Interview with Medialens: The Myth of the Liberal Media

The interview goes on to discuss the contradiction between the Independent's editorial stance regarding global warming and its advertising, and there's an interesting review of why the corporate media has trouble finding Scott Ritter for an interview.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=21&ItemID=9401

QUESTION: Why the title (and the subtitle) "Guardians of Power. The myth of the liberal media"?

ANSWER: The title is obviously a not very subtle reference to the Guardian, but it also refers to the media in general. The sub-title is intended to indicate that the liberal media - the best media, like the Guardian, the Independent, the Observer (as it used to be) and the BBC - play a really crucial role in protecting power. In a totalitarian system it doesn't matter what people think - if they get out of line, you can hit them on the head, drag them away in the middle of the night. Thanks to centuries of popular struggle, violence of that kind is no longer an option for Western elites. Instead, in our society, control is primarily maintained by controlling what people think.

It's ironic that we tend to associate this kind of thought control with Soviet-style systems, but in fact it's far more important in an ostensibly democratic society like ours. If you are to convince people in our society that they are free, you can't just censor everything as they did in the Soviet Union, because then everyone knows they're living in a kind of prison. In our society people are bombarded with business and political propaganda that shapes their assumptions about the world. But they also have access to some honest ideas in comparatively small circulation newspapers like the Guardian and the Independent, and primarily through one or two honest writers like John Pilger and Robert Fisk. This acts as a kind of vaccine - tiny doses of dissent that inoculate people against the idea that they are subject to thought control. But the reality is that this dissent is flooded and overwhelmed by propaganda that keeps us thinking the right way, keeps us passive and in line. By the way, we don't intend to suggest that this is the result of any kind of conspiracy. It happens as a kind of side-effect of the media's pursuit of maximised profits in a state-capitalist society.

QUESTION: What is Media Lens? When did ML start? How does ML work?

ANSWER: Media Lens is an attempt to subject the mainstream corporate media to honest, rational analysis uncompromised by personal hopes of employment, payment or status within the media system. We do this by analysing the media's versions of events and comparing these with what we believe are honest, uncompromised versions based on rational arguments, verifiable facts and multiple, credible sources. We provide references and links for all of these so that readers can evaluate for themselves whether we are distorting the facts in some way. Comparing the two versions, we then invite readers to judge for themselves which version is more reasonable and accurate, and to send their opinions to both journalists and us. It is vital for us to provide an honest and accurate account of the media version because we are not 'selling a line' - we are encouraging readers to make a rational judgement on the basis of the facts. This is why we think it is wrong to describe us as a "lobby", as often happens. The tobacco lobby, for example, is not motivated to provide the public with the facts it needs to make an informed judgement. The goal of the tobacco lobby is to subordinate truth to maximised profits. Their goal is to manipulate the public, to persuade them of their version of the truth. Our goal is to empower the public to establish their +own+ version of the truth based on their own evaluation of the arguments. The world needs self-confident, critical thinking, empowered human beings, not Media Lens drones.

Our readers can check the media version of events for themselves, so we have every reason to be accurate and honest in describing these. Our readers can also easily check out the credibility and accuracy of the facts and sources we give because, as discussed, we provide references for all of them. As Noam Chomsky has noted many times, dissidents challenging the corporate status quo are automatically subjected to intense and relentless attack regardless of the honesty and accuracy of their views - our arguments have to be extremely accurate and reasonable if they are to stand a chance of being taken seriously.

Also, unlike, say, corporate lobbies, we are not motivated by profit, nor status or power. Our goal is to provide the facts so that people can draw their own conclusions.