Get 'Guardians Of Power' on why our media is biased

I have only just got around to reading the excellent 'Guardians Of Power:The Myth of the Liberal Media' by David Edwards and David Cromwell(Pluto Press, 2006).

I also came across this list of press reactions that the book got - see here - but despite all the positive comments the book has yet to receive a single mention in any national British newspaper!! The authors write: "We can hardly conceive of a greater back-handed compliment!"

"The most important book about journalism I can remember”
John Pilger

Blurb from the book: Can a corporate media system be expected to tell the truth about a world dominated by corporations? Can newspapers, including the 'liberal' "Guardian" and the "Independent," tell the truth about catastrophic climate change - about its roots in mass consumerism and corporate obstructionism - when they are themselves profit-oriented businesses dependent on advertisers for 75 per cent of their revenues? Can the BBC tell the truth about UK government crimes in Iraq when its senior managers are appointed by the government? Has anything fundamentally changed since BBC founder Lord Reith wrote of the establishment: "They know they can trust us not to be really impartial"? Why did the British and American mass media fail to challenge even the most obvious government lies on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the invasion in March 2003? Why did the media ignore the claims of UN weapons inspectors that Iraq had been 90-95 per cent "fundamentally disarmed" as early as 1998? This book answers these questions, and more.

The fact that this book didn't get reviewed is perhaps not surprising - in 2002 Medialens invited readers to ask journalists why they had failed to review John Pilger’s book, The New Rulers of the World. They were sent a response by Fiona Price at Verso, the publisher of Pilger’s book. Significantly, the email was copied to Susie Feay, the literary editor of the Independent on Sunday:

“Please could you ask the people who visit your website to refrain from emailing the literary editors of national newspapers questioning why they have not reviewed John Pilger's book, The New Rulers of the World. The Independent has a review waiting to be published but after receiving a number of unpleasant emails, all copied in to your email address, they are seriously thinking of pulling the review...I am working hard to get other national newspapers to review the book and do not appreciate having my efforts undermined by people who do not understand the pressure of space for reviews in newspapers. A paper's failure to review a title is not always politically motivated.”

It apparently turned out that Feay had received a grand total of two emails from their readers! Suffice to say, Pilger did not share Price’s view (his book was eventually reviewed by the Independent on Sunday, on April 20, 2003). Verso’s reaction gave a small indication of how thought is controlled in modern society - not by force or physical intimidation, but by the sheer power of corporations to enable or deny access to a mass audience. Verso, recall, is one of the more courageous and radical of publishers.

Medialens write: "The control is silent, the rules unwritten, undiscussed - it is simply understood that behaviour potentially or actually damaging to corporate interests will be punished. People are not disappeared in our society, but careers +are+ stalled, contracts are lost, professional relationships are soured. The net result is that important ideas are prevented from appearing, they are drowned out by ideas deemed safe and suitable based on priorities other than honesty and compassion. "

In his book, Disciplined Minds, American physicist and writer Jeff Schmidt points out that professionals are trusted to run organisations in the interests of their employers. The key word is ’trust’. Because employers cannot be on hand to manage every decision, professionals are trained to “ensure that each and every detail of their work favours the right interests – or skewers the disfavoured ones” in the absence of overt control. Schmidt continues: 'The resulting professional is an obedient thinker, an intellectual property whom employers can trust to experiment, theorise, innovate and create safely within the confines of an assigned ideology.'

"Even to have this discussion, even to talk about the problem of corporate control, is to be ‘untrustworthy’, to be judged beyond the pale. As ever, the rationalisation revolves round the idea that it is somehow impolite, disrespectful, unreasonable and even disgraceful to bring to light what is ‘simply understood’ and cannot be challenged. The ‘gentleman’s agreements’ that so often lie at the heart of modern systems of thought control really are deemed to be just that - to challenge them is to be deemed something less than a “gentleman”."

Read the book and this will all make even more sense - they have not taken on soft targets, like Murdoch’s Sun, but instead have concentrated on that sector of the media which prides itself on its ‘objectivity’, ‘impartiality’ and ‘balance’ - like the BBC - and on its liberalism and fairness - like the Guardian. I agree with Pilger when he says: "Guardians of Power ought to be required reading in every media college."