THE REASON I HAVE RETURNED TO BLOGGING.
A DESERVED PLUG FOR A QUITE EXCEPTIONAL BOOK.
WHAT CAN WE DO TO COMBAT THE BETRAYAL OF JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY?
A DESERVED PLUG FOR A QUITE EXCEPTIONAL BOOK.
WHAT CAN WE DO TO COMBAT THE BETRAYAL OF JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY?
‘If an hour’s speech, a few thousand word on-line communiqué taxes your mental focus you should probably stick to Yankee comics. They will at least keep you smiling; reassure you that you’re smart even while the world dies. But isn’t it better to try and pay attention; better to try and become informed?’
Early on Tuesday 5th March 2013 I was on my way to a States Sitting (Jersey government) when I received a text message on my mobile. It was from my fellow blogger at the voiceforchildren.blogspot.com. and simply read ‘Chavez is dead’. I had known the death was coming and yet with Chavez being a figure I hugely admired in many ways, just like the Zapatistas’ own Subcomandante Marcos, it made me feel a sadness for a lost public figure I had not experienced since the death in a car crash of my childhood hero, the musician and poet Marc Bolan.
More than 6 years has slipped by since that day – a full 5 since I sat down to write the last post on the original Bald Truth Jersey blog. It doesn’t seem possible I have to admit – but the cold facts don’t lie do they. Unlike, it has to be said, what is now increasingly mocked as the international ‘mainstream media’. But more on this in a moment.
Alejandra, female EZLN/Zapatista activist, Mexico City 2004
More than 6 years has slipped by since that day – a full 5 since I sat down to write the last post on the original Bald Truth Jersey blog. It doesn’t seem possible I have to admit – but the cold facts don’t lie do they. Unlike, it has to be said, what is now increasingly mocked as the international ‘mainstream media’. But more on this in a moment.
Firstly recognising that I almost certainly owe any old readers of what turned out to be a venture far more successful than I ever would have imagined - having not the expected dozens or at best hundreds of local readers, but thousands from places as diverse as the UK, much of Europe, America, Russia, China and more - a brief explanation for my apparently sudden return to the so-called ‘blogosphere’ after so prolonged a silence; the key fact of it is this.
Old notes – a new book
Clearing out some old political papers following a move across from France I stumbled upon some notes from a speech made during my successful re-election campaign in the Jersey Deputorial elections of 2011. Here, talking about the role of the now already notorious local MSM within the still on-going huge tragedy of the Haut de la Garenne scandal I had had this to say.
‘Making a living for our so-called journalists, it seems to me must be like writing at the point of a bayonet – it risks your integrity bleeding even if your body doesn’t. To my mind only those with the thickest skins of honesty to protect them will escape unscathed: for do you write what you believe to be true or just what you feel is wanted, demanded?’
What I was talking about of course without even really appreciating it then was the phenomena now widely known as ‘Fake News’ and its closely related political cousin ‘Post-truth’. While I hadn’t really missed blogging at all given other interests, when later that very same week I happened to see and buy the book entitled ‘Bad news from Venezuela – Twenty years of fake news and misrepresentation’ by Alan MacLeod (see the image above) something just clicked back in to place. What the author was setting out tied in with what I had said all those years ago perfectly; crystallised it. It also made me think about those words from Alejandra again. It made me start to wonder anew what we all, bloggers in particular, can do to challenge the ‘fake news’ phenomena?
A book everyone should read – but unfortunately probably won’t
Key elements of what Alan MacLeod highlights in his book can immediately be seen as being echoed from within the current political situation and underlying corporatist MSM manipulation of it here in the UK with the possibility of the first genuinely ‘socialism-inspired’ government since that of Clement Atlee – a possibility that terrifies them beyond belief. All the way likewise across to the struggle with the long-entrenched Establishment on the Crown Dependency Tax Haven of Jersey and calls for a separation of powers in the aftermath of the above mentioned Haut de la Garenne scandal that I had been involved with: a struggle that more than 10 years on appears to be witnessing a slow drift to being every bit as bad as things were.
I will look at these two ‘situations’ in Part 2.
The fact is that I would honestly suggest that Alan MacLeod’s book is probably the most important political tome of the 21st Century so far if only for the masterly way that it lucidly paints what can, and surely always will, occur when journalists meekly surrender their principles to become mere ‘reporters’ – propagandists would be a more apt term - shamelessly peddling the corporate line in interest of the must-ever-expand capitalist project and in keeping their own jobs. On the minus side the book is, it has to be said, like a lot of academic works, staggeringly overpriced for a slim volume; though there is now at least a much cheaper Kindle version available. You can find it easily enough on Amazon.
Now I obviously do not have the space or license to set out the entire contents of ‘Bad News from Venezuela’. But suffice to say that to anyone gaining their world view from the sort of neo-liberal ‘comics’ young Zapatista Alejandra was referring to all those years ago when I was In Mexico city; likewise their TV channel counterparts all pushing an interchangeable version of alleged ‘fact’ Hugo Chavez was a clown, an incompetent, a brutal dictator, only gaining and maintained in power by intimidation and rigged elections. Indeed, to the a-political six years after Chavez’s death I would say it has largely become accepted fact. Such is the power of the endless ‘fake news’ MSM barrage.
Yet the facts can’t lie – in honest hands
Via a concise yet quite stunning analysis of more than 500 newspaper articles from seven of the most influential English language newspapers – both British and American - the author shows how this portrayal of Chavez is wholly at odds with hard fact and even statistics from organisations including the world famous Carter Centre, the European Parliament, the European Union Election Observation Mission and many more. Yet even some of these would, when it suited, play along keeping silent about their own data subsequently being distorted or simply wholly ignored. For those who would have a better, fairer world, considering all of this it certainly would be easy to become wholly daunted by the sheer scale of collusion and lack of integrity.
For the truth is Chavez’s tenure, even amidst a relentless assault from a disgruntled elite within and said neo-liberal governments/corporate interests without, brought a huge increase in equality to his country, the health and education of the poorest. Indeed, it is perhaps a most telling fact that prior to Chavez’s election in 1998 83% of Venezuelans believed elections to be fraudulent. By just halfway through Chavez’s time in office this belief had plummeted to only 30%. His so-named Bolivarian Revolution further, quite indisputably, gave a political voice to huge swathes of the population whom had never had one, and who without him were never likely to get one.
Yet for me nothing likely highlights the deplorable con of this election-rigging corrupt dictator myth spun by the Western MSM in tandem with the likes of Washington and Westminster governments than the statement ironically from a former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter of the aforesaid Carter Centre who in 2012, just months before Hugo Chavez’s death proclaimed that:
Now how many of you have ever read that in the UK papers?
With examples galore MacLeod then goes on to cement his analysis in the second part of the book by utilising interviews with 27 journalists and academics examining the influences on their ‘work’; doing so via application of Chomsky and Herman’s theory of ‘Manufacturing Consent’. I must have read this seminal work a good 25 years ago now but I must admit MacLeod’s focus on Chavez and Venezuela alone brings the theory to life all over again in true Technicolor. But for those not already familiar – and I appreciate that many of my old readers will be – the ‘Manufacturing Consent’ theory essentially posits that public opinion in nations like America, the UK and neo-liberal West generally are effectively manipulated through five systematic bases.
Clearing out some old political papers following a move across from France I stumbled upon some notes from a speech made during my successful re-election campaign in the Jersey Deputorial elections of 2011. Here, talking about the role of the now already notorious local MSM within the still on-going huge tragedy of the Haut de la Garenne scandal I had had this to say.
‘Making a living for our so-called journalists, it seems to me must be like writing at the point of a bayonet – it risks your integrity bleeding even if your body doesn’t. To my mind only those with the thickest skins of honesty to protect them will escape unscathed: for do you write what you believe to be true or just what you feel is wanted, demanded?’
What I was talking about of course without even really appreciating it then was the phenomena now widely known as ‘Fake News’ and its closely related political cousin ‘Post-truth’. While I hadn’t really missed blogging at all given other interests, when later that very same week I happened to see and buy the book entitled ‘Bad news from Venezuela – Twenty years of fake news and misrepresentation’ by Alan MacLeod (see the image above) something just clicked back in to place. What the author was setting out tied in with what I had said all those years ago perfectly; crystallised it. It also made me think about those words from Alejandra again. It made me start to wonder anew what we all, bloggers in particular, can do to challenge the ‘fake news’ phenomena?
A book everyone should read – but unfortunately probably won’t
Key elements of what Alan MacLeod highlights in his book can immediately be seen as being echoed from within the current political situation and underlying corporatist MSM manipulation of it here in the UK with the possibility of the first genuinely ‘socialism-inspired’ government since that of Clement Atlee – a possibility that terrifies them beyond belief. All the way likewise across to the struggle with the long-entrenched Establishment on the Crown Dependency Tax Haven of Jersey and calls for a separation of powers in the aftermath of the above mentioned Haut de la Garenne scandal that I had been involved with: a struggle that more than 10 years on appears to be witnessing a slow drift to being every bit as bad as things were.
I will look at these two ‘situations’ in Part 2.
The fact is that I would honestly suggest that Alan MacLeod’s book is probably the most important political tome of the 21st Century so far if only for the masterly way that it lucidly paints what can, and surely always will, occur when journalists meekly surrender their principles to become mere ‘reporters’ – propagandists would be a more apt term - shamelessly peddling the corporate line in interest of the must-ever-expand capitalist project and in keeping their own jobs. On the minus side the book is, it has to be said, like a lot of academic works, staggeringly overpriced for a slim volume; though there is now at least a much cheaper Kindle version available. You can find it easily enough on Amazon.
Now I obviously do not have the space or license to set out the entire contents of ‘Bad News from Venezuela’. But suffice to say that to anyone gaining their world view from the sort of neo-liberal ‘comics’ young Zapatista Alejandra was referring to all those years ago when I was In Mexico city; likewise their TV channel counterparts all pushing an interchangeable version of alleged ‘fact’ Hugo Chavez was a clown, an incompetent, a brutal dictator, only gaining and maintained in power by intimidation and rigged elections. Indeed, to the a-political six years after Chavez’s death I would say it has largely become accepted fact. Such is the power of the endless ‘fake news’ MSM barrage.
Yet the facts can’t lie – in honest hands
Via a concise yet quite stunning analysis of more than 500 newspaper articles from seven of the most influential English language newspapers – both British and American - the author shows how this portrayal of Chavez is wholly at odds with hard fact and even statistics from organisations including the world famous Carter Centre, the European Parliament, the European Union Election Observation Mission and many more. Yet even some of these would, when it suited, play along keeping silent about their own data subsequently being distorted or simply wholly ignored. For those who would have a better, fairer world, considering all of this it certainly would be easy to become wholly daunted by the sheer scale of collusion and lack of integrity.
For the truth is Chavez’s tenure, even amidst a relentless assault from a disgruntled elite within and said neo-liberal governments/corporate interests without, brought a huge increase in equality to his country, the health and education of the poorest. Indeed, it is perhaps a most telling fact that prior to Chavez’s election in 1998 83% of Venezuelans believed elections to be fraudulent. By just halfway through Chavez’s time in office this belief had plummeted to only 30%. His so-named Bolivarian Revolution further, quite indisputably, gave a political voice to huge swathes of the population whom had never had one, and who without him were never likely to get one.
Yet for me nothing likely highlights the deplorable con of this election-rigging corrupt dictator myth spun by the Western MSM in tandem with the likes of Washington and Westminster governments than the statement ironically from a former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter of the aforesaid Carter Centre who in 2012, just months before Hugo Chavez’s death proclaimed that:
‘I would say the election process is Venezuela is the best in the world’.
Now how many of you have ever read that in the UK papers?
With examples galore MacLeod then goes on to cement his analysis in the second part of the book by utilising interviews with 27 journalists and academics examining the influences on their ‘work’; doing so via application of Chomsky and Herman’s theory of ‘Manufacturing Consent’. I must have read this seminal work a good 25 years ago now but I must admit MacLeod’s focus on Chavez and Venezuela alone brings the theory to life all over again in true Technicolor. But for those not already familiar – and I appreciate that many of my old readers will be – the ‘Manufacturing Consent’ theory essentially posits that public opinion in nations like America, the UK and neo-liberal West generally are effectively manipulated through five systematic bases.
- Elite ownership of the media.
- Reliance on big advertising for income.
- Reliance on official sources and portrayed ‘credible experts’.
- Flak – journalists learning to self-censor after negative experiences of failing to follow the editorial line.
- Anti-socialism (in reality simply not neo-liberal) – the consistent attacking of any organisation or government seen to be socialist.
Refine point 5 down to any individual with a public platform seen to be socialist or more precisely still just critical of Establishment/neo-liberalism and I would argue a clearer picture of our little Crown Dependency Tax Haven of Jersey you really could not find! But more thought on this perhaps in Part 2?
Of particular interest the way I personally see it both over here on the United Kingdom mainland - and certainly on Jersey where I was formerly a States Deputy or MP - No. 4 is likely of key relevance to the vexing question of how those of us active in social media who would want a better, fairer world can best begin to trigger change.
After all if even those who know what they are writing, spinning is false and propaganda but repress their own professionalism just to keep their jobs then the trials of Winston Smith in Orwell’s 1984, not least his final symbolic acceptance that 2+2=5 have surely long come to pass in our real world? Those journalists who gravitate towards the type of media outlets examined by MacLeod precisely because they share those very same prejudices are surely lost to us and reason irretrievably – so why waste our limited resources on them? Indeed, to adapt a famous quotation from Latin America’s greatest hero, ‘the Liberator’ Simon Bolivar those who would waste time on such individuals are likely ‘ploughing the sea’.
The 2017 UK election, which was meant to see the end of the wholly unexpected ‘Corbynista’ development within the Labour party, but in fact saw Corbyn secure the biggest increase in the party share of the vote by any leader since Clement Atlee in 1945 - and the first time it had actually gained seats since 1997, was achieved largely thanks to the support for Corbyn’s vision by a staggering myriad of assorted social media. I would suggest that this must be a sign of encouragement even if you are an individual not particularly enamoured of Corbyn or socialism.
It was likewise social media – in particular blogging in the support of the victims of abuse and the two brave senior police officers and handful of local politicians who championed their cause – who saved the shame of decades of Jersey Establishment concealed abuse from being buried, ever-deeper all over again and brought about the so-called Independent care Inquiry. And yet now the opinion is that things on the Island are slipping back to their pre-2007/8 nadir.
Thus prior to writing what will be the aforesaid Part 2 I invite any reader interested, whatever part of the world they may reside in, to share their thoughts in the comments section of The Bald Truth – Postcards From Dystopia as to how bloggers and other social media activists should focus their efforts to effect change in the months and years ahead.
Finally, as to Alejandra back in the Mexico City of 2004 – in the unlikely event that you are reading this, thank you for the quote. I have never forgotten it. Hopefully that I didn’t quite stray into the few thousand word communiqué territory you described one or two readers at least will have reached this point!
After all if even those who know what they are writing, spinning is false and propaganda but repress their own professionalism just to keep their jobs then the trials of Winston Smith in Orwell’s 1984, not least his final symbolic acceptance that 2+2=5 have surely long come to pass in our real world? Those journalists who gravitate towards the type of media outlets examined by MacLeod precisely because they share those very same prejudices are surely lost to us and reason irretrievably – so why waste our limited resources on them? Indeed, to adapt a famous quotation from Latin America’s greatest hero, ‘the Liberator’ Simon Bolivar those who would waste time on such individuals are likely ‘ploughing the sea’.
Citizens Media – the New MSM: but what are our best routes to achieving change?
It was likewise social media – in particular blogging in the support of the victims of abuse and the two brave senior police officers and handful of local politicians who championed their cause – who saved the shame of decades of Jersey Establishment concealed abuse from being buried, ever-deeper all over again and brought about the so-called Independent care Inquiry. And yet now the opinion is that things on the Island are slipping back to their pre-2007/8 nadir.
Thus prior to writing what will be the aforesaid Part 2 I invite any reader interested, whatever part of the world they may reside in, to share their thoughts in the comments section of The Bald Truth – Postcards From Dystopia as to how bloggers and other social media activists should focus their efforts to effect change in the months and years ahead.
Finally, as to Alejandra back in the Mexico City of 2004 – in the unlikely event that you are reading this, thank you for the quote. I have never forgotten it. Hopefully that I didn’t quite stray into the few thousand word communiqué territory you described one or two readers at least will have reached this point!
