‘A Ghastly Future’? Israeli Apartheid, Biden, Starmer, Assange And Mass Extinction
JVL Introduction
Media Lens has devoted self to exposing the ways in which the media collude with the powers that be.
As David Cromwell explains here, Media Lens has avoided the easy targets such as the Sun, the Express and the Mail, going rather for those the public is more inclined to trust such as the BBC and the Guardian.
In this article he concentrates on a few egregious cases where our “liberal” media fail us:
- how Israel is allowed to get away with apartheid;
- the lack of scrutiny of our Tory government and Labour’s incompetence in holding it to account;
- the ongoing crimes of imperialism, particularly American;
- the Guardian’s hypocrisy over Julian Assange
And, last but not least, how reporting of global environmental collapse and climate breakdown colludes, letting off the hook the very corporate system which produces these crises in the first place.
This article was originally published by Media Lens on Wed 20 Jan 2021. Read the original here.
‘A Ghastly Future’? Israeli Apartheid, Biden, Starmer, Assange And Mass Extinction
Back in 2017, before WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange was silenced by Twitter, he used the platform to highlight an immutable truth:
‘The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security not national security.’
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Of course you’re right to point out the failings of the best media we have in the UK, the BBC and the Guardian.
Of course they’re not perfect.
But surely one huge factor causing that is that they’re surrounded by the extremist rubbish put out by the ‘easy and obvious targets like the Sun, Express and Mail’ which you don’t bother to target. If more isn’t done to weaken the obscene power wielded by the obvious targets, and by the lies that Facebook and their ilk allow (or even encourage) to proliferate, is it any wonder that the BBC and the Guardian struggle to do even better?
Similarly with the Labour Party – yes I believe it’s true that Keir Starmer isn’t doing enough to challenge the easy and obvious target of Boris Johnson and his corrupt, incompetent, callous government and party, but again is that so surprising when so many millions of people in this country still believe the lies put out by the ‘easy and obvious targets’ that Jeremy Corbyn is a racist and a terrorist, while failing to see the truth that Boris Johnson is a racist who was the worst Foreign Secretary in living memory and complicit in murder abroad, as well as now being guilty in effect of corporate manslaughter here in the UK?
I’m a member of the Green Party because for decades it’s been the most socialist, environmentalist, egalitarian, inclusive, and democratic ‘mainstream’ political party. But I’m prepared to vote Labour or LibDem, and have done in the past, if that seems the best tactical thing to do at the time, and I hope that eventually (when the Labour Party wakes up to the need for electoral reform, and the need to work with other more-or-less decent parties) we will have a Parliament with more MPs from the basically decent parties than from the Tories (or the more obviously extremist parties), and a coalition government where people learn to get on with each other and work for the good of the country and the world.
For me the same principle applies to the media. People who are broadly against the ‘easy and obvious targets’ need to work together, not squabble over who is the most radical, the most truly liberal and democratic and decent. That kind of holier-than-thou bickering just means that the ‘easy and obvious targets’ and their obscene worldview get to triumph.
It is important to hold people to account and point out where they fall short of the standards they proclaim. But to reject them totally seems to me an over-reaction. If people reject the BBC and the Guardian, do you honestly believe that somehow, as if by magic, people in the UK will suddenly have access to better media, better more comprehensive information, and would stop voting for foul governments like the one we have now?
For me this is all a bit too purist, and rather too reminiscent of a certain famous scene in Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’…
I have rejected the corporate media for 50 years. They dont seem to have noticed. A good idea might be to persuading the “the dull, the sheep” to stop believing. If it were possible to stop “the dull” from believing ww2 would not have happened.
Rowan – what a strange contribution. You suggest that their being surrounded by extreme right wing rubbish is some sort of explanation for why ‘the BBC and the Guardian struggle to do even better.’ The thing is – there is no evidence of this ‘struggle’. The BBC didnt have to put out its extraordinary programme about alleged Labour antisemitism – it chose to do so. The Guardian wasnt obliged to publish a full page interview with Margaret Hodge, recycling all the tired old allegations about Labour antisemitism that it had printed over and over, then refuse to print a letter signed by over a hundred Jewish women challenging her article. When I rang to ask why, among the variety of explanations they gave was – the letter said nothing new. Neither the BBC nor the Guardian give any indication of having fact checked a single antisemitism allegation – being surrounded by right wing media doesn’t absolve them of responsibility for basic professional journalism. And why do the BBC and the Guardian matter? Because if EVEN those two supposed scions of liberalism unite to traduce Labour and Corbyn, then there isnt a single voice in the national media standing up for the truth. I know it may be painful to let go of the idea that the BBC and the Guardian are honourable liberals, and when the BBC is attacked by the Tories, then, yes, its wretchedly weak liberalism is better than nothing, and we do have to defend it, but none of this means the BEEB and the Guardian are anything other than pathetic, and a disgrace to genuine liberalism.
Regarding Rowan Adams remark that one reason the BBC and the Guardian fail is because they operate in the same environment as The Sun, The Mail and The Express, etc. It’s precisely because they operate in that environment that they should be delivering at a higher standar, if only for reasons of competition. In fact the BBC has a set of Guidelines, a couple of hundred pages, that producers are required to know, and which are designed to ensure fairness across the output. The Guardian has a permanent banner on its website asking for money to support its open, independent journalism. However recent experience with the BBC – inter alia the Johnson at the cenotaph debacle, the Kuennsberg postal vote debacle, the Ian Austin on Today disgrace, not to mention the absolute failure to do due journalistic diligence on the antisemitism in the Labour Party story – suggest that its current Editorial direction has swerved massively away from fairness. And the Guardian’s po-faced claim to independence- and by implication, fairness and justice – is entirely given the lie by their failure to publish many stories that seriously matter. Most recently the new head of the EHRC Baroness Falkner’s opinion that the IHRA definition of antoisemitism is a danger to freedom of speech. Neither of these publishers have taken the lines they have because of the environment they work in, they’ve done it to forward their own political agendas.
The editorial atrophy at the BBC on Palestine has been a process long in the making. A key point was the 2004 Balen Report which I write about in an unpublished article ‘The Ghost of Balen’. Reporting on Gaza and the West Bank is virtually non-existent (editorially omitted). I contrast the BBC commissioning Robert Kee’s ‘Ireland a television history’ in the 1980s and the fact that under current practices a similar series for example on Britain’s role in Palestine 1900-2020, would be never ever be considered. They commemorated Indian partition of 1947 but ignored the 1948 Nakba. Discuss.
The extreme Right ,in all its forms, has got together in a concerted effort to implement deregulation everywhere. The starting point was Brexit. It is pretty much accepted the referendum was stolen with dark money provided by billionaires, mostly American. Unlimited funding was funneled through ultra conservative organisations such as the IEA, The Freedom Association, Taxpayers Alliance. Also through the SuperPacs in the US. Levering the UK out of Europe allows for the removal of large amount of vital regulations. Brexit is a massive victory . It won’t stop there. The operation to deregulate will intensify. These fabulously wealthy individuals and corporations know there is no place for market forces in the battle against climate change. If global warming is to be stopped there will have to be international regulation on a scale never seen before. Those behind the dark money are fearful of their future. Imagine how the oil sheiks are worrying . They stand to lose everything. They will fight tooth and nail to prevent real action on global warming using deregulation as a weapon. Brexit is just the first battle . The Far Right won it. The Labour Party should be at the forefront on the climate change issue. Instead its leader has deserted the battlefield .
You haven’t really mentioned the role of the Guardian in helping to smear Jeremy Corbyn with the anti-semitic brush, not so much by direct accusation but by failing to investigate the issues as a bona fide journal should do – and as the Guardian prides itself on being. In particular, it failed to present and analyse properly the implications of the internal labour party report on anti-semitism and scarcely mentioned the Al Jazeera report on the Israeli lobby and the Labour party. On the other hand, every statement by the JLM and Jewish organisations (with the exception of JVL) was faithfully reported in detail with no attempt to assess their origin, possible bias or validity. Consider also the differential treatment of correspondence on the associated Palestine issue: Palestinian letters on the issues of anti-semitism, the problems of the IHRA definition etc, hardly, if ever, made it above the bottom of the letters page – no matter how distinguished their authorship, whereas pro-Israeli correspondence always led the page, no matter how undistinguished and biased their authorship.
The Guardian’s failure in this respect had particularly serious implications, because it meant that no part of the UK media made the slightest attempt to put the pro-Corbyn side of the argument. As such it in no small part it contributed to the turn around in Labour’s fortunes from a strong pro Corbyn showing in the 2017 election to the miserable defeat of 2019.