These were very sane and courageous questions from Monbiot -
he deserves every credit for raising them. Butterworth supplied
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger's comments in response:
"It is
always useful to ask your critics what economic model they would choose
for running an independent organisation that can cover the world as
widely and fully with the kind of journalism we offer."
It can
of course be useful to discuss solutions in this way. However, we have
noticed that the question, 'Well, what's your alternative?', is often a
fallback position after sheer weight of evidence has forced the
abandonment of denials of the existence of a problem. So, for example,
debaters - let's call them the 'Free Press' Faithful - may tirelessly
insist that, in the UK, we have "a press which has a relatively wide
range of views - there is a pretty small 'c' conservative majority but
there are left-wing papers, and there is a pretty large offering of
views running from the far right to the far left...". (Andrew Marr,
The Big Idea - Interview with Noam Chomsky, BBC 2, 1996,)
This
may be their firm belief - or at least, what they are firmly determined
to believe. On occasions when this position becomes untenable in debate
- evidence that a corporate press does not report honestly on a world
dominated by corporate power is overwhelming - the 'Free Press'
Faithful will appear to agree and move on to alternatives.
Superficially,
this looks like progress. But, all too often, the underlying conviction
remains that there +are+ no credible alternatives. The point being that
a problem without a solution is not a problem; it is a fact of life.
Rusbridger asked us in February 2004:
"I'd be interested to know
what alternative business model you propose for newspapers which would
sustain a large, knowledgeable and experienced staff of writers and
editors, here and abroad, in print as well as on the web. Do you prefer
no advertising lest journalists are corrupted or influenced in the way
you imagine? If so, what cover price do you propose? Or, in the absence
of advertising, what other source of revenue would you prefer?
"These
are all interesting debates, and I wish you well. I can only answer as
to my experience. alan.' (Email to Media Lens, February 6, 2004)
Alas,
this was not a precursor of vibrant debate and discussion. For several
years now, Rusbridger has refused to respond to our emails. Our 2006
book, Guardians Of Power, discussing these and related issues, has
never been so much as mentioned by the paper, much less reviewed. This
could, of course, simply reflect the worthlessness of what we have to
say. George Monbiot, however - one of the most respected commentators
on the paper - appears not to share this view. More to the point,
Monbiot's intervention aside, there has been essentially no discussion
of issues that we and many readers (and many excellent writers and
media analysts) have sought to raise over many years.
The
suspicion that the Guardian editor is not willing to recognise the
existence of a problem worthy of serious discussion and action is
reinforced by other comments from him cited by Butterworth:
"Alan
Rusbridger, warns against creating a 'joyless' paper. 'If you had
nothing to do with any form of consumption, your circulation would take
a big dip and reading the Guardian would become a duty rather than a
pleasure. We would be moving away from journalism... to preaching. So
long as you do these things in reasonable proportion and balance, I do
not think we should stop covering aspects of consuming such as travel
or fashion, eating or holidays and motoring.'"
The Guardian
editor is here leading readers away from the issues that matter. In
fact, as Rusbridger well knows, if the Guardian "had nothing to do with
any form of consumption", it would go out of business, because it and
other 'quality' titles are dependent on advertising for "75 per cent or
more of their total take". (Peter Preston, 'War, what is it good for?',
The Observer, October 7, 2001)
+That+ is the problem and it is
why newspapers have to be so careful not to alienate their big
advertisers and related political allies. Rusbridger suggests that the
real difficulty would be the "joyless" experience of an advert-free
newspaper - but this is a mere diversion from very deep-rooted and
serious issues.
And let's consider the suggestion that
"reading the Guardian would become a duty rather than a pleasure. We
would be moving away from journalism... to preaching" in context.
Consider, first, that this was in response to a very reasonable
suggestion that the Guardian might initially look at banning some of
the more destructive forms of fossil fuel advertising.
Consider,
further, the broader context. Wherever you look, corporate giants are
investing in the same high consumption of fossil fuels that has already
brought us to the brink of disaster. Last month, the BBC described
"Airbus' gamble on the success of the A380", the new "Superjumbo"
airliner. The "gamble" is based "on what Airbus believes will be
ever-growing demand for long-haul travel".
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7043812.stm)
In June, the
Financial Times reported that a survey of business leaders had found
that "Climate change is bottom of the priority list for Britain's
largest companies... and their biggest shareholders are not much more
exercised by the issue." (John Willman and Kate Burgess, 'Climate
change "not a business priority",' Financial Times, June 4 2007)
More
than half of the companies surveyed by YouGov said there were more
urgent issues, such as brand awareness, marketing strategies and
corporate social responsibility. Just 14 per cent of them had a clear
plan for tackling climate change.
A report from Headland, a
communications consultancy, says fund managers "do not pay much
attention to climate change issues when taking investment decisions".
They regard climate change effects as slow and cumulative and the issue
as outside the remit of typical fund managers who "are not looking at
2012, let alone 2050". Long term for the investment community was about
three years, they said.
The New York Times reported last month:
"There
is plenty of oil and gas still in the ground, energy executives say.
But global consumption is rising so fast that they must keep looking
for new sources. Despite worldwide concern over global warming and the
role of fossil fuels in causing it, United States government
specialists project that global oil and gas demand will increase by
some 50 percent in the next 25 years." (Jad Mouawad, 'A Quest for
Energy in the Globe's Remote Places,' New York Times, October 9, 2007)
And
yet the Guardian editor chooses to focus on bizarre notions of his
paper having "nothing to do with any form of consumption", of the risk
of a "joyless" newspaper. Meanwhile, the world stands (at best) at the
very brink of disaster, while big business acts as if nothing at all
has changed. To spell it out: Something needs to be done - fast!
Finally, Rusbridger comments:
"The
journalism we do matters much more than advertising. That is obvious.
That is why the PR industry exists and why people try to buy space
nested in the journalism context. As long as the journalism is free and
we allow George Monbiot to criticise us and we feel free to criticise
people who advertise, that is more important than the advertising."
Here
we face a positive shoal of liberal herrings - each one darting away
from problems that are becoming ever more crucial. Of course journalism
matters more than advertising. The problem is that a mountain of
evidence demonstrates that profit-seeking corporate media - dependent
on advertisers and allied government news sources, often also dependent
on wealthy owners, or giant parent companies, and under constant attack
from right-wing flak groups - suppress much that is important about our
world and its problems.
The Guardian might claim to be free of
one or more of these constraints, but this is irrelevant because the
Guardian is one small part of a biocidal media system, and its record
is anyway also lamentable. Holding up Monbiot's virtually unique
intervention as a sign that all is well, that tolerating such criticism
is all that is required, is not reasonable. One article from Monbiot is
not enough. The presence of one Monbiot tolerated on one newspaper is
not enough. These are serious structural issues that cannot be wished
away. And incidentally, we wonder just how much more would be tolerated
from Monbiot. Would it take one burst of criticism alienating one big
advertiser? Or two or three? How long would Rusbridger, himself, then
be tolerated?
Monbiot's questions were vitally important. How
can we move away from a media dependent on fossil fuel advertising?
What are the first small steps that could be taken? How might readers
react positively to offset the financial damage incurred?
We
are not economists, or financial strategists with detailed knowledge of
the Guardian's performance. We don't know how media executives coped
with the loss of tobacco advertising - we know it happened after being
declared impossible. We are not specialists on how the British empire
adjusted for the vast loss of revenue generated by the slave trade,
although we know such a loss was declared insupportable (which it
turned out not to be).
We believe that we, all of us, need to
look beyond blinkered, short-term self-interest towards enlightened
self-interest rooted in compassion for the suffering that surrounds us
and that is sure to increase. In 1914, the novelist Robert Tressell
wrote:
"Even if you are indifferent to your own fate - as you
seem to be - you have no right to be indifferent to that of the child
for whose existence in this world you are responsible.
"Every
man who is not helping to bring about a better state of affairs for the
future is helping to perpetuate the present misery and is therefore the
enemy of his own children." (Tressell, The Ragged Trousered
Philanthropists, Oxford, 2005, p.129)
If these are harsh words,
how then are we to describe the future facing us? Why do we lavish so
much time, energy and love on our children, and yet do nothing to save
them from a terrifying, collapsing world that they are now almost
certain to inherit?
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 Alan Rusbridger, Guardian editor
Email: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk
Write to Siobhain Butterworth, readers' editor of the Guardian
Email: reader@guardian.co.uk
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Email: letters@guardian.co.uk
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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
journalism I can remember."
For further details, including reviews, interviews and extracts, please
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Writings 
The Guardian this week published an article by the readers' editor, Siobhain Butterworth, discussing "the contradiction between what the Guardian has to say about environmental issues and what it advertises". (Butterworth, 'Open door - The readers' editor on... the contradiction between what we say and the ads we run,' 
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