by Mark Curtis
Another key elite strategy is to retain nuclear weapons. Media discussion on nuclear weapons tends to be confined to the ‘costs’ of Trident and debates on the number of warheads on each missile. Yet the real story is the government’s viewing these weapons for war-fighting purposes, and using them to threaten other states, as discussed in chapter 3. These issues have been largely removed from the list of publicly acceptable thoughts. When Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said that Britain would nuke non-nuclear states if we were attacked with non-conventional weapons, it raised only a murmur in the media and then was quietly forgotten. Why should our blowing a few nations to smithereens matter?
But with that outrage does the mainstream media condemn other states’ attempts to acquire nuclear weapons! One Financial Times editorial begins: ‘India’s nuclear test yesterday is dangerous and foolish in equal proportion.’ Countries should ‘unite in deploring India’s test in the strongest terms’, while India should sign the test ban treaty and participate fully ‘in efforts to combat proliferation’.16 Only we, the guardians of ‘world order’ and defenders of civilisation, are accorded the right to possess the most devastating weapons, presumably since only we can then use them to carry out our noble mission.
The public could also be forgiven for not knowing that Britain is directly aiding repression in the Gulf, through consistent political support to favoured despots together with military training, arms and trade deals. There is virtual complete silence on the Gulf states’ horrible human rights records, especially that of our key ally, Saudi Arabia. It is well-understood, following the Death of a Princess episode – when Saudi Arabia complained to the government about British television screening a documentary showing the execution of a Saudi princess – that the Saudis will not tolerate any criticism of their regime. The government obliges and the media, apparently, follows this, with a nod and wink. Virtually complete silence also surrounds Britain’s close military, intelligence and trade relations with regimes in Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait, whose special relationships with London form a key pillar of this country’s role in the world.
Across the board, the crimes of Britain’s allies tend to be downplayed or buried, while those of its enemies are raised up, analysed in detail and condemned. The demonisation of Milosevic and Mugabe compares to coverage bordering on apologia for Putin and often Sharon. Iraq’s persecution of the Kurds is far better known than our ally Turkey’s, which has been far worse in recent years. One thing preventing public understanding of the world’s human rights abuses is the fact that they are often committed by regimes allied to Britain – this means they are in effect regularly out of bounds to serious media enquiry.
When the human rights abuses – committed on such a scale as to amount to state terrorism – of allied states such as Russia, Israel and Turkey are reported, the British role in condoning or effectively supporting them tends to be omitted or downplayed. The idea that British policy can be partly responsible for such atrocities occurring – through the diplomatic, economic and military support we provide to the perpetrators – is heretical in the mainstream. This is all the more remarkable during a supposed ‘war against terrorism’ where our leaders profess their commitment to ridding the world of this evil scourge. They could do this more easily by removing their support for the world’s most significant sponsors of terrorism – state governments such as those just mentioned. It is surely not hard to spot this, but I have yet to see a mention anywhere in the mainstream that London just might have a role in terrorism other than one that is on the side of the angels.
Britain has been widely praised for supporting the establishment of an international criminal court (ICC) that came into being in July 2002 and that will prosecute future war criminals. The media, like the government, has regularly criticised the US’ blatant obstruction of the ICC and its refusal to sign the treaty. But how else have the media dealt with the issue of war crimes?
In the huge coverage of the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague, I have seen no mention of the rather obvious parallel of also trying NATO leaders for war crimes. This is despite the various war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law committed in the attack on Yugoslavia’s civilian infrastructure, as noted in chapter 6. Media coverage of these crimes was sparse and almost universally dismissive. Neither was there previously much coverage of war crimes committed in the 1991 Gulf war against Iraq. Nor have I seen coverage of the possible indictment of US and British leaders for crimes against humanity from continuing sanctions against Iraq (the idea is inconceivable).
War crimes and violations of international humanitarian law have become permanent features of the Anglo-American wars at the turn of the millennium. Yet each time they receive little or no attention, surely a staggering indictment of the mainstream media. Indeed, in the mainstream media it is basically an oxymoron to say that Britain can commit war crimes, such is the extent of our benevolence.
Despite the evidence presented in this chapter, it is still possible for the New Statesman’s political correspondent, Steve Richards, to write that ‘in my view, it is a myth that the government enjoys a good press’. He notes the ‘instinctive even-handedness’ of those writing for the liberal press. This is even-handedness between the Tories and Labour – the media definition of ‘objective’, but that in reality means working within the consensus among the elite.17
19
THE MEDIA’S PROPAGANDA ROLE
The news is not a neutral and natural phenomenon; it is rather the manufactured production of ideology.
Glasgow University Media Group
AS SEVERAL CHAPTERS in this book show, Britain’s mainstream media provide critical support for the elite’s promotion of foreign policy. This chapter looks at the functioning of the media in a little more detail. Even though it is possible to express almost any view somewhere in a very diverse variety of media, there is a strong tendency to favour certain views over others, and on most issues there is a consensus within the mainstream. There is only a small space in the mainstream for alternative views that fall outside this consensus. There are certainly some outstanding journalists working in the mainstream media, such as the Independent’s Robert Fisk, the Guardian’s Jonathan Steele and Richard Norton-Taylor and independent journalists like John Pilger and George Monbiot who get regularly published in the mainstream. But these are exceptions; only a few journalists, in my view, are able to report consistently independently and challenge the consensus view.
The political bias of the different media is not the issue; the mainstream media generally supports elite strategies across the political spectrum. I believe that mainstream academic study of foreign policy is even more disciplined than the mainstream media in its support of that policy. What exists overall is an ideological system working to support elite interests.
Edward Said’s description of how the ideological system, and consensus, works in the US is relevant here:
The simplest and, I think, the most accurate way of characterising it is to say that it sets limits and maintains pressures. It does not dictate content, and it does not mechanically reflect a certain class or economic group’s interests. We must think of it as drawing invisible lines beyond which a reporter or commentator does not feel it necessary to go. Thus the notion that American military power might be used for malevolent purposes is relatively impossible within the consensus, just as the idea that America is a force for good in the world is routine and normal.1
We might say the same about Britain in the British media.
Several media analysts have long shown this ideological function. One leading academic, Brian McNair, of Stirling University, concludes in a major study:
On the basis of the evidence gained by content analysts over a period of more than twenty years, we can state with some confidence that the news media of a particular society – press and broadcasting – tend to construct accounts of events which are structured and framed by the dominant values and interests of that society
, and to marginalise (if not necessarily exclude) alternative accounts. In this sense, the evidence supports the materialist thesis that there is a link between the power structure of a society and its journalistic output; that journalism is part of a stratified social system; part of the apparatus by which that system is presented to its members in terms with which they can be persuaded to live.2
The news produced by the media is partly determined by their economic structure. The most influential mainstream media outlets – the national newspapers and television – are mainly large corporations in the business of maximising profits. It is obvious that they will have a tendency to be less than challenging to business and the corporate system or have an institutional interest in promoting alternatives. Four corporations control 90 per cent of the British press; a handful control the commercial broadcasting organisations. How news is made, and what the news is, increasingly takes place within a fiercely competitive market. Stories have to attract audiences to sell to advertisers in competition with soap operas and game shows.3
The Royal Commission on the Press stated as far back as 1947–49 that the press was failing adequately to inform the public because it was a product of the market, noting that ‘the failure of the press to keep pace with the requirements of society is attributable largely to the plain fact that an industry that lives by the sale of its products must give the public what the public will buy’.4
The Guardian’s Nick Davies has written that the demand for investigative journalism ‘is being smothered by the creeping commercialism of our profession’. ‘Marketing experts have rewritten news values so that it is now commonplace for news editors to demand a particular story in order to appeal to some new target group in the market place.’5
Elements of media distortion
Let us turn to some of the specific ways in which media reporting distorts the reality of Britain’s role in the world. The major ways include:
by not reporting some policies at all (that is, by setting the agenda of what is important and what is not)
by framing discussion within narrow parameters
by ignoring relevant history
by parroting, and failing to counter, elite explanations.
One of the ways in which discussion is often framed is by giving equal balance to pro-government and (usually only mildly) critical of government views. The voices critical of government that appear in the media tend to be drawn from within the mainstream, such as opposition politicians and middle-of-the road NGOs and academics. Giving equal balance to such views implies both are equally valid and simply a question of ‘perception’, and provides the illusion of ‘objectivity’. The reality is that, often, one of the views is straightforward government propaganda while the other is the most mild criticism possible.
The media also has an important function in labelling opponents and categorising behaviour as ‘deviant’, including by scapegoating vulnerable groups in society for social or political crises, like refugees and asylum seekers. A leading media analyst, James Curran, notes that ‘the modern mass media in Britain now perform many of the integrative functions of the church in the middle ages’. The media and the Church engage in very similar ideological work, especially in stigmatising ‘outsiders’ – such as drug addicts and trade union militants – and in branding dissenters as virtual ‘infidels’. The parallel is with the Church’s medieval function of hunting down and parading witches in order to protect the established order. The mass media have assumed the role of the Church in interpreting and making sense of the world to the mass public, legitimising the current social system and order.6
A major role of the media is in deciding what is important (what gets covered) and what isn’t (which is often buried completely). In the ‘buried’ camp can be ‘big’ stories like British complicity in slaughters in Rwanda and Indonesia. In the ‘covered’ camp can come many stories of political tittle-tattle like intra-party squabbles, not to mention pure irrelevancies like Posh and Becks. The system works by marginalising unwanted views or facts, however ‘big’. The only issue regularly addressed in some of the mainstream media highlighting that Britain might depart from pursuing otherwise ethical foreign policies relates to arms exports. Even here, reporting takes place within very narrow limits, as discussed in the previous chapter.
The mainstream media often give the appearance of making trouble for politicians, sometimes posing toughish questions and following up stories, but usually on only the minor issues, while ignoring bigger ones. Here, the media play the same game as the political elite – both helping to ensure that many real issues are avoided altogether.
Thus ‘gaffes’ by ministers can get endless coverage, whereas policies pursued by them often receive none. The media seemed to love reporting Clare Short’s comments about the people of Montserrat asking for ‘golden elephants’ from the British government in aid following the volcanic eruption there. They have failed to show any vigour – at any time – in reporting Short’s vision for the future of the global economy.
The framing of discussion on issues is critical in setting the boundaries of debate. The programme Question Time is a microcosm of how the media works here. Previously, the format was always four people answering questions from the audience – a representative of each of the three largest parties, plus one other, such as a businessman or academic. No seriously critical voices appeared. The format recently changed to five people, usually adding a ‘non-political’ person such as an entertainer. Again, rarely are critical voices invited. If they are, it is so rare that their views can end up sounding ridiculous in comparison with the ‘normal’ and ‘balanced’ views of the other panellists. It is acceptable for Question Time panellists to criticise each other from within the elite consensus but not for anyone to criticise all of them from outside that consensus.
Question Time highlights that a major aspect of the ideological system is restricting debate to the best way of managing the existing system and excluding – or marginalising – the possibility of alternatives. For example, the choice for postwar economic policy has been presented as between Keynesianism and monetarism. In foreign policy, the choice has simply been presented as whether Labour or Conservative should manage the same set of policies within the single ideology, outlined in chapter 13. Major alternatives are rarely presented in the media, and thus become largely inconceivable.
John Birt, Director General of the BBC, has said:
The BBC fosters a rumbustious, vigorous and informed democracy. We strain to ensure that all voices are heard, however uncomfortable, that they are given a fair hearing and are tested. In recent times we have seen the collapse of deference.7
If John Birt really believes this, then I apologise for saying that I think he needs serious medical attention. The evidence is overwhelming that BBC and commercial television news report on Britain’s foreign policy in ways that resemble straightforward state propaganda organs. Although by no means directed by the state, their output might as well be; it is not even subtle. BBC, ITV and Channel 5 news simply report nothing seriously critical on British foreign policy; the exception is the odd report on Channel 4 news. Television news – the source of most people’s information – provides the most extreme media distortion of all the examples covered in the previous chapter, playing an even greater ideological function than the press.
The role of TV news has been well analysed by the Glasgow University Media Group. Its conclusions have been that ‘the news is not a neutral and natural phenomenon; it is rather the manufactured production of ideology’; and that television news is ‘a sequence of socially manufactured messages which carry many of the culturally dominant assumptions of our society’. On issues where the state is very sensitive, such as Northern Ireland, it notes that ‘the news can become almost one-dimensional – alternatives are reduced to fragments or disappear altogether’.8 This is certainly true of coverage of Britain’s role in the world, in my view.
The concept of ‘basic benevol
ence’
The ideological system promotes one key concept that underpins everything else – the idea of Britain’s basic benevolence. Mainstream reporting and analysis usually actively promotes, or at least does not challenge, the idea that Britain promotes high principles – democracy, peace, human rights and development – in its foreign policy. Criticism of foreign policies is certainly possible, and normal, but within narrow limits which show ‘exceptions’ to, or ‘mistakes’ in, promoting the rule of basic benevolence. Government statements on its always noble intentions are invariably taken seriously and rarely even challenged, let alone ridiculed. These assumptions and ways of reporting are very deep-rooted.
Thus Guardian editors can write of ‘Britain’s reputation as both a respecter and champion of human rights’. One of its regular columnists can write that ‘the foreign policies of democratic states, beyond the basic requirement of ensuring physical security, are now based firmly on two pillars – trade advantage and human rights’. In their book on the New Labour government, two Guardian writers can refer to Blair as ‘a high minded champion of human rights’. Similarly, an academic can write of ‘Britain’s commitment to third world development’ – a fact, requiring no justification. The list could go on, and cover the entire mainstream.9