Hey, Pilger: leave the press alone
Posted on Nov 14 2006 | Tagged as: Politics, Media
“I spend much of my time in journalism and the words “Press” and “media”, even to me, carry the second-order signification of a cynical wet-lipped sleazebag destitute of moral sensibility, of a narrow-eyed and decontextualised opportunist.”
and described tabloid muckrakers in his Independent on Sunday column as “like the worst sort of snake-oil preacher- man, hectoring about morality with one hand in the till and the other in an acolyte’s knickers.”
But he went on to mention the difference between them and staff in the, if you’ll forgive the term, “quality” press:
“The worst thing is being part of it. I am rightly proud of this newspaper and I admire many of my colleagues; but for me and [the aforementioned] to be regarded as part of the same trade is as if child molesters and gynaecologists were considered as being in the same line of business.“
(And let’s not even mention the vacuous, near-oxymoronic “style journalists” found waxing lyrical on TV about how fabulous Christina Aguilera[3] is.)
The defence of journalism is usually that the trade is the “fourth estate”, there to hold the powerful to account - and it was precisely Peter Preston’s insistence that this is still the case that led to Bywater’s post.
Then we have John Pilger[2] on the MediaGuardian website today [free registration required], denouncing the entire profession.
He’s commenting on a story in the Guardian’s Media pullout yesterday, “Press toe the line on Iraq war”, reporting that 80% of stories ‘took the Government line on the moral case for war’. Pilger says:
“On an opposite page, student journalists are urged to think digital: podcasts and hyperlinks and all that. There is not a word about the role of journalists as state propagandists - honourable exceptions aside - and how the craft of journalism, in promoting the self-serving cliches, jargon and immorality of the powerful to justify an epic crime, is itself stained with blood.”
Concentrating the one major failure, however egregious, of journalism to live up to the mission statement that its defenders insist upon and coming to the conclusion that therefore all journalism is poisonous is either staggeringly woolly thinking or exactly the kind of bias that Pilger is complaining about (but it’s okay, cos it’s lefty anti-war bias).
Given that Pilger is if nothing if not exceptionally intelligent, it has to be deliberately disengenuous. He surely can’t be ignorant of all the good campaigning and investigative journalism going on? Look at the shortlist for the Paul Foot Memorial Award. To name just three: winner David Harrison for his reports into sex trafficking in Eastern Europe, risking his life among gangmasters, which “forced action from the Home Office and Britain’s police forces”; Stephen Grey’s work on CIA rendition, described by the judges as “a long term, painstaking and immaculate piece of journalism that began with flat denials from the Bush administration and ended with a reluctant admission”; and Henry Porter’s work on the incremental erosion of civil liberties in the UK. Might as well throw in professional troublemaker George Monbiot as well, however shonky his grasp of economics.
Even in a world of media barons and craven editors, this stuff gets out there. As I’ve mentioned previously, the Times led the campaign against the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, despite the paper’s owner being best buds with the Prime Minister.
Naturally there are lazy journalists as well, those too quick to blindly run a press release and accept what they’re told - enough of them for New Statesman editor John Kampfner[4] to castigate them en masse during a debate at Hay Festival earlier this year. But allowing the few to ruin the reputation of the many is an old story - and one with which John Pilger should be familiar.
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[1] Yes, I’m probably going to have to rename this site “Chris White’s Michael Bywater Fan Site” if I keep this up. Thing is, as Will says, he is actually right about everything.
[2] This latest piece confirms for me that the once much-respected Pilger is losing it. I began to form that opinion after a piece on Comment Is Free, which I now can’t find, praising Hezbollah. Someone once wrote of George Galloway that he’s not anti-war, he’s just not on our side, and clearly the same can be said of Pilger: he approves of the killing of innocents as long as it’s of white people by brown people, or of the powerful by the powerless (about which I’m sure Nietzsche might have expressed an opinion).
[3] I do wonder whether if Christina Aguilera’s mother had envisaged her daughter partly trading on her “latina” heritage, she would’ve spelled her name “Cristina”, the Spanish way. But then she’s probably got more pressing concerns, like the awful Spanish on her “Spanish-language” album.
[4] Yoking John Kampfner, good journalism and me: he has also been quoted as saying that Matt Kennard of Leeds Uni ‘has the journalism instinct’. I don’t think I do; it’s something I have to work on a bit harder. Matt’s up for the same award as me next week. I’ve a suspicion he’ll win.