[Media-watch] Response to Norman Solomon

[David Cromwell]

Reponse to Normon Solomon's ZNet piece today at:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-01/12solomon.cfm



Dear Norman,

I am co-editor of a UK-based media watch website, 
Media Lens. We've been documenting the omissions 
and distortions of the British media for around 
four years, with particular attention devoted to 
the 'liberal' media, including the BBC, Channel 4 
News, the Independent (and its Sunday sister), 
the Guardian and the Observer.

I read your ZNet piece today with interest but 
also with some surprise. It may well be your 
impression that "journalists [in the UK] are far 
more willing than their U.S. counterparts to 
repeatedly take on powerful interests". But where 
is the evidence that UK-based journalists 
"repeatedly take on powerful interests" at all? 
Quoting just one Independent commentator (Matthew 
Norman, usually seen fronting a facile media 
diary with plenty of tittle-tattle and little 
substance) hardly justifies your thesis. Norman 
writes self-servingly: "the only effective 
barrier between a roguish, ruthless British 
government and the creation of a country in which 
very few of us would care to live." This is 
largely a convenient fiction. The truth is that 
Matthew Norman, the Independent and the liberal 
media act as benign figleaves for state-corporate 
power, not as mythical watchdogs of democracy. 
Media Lens put it this way in one media alert 
titled 'Conspiracy-Free Conformity' (26 July, 
2002):

In an ostensibly democratic society, a propaganda 
system must incorporate occasional instances of 
dissent. Like vaccines, these small doses of 
truth inoculate the public against awareness of 
the rigid limits of media freedom. The honest 
dissident pieces which occasionally surface in 
the mainstream are quite as important to the 
successful functioning of the propaganda system 
as the vast mass of power-friendly journalism. 
Dissidents (a tiny number of them) also have 
their place in the pyramid - the end result, 
however, is an overall performance that tends to 
mould public opinion to support the goals of 
state-corporate power.

You claim of the Independent and the Guardian 
that: "Tough questions get pursued at length and 
in depth. News coverage is often factually 
devastating. And commentaries don't mince words." 
In fact, we believe - based on hundreds of case 
studies archived in our media alerts at 
www.medialens.org - that the following quote - by 
you - is an apt summary of the UK media, as well 
as your own: "scattered islands of 
independent-minded reporting are lost in oceans 
of the stenographic reliance on official 
sources". (Solomon, Target Iraq: What The News 
Media Didn't Tell You, Context Books, 2003, p.26)

Are you aware that the Observer, which you list 
approvingly, actually explicitly supported the 
invasion of Iraq? As for the Guardian, a Media 
Lens article last month highlighted in the paper 
- probably for the first time - its own grievous 
omissions and distortions, particularly on Iraq 
(David Edwards and David Cromwell, 'Balance in 
the service of falsehood,' The Guardian, December 
15, 2004;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1373913,00.html)

As for the Independent, to quote from one of our 
media alerts, dated 15 August 2003, focussing on 
the paper's poor performance:

"The role of the liberal press’ is to impose a 
power-friendly view of the world on [Alex] 
Carey's "better educated people" in a way that 
convinces them that real debate has taken place, 
when often it has not. A good example of this 
propaganda role was provided recently in the 
title of an Independent editorial, which read: 
"The Americans are trying to build a prosperous, 
democratic Iraq, but they cannot do it on their 
own." (Leader, the Independent, August 9, 2003)

This is one of the country's two leading liberal 
papers [the other being the Guardian] making the 
quite astonishing claim that the United States is 
genuinely trying to create democracy in Iraq. In 
other words we are to believe that the US will 
have spent an estimated $58 billion for the nine 
months from January through September (with some 
estimates projecting final invasion/occupation 
costs of $600 billion), with the loss of 258 US 
dead so far, to create conditions in which the 
Iraqi people would be free to reject all further 
US political, economic or military involvement in 
the country. That, after all, is what democracy 
must be able to mean.

A more fantastic view of great power politics can 
hardly be imagined. The Independent, in fact, is 
stating as bald fact a purity of US motivation 
that is without precedent in all history and 
represents a level of generosity, altruism and 
self-sacrifice that is almost beyond belief. We 
can only conclude that George W. Bush, Donald 
Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle et al are 
in fact bodhisattvas bent on achieving the 
welfare of the world regardless of the costs to 
themselves or their country.

There are countless other examples of 
power-friendly editorials and news reporting in 
the Independent, including conforming to the 
standard ideology that this month's elections in 
Iraq are free and democratic (Fisk's reports 
being a valiant exception).

Right through the buildup to the invasion of Iraq 
and beyond, Media Lens documented and challenged 
the paper's editors on its systematic failures to 
report the truth of who was responsible for the 
death of a million Iraqis under sanctions; that 
Iraq had been 90-95% disarmed (authoritative 
critical commentators such as Scott Ritter were 
routinely ignored or marginalised); that Iraq had 
been devastated and was not a threat; that WMD 
was +not+, in any case, the issue; that US 
geostrategic plans for the region and the globe 
(openly announced by US planners, as Noam Chomsky 
has noted repeatedly, particularly in 'Hegemony 
or Survival') was and is the issue; and on and 
on. The paper's overall performance, with the 
occasional questioning piece of reporting that 
"gestured cryptically in the direction of the 
truth" (to quote David Edwards, my co-editor) 
ensured that the permissible limits of debate 
never went far enough to trouble the newspaper's 
owners, advertisers, trusted news sources or 
likely generators of flak.

In February 2001, I sent a particularly ludicrous 
piece of reporting on Iraq in the Independent to 
Noam. This was his reply:

"It's worth remembering that no matter how much 
they try, they [Independent staff] are part of 
the British educated elite, that is, ideological 
fanatics who have long ago lost the capacity to 
think on any issue of human significance, and 
entirely in the grip of the state religion. They 
can concede errors or failures, but anything more 
is, literally, inconceivable."
(Email to David Cromwell, 24 February 2001)

With certain exceptions - notably Robert Fisk 
(for whom Noam has expressed admiration), this is 
an accurate observation of that paper and its 
editors and senior correspondents.

Mainstream US reporting might well be almost 
uniformly regimented, monolithic and subservient 
to power. But the UK media - with very similar 
institutional and other constraints - is little 
different.

I hope you don't mind the robust manner in which 
I've challenged your - admittedly brief - 
analysis of the UK media. I would be glad to hear 
your response to the points above. I'd also 
encourage you strongly to sign up for our free 
media alerts (about once a week) at 
www.medialens.org and to question your own view 
of the Independent, the Guardian and the British 
liberal media.

Thank you for a stimulating ZNet commentary.

best wishes,
David Cromwell
co-editor
Media Lens
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