{"id":183338,"date":"2021-04-26T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T11:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=183338"},"modified":"2021-04-26T10:36:44","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T09:36:44","slug":"shocking-omissions-capitalisms-conscience-200-years-of-the-guardian-john-pilger-and-jonathan-cook-respond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/04\/shocking-omissions-capitalisms-conscience-200-years-of-the-guardian-john-pilger-and-jonathan-cook-respond\/","title":{"rendered":"Shocking Omissions: \u2018Capitalism\u2019s Conscience\u2013200 Years of The Guardian\u2019 \u2013 John Pilger and Jonathan Cook Respond"},"content":{"rendered":"

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19 Apr 2021 – <\/em>Long before \u2018the propaganda model\u2019 flew off Edward Herman\u2019s keyboard and into \u2018Manufacturing Consent\u2019, the book he co-authored with Noam Chomsky, Leo Tolstoy had captured the essence of non-conspiratorial conformity:<\/p>\n

\u2018One man does not assert the truth which he knows, because he feels himself bound to the people with whom he is engaged; another, because the truth might deprive him of the profitable position by which he maintains his family; a third, because he desires to attain reputation and authority, and then use them in the service of mankind; a fourth, because he does not wish to destroy old sacred traditions; a fifth, because he has no desire to offend people; a sixth, because the expression of the truth would arouse persecution, and disturb the excellent social activity to which he has devoted himself.\u2019 (Tolstoy, \u2018What Then Must We Do?\u2019, Green Classics, 1991, p.118)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is nothing special about journalists in this regard \u2013 we are all aware, on some level, that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed truth-teller faces various kinds of crucifixion. It is tempting to affect blindness, to protect our \u2018reputation and authority\u2019, that we might use them, of course, \u2018in the service of mankind\u2019.<\/p>\n

Academics are no different. In 2008, Terry Eagleton, formerly Professor of English Literature at Manchester University, wrote:<\/p>\n

\u2018By and large, academic institutions have shifted from being the accusers of corporate capitalism to being its accomplices. They are intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries.\u2019 (Eagleton, \u2018Death of the intellectual,\u2019 Red Pepper, October 2008)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 20 years of working on Media Lens, not much has left us disillusioned \u2013 we had no great illusions about journalism to begin with! \u2013 but we have often been dismayed by the response of the \u2018intellectual Tescos\u2019.<\/p>\n

In particular, it has been a thing of wonder for us to see how academics who support us privately, and even in public, treat our work in published articles and books. Typically, our 20 years of detailed media analysis simply cease to exist. After openly supporting us for years, one academic \u2013 someone we considered a firm ally \u2013 wrote a book on our central theme, propaganda. Our work did receive a handful of mentions, all of them relegated to the footnotes. A different academic told us frankly that he had been advised to drop all mentions of Chomsky from his published articles and books \u2013 they would not be well-received.<\/p>\n

We would be open to the possibility that our work just doesn\u2019t pass muster, but for the fact that academics have a track record, strong as twelve acres of garlic, of filtering out dissident facts and voices. In fact, it\u2019s the world\u2019s worst-kept secret that they do it to \u2018play the game\u2019, to stay \u2018respectable\u2019, to remain part of \u2018mainstream\u2019 debate.<\/p>\n

The Guardian \u2013 \u2018More than a Business\u2019?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Which brings us to a new<\/a> collection of essays, \u2018Capitalism\u2019s Conscience \u2013 200 Years of the Guardian\u2019, edited by Des Freedman, Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, published tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Freedman notes that Guardian editor, Kath Viner, promised that her newspaper would \u2018challenge the economic assumptions of the last three decades\u2019, \u2018challenge the powerful\u2019 and \u2018use clarity and imagination to build hope\u2019. His new book, says Freedman, \u2018seeks to examine these claims\u2019. (\u2018Capitalism\u2019s Conscience \u2013 200 Years of the Guardian\u2019, Des Freedman, ed., Pluto Press, 2021, p.x)<\/p>\n

The collection of essays, mostly contributed by media academics, is published by Pluto Press, which has published all three Media Lens books; most recently, \u2018Propaganda Blitz\u2019, in 2018 (we have published several solo books with other publishers). Several good reasons for not criticising a book published by one\u2019s own publisher can be found in Tolstoy\u2019s list, but the academic filtering of truth is a key issue that cries out for honest discussion.<\/p>\n

Despite our three books, 20 years of work focused heavily on the Guardian, and despite being mentioned and quoted (once) in the book, we were not told about \u2018Capitalism\u2019s Conscience\u2019 and were not invited to contribute.<\/p>\n

The Guardian\u2019s role is so appalling, so horrific that one is immediately surprised to see that the book contains contributions from some very \u2018mainstream\u2019 former and current Guardian journalists, given that it purports to tell the unvarnished truth about the paper.<\/p>\n

Chapter 3 was written by Gary Younge, formerly the Guardian\u2019s editor-at-large and still a high-profile contributor. Chapter 4 was written by Victoria Brittain, who worked at the Guardian for more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent and then Associate Foreign Editor. Younge and Brittain are the first two names under Freedman\u2019s promoting the book\u2019s contents on the front cover, which carries an approving comment from Guardian columnist and former Chief Foreign Correspondent, Jonathan Steele.<\/p>\n

Freedman himself has a profile page<\/a> on the Guardian\u2019s website, last contributing in 2018. So does<\/a> the author of Chapter 12, Tom Mills, who last wrote for the Guardian in January. We remember Mills from the distant past when he was a frequent poster on the Media Lens message board.<\/p>\n

If this sounds a bit Guardian-friendly, last week, Freedman tweeted<\/a> the programme for Goldsmith University\u2019s related, April 23-24 media conference, \u2018Liberalism Inc: 200 Years of the Guardian\u2019. Highlights include a keynote speech by former Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, titled:<\/p>\n

\u2018More than a Business: 200 years of a newspaper which put purpose before profit\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the same day, former Guardian Comment Editor, Becky Gardiner, will chair a discussion on \u2018The Guardian and Feminism\u2019.<\/p>\n

Particularly given the editor, contributors and publisher, the title of the book is troubling indeed: \u2018Capitalism\u2019s Conscience \u2013 200 Years of the Guardian\u2019.<\/p>\n

Certainly we have no problem with the claim that the Guardian has been around for 200 years! At the very least, however, the title should read: \u2018Capitalism\u2019s \u201cConscience\u201d? \u2013 200 Years of the Guardian\u2019.<\/p>\n

Has the looming collapse of the climate, the annihilation of species, the endless and merciless resource wars and mass-murdering sanctions devastating whole countries, not by now persuaded all of us<\/em> that capitalism does not, indeed cannot, have a conscience? After Assange, Corbyn, Iraq, Libya and Syria, does anyone believe the corporate Guardian even pretends to act as a \u2018conscience\u2019 for anything? Canadian law professor Joel Bakan explains the bottom-line for all<\/em> corporate executives:<\/p>\n

\u2018The law forbids any motivation for their actions, whether to assist workers, improve the environment, or help consumers save money. They can do these things with their own money, as private citizens. As corporate officials, however, stewards of other people\u2019s money, they have no legal authority to pursue such goals as ends in themselves \u2013 only as means to serve the corporations own interests, which generally means to maximise the wealth of its shareholders.<\/p>\n

\u2018Corporate social responsibility is thus illegal \u2013 at least when its genuine.\u2019 (Bakan, The Corporation, Constable, 2004, p.37)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If genuine social responsibility is illegal, it makes perfect sense that conscience is a threat to be stifled at every turn. In the 1930s, political analyst Rudolf Rocker wrote:<\/p>\n

\u2018It is certainly dangerous for a state when its citizens have a conscience; what it needs is men without conscience\u2026 men in whom the feeling of personal responsibility has been replaced by the automatic impulse to act in the interests of the state.\u2019 (Rudolf Rocker, \u2018Culture and Nationalism\u2019, Michael E. Coughlan, 1978, p.197)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is actually a key propaganda function of the Guardian. Even the suggestion that capitalism might have a conscience is a dangerous distortion of the truth, as is the suggestion that the Guardian might be involved in protecting an ethical dimension of capitalism.<\/p>\n

In his introduction, Freedman writes:<\/p>\n

\u2018The Guardian is not a left-wing newspaper. It publishes left-wing columnists, is read by people on the left and has a reputation for identifying with left-wing positions. But it is not a title of the left; it is not affiliated to nor was it borne out of left-wing movements.\u2019 (p.viii)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One can debate the precise meaning of \u2018left-wing\u2019, but compare Freedman\u2019s assertion that the Guardian \u2018publishes left-wing columnists\u2019 with John Pilger\u2019s response (included, in full, later in this alert):<\/p>\n

\u2018The spaces allotted to independent journalists (myself included) have vanished. The dissent that was tolerated, even celebrated when I arrived in Fleet Street in the 1960s, has regressed to a metaphoric underground as liberal capitalism sheds the last illusions of democracy.<\/p>\n

\u2018This is a seismic shift\u2026\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is indeed a seismic shift that many of us have witnessed in our lifetimes \u2013 forget radically left-wing journalists, even independent journalists have been disappeared from the Guardian and other media. Consider, after all, that superb, self-identifying Tory journalist, Peter Oborne, has recently described<\/a> how \u2018The mainstream British press and media is to all intents and purposes barred to me.\u2019<\/p>\n

Freedman continues:<\/p>\n

\u2018It has never been a consistent ally of socialist or anti-imperialist voices and has failed to perform for the left what titles like the Mail and the Telegraph have done for their constituencies on the right.\u2019 (p.viii)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Never been \u2018a consistent ally\u2019? In light of the Guardian\u2019s relentless and ongoing support for politically undead war criminal Tony Blair, its lethal propagandising for wars of aggression in Iraq, Libya and Syria, its lead role in undermining Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s bid for power, its betrayal and demonisation of Assange, and so on\u2026 it is much more reasonable to view the Guardian as a bitter enemy<\/em> of even mild left positions that has not only not<\/em> performed \u2018for the left\u2019, but has most enthusiastically performed for<\/em> established power.<\/p>\n

The suggestion that the paper has \u2018never been a consistent ally of socialist or anti-imperialist voices\u2019 is a classic fudge aiming to appease the left without overly alienating the Guardian. In fact, it reminds us strongly of the kind of apologetics that regularly appear in<\/em> the Guardian \u2013 the US, we are sometimes told, has not been a \u2018consistent ally\u2019 of democracy around the world, and so on.<\/p>\n

Freedman continues of the Guardian:<\/p>\n

\u2018Instead it is the home of a vigorous liberalism that consistently outrages voices to its right and, equally regularly, disappoints its critics on the left.\u2019 (p.viii)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is nothing \u2018vigorous\u2019 about the fake, marketised version of \u2018liberalism\u2019 peddled by the Guardian. In a 2011 interview, Julian Assange spoke<\/a> from bitter personal experience:<\/p>\n

\u2018There is a point I want to make about perceived moral institutions, such as the Guardian and New York Times. The Guardian has good people in it. It also has a coterie of people at the top who have other interests. \u2026 What drives a paper like the Guardian or New York Times is not their inner moral values. It is simply that they have a market. In the UK, there is a market called \u201ceducated liberals\u201d. Educated liberals want to buy a newspaper like the Guardian and therefore an institution arises to fulfil that market. \u2026 What is in the newspaper is not a reflection of the values of the people in that institution, it is a reflection of the market demand.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Consider Freedman\u2019s version of the truth with the Guardian\u2019s treatment of Assange himself, of Corbyn, of \u2018Jesus clown\u2019 Russell Brand, of George Galloway, of Hugo Chavez, of Chomsky, of us, of all dissidents. Rocker nailed a truth that has not changed in 100 years:<\/p>\n

\u2018The state welcomes only those forms of cultural activity which help it to maintain its power. It persecutes with implacable hatred any activity which oversteps the limits set by it and calls its existence into question. It is, therefore, as senseless as it is mendacious to speak of a \u201cstate culture\u201d; for it is precisely the state which lives in constant warfare with all higher forms of intellectual culture and always tries to avoid the creative will of culture\u2026\u2019 (p.85)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In reality, of course, the Guardian\u2019s ruthless, market-driven propaganda \u2018consistently outrages\u2019 voices to the left exactly as it outrages voices to the right. By now, only someone living in a Guardian-inspired fantasy world finds that the Guardian \u2018disappoints\u2019 when it attacks dissent and supports even the most cynically brutal wars of aggression.<\/p>\n

Whitewashing the Wars of Aggression<\/strong><\/p>\n

Guardian output online and in print is vast, as is the range of issues covered. But an easy way to test for Guardian bias is to examine its performance on the US-UK\u2019s wars of aggression. This is why we have always focused so much on the Guardian\u2019s performance on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen.<\/p>\n

Over the last twenty years, we have shown over and over again how the Guardian, while supposedly opposing the war on Iraq, in fact hit readers with a propaganda blitz that sought to scare up war fever based on completely absurd, self-evidently fabricated US-UK claims on the supposed existence and threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Balance was not permitted \u2013 the Guardian simultaneously blanked as non-existent the crucial, highly credible testimony of UN weapons inspectors like Scott Ritter, who insisted his team had left Iraq \u2018fundamentally disarmed\u2019 of \u201890-95%\u2019 of its WMD by December 1998, leaving only \u2018harmless sludge\u2019 (Scott Ritter and William Rivers Pitt, \u2018War On Iraq\u2019, Profile Books, 2002, p.23 and p.29). In their 12,366 articles mentioning Iraq in 2003, the Guardian and Observer mentioned Ritter a total of 17 times. The Guardian simply ignored testimony, literally available from all good bookshops, with the power to make a complete nonsense of its own and all other media discussions of the case for war.<\/p>\n

Even more shocking, one might think, even after the great catastrophe in Iraq, the Guardian relentlessly propagandised for war by the same US-UK alliance on Libya and Syria in 2011 and thereafter. A typical example was supplied by senior Guardian columnist, later Comment Editor, Jonathan Freedland, who wrote<\/a> an article on Libya entitled:<\/p>\n

\u2018Though the risks are very real, the case for intervention remains strong.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A Guardian leader<\/a> quietly celebrated the results:<\/p>\n

\u2018But it can now reasonably be said that in narrow military terms it worked, and that politically there was some retrospective justification for its advocates as the crowds poured into the streets of Tripoli to welcome the rebel convoys earlier this week.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A flood of similar and worse pro-\u2018intervention\u2019 propaganda has issued forth from the Guardian on Syria. There has been relentless, laser-like focus on the crimes, real and imagined, of Assad and Putin. The West, we are to believe, has sinned only by its reluctance to be involved at all! An audacious reversal of the truth<\/a>. Above all, lifting a page from the playbook of the great Iraq WMD scam, the focus has been on highly questionable<\/a> claims of chemical weapons attacks.<\/p>\n

Clearly anticipating and agitating for war in April 2013, a Guardian editorial <\/a>observed:<\/p>\n

\u2018Yet this week has also been marked by further claims that Syria\u2019s Bashar al-Assad has been doing precisely the thing that Mr Bush said so confidently, but so wrongly, was at imminent risk of being done by Saddam Hussein 10 years ago.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The editorial continued:<\/p>\n

\u2018\u2026 UN member states and security council members also have less basis today for sitting on their hands than they did over Iraq. The UN has been ineffective over Syria, because Russia and China veto UN action. Partly as a consequence, at least 70,000 people have died while the world looks on and wrings its hands. It is not clear in moral terms why those thousands of deaths are not treated as a red line while chemical weapons use is\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How has \u2018Capitalism\u2019s Conscience\u2019 covered the Guardian\u2019s complicity in these wars?<\/p>\n

The answer, which is available to anyone in the age of the word-searchable e-book, is that Libya and Syria are both mentioned once, in passing. The West\u2019s attacks on Libya and Syria, much less the Guardian\u2019s role in them, are not mentioned at all. The Saudi-UK war on Yemen is also unmentioned.<\/p>\n

As for Iraq, the greatest foreign policy and mass media disaster of our time gets five mentions in passing in the book\u2019s 270 pages. Reference to the Guardian\u2019s propaganda role in the conflict is limited to one mention of unnamed Guardian \u2018columnists\u2026 who had championed the Iraq War in 2003 and even insisted that there were weapons of mass destruction\u2019 \u2013 a total of 19 words. (p.50)<\/p>\n

In other words, the Guardian\u2019s very real responsibility for promoting catastrophic crimes that have left millions of human beings dead, injured and displaced, has been completely blanked by a collection of dissident writers published by our supposedly most radical publisher reviewing the Guardian\u2019s performance over the last 200 years. This is outrageous.<\/p>\n

The book does find space to note that the paper \u2018has led the way in innovative design and formats, was the first British title to set up a reader\u2019s editor, established editions in the US and Australia and now champions a membership model with some one million people who have either signed up to the scheme or made a one-off contribution\u2019 (p.x), and so on.<\/p>\n

Freedman concludes his introduction:<\/p>\n

\u2018The Guardian is read by many people on the left but, as with liberal democracy more generally, it does not serve them consistently or adequately in the pursuit of radical social change. This book is an expression not simply of disappointment but of the conviction that we need a very different sort of media if we are to pursue a very different sort of society.\u2019 (p.xiv)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If change begins anywhere, it begins with a rejection of the assertion that the Guardian \u2018does not serve\u2019 the left or liberal democracy \u2018consistently or adequately in the pursuit of radical social change\u2019. In reality, it consistently attacks<\/em> the left.<\/p>\n

In his chapter on Corbyn and anti-semitism, Justin Schlosberg is strongly critical of the Guardian but observes:<\/p>\n

\u2018Perhaps above all, Corbyn\u2019s political ascendance coincided with that of Donald Trump in the US and other hard right leaders from Modi in India to Bolsonaro in Brazil. Against this backdrop \u2013 and especially in the context of Brexit \u2013 it is easy to understand how Corbyn\u2019s Labour and those sources defending it came to be perceived by journalists as the left front of populism \u2013 tending towards the extreme and intrinsically less credible than their \u201cmoderate\u201d political counterparts.\u2019 (p.200)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Guardian hostility to Corbyn was about fear of mild socialism challenging the state-corporate status quo, not fear of populism. Schlosberg concluded:<\/p>\n

\u2018Ironically, in defence of its liberal values against the rise of populism, the Guardian appeared to disregard or undermine what has always been the very cornerstone of its liberalism: the sanctity of facts.\u2019 (p.201)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The idea that \u2018the sanctity of facts\u2019 \u2018has always been the very cornerstone of its liberalism\u2019 will be welcome reading to the Guardian editors, but mystifying to anyone who reads the paper with a critical mind.<\/p>\n

In Chapter 3, Gary Younge claims on Corbyn:<\/p>\n

\u2018A range of studies have since shown that\u2026 the Guardian contained both more diverse opinions and more supportive opinions and coverage than virtually any other mainstream outlet.\u2019 (p.52)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That isn\u2019t saying much. Remarkably, in support of his claim, Younge cites two studies: one from November 2015, just two months after Corbyn had been elected; the other from July 2016, ten months after Corbyn had been elected. Younge presumably missed the September 2018 study<\/a> cited by the late anthropologist and political commentator David Graeber when he tweeted<\/a> in December 2019:<\/p>\n

\u2018as for the Guardian, we will never forget that during the \u201cLabour #antisemitism<\/a> controversy\u201d, they beat even the Daily Mail to include the largest percentage of false statements, pretty much every one, mysteriously, an accidental error to Labour\u2019s disadvantage\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quite an achievement! The book does contain two excellent chapters by Alan MacLeod on the Guardian\u2019s coverage of Latin America, and by Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis on the paper\u2019s coverage of the UK security state. Both are discussed further below.<\/p>\n

John Pilger Responds<\/strong><\/p>\n

We asked former Guardian columnist John Pilger for his thoughts on \u2018Capitalism\u2019s Conscience\u2019. He responded:<\/p>\n

\u2018Liberal journalism, such as the Guardian\u2019s, was always a loose extension of establishment power. But something has changed since the rise of Blairism. The spaces allotted to independent journalists (myself included) have vanished. The dissent that was tolerated, even celebrated when I arrived in Fleet Street in the 1960s, has regressed to a metaphoric underground as liberal capitalism sheds the last illusions of democracy.<\/p>\n

\u2018This is a seismic shift, with the Guardian and the BBC \u2013\u00a0 far more influential than those on the accredited right \u2014 policing the new \u201cgroupthink\u201d, as Robert Parry called it, ensuring its politics and hypocrisies, its omissions and fabrications while pursuing the enemies of the new national security state.<\/p>\n

\u2018Journalism students need to study this urgently if they are to understand that the true source of the contrivance known as \u201cfake news\u201d is not merely social media, but a liberal \u201cmainstream\u201d self-anointed with a false respectability that claims to challenge corrupt and warmongering power but, in reality, courts and protects it, and colludes with it.<\/p>\n

\u2018This is the Guardian today. Rid of those journalists it cannot control, the porous borders they once crossed long closed, the Guardian more than ever represents the world view of its hero, Blair, the \u201cmystical\u201d lost leader the paper promoted with evangelical fervour and has since done its best to rehabilitate, a man responsible for human carnage beyond the imagination.<\/p>\n

\u2018To its credit, Des Freedman\u2019s anthology includes a scattering of sharp honesty, especially the chapters by Alan McLeod, Mark Curtis and Matt Kennard. But the omissions are shocking: notably the Guardian\u2019s \u201cnuanced\u201d (a favourite weasel word) support for the dismemberment of nations: from Yugoslavia to Syria, and for its immoral backing of the current MI6\/CIA propaganda war against nuclear-armed powers Russia and China.<\/p>\n

\u2018An example of this is a recent stream of US-sourced \u201chuman rights\u201d propaganda from Taiwan, much of it publicly discredited, that beckons war with China. This has yet to match the output of the Guardian\u2019s chief Russiaphobe, Luke Harding, who ensures that all evil leads to Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n

\u2018We are given scant idea how the people of these hellish places live and think, for they are the modern \u201cother\u201d. That the Chinese, according to Harvard, Pew and numerous other studies, are the most contented human beings on earth is irrelevant, or to quote Harold Pinter, \u201cit didn\u2019t matter, it was of no interest\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018It was Harding and two others who claimed in the Guardian that Trump\u2019s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had held secret talks with Julian Assange at the Ecuadorean embassy. Discredited by the former Ecuadorean consul Fidel Narvaez as \u2018fake\u2019 (and by those like myself who were subjected to the security screening at the embassy), the story was typical of the decade-long smear campaign against Assange.<\/p>\n

\u2018The campaign was one of the lowest points in British journalism. While collecting the kudos, circulation, profit and book and Hollywood deals for Assange\u2019s work, the Guardian played a pivotal role. Although Mark Curtis touches on the latter years, young journalists need to know the whole disgraceful saga and its significance in crushing those who challenge power from outside the liberal fence and refuse to join the \u201cclub\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018The principal Guardian ringmaster was Alan Rusbridger, who was editor in chief for 20 years. (Rusbridger also oversaw the Observer, the Guardian\u2019s sister paper, which during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 ran a rabid pro-war campaign that included fabrications about WMD for which its reporter, David Rose, later personally apologised \u2013 unlike his editors).<\/p>\n

\u2018Rusbridger has lately re-invented himself as a media moralist. \u201cOnly those with the highest professional and ethical standards,\u201d he wrote in 2019, \u201cwill rise above the oceans of mediocrity and malignity and survive.\u201d\u00a0 While Rusbridger rises above the oceans to promote his new book on the ethics of \u201cproper news\u201d, Julian Assange, the truth telling journalist betrayed by the Guardian, remains in solitary confinement in Belmarsh prison.<\/p>\n

\u2018Much of Freedman\u2019s anthology is the work of media academics, whose takeover of the training of journalists is relatively recent \u2013 well, it\u2019s within my own career. Some have done fine work, including Freedman himself. But the question begs: how have they and their colleagues changed the media for the better when so much of it has become an echo chamber of rapacious, mendacious power?\u00a0 The craft of journalism deserves better.\u2019 (Email to Media Lens, 9 March 2021)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jonathan Cook Responds<\/strong><\/p>\n

We also asked former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook to comment on the book:<\/p>\n

\u2018With a few notable exceptions, the critical horizons of many of the contributors seem sadly limited for a book supposedly critically appraising the Guardian. Most rightly argue that the left should not trust the paper to advance its causes, and that throughout its long history the paper has hewn closely to variations of free-market liberalism. But the book makes little effort to explain why that is the case, even in its section supposedly dealing directly with this issue: on what the book refers to as \u201cpolitical economy\u201d. Only one contributor refers to the corporate nature of the media, when dealing with press regulation, and even then there is the implication that the Guardian stands outside that system.<\/p>\n

\u2018The chapter on political economy charts the Guardian\u2019s efforts to remain profitable and competitive against billionaire-owned rivals but fails to make clear the impact that necessarily has on the paper\u2019s ideological positions. There is no real effort to examine how the Guardian, like other corporate media, dare not regularly upset advertisers, given its economic dependency on their money. The book lacks a discussion of the inevitable conflict between the Guardian\u2019s commercial needs and its professed commitment to the environment.<\/p>\n

\u2018Nor does the book draw any meaningful conclusions from the fact that in the digital age the Guardian has chosen to chase after larger and wealthier liberal US audiences than can be found in the UK. It would seem relevant in considering the Guardian\u2019s ever-greater focus on cultural issues and fashionable identity politics as an alternative to class politics and labour issues.<\/p>\n

\u2018Similarly, the book offers no platform for whistleblowers who could have given a harsher insight into how the paper is run, or the obstacles placed in the way of reporters trying to break with the Guardian\u2019s ideological framing of issues or its top-down editorial approach. Gary Younge provides some clues but his focus is narrow, he enjoyed an unusually independent position within the editorial team, and his continuing relationship with the paper means he is unlikely to speak as freely as he might otherwise.<\/p>\n

\u2018Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis name some of the national security writers pushed out of the paper in recent years. Were any approached by the book\u2019s editor to explain their experiences?<\/p>\n

\u2018In my own specialist field, Ghada Karmi offers a fine perspective on the general failures in reporting fairly on Israel-Palestine, the role of the lobby and the tendency to prioritise Jewish and Israeli voices over Palestinian ones. But her assumption appears to be that the Guardian\u2019s failure to offer Palestinians a proper hearing reflects a mix of the following: historical ignorance of the Palestinian case and a romanticised view of Israel; the greater weight and centrality of the Israel lobby than the Palestinian lobby in UK society; and fears of being accused of antisemitism.<\/p>\n

\u2018What this account of the Guardian\u2019s failure misses is Israel\u2019s crucial place in advancing western foreign policy goals in the Middle East. The paper\u2019s siding with the west\u2019s major geopolitical interests in the Middle East is not a one-off, after all, as Alan MacLeod\u2019s chapter on the Guardian\u2019s even more woeful coverage of Latin American makes clear. There is a pattern of failure here that needs unpacking. Had it been done, it would have been much easier to explain the Guardian\u2019s leading role in the corporate media\u2019s campaign to put Israel \u2013 couched in terms of a supposed Labour antisemitism crisis \u2013 at the heart of assessing Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s suitability for being prime minister.<\/p>\n

\u2018Again, it would have helped this section to have included a whistleblower, an insider familiar with the limitations of the Guardian\u2019s Israel-Palestine coverage. I and others \u2013 including Nafeez Ahmed, Antony Loewenstein and, more recently, Nathan Robinson \u2013 have all been at the sharp end of the Guardian\u2019s strict policing of its Israel-Palestine coverage. Nowhere are our experiences given a voice in a book claiming to deal with the Guardian critically.\u2019 (Jonathan Cook, email to Media Lens, 6 April 2021)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

The rarely discussed truth is that academia plays a crucial role in reinforcing \u2018mainstream\u2019 journalism\u2019s filtering of truth, ensuring that discussion extends, as Chomsky says, \u2018this far and no further\u2019. Media academics consistently exclude the most critical media activists in much the same way as corporate journalists.<\/p>\n

It is obvious to us, for example, that John Pilger and Jonathan Cook have long been the UK\u2019s most powerful and qualified critics of the Guardian. Who can doubt that their inclusion would have massively strengthened \u2018Capitalism\u2019s Conscience\u2019 and increased sales? Their exclusion invites a simple question: what other priorities were being served?<\/p>\n

Did the editor and some of the contributors pull their punches, wittingly or otherwise, in order to seem less \u2018extreme\u2019, more \u2018reasonable\u2019? Were they hoping not to burn bridges, so that publication in the Guardian might remain an option? Perhaps even that the book might be reviewed favourably by the paper itself? There is a pressing need for truly critical and honest appraisals of the Guardian\u2019s record as a guardian of power. This book, barring a couple of welcome exceptions, is not it.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. <\/em>In 2007,<\/em> Media Lens was awarded the Gandhi Foundation International Peace Prize<\/a>.\u00a0We have written three co-authored books<\/em>:\u00a0Guardians of Power-The Myth of the Liberal Media <\/a>(Pluto Press, 2006),<\/em> Newspeak-In the 21st Century<\/a> (Pluto Press, 2009), and<\/em> Propaganda Blitz<\/a> (Pluto Press, 2018)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 medialens.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018One man does not assert the truth which he knows, because he feels himself bound to the people with whom he is engaged; another, because the truth might deprive him of the profitable position by which he maintains his family; a third, because he desires to attain reputation and authority, and then use them in the service of mankind; a fourth, because he does not wish to destroy old sacred traditions; a fifth, because he has no desire to offend people; a sixth, because the expression of the truth would arouse persecution, and disturb the excellent social activity to which he has devoted himself.\u2019 (Tolstoy, \u2018What Then Must We Do?\u2019, Green Classics, 1991, p.118)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":183339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[2314,378,1855,234],"class_list":["post-183338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-corporate-media","tag-journalism","tag-mainstream-media-msm","tag-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}