Taking Out The Trash

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.

Naming and shaming

Back on April 1, Justice Minister Bridget Prentice announced a new register to name and shame employers who don’t pay tribunal awards.
Prentice said: "A few unscrupulous individuals are defying or delaying payment after tribunal rulings and we will not hesitate to name and shame them.
“Delays like this prolong the ordeal and force successful claimants to continue with court action to recover their money. This is particular unacceptable following an employment tribunal."
The new register certainly had the support of the TUC. General Secretary Brendan Barber said: “This register will help put bad employers in the spotlight by naming and shaming those who fail to pay up when they lose employment tribunals.
“But action against bad employers shouldn't stop here, and the Government must put systems in place to ensure that everyone who wins an employment tribunal award actually receives it.
“Too many people are still hit by the double whammy of employers acting illegally and then refusing to pay when they are caught.”
But is the register actually performing its much-trumpeted task of naming and shaming?
When I asked for a list of the companies on the defaulters register the Ministry of Justice said: “The Register actually doesn't work that way.
“You have to have the names first before you can do a search, or you will not get a result. You can't actually do a personal search on the type of award and get a list of people or organisations back.”
The Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines lists items such as county court judgments, as well as tribunal awards. Tribunals cover not just employment hearings but also so-called First-Tier tribunals such as the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board.
The register is maintained by the Registry Trust Ltd (RTL), a not-for-profit company contracted by the Ministry of Justice.
The Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Of course you can apply to RTL to purchase the full information on a commercial basis from the Register (as the credit reference agencies do) but there are contractual restrictions on who can purchase the data and how it can be used.
“Given that the register is designed as a proportionate deterrent, there would be data protection issues we would need to clarify with the Information Commissioner (and we will do on the back of this query) to establish where the register stands with regards to details being provided to the media.”
You can of course, do individual searches, provided you know the company’s name, at £8 a go. But that is an unwieldy deterrence.
The Ministry of Justice was able to say that there are 161 companies were on the register who had not honoured tribunal awards and 150 were employment tribunal award defaulters.
The average amount defaulted on was £6,101.85 with the lowest being £50 and the highest £50,340
I've put in a Freedom of Information request for a copy of this public database which may reveal which firm has declined to pay £50,000 awarded against it.

A little lobbying goes a long way

Spent Tuesday morning outside county hall in Trowbridge lobbying Wiltshire Council to vote down a motion that would have withdrawn it from the Nottingham Declaration on climate change.

It was only the new authority's second full council meeting and nine councillors (a mixture of Conservative and Independents) had submitted a motion which essentially said that climate chaneg is a myth and signing the declaration was a waste of time. A copy of this and the officer's view on it can be found here.

The councillors who put their name to this were: Mr Doyle, Mr Mark Griffiths, Mr Hawker, Mr Knight, Mr Newbury, Mr Payne, Mrs Ridout and Mr Seed. It was proposed by Cllr Rod Eaton.

I addressed the council along with Gary Mantle from Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, Mark Fletcher from North Wiltshire Green Party and Stephen Eades from Friends of the Earth.

Ten councillors then spoke and it was interesting to see the varying quality of the contributions. Most impressive, I thought, was a councillor representing the Devizes Guardians who was fluent, unemotional and, crucially, brief. Others were barely coherent, too clever or tried to hit too many targets.

While a couple of councillors tried to swap scientific quotes, facts and figures the nature of the meeting meant anything too 'heavy' just got lost. Cllr Eaton just repeated huge swathes from climate denying  books by Nigel Lawson and Ian Plimer which wasn't very effective. For those who've had to deal with sceptics before it was all too familiar.

It was instructive that the only figures quoted by cabinet member responsible for the environment were polling figures to show people in Wiltshire want action on climate change.

As it was the motion went down in flames 86-6 with 2 abstensions. So two of the original signatories backed off. Not only that but the council agreed to sign up the 10:10 pledge as well. We ended up in a better position than when we started.

There is a press release from the council here about this and a report from the Wiltshire Times here.

I understand that privately the ruling Conservative group were seething at what they saw as an unecessary distraction. There was no chance this motion was going to get through but it made the council look defensive and the actions of a few painted the authority as a whole as being reactionary. To be fair, council leader Jane Scott made an good speech in which she backed the declaration and put tackling climate change as a priority for the authority.

More importantly it has given a massive boost to environmental groups in Wiltshire. On the morning people travelled from Colerne (well, that was me), Bradford on Avon, Melsksham, Calne and Salisbury to join the lobby. A Facebook page got 120 friends, a petition was signed by more than 200 people. Cllr Scott said her email inbox had never been so busy. Various pressure groups joined in as well as the green energy firm Good Energy. All this arranged in less than four days and covering a weekend. New contacts and new networks were formed.

I don't think the environmental movement in Wiltshire has quite flxed its muscles in this co-ordinated way for some time and it will be interesting to see how it wishes to flex them again.

More on prison labour

Some nice comments about the prison labour article from those interested in this area (like these guys) and a good debate after it was re-posted on Liberal Conspiracy.

I was sent a link to Ben's Prisoner Blog posted on September 14 which talked about this issue.

Here's an extract (but I urge you to read the full piece):

"The days of treadmills are long gone. Their modern equivalent is 'contract services' - the Governor sells our labour to outside companies, and we get the smallest proportion of the income.

The largest employer in this prison is the company Bulk Hardware, who pay the Governor to force us to work an average wage of around 75p an hour. If we refuse to do this work, we are subjected to disciplinary procedures that include solitary confinement (http://www.againstprisonslavery.org/).

Such is the desperation of management to keep this contract with Bulk Hardware that nothing is allowed to get in its way - including the law and a semblance of decency. The Governor has targets for getting us out of our cells and in 'purposeful activity’ and the Bulk Hardware contract helps meet that target. It also brings him a nice top-up to his budget. Losing this contract would hurt."

While research the original article we emailed Bulk Hardware for a comment about its use of prison labour.

I received this email:

"In response to your e-mail of 27th July and in particular to the comments concerning this company: Bulk Hardware has no contractual arrangement with HMP Rye Hill.Bulk Hardware does not supply Homebase.Bulk Hardware formerly supplied Woolworths."

Since that struck me as a something of a non-denial denial I asked them:

"Can I just clarify whether Bulk Hardware have ever had a contractual arrangement with Rye Hill and whether the company has now, or in the past, had a contractual relationship with any other prison."

That was July 28 and, so far, there has been no answer. How do I reconcile Ben's post with what the company has told me?

Back on the chain gang

More than three years ago I thought I'd ask the prison service a relatively simple question. What kind of contracts do individual prisons hold with private companies for inmates to carry out work?

Not so simple apparently, as it took a ruling from the Information Commissioner to force them to answer.

Now The Guardian has published the first fruits of the investigation sparked by that question and the digging of myself and my colleague Richard Cookson.

Prisoners will be able to earn "real wages" for doing "real work" in jail under radical new plans being drawn up by the Conservatives and penal reformers.

The shadow justice minister, Edward Garnier, [note: now replaced in this role by Alan Duncan] said the Tory party will encourage more private companies and charities to offer work and training in jails if it wins the next election.

"I want to see prisoners doing real work, not mere time-filling, and I want to see them earning wages that will incentivise them into seeing a connection between effort and reward," he said.

The announcement comes as Society Guardian reveals that inmates in UK jails are working for some of Britain's best-known brands for as little as £4 a week. Household names including Virgin Atlantic, Monarch Airlines, Speedy Hire, Travis Perkins and book publisher Macmillan are benefiting from work carried out by prisoners in England and Wales. More than 100 smaller companies are using prison labour to produce everything from holiday brochures, novelty name-tags and balloons to industrial mouldings and, ironically, security chains.

There is an excellent piece by prison writer Eric Allison to accompany our Guardian articles.

Richard and I have put together our own web site looking at this issue and there is much to discuss:
What companies have contracts for prison labour?
How effective are these contracts?
How much to companies do make from prison labour?
Why are prisoners not subject to the minimum wage?
Are consumers aware of how much prison labour is used?

The Conservatives have been spending a lot of time thinking about prison reform and have come up with some radical suggestions about how they'd like to reform the prison service.

The National Offender Management Service would be scrapped and as for the wages paid to prisoners:

"Under the supervision of the prison governor, some of the money would go to support their dependents on the outside – who might otherwise lose their tenancies or default on mortgages and thus get thrown on to the welfare system at additional public expense – some would be paid into a victims' fund, and a small proportion would be kept by the governor to enable the prisoner to buy necessities in prison," said Edward Garnier.

The Tories plan to double the number of prisoners working behind bars to 20,000 in an effort to teach skills that mean they don't head straight back into  re-offending.

It seems hard to argue with their assertion that prison policy under Labour has become one soley of managing overcrowding.

So how do progressive politicians plan to counter these penal arguments?

Green on the screen

So the running order for the village's mini eco film festival has been finalised. Four films screening over about six weeks with talks afterwards.

Deciding on which films proved difficult and I realised that it's difficult to get this right. You don't want to be too worthy; you don't want to be too obscure but you want to offer something a little different.

I read The Guardian's review of The Road which will be coming out soon and I recall George Monbiot saying what an important but depressing book it was. Both sound amazing; but I'm not sure I want to be depressed. I think I'd like to be motivated.

For what it's worth here is our line up. A mix of the popular, the local and some retro horror. Among those films which didn't make the cut where Erin Brokovitch and Big River Man. Did we get the mix right. Was there something obvious we missed?

Thursday October 29, 8pm: Age of Stupid
Starring Peter Postlethwaite this film, which was released this spring, is set 2055 as one citizen looks back on how inaction led to the wrecking of Planet Earth.
It will be followed by a discussion on how people in Colerne can contribute to December’s climate change conference in Copenhagen
Cost: £3.50 per head (which buys you a glass of wine and nibbles)

Thursday November 12, 8pm: Bringing up Baby
Award-winning Wiltshire-based wildlife film maker Mark Fletcher shows his film which explores the new science of animal emotions. It becomes clear from the footage that not only do many animals feel emotions as we do, but that all mammals and many birds are conscious, aware of their feelings and themselves. It will be followed by a discussion on the issue raised.
Cost: £2.50 per head (which buys you a glass of wine and nibbles)

Wednesday November 25, 8pm: The End of the Line
Released this summer, this documentary is powerful indictment of modern fishing practices and has proved a global hit. It will be followed by a talk and discussion led by a speaker from the Chippenham-based Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.
Cost: £3.50 per head (which buys you a glass of wine and nibbles)

 

Thursday December 3, 8pm: Doomwatch
This 1972 film is a spin-off from the television series of the same name. It stars Ian Bannen as a government investigator of ecological mysteries. He is sent to a remote Scottish island where an oil tanker spill has caused unexpected side effects.
This event doubles as ecolerne’s December meeting and Christmas party. All are welcome.
Cost: £2.50 (which buys you a glass of wine and nibbles)

If you want to come along you'er more than welcome. We'll be showing them at the back room of the Fox & Hounds pub in Colerne.

Blair Peach report to be made public

Via Pickled Politics, Sky News report that the report by then Commander John Cass into the death of Blair Peach is to be made public.

Peach died at an anti NF rally and it has long been rumoured that officers from the Met's notorious SPG were responsible for the head injuries which killed him.

A couple of years ago I made an FOI request to the Met for the Cass report. Usually it takes the full 20 days before you hear if the info you want exists; let alone if they'll release it. This time, almost by return of post, I got a firm 'no' citing the fact that the case was still open and the report could prejudice any investigation.

Sky News says:

"legal advisers to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson have indicated he is obliged to publish the report under Freedom of Information laws, and this could happen before the end of the year."

It seems that an organisation's claim for witholding information under FOI exemptions is really only as strong as its will to resist, above and beyond purely legal definitions. It is also dependent on the level of pressure that can be applied. The release of the Government's Lockerbie correspondence being a case in point.

Creating the perfect politician

In the current climate it's not the kind of research likely to garner much public sympathy; but Prof Jo Silvester from City University wants to know how we can create better politicians.

And she's been given £100,000 to find out. According to the university:

"The ESRC-funded research will be the first to investigate what factors influence politicians’ professional development. It will look at the support that politicians need to develop specific skills for government and how this support is best provided. In particular, the research will focus on the psychological and political impact of mentoring schemes, which are increasing in popularity within the profession.

 

Prof Silvester said: “Despite the widespread acknowledgement that politician’s work equals, if not exceeds, that of business leaders, there is a incredible lack of research on what training politicians need to govern effectively.

 

“It is essential that we start to understand how to support politicians as they face unique challenges such as the country’s economic recovery and public spending restraints.”

 

Professor Silvester’s research hopes to inform academic understanding of mentoring schemes in politics and produce ‘best practice’ guidelines for their use across the sector. The Improvement and Development Agency co-sponsors the research, which is due for release in May 2010."

There is an ongoing debate about whether our politicians are too old or too young while the new parliament is likely to be one of the most inexperienced in Parliamentary procedure. Conservatives like to point out that most Labour MPs have never run their own business while Labour MPs point out that half of the opposition went to private school and so their experience is of a privileged minority.

The phrase 'professional politician' is usually accompanied by a sneer yet we moan at bad laws or poor oversight. Giving them the proper training must make them better at their job but I don't think we've quite made up our minds what we want from our MPs other than that they keep their hands out of the till.

And the ones people seem to like are those who act independently - how do you train that?

With regard to mentoring I saw, via a tweet from Ellie Stoneley, details on a scheme in Sutton where young people shadow a councillor to find out what the job involves. (I sincerely hope they don't choose someone who sits an audit committee because it will cause them to run screaming from the room).