[Media-watch] Feigned Media Psychosis

[Kev Kiernan]

9th October 2003

ZNet Commentary
Feigned Media Psychosis
By Dave Edwards

Access Denied

A key role of the mass media is to prevent the public from achieving a 'big 
picture'
understanding of how people and planet are systematically subordinated to 
short-term profit.
Important individual pieces of the jigsaw are made available - the BBC will 
occasionally report
on the killing of all six children in an Iraqi family by "coalition" cluster 
bombs; the
Independent will report on the US use of napalm - but access to an 
understanding of how these
horrors fit as part of an inherently exploitative and violent 
state-corporate system is denied.

Instead, the media has evolved to block the kind of 'critical mass' 
awareness of
institutionalised destructiveness that would trigger public outrage and 
genuine change.
Journalists are forever inserting ideational 'control rods' of reassurance, 
obfuscation and
diversion to pacify the public mind. The tendency is so deeply ingrained 
that journalists who
assume the basic benevolence of the status quo are reflexively praised as 
'balanced' and 'fair'.
Journalists who reveal the clear links between the status quo and immense 
human suffering are
smeared as 'committed' and 'crusading'.

The current furore over the war in Iraq is a rare example of dangerous 
issues slipping out of
control. The media has attempted to limit the damage by defining the issue, 
quite absurdly, as a
spat between the government and the BBC, rather than as a conflict between 
the government and a
deeply sceptical public; as a matter of damaged trust rather than of 
democracy betrayed; as a
problem of government media mismanagement rather than of deliberate 
government deception in the
commission of war crimes.

Even after all that has happened, Timothy Garton Ash can write in the 
Guardian ('Blair's
bridge', September 4, 2003) of how Tony Blair "has strong Gladstonian 
instincts for humanitarian
intervention" - an astonishing statement in the light of everything we now 
know. Garton Ash even
rehearses one more time the pre-war propaganda endlessly repeated by the 
government: "no other
serving leader had used chemical weapons against his neighbours and his own 
people, and no one
else had violated so many UN disarmament resolutions".

The last comment is merely comical in light of the fact that these 
resolutions related to
alleged Iraqi WMD, which we now know were in fact non-existent Iraqi WMD. In 
the same paper on
the same day that Garton Ash's comments appeared, a senior government 
intelligence official was
quoted as aying: "In particular... on the advice of my staff, I was told 
there was no evidence
that significant production had taken place either of chemical warfare agent 
or chemical
weapons" since 1998. He said he "could not point to any solid evidence of 
such production".
(Richard Norton-Taylor and Vikram Dodd, 'The whistleblower', September 4, 
2003) In 1998, UNSCOM
inspectors declared Iraq 90-95% disarmed of WMD.


Feigned Media Psychosis

Keeping the big picture scattered and confused means failing to make 
blindingly obvious
connections between important aspects of the same issue.

This device might be termed Feigned Media Psychosis (FMP). News viewers, for 
example, are often
in the presence of FMP when they find themselves thinking: 'Wait a minute! 
Didn't I see
something before that completely contradicted what I'm hearing now?' And: 
'Didn't I see
something before that simply +has+ to be mentioned as relevant now?'

Alas, because many of us sit alone in front of our TVs and newspapers, we 
may well assume that
we are imagining the conflicting evidence, or that we are somehow 
exaggerating the significance
of the failure to acknowledge some obvious fact. The Oxbridge talking heads 
monologuing at us
from our TVs are often famous, after all, perhaps 'recognised experts' in 
their fields, and
perhaps even celebrity quiz show hosts - who are we to question them?

A classic example of a 'Wait a minute!' moment was provided by the BBC in a 
recent lunchtime
news report (BBC1, September 3, 2003). News anchor, Anna Ford, described how 
60 (in fact 66) BAE
Systems Hawk jets were being sold to India in a £1 billion package. The 
report only lasted a few
seconds, in which time Ford described the Hawks as "trainer jets". Media 
Lens immediately sent
an email to BBC Director of News, Richard Sambrook:


Dear Richard

Hope you're well. Today's lunchtime news described the sale of 60 Hawk jets 
to India. Why did
Anna Ford describe the Hawks as "trainer jets"? Do you accept that they have 
also been used as
ground attack aircraft (for example by Indonesia in East Timor)? Should this 
not be mentioned
given the threat of war, indeed nuclear war, in the region? And should not 
the morality of the
sale, again given this threat of war, also have been presented as an issue 
for discussion?

Best wishes
David Edwards (September 3, 2003)

The BBC, after all, had only recently provided numerous reports describing 
how India has long
insisted that Kashmir is an integral part of the Indian state, while 
Pakistan insists that it
was robbed of the Muslim-dominated province. In 2002, the BBC helped spread 
justifiable alarm
over the fact that not only have India and Pakistan fought three wars over 
Kashmir since 1947,
but both countries now possess nuclear weapons.

Over the past 15 years, both sides have fought a simmering low-intensity war 
at a cost of some
60,000 lives. In December 2001, Islamic terrorists stormed India's 
parliament building in New
Delhi, killing several people. India held Pakistan responsible, mobilised 
thousands of troops
and came close to declaring war in June 2002. Sources in the Foreign Office 
have declared
Kashmir their "number one concern" due to fears that the two countries could 
slip into
uncontrolled conflict and a nuclear exchange.

How could the BBC mention the sale of £1 billion worth of British military 
equipment to a region
that was recently on the verge of nuclear war without making even the 
smallest reference to the
very issues by which it had, itself, so recently been so alarmed? This is 
Feigned Media
Psychosis. And what about the description of the Hawks as "training jets"?

Promotional material supplied by BAE Systems, manufacturer of the Hawk jet, 
is clear enough:

"Hawks can be modified on site to the five-pylon ground-attack standard [and 
the conversion is]
relatively simple." (Quoted, John Pilger, Hidden Agendas, Vintage, 1998, 
p.137)

The "five-pylon... standard" refers to stations for one cannon of up to 
30-mm calibre in a
self-contained central pod, and up to 3000 kg of diverse weapons - 
air-to-air missiles, rocket
launchers, retarded and free-fall bombs, runway cratering, anti-personnel, 
light armour and
cluster bombs - carried on underwing pylons.

In 1994, Robin Cook, later to become Foreign Secretary, commented on 
Indonesian air force
operations:

"Hawk aircraft have been observed on bombing runs in East Timor in most 
years since 1984."
(Ibid, p.141)

These are the aircraft described by the BBC as "training jets". The Guardian 
also twice
describes the Hawks as "jet trainer aircraft" in an article tucked away in 
the Business section
of the paper under the 'pragmatic'
title: '5,000 jobs safe as India buys Hawks.' (David Gow, The Guardian, 
September 4, 2003) As
experienced media watchers will know, "jobs" is a polite euphemism for the 
forbidden "p-word"
(profits), which should not be mentioned in this kind of context.

In a different world, we can imagine a comparable article appearing in the 
Ethics section of a
paper under the title: 'Hundreds of millions of lives unsafe as India buys 
Hawks.' To its
credit, the Guardian managed to quote David Mepham, associate director of 
the Institute for
Public Policy Research (IPPR), who insisted the deal was "a source of 
serious concern, not
celebration" as Britain would strengthen Indian military power in a region 
that stood on the
verge of nuclear war a year ago. The Guardian reported the IPPR view that 
the Hawks "could be
used for combat purposes as in Indonesia", but nevertheless chose to 
describe them as "trainer
aircraft", twice, in its own article.

The Independent followed a similar pattern, referring to "Hawk trainer 
aircraft", quoting
several contradictory comments from the IPPR, Saferworld and also Amnesty 
International. The
Independent's title was less business
friendly: 'Britain condemned over £1bn deal to sell jets to India.' (Phil 
Reeves, The
Independent, September 4, 2003)

Apart from their combat role, the Hawks will be used to train Indian pilots 
to fly more powerful
jets, including Jaguar bombers, also made by BAE Systems, which the Ministry 
of Defence has
accepted can be adapted to deliver nuclear weapons. Some 126 of these 
nuclear-capable bombers
are currently being built under licence.

The issue casts an interesting light on Tony Blair's "Gladstonian instincts 
for humanitarian
intervention". The Independent notes:

"The deal comes after intense lobbying by the British Government, with Prime 
Minister Tony
Blair, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon and 
Foreign Secretary
Jack Straw taking it in turns to persuade the Indians to buy the jets." 
(Clayton Hirst and
George Fernandes, 'BAE to enjoy Indian summer with £1bn order for Hawk 
jets', The Independent,
August 3, 2003)

Short of actual killing, few acts could be more morally reprehensible than 
the supplying of
weapons for profit facilitating a possible nuclear war, and the agonising 
death and mutilation
of hundreds of thousands, or millions, of human beings. The strategy of the 
liberal media in
this kind of case appears to be to cover their backs by making token 
gestures in the direction
of worthy dissident views without making serious waves. It goes without 
saying that this -
coming from our most challenging media - is pitiful.

And again, how can the moral issues not be worthy of mention by the BBC, 
especially in light of
the BBC's own recent reports highlighting the danger, not just of war, but 
of a devastating
nuclear war?

This is only one example of Feigned Media Psychosis. It is a consistent 
tendency involving
inexplicable silences, outrageous failures to make obvious connections, and 
a stubborn refusal
to recognise ugly realities that cause untold human suffering but which 
threaten powerful
interests if brought to light.

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