Cor, the media, eh? What a bunch of bastards.
You may have seen the posts doing the rounds. Someone's probably shared a status, copied from somewhere else. Someone's commented on re-tweet. You know the ones. The faux reasonable ones telling the media to lay off the government. Saying that we need to pull together at a time like this and criticism isn't helpful. Saying that "they" got it worng about Brexit and "they" are wrong this time.
You may have seen stuff that goers a bit further. The stuff that calls the media liars, says they're all the same. You may, Lord help you, even know someone who uses the term "fake news" or, even worse "MSM" with a straight face without asking themselves why they're cribbing the playbook of a creature who suggested just a few weeks ago that the way to combat coronavirus was to drink bleach.
To which the only reasonable response is: what on Earth have you been reading?
I'm not here to blindly defend the media. It strikes me that they do have some responsibility for the way this pandemic has played out (and, by extension, many other situations). Consider that the most important thing for lockdown to achieve is for nothing to happen. That's the whole idea. Nothing happening is anathema to media: there’s pages and broadcasts to fill. Things have to happen, so every day there is speculation, innuendo, opinion, all dressed up as fact. Combine this with the most paranoid and image conscious government that I can recall and you’ve got a recipe for an incredible amount of noise, all signifying nothing. Hence last week's hilarious unity of joyful front pages trumpeting the end of lockdown followed by an awkward and shame-faced Johnson humming and aahing about nothing of the sort on Sunday.
So does it in part then create news? All the headlines create “public opinion”. Or do they? No one ever seems to ask the public. You can get an idea from social media, but that, by its very nature tends to be populated by those with polarised views, the algorithms bump the most contentious things to the top of the feed, they get re-tweeted and amplified and before you know it everyone’s at each other’s throats. Besides, as anyone who’s a bruised veteran of the last few elections and the referendum can attest: Twitter does not equal real life. Though this time around the loudest voices have been the libertarian ones, the ones trying to amplify the government message that this is all somehow the fault of “the media”, that they haven’t been compliant enough, that we should all get behind the government as the body-count mounts.
This is my big problem with the anti-media warriors. Their complaints simply aren't borne out by fact. They complain loudly about "the media" being negative, but the vast majority of the press have been supportive. Slavishly so. Last Thursday's identical headlines were the product of a Downing Street press briefing being taken as gospel and run uncritically. If there's a problem with today's media, it is that they aren't critical enough. In the rush for deadlines and headlines, there's no time to fact check. They simply take what the government said and stick it on the front page. All the fawning over Johnson when he was ill? The platitudinous froth at the birth of yet another of his children? He is a creature of the papers, the idea that they are somehow anti-Government is patently absurd.
Bearing this in mind, why, then, has the idea that they are somehow enemies of the state gained traction? It's an odd one all right. Until you recall which outlets actually are questioning the Government. The BBC. The Guardian. Channel 4 News. All organisations which aren't beholden to a rich, individual proprietor. None of these outlets are without flaws. The Beeb cops as much flak from the left as it does from the right, each side regarding it as a hotbed of politically correct lefty scum / proto-fascist public school bastards (delete as applicable) which, I would argue, would seem to indicate that they're doing something right. The Graun is open to accusations of hypocrisy, as anyone who sets themselves up to a high standard would be. C4 is routinely derided by the right as being a bunch of "metropolitan elites" (I've never understood politicians using that phrase - uh, guys?)
From here it suddenly seems that an assault on "the media" is part of a wider front in the culture war. That is to say, the ongoing war against intellect that the Tories have been indulging in for years. It suits their purposes (recall Gove, of course, and his disdain for "experts") to set the populace against a perceived "elite". What's miraculous is that few seem to have yet realised that it is the elite that are telling them this. Backed into a corner, the Tories will always retreat into nationalism, which is why briefing just before the VE celebrations that everything was going to be dandy led neatly into a red white and blue narrative which excites the tabs as much as it does the punters.
This is not to criticise anyone for enjoying VE day, of course. We all need to feel a part of something, and I have nothing but love for people who embraced the opportunity to stick a bit of bunting out and have a scone (though, from the observations of my socially distanced run on the day, it mostly appeared to be an excuse for people to hit the wine mid-afternoon, and again, I have no problem with that). But it's disingenuous to suggest that, at a time of crisis, Tories do anything other than wrap themselves in the flag, and that they do this out of anything other than naked self-interest. Nationalism is the last refuge of the politician who's out of ideas, and the first port of call for a paper that wants to shift a few units.
It's a precise calculation, and for a government which so far has managed to evade the levels of opprobrium it surely deserves for presiding over the highest death count in Europe, it's a strategy which is working. At present, large sections of "the media" have no problem with being blamed, or seemingly not, anyway. "The media", it seems, is short-hand for the BBC, cover for the knives coming out as soon as this bunch of spivs reckon they can sell it off.
On the other side of the coin, I recently found myself embroiled in a minor Twitter imbroglio when I questioned the influence of Philip Schofield, after an angry Corbynista had accused him of "conspiring" to put the Tories in power. I received a lot of angry replies telling me that I didn't understand the power of "the media". The point that the idea of Pip Schofield meeting with some evil corporations in an upper office of the Shard in order to drink virgin's blood and keep St Jez out of power was a slightly absurd image rather went over the poor darlings heads.
So, to conclude, I'm rather of the opinion that "the media" for all their undoubted power and influence, are somewhat more useful as a stick to beat the other side with. It's not our fault, it's all the fault of "the media". It's their bias that's at fault, not our making an absolute pigs ear of things. They decide what the news is, not the actual course of events themselves. It's much easier to sit at home and roll your eyes over whatever piece of tone-deaf nonsense Allison Pearson's shat out on the page than it is to, oh, I don't know, do something useful?
You may have seen the posts doing the rounds. Someone's probably shared a status, copied from somewhere else. Someone's commented on re-tweet. You know the ones. The faux reasonable ones telling the media to lay off the government. Saying that we need to pull together at a time like this and criticism isn't helpful. Saying that "they" got it worng about Brexit and "they" are wrong this time.
You may have seen stuff that goers a bit further. The stuff that calls the media liars, says they're all the same. You may, Lord help you, even know someone who uses the term "fake news" or, even worse "MSM" with a straight face without asking themselves why they're cribbing the playbook of a creature who suggested just a few weeks ago that the way to combat coronavirus was to drink bleach.
To which the only reasonable response is: what on Earth have you been reading?
I'm not here to blindly defend the media. It strikes me that they do have some responsibility for the way this pandemic has played out (and, by extension, many other situations). Consider that the most important thing for lockdown to achieve is for nothing to happen. That's the whole idea. Nothing happening is anathema to media: there’s pages and broadcasts to fill. Things have to happen, so every day there is speculation, innuendo, opinion, all dressed up as fact. Combine this with the most paranoid and image conscious government that I can recall and you’ve got a recipe for an incredible amount of noise, all signifying nothing. Hence last week's hilarious unity of joyful front pages trumpeting the end of lockdown followed by an awkward and shame-faced Johnson humming and aahing about nothing of the sort on Sunday.
So does it in part then create news? All the headlines create “public opinion”. Or do they? No one ever seems to ask the public. You can get an idea from social media, but that, by its very nature tends to be populated by those with polarised views, the algorithms bump the most contentious things to the top of the feed, they get re-tweeted and amplified and before you know it everyone’s at each other’s throats. Besides, as anyone who’s a bruised veteran of the last few elections and the referendum can attest: Twitter does not equal real life. Though this time around the loudest voices have been the libertarian ones, the ones trying to amplify the government message that this is all somehow the fault of “the media”, that they haven’t been compliant enough, that we should all get behind the government as the body-count mounts.
This is my big problem with the anti-media warriors. Their complaints simply aren't borne out by fact. They complain loudly about "the media" being negative, but the vast majority of the press have been supportive. Slavishly so. Last Thursday's identical headlines were the product of a Downing Street press briefing being taken as gospel and run uncritically. If there's a problem with today's media, it is that they aren't critical enough. In the rush for deadlines and headlines, there's no time to fact check. They simply take what the government said and stick it on the front page. All the fawning over Johnson when he was ill? The platitudinous froth at the birth of yet another of his children? He is a creature of the papers, the idea that they are somehow anti-Government is patently absurd.
Bearing this in mind, why, then, has the idea that they are somehow enemies of the state gained traction? It's an odd one all right. Until you recall which outlets actually are questioning the Government. The BBC. The Guardian. Channel 4 News. All organisations which aren't beholden to a rich, individual proprietor. None of these outlets are without flaws. The Beeb cops as much flak from the left as it does from the right, each side regarding it as a hotbed of politically correct lefty scum / proto-fascist public school bastards (delete as applicable) which, I would argue, would seem to indicate that they're doing something right. The Graun is open to accusations of hypocrisy, as anyone who sets themselves up to a high standard would be. C4 is routinely derided by the right as being a bunch of "metropolitan elites" (I've never understood politicians using that phrase - uh, guys?)
From here it suddenly seems that an assault on "the media" is part of a wider front in the culture war. That is to say, the ongoing war against intellect that the Tories have been indulging in for years. It suits their purposes (recall Gove, of course, and his disdain for "experts") to set the populace against a perceived "elite". What's miraculous is that few seem to have yet realised that it is the elite that are telling them this. Backed into a corner, the Tories will always retreat into nationalism, which is why briefing just before the VE celebrations that everything was going to be dandy led neatly into a red white and blue narrative which excites the tabs as much as it does the punters.
This is not to criticise anyone for enjoying VE day, of course. We all need to feel a part of something, and I have nothing but love for people who embraced the opportunity to stick a bit of bunting out and have a scone (though, from the observations of my socially distanced run on the day, it mostly appeared to be an excuse for people to hit the wine mid-afternoon, and again, I have no problem with that). But it's disingenuous to suggest that, at a time of crisis, Tories do anything other than wrap themselves in the flag, and that they do this out of anything other than naked self-interest. Nationalism is the last refuge of the politician who's out of ideas, and the first port of call for a paper that wants to shift a few units.
It's a precise calculation, and for a government which so far has managed to evade the levels of opprobrium it surely deserves for presiding over the highest death count in Europe, it's a strategy which is working. At present, large sections of "the media" have no problem with being blamed, or seemingly not, anyway. "The media", it seems, is short-hand for the BBC, cover for the knives coming out as soon as this bunch of spivs reckon they can sell it off.
On the other side of the coin, I recently found myself embroiled in a minor Twitter imbroglio when I questioned the influence of Philip Schofield, after an angry Corbynista had accused him of "conspiring" to put the Tories in power. I received a lot of angry replies telling me that I didn't understand the power of "the media". The point that the idea of Pip Schofield meeting with some evil corporations in an upper office of the Shard in order to drink virgin's blood and keep St Jez out of power was a slightly absurd image rather went over the poor darlings heads.
So, to conclude, I'm rather of the opinion that "the media" for all their undoubted power and influence, are somewhat more useful as a stick to beat the other side with. It's not our fault, it's all the fault of "the media". It's their bias that's at fault, not our making an absolute pigs ear of things. They decide what the news is, not the actual course of events themselves. It's much easier to sit at home and roll your eyes over whatever piece of tone-deaf nonsense Allison Pearson's shat out on the page than it is to, oh, I don't know, do something useful?
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