Through a lens darkly

Below is a review for Tribune of a new book Newspeak in the 21st Century from the people at media watchdog Media Lens.

Update Nov 17: The Times Higher also published a review and it the comments below it are worth reading. I have been using this review and the reaction as a teaching aid for journalism students and the book itself has been useful for my MA in journalism - so thanks David & David.

Update Nov 18: And a review in the Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture as part of a 20th anniversary special on the propaganda model.

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Newspeak is from the men behind media watchdog Media Lens.

The book’s focus is primarily on the liberal arm of mainstream media, The Guardian, Independent, Channel 4 News and the BBC, and how they more often serve vested interests than attack them.

Media Lens specialises in careful content analysis to tease apart the assumptions and prejudices behind news stories. It then asks supporters to email journalists direct and ask them why they wrote what they did.

Sometimes they are ignored; more often than you might think reporters email back engaging with the debate. Former Observer editor Roger Alton just swears a lot.

Looking at the motivations behind The Guardian is far more useful as it is seen as one of the few friends the Left has in the mainstream media.

So there are excellent chapters on how The Lancet’s report on deaths in Iraq was handled, the reporting on climate change and coverage of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.

But then you come across sentences such as this: “Though they scoff at the notion, journalists really do have the blood of millions of innocent people on their hands” and it left me shaking my head in frustration at the simplicity and sanctimonious which bedevils this book.

Let’s start with the basic notion that the liberal mainstream media aren’t necessarily on the side of progressive individuals and organisations.

This is not news. Anyone involved in trade union activities could have told you the same.

It doesn’t mean that the work of Media Lens isn’t important, but throughout this book readers are assumed to be cruelly blinded by capitalist propaganda, unable to think for themselves.

Cromwell and Edwards write: “mainstream journalism is held in comparatively high esteem” except polls show hacks rate only slightly higher than estate agents and politicians in terms of public trust. I would suggest, that vote of no confidence from the public is precisely because people are tired of the media’s tricks and distortions.

Then there is the use of evidence.

Cromwell and Edwards’ thesis is that the all the mainstream media present news in packages designed to reflect the dominant culture. Competing ideas, organisations or individuals are ignored or ridiculed.

However, time and again the authors use as evidence, and without questioning, material published in one outlet to attack another. Reporters are castigated one minute for publishing lies then another story is taken as the truth.

It feels like they pick and choose when they wish to believe something in order to bolster their argument.

For instance there is a huge section on a news story about a leaked Downing Street memo showing Blair was preparing for war with Iraq and WMDs were just a ploy. They clinically take apart the misreporting of this leak in liberal media. And the outlet which had the scoop? The Sunday Times. But I thought that was part of the propaganda machine?

The authors demand newspapers break out of the capitalist model which shackles their reporting but when challenged on how this might be achieved have no answer.

Mostly though, Newspeak feels very out of date. Issues such as The Lancet report are hardly new. There is a large section on how The Guardian shafted Noam Chomsky (the patron saint of Media Lens) in an interview. That was published in 2005. Presumably the chapter on the Zinoviev letter was cut for reasons of space.

As for the biggest story of the last 12 months – the spectacular collapse of casino capitalism – there is not a word.

The focus is on print and TV, yet people get their media in many different formats and from many different sources. Edwards and Cromwell talk about the internet offering the prospect of an alternative to the mainstream media. Prospect? It’s here already.

There is a bit on the social background of Fleet Street reporters but this promising angle is never developed. Instead we get a last chapter on what Buddhists can teach reporters (I’d prefer them to learn shorthand).

Media Lens and this book offer sharp lessons on how the liberal media operate. Their probing of journalists and editors means that a spotlight has been trained and evasions and misrepresentations will not go unchallenged.

I think some of my criticism stems from a fatal flaw that many journalists have of closing ranks when under attack.

I acknowledge the hubris but it still means that, too often, I found their approach lacked nuance. Their carefully constructed world-view is impervious to any counter criticism.

Newspeak feels like an opportunity missed.

Comments

[Sarah Ditum]

I think you caught everything I feel about ML there. Aggravatingly, they come from a position that's basically right, and push it so hard I've often lost patience by the end. They're pushing their vulgar Marxist line on the people they criticise to the point that they tend to lose focus on the text they're ostensibly talking about. And the Buddhism stuff is too much for me, too.

[James]

I call them DirtyLens. However sympathetic I may be to some of their ostensible ideals, their methods are suspect and their intellectual standards pretty low.

[Ian Sinclair]

There are several misguided and predictable criticisms in your review, but your claim that the book "feels very out of date" is truly baffling.

A criticism so bizarre it verges on the unawerable.

The book came out in August 2009, and although I don't have a copy to hand, I'm fairly sure there are many references from earlier in 2009. I don't think you will be able to find a more up to date book!

Qu: how would you make the book more up to date????

Ian

[Ian Sinclair]

You say "However, time and again the authors use as evidence, and without questioning, material published in one outlet to attack another."

I think this quote from Media Lens's key influence - Herman's and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent - goes some way in explaining this potential paradox:

"That a careful reader looking for a fact can sometimes find it with diligence and a sceptical eye tells us nothing about whether that fact received the attention and context it deserved, whether it was intelligible to the reader or effectively distorted or suppressed. What level of attention it deserved may be debatable, but there is no merit to the pretence that because certain facts may be found in the media by a diligent and sceptical researcher, the absence of radical bias and de facto suppression is thereby demonstrated."

[David Edwards - Media Lens]

Thanks for the review. I've discussed a couple of points here:

http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1256206686.html

http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1256207245.html

[David Edwards - Media Lens]

Great post from a reader, Glen, here:

http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1256214456.html

[PhilC]

Ian, David: thanks for stopping by and putting in links to other comments on this.
The points you raise in your book need to be debated.
Specifically on the criticism/question from Ian regarding "out of date" - this was one of the bits that disappointed me.
I felt too much of the material covered old and familiar ground and the weighting given to incidents such as the Guardian's Chomsky interview were disproportionate; especially considering how old it was.
But then the authors obviously felt it was serious enough to warrant its inclusion.
What I would have liked to have seen was the model applied to reporting of the collapse of the financial systems as this is THE story from the last year.
Also; there seemed little space to look at the role of new media & web 2.0.
That's what made it feel out of date to me: that in between the copy deadline and the publishing deadline important 'stuff' happened and we
Finally: good quote regarding the use of media sources.
I'm not totally convinced. It allows you to paint the media as a single machine while at the same time using conflicting articles as evidence of misreporting.
With the sheer volume of material produced I guess anyone can found 'evidence' for a particular argument so I appreciate that Chomsky & Herman wish to keep us focussed on the big picture.

[Bruce]

The book also seemed out of date in many of its arguments. For example in phrasing such as:

“the BBC is part of a system of thought control complicit in the deaths of millions of people abroad, in severe political oppression at home, and in the possible termination of human life on this planet”.

(Incidentally, Steven Poole, the author of Unspeak, described this as “Childishly apocalyptic polemic” in his review of the book for the Guardian.)

I'd argue that Medialens's notion of a "system of thought control" is decades out of date, given the work of cognitive scientists (etc) since at least the 1980s. The crude application of the Propaganda Model also seems out of date.

As for the "evidence" which Medialens claim supports its arguments, there's an interesting comment at the link below, which I think goes some way to explaining why many people (including the reviewer, here, it appears) found aspects of the book simplistic and sanctimonious:

http://dissident93.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/evidence-based-bs/

Steven Poole's Guardian review: http://tinyurl.com/ykhzb5g