Guardian columnist George Monbiot, who visited the climate camp, hailed it as a success:
"All
the facilities that 1,500 people would need - including running water,
sanitation, hot food twice a day, banks of computers and
walkie-talkies, stage lighting, sound systems, even a cinema - were set
up in a few hours on unfamiliar ground, in the teeth of police
blockades. A system of affinity groups and neighbourhoods, feeding
their decisions upwards to general meetings, permitted a genuine
participatory democracy of the kind that you will never encounter in
British public life. The actions themselves were disciplined and
remained non-violent, even when the police got heavy. I left the camp
on Sunday evening convinced that a new political movement has been
born." (Monbiot, 'Beneath Heathrow's pall of misery, a new political
movement is born,' The Guardian, August 21, 2007)
Activist Chris Shaw reported back:
"I
attended the climate camp and found the event deeply inspiring and
uplifting. The camp was characterised by values of selflessness,
solidarity and cooperation. I have never known anything like it -
intelligent and deeply committed people acting together for a greater
cause. My predictive powers are no better than [astrologer] Russell
Grant's, but I sincerely feel this is the beginning of a movement which
will have a profound impact on how we live our lives." (Email to
'Crisis Forum' mailing list, August 21, 2007)
Not all visitors were as enthused. Guardian environment editor John Vidal wrote bitterly:
"I
went to the camp twice, and to the HQ of the metropolitan police once
for a briefing last week. Frankly, it was easier and far more pleasant
getting into Scotland Yard. A small but anonymous faction of the old
protest movement at the climate camp had decided from the start that
the 'corporate' press is actually the enemy, and therefore has to be
excluded." (Vidal, 'Climate camp's media mismanagement,' The Guardian,
August 21, 2007;
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/2007/08/climate_camps_media_mismanagme.html)
Vidal concluded of the activist movement seeking action on climate change:
"Via
its media strategy it threatens to become one more totalitarian,
exclusive group that is neither liked nor taken seriously. Rather than
being armed with 'nothing but peer-reviewed science', as it proclaims,
it seems to be armed with ill-founded suspicion."
On August 22, we sent the following email to Vidal:
Dear John,
We hope you're well.
In
our experience few people do self-pity better than your average
corporate journalist. And yes, John, that's what you are: an employee
of a large corporation, the Guardian Media Group (GMG), dependent on
advertisers for 75% of its income. However well-intentioned, your
presentation of yourself as a loyal friend of the green movement has
always been riddled with compromise, conflicts of interest and awkward
silences.
Consider the Trader Media Group (TMG), valued at
$1.35 billion, in which the GMG has a majority stake ('
Guardian Media
Group announces sale of stake in Trader Media Group,' March 23, 2007;
TMG publishes over 70 publications on a weekly basis. These,
presumably, are publications raging against the despoliation of our
precious planet as we teeter on the brink of catastrophe; they are
surely devoted to building dissident awareness and resistance.
Your website announces:
"Some
of the most recognised publications include Auto Trader, Bike Trader,
Truck Trader and Top Marques. TMG also owns the UK's busiest automotive
web site http://www.autotrader.co.uk which attracts some 2.3 million
unique users per month. Due to the high volume of visits the web site
receives, autotrader.co.uk can be found in the top 20 visited web sites
in the UK. In addition TMG also offers interactive services on digital
television and mobile phones.
"With an annual turnover in excess
of £280 million, TMG employs over 4,000 employees, located over 35
locations throughout the UK and Ireland. TMG also has three
international operations located in Holland, Italy and South Africa."
As
an embedded part of the corporate system, your newspaper is hardly in
favour of the far-reaching, radical action that is required to respond
to climate change. Your paper's adverts, special offers, and 99.9% of
its reporting and commentary, are all about business as usual, about
protecting the status quo.
You write:
"Just when the
campers were saying that climate action had to become a mass movement
and were appealing to the public to join them, they were deliberately
keeping the media out - the very people needed to open up the debate."
Just as they, the corporate media, have been keeping out radical activists for years!
You claim:
"The
paranoia comes from years of being rolled over by certain newspapers
and being consistently harassed by the police. It has led to a
defensive culture and deep mistrust and mistakes. It is also a hangover
of American authoritarianism and Puritanism...."
Not so; it comes from decades of corporate media performance functioning as a propaganda arm of powerful interests.
Apart
from the corporate nature and priorities of the GMG, just look at the
institutional,
business and establishment links of those who sit on the
Trust: corporate media, the Labour party, KPMG Corporate Finance,
Tesco, the Bank of England.
More
importantly, examine the output of the Guardian, as Media Lens has done
in many media alerts since 2001 and in our book, 'Guardians of Power:
The Myth of the Liberal Media' (Pluto Press, 2006).
Choose a
subject: climate change, sanctions on Iraq, Iraqi WMD, illegality of
the 2003 invasion, Iraqi civilian casualties, Iran, Afghanistan,
Kosovo, Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua, missile defence, arms sales, UK
militarism. The Guardian has, like the liberal media generally,
provided effective cover for the crimes and abuses of western
state-corporate power over the years, while maintaining the illusion of
providing a forum for radical challenge and serious debate.
If
activists are finally waking up to this fact and making you part of the
story to be analysed and discussed - rather than accepted on blind
faith - then there's finally a chance of genuine progress.
You write:
"No
argument was ever won by people trying to hide or manipulate freedom of
movement or speech. It is an ugly culture that cannot welcome its
potential friends, and debate with its enemies, and which feels it must
control people's perceptions so crudely."
What does the
corporate media do on a daily basis? Crude perception management is
what your adverts are all about. Honest analysis reveals the same of
your paper's editorials and slanted news reports. When have you ever
discussed the crucial role of the corporate media in obstructing action
on climate change? When have you discussed the role of corporate
advertising in papers such as your own in normalising the biocidal
status quo?
George Monbiot made a rare mention of these issues
recently ('The editorials urge us to cut emissions, but the ads tell a
very different story',
August 14, 2007; ). It was
a courageous piece because, as he well knows, the discussion is all but
forbidden in a system you consider a "free press". As for welcoming
potential friends and allies - the thinkers and ideas that really
matter are all but excluded from your pages. Small fig leaves of
dissent are allowed, but not enough to make a difference. The picture
is overwhelmingly conformist, heavily favouring the business status
quo.
You write of the climate camp:
"Via its media
strategy it threatens to become one more totalitarian, exclusive group
that is neither liked nor taken seriously."
The corporation is
one of the most totalitarian organisations imaginable: control is
strictly top-down with zero public input and minimal staff input
flowing back up the chain of command. As the Canadian lawyer Joel Bakan
has noted, the corporate motivation is essentially "psychopathic": all
concerns, values, motivations are subordinated to the bottom line of
maximised profits as a matter of legal obligation. That's what you are
part of.
As for being taken seriously, your diatribe against
the climate camp tells its own story. When has a corporate journalist
ever railed in this manner against the restrictions imposed by the
US/UK military in Iraq, against the control freaks of New Labour,
against the taboo on discussing their advertisers' products and
services?
Your piece is a good example of how respect is
reserved for the powerful, while the powerless are considered fair game
to be patronised and in effect told off with impunity. It's all part of
the great myth of balanced professional journalism. It turns out that
'balanced' is that which does not offend powerful interests. You are
very much part of the corporate media problem, John. The sooner we all
wake up to this, the better.
Best wishes,
David Edwards & David Cromwell
Postscript
We
approached Comment is Free (CiF), the online section of the Guardian
whose declared aim is "to host an open-ended space for debate, dispute,
argument and agreement and to invite users to comment on everything
they read." We mentioned that we had a piece in response to Vidal's
blog which would also address the Guardian and the Scott Trust. CiF
editor Georgina Henry responded:
"But why would I be interested in commissioning piece about the Guardian and the Scott Trust from you?" (Email, August 22, 2007)
A good question. Perhaps not all comment is welcome; particularly when it offers critical analysis of the newspaper in question.
SUGGESTED ACTION
The
goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect
for others. If you decide to write to journalists, we strongly urge you
to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Write to John Vidal, Guardian environment editor
Email: john.vidal@guardian.co.uk
Write to Alan Rusbridger, Guardian editor
Email: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk
Please send a copy of your emails to us
Email: editor@medialens.org
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The
Media Lens book 'Guardians of Power: The Myth Of The Liberal Media' by
David Edwards and David Cromwell (Pluto Books, London) was published in
2006. John Pilger described it as "The most important book about
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