[Media-watch] FW: Self-Deceits Held In Common

[David Miller]

----------
From: Medialens Media Alerts <noreply at medialens.org>
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 14:18:27 UT
To: Friend <david.miller at stir.ac.uk>
Subject: Self-Deceits Held In Common

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

RAPID RESPONSE UPDATE: SELF-DECEITS HELD IN COMMON

The Guardian’s Paul Brown Replies Again

January 23, 2004


Following our recent update (January 20), we have received a further
response from the Guardian’s environment correspondent, Paul Brown:

“Dear Media Lens, Glad to know you have looked at the book. A lot of those
companies have since resigned from the Climate Change Coalition, but you can
see from David Gow's piece on the city pages today the leopard has not
really change his spots. There are a lot of issues here, but frankly I do
not think that the adversising point is a good one. Years ago we had a long
battle with Ford which refused to advertise for (I think) 10 years because
of a piece we carried attacking them. Since then companies have written to
the editor asking various journalists to be removed, I know I have been one
of them, and the Guardian has simply ignored them. I am not aware of any
example of companies in the last five years pulling ads because they have
been attacked, and internally I have never known a journalist pulling
his/her punches because of advertising, still less being asked to do so by
the management. That does not mean we are not heavily reliant on ads, we
are.

”There are lots of journalists here, like people everywhere else, who either
try not to think about the impact climate will soon have on their lives and
their children, or have genuinely not got the message. There are others who
argue that we need a mix of stories to keep the readership happy, reflecting
their interests. As I think I said before we need to be commercially viable
to survive. 

“Keep reading the paper and you will a lot about this - especially the
regrettable 2 for 1 offer. I was as appalled by that as you were and have
made my feelings clear, Paul Brown” (Email to Media Lens, January 20, 2004)

Dear Paul

Once again we very much respect and appreciate your willingness to discuss
these issues with us – many thanks. Please do not imagine that we are
intending to blame individual journalists like yourself for problems
inherent to the corporate mass media system as a whole. We know that many of
you are doing the best you can in very difficult circumstances. Our goal is
to support honest journalism by raising public awareness of just how
restrictive these circumstances are.

When we discuss the range of influences filtering media content – the
corporate nature, goals and ownership of the media, dependence on
advertising, vulnerability to corporate flak, reliance on official news
sources, the impact of patriotism, and so on – journalists invariably select
just one of these and reject them on the basis that they know of no one who
has, for example, pulled their punches in response to a phone call from
advertisers. We received near-identical comments from Channel 4 News
presenter Jon Snow:

“Well where are these pressure coming from – identify them for me? I can
tell you if somebody rings me up from Pepsi-Cola – and I must say I don’t
think I’ve ever been rung by any corporation, would that I was! – I’d give
them short shrift!” (Interview with David Edwards, January 9, 2001. See
articles/interviews, www.medialens.org)

In other words: ‘It doesn’t happen in a crude, conspiratorial way - I don’t
see it, I don’t hear of it, I’m not aware of it - so it’s not a problem.’

Your editor, Alan Rusbridger, gave another interesting example in an
interview with us:

“Um, I’m sure there is a... that the pressures of ownership on newspapers
is, is pretty important, and it works in all kinds of subtle ways – I
suppose ‘filter’ is as good a word as any - the whole thing works by a kind
of osmosis. If you ask anybody who works in newspapers, they will quite
rightly say, ‘Rupert Murdoch’, or whoever, ‘never tells me what to write’,
which is beside the point: they don’t have to be told what to write.”
(Interview with David Edwards, December 22, 2000, articles/interviews,
www.medialens.org)

What was so interesting was that Rusbridger accepted the basic premise of
our argument – that journalistic compromise and conformity can occur in the
absence of conscious awareness and conspiracies – and yet he conveniently
referred only to the pressures of ownership, from which he feels the
Guardian is uniquely free. In other words, Rusbridger was himself filtering
out all the other factors compromising the Guardian’s performance, which he
preferred not to discuss or even recognise. And as he pointed out: he didn’t
have to be told what to ignore.

Bottom line and other corporate pressures quite obviously have a vast impact
on the thoughts and actions of journalists, and indeed on which journalists
are selected for employment in the first place.

In his book, Disciplined Minds, American physicist and editor Jeff Schmidt
describes how professionals throughout society come to promote an elite
agenda. The whole process of selection, training and qualification, Schmidt
argues, ensures that professionals internalise the basic understanding that
they should not “question the politics built into their work”. (Schmidt,
Disciplined Minds, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000, p.16)
 
Schmidt adds:

“Professionalism – in particular the notion that experts should confine
themselves to their ‘legitimate professional concerns’ and not ‘politicise’
their work – helps keep individual professionals in line by encouraging them
to view their narrow technical orientation as a virtue, a sign of
objectivity rather than of subordination.” (p.204)

Psychologist Daniel Goleman argues that this subordination is often based on
an entirely sincere form of self-deception. Goleman talks of “schemas” -
frameworks of understanding which people seek to protect from conflicting
facts, experiences and ideas:

“My belief is that people in groups by and large come to share a vast number
of schemas, most of which are communicated without being spoken of directly.
Foremost among these shared, yet unspoken, schemas are those that designate
what is worthy of attention, how it is to be attended to - and what we
choose to ignore or deny... People in groups also learn together how not to
see - how aspects of shared experience can be veiled by self-deceits held in
common.” (Goleman, Vital Lies, Simple Truths - The Psychology of
Self-Deception, Bloomsbury 1997, p.158)

Goleman adds:

“The ease with which we deny and dissemble - and deny and dissemble to
ourselves that we have denied or dissembled - is remarkable.”

Indeed it is. You write, for example, of the Guardian’s American Airlines “2
for 1” flights offer: ”I was as appalled by that as you were and have made
my feelings clear.”

But what about the Guardian’s adverts on the same days for Citroen,
Chrysler, Fiat, BMW, Toyota, Audi, Lexus, flybmi.com, the easyJet sale -
"every+one+ must go" - Office World, HSBC, Debenhams, Freeserve, MFI,
Dixons, B&Q and Magnet? Have you made your feelings clear about these? Your
outrage in response to a particular advert makes no sense to us.

Nobody tells Guardian journalists not to write articles and leaders
condemning this insane corporate stoking of the fires of climate change.
Nobody tells them not to write leaders condemning the values of mass
consumerism, not to investigate the role of these businesses in blocking
action on climate change through bodies like the US National Association of
Manufacturers. It’s just understood because, as you say: “we need to be
commercially viable to survive”.

US press critic, George Seldes, made the point bluntly in the 1930s:

"The most stupid boast in the history of present-day journalism is that of
the writer who says, 'I have never been given orders; I am free to do as I
like'. We scent the air of the office. We realise that certain things are
wanted, certain things unwanted." (US press critic, George Seldes, quoted
Extra! November/December 1995)

You claim that when Ford pulled its adverts it had no effect. But of course
it did. The Guardian might be able to withstand the loss of one major
contract of this kind, but do you really think the editors were not keenly
aware of the catastrophic price they could pay for criticising other
corporations in a similar way?

But let’s assume for a moment that you are correct, that a newspaper’s
dependence on advertising does not influence the selection of journalists,
stories and emphases – that journalists are somehow immune to pressure from
interests on which they depend for their survival. The problem still remains
of the distorting effects of advertising on the objectivity of +readers+.

In his book, The High Price of Materialism, Tim Kasser, Professor of
Psychology at Knox College, has collated research from around the world
indicating: 

“When people place a strong emphasis on consuming and buying, earning and
spending, thinking of the monetary worth of things, and thinking of things a
great deal of the time, they may also become more likely to treat people
like things.” (Kasser, The High Price Of Materialism, MIT Press, 2002, p.67)

More broadly, materialism of this kind “conflicts with valuing the
characteristics of strong relationships (loyalty, helpfulness, love) and
with caring about the broader community (peace, justice, equality)”.
Researchers have found that exposure to advertising promotes a state of mind
that is “less concerned with socially oriented activities” and is, for
example, “unconcerned with, or actively hostile towards, nature”.

In other words, adverts promising happiness through holidays, cars, kitchens
and gadgets, have the effect of making occasional reports of environmental
collapse seem less important and personally relevant to readers. So even if
newspaper journalists are delivering unbiased reports to readers, newspaper
adverts are delivering biased readers to journalists.

If advertising, together with the other filters mentioned above, did not
influence the Guardian's performance, then we would be seeing many more
stories about corporate domination of politics, economics and culture – the
kind of material that packs the archives of www.zmag.org. There would, for
example, be many more articles about business lobbying to oppose
climate-saving policies. And there would be some, rather than zero, Guardian
features exposing the oxymoronic truth of the term ‘corporate free press’.

Best wishes

David Edwards and David Cromwell


SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for
others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to
maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to Paul Brown at the Guardian.

Email: paul.brown at guardian.co.uk

Write to Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger:

Email: alan.rusbridger at guardian.co.uk

And, very importantly, the Letters Page and the readers' editor of the
Guardian:

Email: letters at guardian.co.uk and reader at guardian.co.uk

Please also send all emails to us at Media Lens:
Email: editor at medialens.org

Visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org

Please consider donating to Media Lens: http://www.medialens.org/donate.html

This media alert will shortly be archived at:
http://www.MediaLens.org/alerts/index.html




To unsubscribe click on the link below:
http://www.medialens.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/medialens/mailproc/register.cgi?em=
david.miller at stir.ac.uk&act=un&at=2