Whoever wins in November, their administration needs to be neutered. If this really was a case of choosing the lesser evil, the next priority must be to defeat whichever evil wins. We certainly shouldn’t wait for good to emerge from the victory of a lesser evil – the clue is in the name.
Of course not everyone does see a Clinton victory as the triumph of a lesser evil. Some see potential for social progress through the election of a corporate war hawk, in the pay of Wall Street. Their belief isn’t shaken by a lifetime of political cynicism and opportunism, self-enriching political corruption, campaign fraud that cheated a true progressive of the candidacy. They see no injustice or danger in the Presidency being served-up as a reward for foul play, to a politician whom everything she "touches she kind of screws up with hubris." Indeed, many can see no further than her being a woman.
Case closed in fact – she’s a woman, so this must be progress. Oh, and Trump is orange, and a sexist, and awful. Well, assuming Trump loses, there isn’t long left to play that particular card. In a few weeks, hopefully, Trump will be consigned to political history. Logically then, no sooner than Clinton’s candidacy is assured it too will be terminated. The media’s self-imposed embargoes and immunities will be lifted. With Trump safely out of the picture, every commentator who worked to protect us from the ‘greater evil’ will be at liberty to round upon the DNC, grab it by the collar and scream, “WTF was that all about?!?! ” A Hoover-sized dam of political sewage will finally breach, flushing Debbie Wasserman Schultz, John Podesta, Huma Abedin, Jake Sullivan, Donna Brazile and all, down into the valley of infamy; a whirling vortex of suits, stilettoes and painted nails, each drowning the other in a desperate scramble to save their own skins.
Clinton herself should be impeached before she even takes the oath. Hmmmm, let’s see……
Tuesday 25 October 2016
Thursday 6 October 2016
The Dreams and Realities of Non-Corporate News
In a perfect world, wealth and power would have no influence over news content. Material and political privilege would not extend to the ownership of reality itself, or entitle the privileged classes to dictate which views of reality were suitable for public consumption.
It is this principle that has led some political progressives to see hope in the prospect of independent digital news, as an alternative to corporate-owned mainstream news. The plan is simple enough: The low cost and universal reach of the internet could be a means for ordinary citizens to speak as loudly, and cast their views as broadly, as Rupert Murdoch. No printing equipment to hire, no print-workers to pay, no distribution chain to maintain – just a monthly direct debit to a broadband provider.
While great strides have been made in this direction, the great day of levelling seems as distant as ever. Corporate news, skeleton-staffed and increasingly unhinged, still manages to capture the largest share of the audience. ‘News’ is still something defined by the mega-rich, and continues to serve their selfish, misanthropic outlook. I’d like to take a look at why this might be. Is progress slow because of teething, or are the delays more deeply rooted? To do so I won’t be making any particular distinction between different kinds of digital media. While tweeting a journalist and running a YouTube news channel are qualitatively different, they lie on a continuum; the former can rapidly morph into the latter in a way that ‘Letters to the Editor’ never could. And of course the whole range of technology is common in its newness. None of this was possible two decades ago.
The first point may seem obvious, but perhaps not so to all: ‘There are more financial costs to news production than publication costs.’ While digital media has had a wonderful levelling effect upon the material costs of publication and distribution, it hasn’t done anything to make journalism cheaper (other than in the pejorative sense – it’s worked wonders there). Both worthy and cynical journalism remain costly. It takes time and money to investigate lies and corruption, as it does to go through a celebrity’s bins.
This leads-on directly to one of the default old-school criticisms: ‘Indi-news is not journalism’. While there is something to this, it’s easy to overstate. If a ‘journalist’ is a hack in a fedora with a ‘PRESS’ card in the hatband, then no, this is not journalism, not usually anyway. Likewise, if ‘journalism’ is talking to camera outside No.10 while dismissively thumbing over your shoulder towards a political elite that you are in fact a part of – then again, no, this is not journalism.
Then again, how much mainstream copy really is of that kind? And even when it is, how often are such methods necessary or useful, rather than a credibility-enhancing pose? In truth, most mainstream political writing is editorial or op-editorial. You don’t need a fedora to dissect a speech or read and criticise the writing of other commentators. In the sphere of analysis and criticism, thoughtful bloggers and vloggers are in every way a match for their mainstream equivalents. Indeed, without an editor breathing down their neck, and that editor having Rupert Murdoch or British Petroleum breathing down their neck, the blogger is in a far freer position to honestly criticise.
That liberty of course includes the freedom to talk crap, leading to another partial truth: ‘Indi media is full of nutcases and conspiracy theorists.’ Perfectly true. For every Humanist Report there are several Infowars. It takes critical acumen to pick the gems from the slag heap. I can understand the apprehension, of course, as we never had this problem with mainstream media. You don’t need critical faculties to read The Sun, or The Guardian. You can relax and take it all at face value.
Seriously though, for the mainstream to accuse bloggers of conspiracy is pot/kettle in the extreme. We are currently in the tenth month of a blanket conspiracy of silence about the failings and deceit of the Clinton machine. Indeed the media is currently serving as active co-conspirator in peddling the evidence-free ‘Russian hackers’ conspiracy-theory, the DNC’s attempt to smoke-screen the content of the leaks. When it suits, the mainstream media exercises all the journalistic integrity and thoroughness of Breitbart.
Another old-school default is ‘Amateur writing is not worth reading’, followed closely by, ‘Good writing will find a publisher.’ Again, there is something to this. The era of costly mass publication (c. 1440 – c. 1990) did have the positive effect of filtering out truly bad writing, at least in some senses. People with nothing worthwhile to say, who couldn’t string a sentence together, simply didn’t get published. This remains true of the mainstream today. While in terms of content much of what gets published is dross, we cannot deny that it is competently written and above all marketable dross – otherwise no viable publishing house would touch it.
Conversely, social media is teeming with cretinous thoughts, incoherently phrased and embarrassingly spelt. But let’s not chuck the babies out with the bathwater. Bad quality is not the only reason some copy gets no further than the internet. Fine writing may be ignored because publishers fear it would only appeal to a small minority – not enough to justify a print run, or an advertiser’s revenue. And of course with political writing it might just be that publishers disagree with the angle, and don’t want to be part of promoting it. Commercial publishing is a business, a capitalist enterprise. So there are limits on how much anti-capitalist writing such businesses will want to commission, for example.
The belief that good writing is that which sells is very much a mind-set of our time. It feeds on the belief that creative worth is best evidenced by popularity, itself evidenced by sales. But popularity is only one measure of creative worth. And surely there is something patently absurd in the idea that capitalists and their free-markets are the best judge of progressive writing. We need to shake this nonsense.
A more serious criticism is: ‘With so many people writing and broadcasting, it’s impossible to find the worthwhile stuff.’ Much as the prohibitive cost of old-school publishing had some positive effect on the quality of writing, it also placed a limit on the amount of different texts that could be published. Now that quantity is limitless. Most citizens of the developed world have the power to publish, and most of them seem to want to exercise it. Social media is a cacophony of word and image, much of it banal, much of it shameful. You can understand why many readers take one horrified look and run screaming back into the BBC’s maternal arms.
Worse still ‘Political commentary does not attract large audiences.’ Indeed it seems safe to say that most times a consumer absorbs political writing it is not what they went there for, because: ‘Mainstream newspapers and websites have the finances to create unrelated eye-catching copy to hook readers.’ It’s only once they are safely flipping about on the deck that the political writers move-in to brain them: The Sun might snare with a sex scandal or football ‘analysis’ then side-load the political thoughts of Trevor Kavanagh. The Mail might snare with celebrity disfigurement photos then side-load Richard Littlejohn. The Guardian might (somehow) snare an audience with an exclusive interview with JK Rowling or Adele, then take the opportunity to side-load Jonathan Freedland.
This bait and switch strategy is not open to the amateur writer. Without financial backing the only lure is the writing itself – a tall order. It is telling to note that The Young Turks, the largest and most polished indi-news outlet, one that actually can afford to employ traditional journalists, also employs many of the same mass-media tricks to secure its audience. Sad to say, if TYT isn’t talking politics it is talking about sex, or celebrities, or un-PC Tweets, the usual frivolous commercial hooks.
In the face of all this it’s no surprise that many independent political writers suffer from 'Father McKenzie Syndrome' – the creeping suspicion that one is squandering one’s free time composing sermons that no one will hear.
But this is no time for faint hearts. In fact the moral duty is greater than ever, as, ‘In the hands of the corporate media, social media is far worse than useless.’ Indeed, left unchallenged, social media has handed corporate media a doozy. A sizeable fraction of commercial copy is now either directly sourced from, or supplemented by, social media. Judging by its content it is tempting to picture the Huffington Post news-room as consisting solely of the Comic Shop Guy, sitting sucking endless Mc Shakes, while his other hand trawls Twitter and YouTube for ‘stories’. It is this novel form of investigative journalism that allows each new day to bring: “Woman shouts something racist in shopping mall” (#468) and of course, “Man objects to LGBT toilet door signage” (#752). Woodward and Bernstein must feel humbled.
Social media provides an endless rogues-gallery of appalling behaviour, waiting to be turned into horrified moralising copy. And of course it’s not restricted to sneering at the great unwashed; our unhappy band of celebrity narcissists are also keen to contribute. Why pay for an interview when you can just quote their self-incriminating tweets?
As well as providing cheap copy, social media is also a useful tool in creating political propaganda. Smear campaigns (very fashionable at present) have been given a new lease of life by Twitter. The most tenuous connections can be pieced together. Headlines like Corbyn Sexism Shame can be constructed on the basis of a three year old tweet found in the archive of an unknown who once ‘shared a platform’ with ‘Hamas supporter’ Seamus Milne, or some such.
Likewise, social media also supplies a free and limitless supply of vox-pops – a long-trusted tool of the corporate propagandist. Traditionally, journalists collected a range of comments from the general public, selected whichever ones suited their argument, and then published them in the guise of ‘public opinion’. Now technology allows this ancient craft to be practised on a much grander scale. However unrepresentative an opinion, one can always find someone on Twitter who espouses it, thus licencing its presentation as ‘public opinion’. All from the comfort of a swivel chair.
Perhaps it was always unrealistic to imagine that indi-news could usurp the power of corporate news. Material wealth will always have an undue influence on the account of reality that is presented to the masses. But truth and compassion are also powerful - and highly attractive. These costless, priceless, powers are at the disposal of the independent writer to an extent most corporate writers can only dream of (or only fool themselves that they already exercise). Perhaps indi-news is more realistically viewed as a means of marginalising what once was a corporate monopoly. The extent of that marginalisation isn’t set in stone, it’s in our hands. Those who care need to seize the new media and turn it against the corporate media, rather than let it become just another club they use to beat us.
While great strides have been made in this direction, the great day of levelling seems as distant as ever. Corporate news, skeleton-staffed and increasingly unhinged, still manages to capture the largest share of the audience. ‘News’ is still something defined by the mega-rich, and continues to serve their selfish, misanthropic outlook. I’d like to take a look at why this might be. Is progress slow because of teething, or are the delays more deeply rooted? To do so I won’t be making any particular distinction between different kinds of digital media. While tweeting a journalist and running a YouTube news channel are qualitatively different, they lie on a continuum; the former can rapidly morph into the latter in a way that ‘Letters to the Editor’ never could. And of course the whole range of technology is common in its newness. None of this was possible two decades ago.
The first point may seem obvious, but perhaps not so to all: ‘There are more financial costs to news production than publication costs.’ While digital media has had a wonderful levelling effect upon the material costs of publication and distribution, it hasn’t done anything to make journalism cheaper (other than in the pejorative sense – it’s worked wonders there). Both worthy and cynical journalism remain costly. It takes time and money to investigate lies and corruption, as it does to go through a celebrity’s bins.
This leads-on directly to one of the default old-school criticisms: ‘Indi-news is not journalism’. While there is something to this, it’s easy to overstate. If a ‘journalist’ is a hack in a fedora with a ‘PRESS’ card in the hatband, then no, this is not journalism, not usually anyway. Likewise, if ‘journalism’ is talking to camera outside No.10 while dismissively thumbing over your shoulder towards a political elite that you are in fact a part of – then again, no, this is not journalism.
Then again, how much mainstream copy really is of that kind? And even when it is, how often are such methods necessary or useful, rather than a credibility-enhancing pose? In truth, most mainstream political writing is editorial or op-editorial. You don’t need a fedora to dissect a speech or read and criticise the writing of other commentators. In the sphere of analysis and criticism, thoughtful bloggers and vloggers are in every way a match for their mainstream equivalents. Indeed, without an editor breathing down their neck, and that editor having Rupert Murdoch or British Petroleum breathing down their neck, the blogger is in a far freer position to honestly criticise.
That liberty of course includes the freedom to talk crap, leading to another partial truth: ‘Indi media is full of nutcases and conspiracy theorists.’ Perfectly true. For every Humanist Report there are several Infowars. It takes critical acumen to pick the gems from the slag heap. I can understand the apprehension, of course, as we never had this problem with mainstream media. You don’t need critical faculties to read The Sun, or The Guardian. You can relax and take it all at face value.
Seriously though, for the mainstream to accuse bloggers of conspiracy is pot/kettle in the extreme. We are currently in the tenth month of a blanket conspiracy of silence about the failings and deceit of the Clinton machine. Indeed the media is currently serving as active co-conspirator in peddling the evidence-free ‘Russian hackers’ conspiracy-theory, the DNC’s attempt to smoke-screen the content of the leaks. When it suits, the mainstream media exercises all the journalistic integrity and thoroughness of Breitbart.
Another old-school default is ‘Amateur writing is not worth reading’, followed closely by, ‘Good writing will find a publisher.’ Again, there is something to this. The era of costly mass publication (c. 1440 – c. 1990) did have the positive effect of filtering out truly bad writing, at least in some senses. People with nothing worthwhile to say, who couldn’t string a sentence together, simply didn’t get published. This remains true of the mainstream today. While in terms of content much of what gets published is dross, we cannot deny that it is competently written and above all marketable dross – otherwise no viable publishing house would touch it.
Conversely, social media is teeming with cretinous thoughts, incoherently phrased and embarrassingly spelt. But let’s not chuck the babies out with the bathwater. Bad quality is not the only reason some copy gets no further than the internet. Fine writing may be ignored because publishers fear it would only appeal to a small minority – not enough to justify a print run, or an advertiser’s revenue. And of course with political writing it might just be that publishers disagree with the angle, and don’t want to be part of promoting it. Commercial publishing is a business, a capitalist enterprise. So there are limits on how much anti-capitalist writing such businesses will want to commission, for example.
The belief that good writing is that which sells is very much a mind-set of our time. It feeds on the belief that creative worth is best evidenced by popularity, itself evidenced by sales. But popularity is only one measure of creative worth. And surely there is something patently absurd in the idea that capitalists and their free-markets are the best judge of progressive writing. We need to shake this nonsense.
A more serious criticism is: ‘With so many people writing and broadcasting, it’s impossible to find the worthwhile stuff.’ Much as the prohibitive cost of old-school publishing had some positive effect on the quality of writing, it also placed a limit on the amount of different texts that could be published. Now that quantity is limitless. Most citizens of the developed world have the power to publish, and most of them seem to want to exercise it. Social media is a cacophony of word and image, much of it banal, much of it shameful. You can understand why many readers take one horrified look and run screaming back into the BBC’s maternal arms.
Worse still ‘Political commentary does not attract large audiences.’ Indeed it seems safe to say that most times a consumer absorbs political writing it is not what they went there for, because: ‘Mainstream newspapers and websites have the finances to create unrelated eye-catching copy to hook readers.’ It’s only once they are safely flipping about on the deck that the political writers move-in to brain them: The Sun might snare with a sex scandal or football ‘analysis’ then side-load the political thoughts of Trevor Kavanagh. The Mail might snare with celebrity disfigurement photos then side-load Richard Littlejohn. The Guardian might (somehow) snare an audience with an exclusive interview with JK Rowling or Adele, then take the opportunity to side-load Jonathan Freedland.
This bait and switch strategy is not open to the amateur writer. Without financial backing the only lure is the writing itself – a tall order. It is telling to note that The Young Turks, the largest and most polished indi-news outlet, one that actually can afford to employ traditional journalists, also employs many of the same mass-media tricks to secure its audience. Sad to say, if TYT isn’t talking politics it is talking about sex, or celebrities, or un-PC Tweets, the usual frivolous commercial hooks.
In the face of all this it’s no surprise that many independent political writers suffer from 'Father McKenzie Syndrome' – the creeping suspicion that one is squandering one’s free time composing sermons that no one will hear.
But this is no time for faint hearts. In fact the moral duty is greater than ever, as, ‘In the hands of the corporate media, social media is far worse than useless.’ Indeed, left unchallenged, social media has handed corporate media a doozy. A sizeable fraction of commercial copy is now either directly sourced from, or supplemented by, social media. Judging by its content it is tempting to picture the Huffington Post news-room as consisting solely of the Comic Shop Guy, sitting sucking endless Mc Shakes, while his other hand trawls Twitter and YouTube for ‘stories’. It is this novel form of investigative journalism that allows each new day to bring: “Woman shouts something racist in shopping mall” (#468) and of course, “Man objects to LGBT toilet door signage” (#752). Woodward and Bernstein must feel humbled.
Social media provides an endless rogues-gallery of appalling behaviour, waiting to be turned into horrified moralising copy. And of course it’s not restricted to sneering at the great unwashed; our unhappy band of celebrity narcissists are also keen to contribute. Why pay for an interview when you can just quote their self-incriminating tweets?
As well as providing cheap copy, social media is also a useful tool in creating political propaganda. Smear campaigns (very fashionable at present) have been given a new lease of life by Twitter. The most tenuous connections can be pieced together. Headlines like Corbyn Sexism Shame can be constructed on the basis of a three year old tweet found in the archive of an unknown who once ‘shared a platform’ with ‘Hamas supporter’ Seamus Milne, or some such.
Likewise, social media also supplies a free and limitless supply of vox-pops – a long-trusted tool of the corporate propagandist. Traditionally, journalists collected a range of comments from the general public, selected whichever ones suited their argument, and then published them in the guise of ‘public opinion’. Now technology allows this ancient craft to be practised on a much grander scale. However unrepresentative an opinion, one can always find someone on Twitter who espouses it, thus licencing its presentation as ‘public opinion’. All from the comfort of a swivel chair.
Perhaps it was always unrealistic to imagine that indi-news could usurp the power of corporate news. Material wealth will always have an undue influence on the account of reality that is presented to the masses. But truth and compassion are also powerful - and highly attractive. These costless, priceless, powers are at the disposal of the independent writer to an extent most corporate writers can only dream of (or only fool themselves that they already exercise). Perhaps indi-news is more realistically viewed as a means of marginalising what once was a corporate monopoly. The extent of that marginalisation isn’t set in stone, it’s in our hands. Those who care need to seize the new media and turn it against the corporate media, rather than let it become just another club they use to beat us.
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