Virgil
10-17-2008, 09:37 AM
This comes in three parts.
Part 1: "Keeping The Media Safe For Big Business"- http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticlePrint/19002
October, 03 2008
By David Edwards Source: Media Lens
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)
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Part 2: "Why journalists stay silent"- http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/19139
October 15, 2008 By Jonathan Cook
Source: Medialens
Response to Media Lens Alert Intellectual Cleansing Part 1
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/081002_intellectual_cleansing_part1.php
By: Jonathan Cook
Sent to Media Lens October 5, 2008
Lesson 1: It's all about money
In many ways, my introduction to journalism was far from typical. In the mid-1980s, after university, I was casting around for a career and decided to "try" journalism. I called the local free newspaper in the city in which I had graduated, Southampton, and offered my services.
Free newspapers were a new and rapidly growing form of print media. Cheap production had been made possible by the new technologies about to revolutionise the working practices of all papers, including those in Fleet Street. I was using a small Macintosh computer, writing stories and designing the pages, at a time when the nationals were still laboriously typesetting. At the Southampton Advertiser, we produced a weekly newspaper with just four editorial staff: an editor, two reporters and a photographer. The advertising staff was more than twice that size.
By definition, free newspapers are advertising platforms - since they have no other way of raising revenue. But when they first emerged, some of the independently owned ones were not as dire as they uniformly are today - for reasons we will come to. The Southampton Advertiser was one of a small chain of free newspapers on the south coast owned by a local businessman. He made no effort to conceal the fact that he saw his newspapers simply as vehicles for making money.
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.
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Part 3: "Comment Is Closed"- http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/19142
October 16, 2008 By David Edwards
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..."
<snipped>
Part 1: "Keeping The Media Safe For Big Business"- http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticlePrint/19002
October, 03 2008
By David Edwards Source: Media Lens
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)
<snipped>
=================================================================
Part 2: "Why journalists stay silent"- http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/19139
October 15, 2008 By Jonathan Cook
Source: Medialens
Response to Media Lens Alert Intellectual Cleansing Part 1
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/081002_intellectual_cleansing_part1.php
By: Jonathan Cook
Sent to Media Lens October 5, 2008
Lesson 1: It's all about money
In many ways, my introduction to journalism was far from typical. In the mid-1980s, after university, I was casting around for a career and decided to "try" journalism. I called the local free newspaper in the city in which I had graduated, Southampton, and offered my services.
Free newspapers were a new and rapidly growing form of print media. Cheap production had been made possible by the new technologies about to revolutionise the working practices of all papers, including those in Fleet Street. I was using a small Macintosh computer, writing stories and designing the pages, at a time when the nationals were still laboriously typesetting. At the Southampton Advertiser, we produced a weekly newspaper with just four editorial staff: an editor, two reporters and a photographer. The advertising staff was more than twice that size.
By definition, free newspapers are advertising platforms - since they have no other way of raising revenue. But when they first emerged, some of the independently owned ones were not as dire as they uniformly are today - for reasons we will come to. The Southampton Advertiser was one of a small chain of free newspapers on the south coast owned by a local businessman. He made no effort to conceal the fact that he saw his newspapers simply as vehicles for making money.
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.
<snipped>
============================================================
Part 3: "Comment Is Closed"- http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/19142
October 16, 2008 By David Edwards
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..."
<snipped>