[lbo-talk] Media Lens

[james daly]

      The cyber guardians of honest journalism

      By John Pilger

      11/30/07 "ICH" -- -- What has changed in the way we see the world? For 
as long as I can remember, the relationship of journalists with power has 
been hidden behind a bogus objectivity and notions of an "apathetic public" 
that justify a mantra of "giving the public what they want." What has 
changed is the public's perception and knowledge. No longer trusting what 
they read and see and hear, people in western democracies are questioning as 
never before, particularly via the internet. Why, they ask, is the great 
majority of news sourced to authority and its vested interests? Why are many 
journalists the agents of power, not people?

      Much of this bracing new thinking can be traced to a remarkable UK 
website, MediaLens. The creators of Media Lens, David Edwards and David 
Cromwell, assisted by their webmaster, Olly Maw, have had such an 
extraordinary influence since they set up the site in 2001 that, without 
their meticulous and humane analysis, the full gravity of the debacles of 
Iraq and Afghanistan might have been consigned to bad journalism's first 
draft of bad history. Peter Wilby put it well in his review of Guardians of 
Power: the Myth of the Liberal Media, a drawing-together of Media Lens 
essays published by Pluto Press, which he described as "mercifully free of 
academic or political jargon and awesomely well researched. All journalists 
should read it, because the Davids make a case that demands to be answered."

      That appeared in the New Statesman. Not a single major newspaper 
reviewed the most important book about journalism I can remember. Take the 
latest Media Lens essay, "Invasion - a Comparison of Soviet and Western 
Media Performance." Written with Nikolai Lanine, who served in the Soviet 
army during its 1979-89 occupation of Afghanistan, it draws on Soviet-era 
newspaper archives, comparing the propaganda of that time with current 
western media performance. They are revealed as almost identical.

      Like the reported "success" of the US "surge" in Iraq, the Soviet 
equivalent allowed "poor peasants [to work] the land peacefully." Like the 
Americans and British in Iraq and Afghanistan, Soviet troops were liberators 
who became peacekeepers and always acted in "self-defense." The BBC's Mark 
Urban's revelation of the "first real evidence that President Bush's grand 
design of toppling a dictator and forcing a democracy into the heart of the 
Middle East could work" (Newsnight, 12 April 2005) is almost word for word 
that of Soviet commentators claiming benign and noble intent behind Moscow's 
actions in Afghanistan. The BBC's Paul Wood, in thrall to the 101st 
Airborne, reported that the Americans "must win here if they are to leave 
Iraq . . . There is much still to do." That precisely was the Soviet line.

      The tone of Media Lens's questions to journalists is so respectful 
that personal honesty is never questioned. Perhaps that explains a reaction 
that can be both outraged and comic. The BBC presenter Gavin Esler, champion 
of Princess Diana and Ronald Reagan, ranted at Media Lens emailers as 
"fascistic" and "beyond redemption." Roger Alton, editor of the London 
Observer and champion of the invasion of Iraq, replied to one ultra-polite 
member of the public: "Have you been told to write in by those c*nts at 
Media Lens?" When questioned about her environmental reporting, Fiona 
Harvey, of the Financial Times, replied: "You're pathetic . . . Who are 
you?"

      The message is: how dare you challenge us in such a way that might 
expose us? How dare you do the job of true journalism and keep the record 
straight? Peter Barron, the editor of the BBC's Newsnight, took a different 
approach. "I rather like them. David Edwards and David Cromwell are 
unfailingly polite, their points are well argued and sometimes they're plain 
right."

      David Edwards believes that "reason and honesty are enhanced by 
compassion and compromised by greed and hatred. A journalist who is 
sincerely motivated by concern for the suffering of others is more likely to 
report honestly . . ." Some might call this an exotic view. I don't. Neither 
does the Gandhi Foundation, which on 2 December will present Media Lens with 
the prestigious Gandhi International Peace Award. I salute them.