way of policing and enforcing bias in media performance.

The full article is pitched perfectly. The issue is there are actually three sides to any story. The interests of power; those with interests oppostie to those in power; and the status quo. Most media tries to place itself in this "objective" status quo place, without acknowledging that the status quo is already firmly weighted towards those in power, and get dragged along with it. In our extremist capitalist society, that is inexorably in favour of the wealthy, towards the "Right".

The obeisance to power was shown only yesterday, with the change of pseudoephadrine to a Class B drug, doubling the cost to those who use it for colds and flu, just because some criminals use it. Just because Paul Holmes' daughter got on P, and the upper class got frightened. The whole pitch from the media was "good, strong government". No opposition voice of note.

Roll back a year, and if the Labour government had tried this there'd be huge cries of "nanny state".

The most painful example of the blind media bias is of course in the Middle East. Look at the status quo there:

If the Palestinians do nothing? They lose their land to Jewish settlements.
If they attack? They get massacred, persecuted, and still lose their land. Oh, and their persecutor cries "victim".
If they go along with the "US peace process"? Well they can't agree to anything because Israel won't define its borders in line with UN resolutions - after more than 40 years. (bet Iran wishes it had that sort of deadline).
And hey, what would happen if the supposed "cycle of hate" ended; what if the Palestinians and Muslims said, "you know? this isn't worth it. Lets make it one country. We'll live in Israel. You call it it that. We call it Palestine. We'll be a peace-loving democracy sharing the same land holy to us both. No problem."
Well, that's not possible, of course. Not because normal people in both countries don't want peace. But because Isreal is a jewish state. That's a theocracy - not a democracy. The government of Israel has been committed to a Jewish state across the holy state since inception, and if they let whoever they want live in Israel, they'd be an ethnic Muslim state within years.

The Israel/Palestine situation is a very simple story of power and injustice, but you wouldn't know it by the way the media fret and follow the narrative spooled out from the US.

And they wonder why we don't trust them.