Media Lens on 1+1 With Youri Smouter: Characterizing British Media as Provocative, Pluralistic, and Free-Thinking Is Wrong
Youri Smouter from the YouTube channel 1+1 recently interviewed David Edwards and David Cromwell, those responsible for running the UK-based media watchdog group Media Lens. The interviewees answered questions focusing on the corporate media’s propaganda model and on the role of the UK mainstream media in supporting imperialist wars. In the following lines, you will find the interview as delivered to Orinoco Tribune by Smouter.
Media Lens is a UK-based organization that provides criticism and analysis of media. It is run by David Edwards (DE) and David Cromwell (DC). They publish articles exposing the propaganda and deception of the British corporate and state media, with a particular focus on British imperialism. They are not afraid to confront major British journalists such as those in the BBC; token leftists and liberals of the Guardian, Independent, New Statesman, or The Observer; and even left-leaning outlets that play a role in advancing reactionary agendas. Medialens.org and the two Davids have produced the following must-read books: Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media, Newspeak in the 21st Century, Why Are We the Good Guys? (written by David Cromwell), Private Planet: Corporate Plunder and the Fight Back, Free to be Human, The Compassionate Revolution: Buddhism and Radical Politics, and the forthcoming A Short Book About Ego…And the Remedy of Meditation (by Edwards). Their latest tour de force is Propaganda Blitz: How the Corporate Media Distort Reality.
Smouter: My first question is can you explain how Professor Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s theory of the propaganda model of corporate media applies to the British press and how it applies to the BBC, which is state-funded/state-subsidized?
Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s “propaganda model of media control” was mostly the work of Herman. It argues, quite simply, that in a world dominated by corporate power, we can’t expect profit-seeking, ad-dependent corporate media—deeply dependent on allied corporate media and corporate-owned political parties and governments—to tell the truth about corporate power. The model explains how free market carrot-and-stick pressures filter out facts, ideas, sources, and journalists that harm elite interests, promoting those that benefit the same interests.
Ed Herman wrote to us in 2002: “On the applicability of the model to Britain, one can go through that list of filters and ask whether they fit. Ownership? Blatantly true with Murdoch, an important media proprietor, and no reason to think they are less powerful in Britain than in the US. For the BBC, the impact of government is probably at least as severe as under Thatcher, and she brought intervention to a pretty high level, I do believe. Advertising? Why not effective in the UK in its usually subtle way. Sourcing? Little basis for difference from the US, although I suspect not quite as bad. Flak? Possibly not quite as bad, but flak from government and powerful lobbies is surely real. Ideology? Anticommunism, market ideology, possibly not quite as powerful as in US, but probably real—and the force of patriotism and demonization of enemies I suspect is as great and powerfully affecting ability to speak honestly on Israel or Iraq” (email to Media Lens, 9 December 2002).
Chomsky told us: “I don’t really agree that the British media are better than here [the US]. Different, but not really better. If I was stuck with one newspaper to read, it would be the NY [New York] Times. When I’m in England I find that I have to buy half a dozen papers even to get a general sense of what’s happening in the world” (Chomsky, email to David Edwards, 12 December 2004).
Although the BBC is funded by the public through a license fee and is therefore not reliant on advertising revenue, it still has to perform in a highly competitive, commercialized market. The BBC actually has a commercial wing which exploits BBC brands, sells BBC and other British programming for broadcast abroad with the aim of supplementing the income received by the BBC through the licence fee.
Note, too, that the BBC is essentially a state broadcaster; it operates under a Royal Charter, and its senior officials are appointed by the government. Its news output conforms closely to state ideology, and it can be subjected to severe flak when it is deemed to have strayed too far from the official line. This was seen in 2004 following criticism in Lord Hutton’s report into the way the BBC reported the “sexing-up” of the government’s case for invading Iraq in 2003. The BBC Chairman, the director-general and a reporter all lost their jobs.
In 2009, no less a figure than Greg Dyke, a former BBC director-general, openly declared that the BBC was part of an anti-democratic “Westminster conspiracy.” A BBC article quoting Dyke, who resigned as director-general in 2004 in the wake of the Hutton report, began: “The BBC is part of a ‘conspiracy’ preventing the ‘radical changes’ needed to UK democracy, the corporation’s former director-general has said.”
Dyke commented: “I tried and failed to get the problem properly discussed when I was at the BBC and I was stopped, interestingly, by a combination of the politicos on the board of governors… the cabinet, interestingly—the Labour cabinet—who decided to have a meeting, only about what we were trying to discuss, and the political journalists at the BBC. Why? Because, collectively, they are all part of the problem. They are part of one Westminster conspiracy. They don’t want anything to change. It’s not in their interests.”
Dyke called for a parliamentary commission to look into the “whole political system,” adding that: “I fear it will never happen because I fear the political class will stop it.”
They did, of course–Dyke’s comments were ignored and instantly buried out of sight.
Smouter: Can you talk about how Israel, Western backing of war in Ukraine that led to Russia’s invasion and past wars from Iraq, Libya, and Syria the large newspapers, magazines, TVs from BBC to the Guardian to The Economist, to the Sun, Daily Mail, Observer, LBC to Talk Radio all largely go along with the consensus that Britain is freeing the world from tyranny and Britain is engaging in the white man’s burden? And how much worse has the press become in advocating for imperial wars but window-dressing them from the Iraq War and war on Venezuela and Haiti compared to Libya, Syria, Ukraine and what’s happening with Israel right now?
The idea of a “spectrum” is false in both media and politics. We’re free to choose media outlets and political parties that support state propaganda for war. Technically, the Guardian claimed to have opposed the 2003 war on Iraq. In reality, it spent years channeling the US-UK governments’ completely fake concern for Iraq’s supposedly deadly, in fact non-existent, “weapons of mass destruction.” Like other media, the Guardian and Observer massively supported the illegal regime-change wars in Libya and Syria. The same is true of the US proxy war in Ukraine and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. What’s changed in recent years is that glimpses of dissent provided by the likes of John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Noam Chomsky, Mark Curtis, and Chris Hedges are no longer tolerated by “mainstream” outlets. They used to be allowed as fig leaves, but now even that is disallowed.
Smouter: Which outlets do you find have been the worst in denigrating Palestinians, normalizing the unthinkable, and recycling the lies and mass murder of Israel?
As ever, the right-wing press–for example, the Murdoch press–is more extreme in its propaganda.
Smouter: And how do the BBC, the Guardian, Observer, Channel 4, and ITV play a more effective role in getting their audience to back unjust imperial wars?
The liberal media are more important than the right wing because nobody imagines that The Times, the Telegraph, or the Daily Mail set the limits on thinkable thought to the left of the media “spectrum.” The Tory press sets the limits on the extent to which racism, warmongering, and open class war are acceptable in the “mainstream.” Liberal media set the limits on what level of anti-corporate, pacifistic, socialistic, and compassionate ideas are acceptable. So obviously, we don’t ask: “Does The Times publish Chris Hedges’ most excoriating critiques of Western power?” We ask that of the Guardian. If it doesn’t appear there, it’s not appearing anywhere. If it’s not appearing anywhere, then we don’t have a “free press,” which is a problem. Then we can decide if that’s important or not. We think the limits on free speech have had catastrophic consequences for our own society and, of course, for societies like Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen.
It was so obvious, for example, that the BBC was being used as a conduit to peddle relentless atrocity stories in support of “intervention” in Syria. It was clear that some kind of mechanism was in place to ensure a steady supply of such claims. Many of these were based on allegations of dramatic new evidence that, we were told, demanded Western “intervention” in response. Because all media repeated and accepted these claims, they appeared to be supported by an informed corporate media/academic/expert consensus. Anyone daring to challenge this pattern, to question the apparent consensus, was instantly condemned as “pro-Assad,” an “Assad apologist,” a “denier,” and so on. The claims often appeared to appear at just the right time in support of action of some kind and dried up the moment “action’” happened or was rejected.
For example, when Obama backed off from bombing Syria at the last moment in August 2013, the atrocity claims suddenly dried up. Likewise, claims linking Corbyn to antisemitism tended to peak ahead of the General Elections of 2017 and 2019.
Smouter: And how often does the media clearly marginalize voices of reasons or those really challenging the unjust state of affairs? Talk to us about George Galloway, Russell Brand, and Julian Assange and about what John Pilger calls an “honorable exception”: Owen Jones, who claims to be a socialist; Paul Mason’s radical leftism, Jon Hariri’s anti-drug war policies, George Monbiot’s environmentalism, or the late Robert Fisk of the Independent.
It’s hard to know what Naomi Klein thinks on the matter; whenever we’ve asked her for her view of the Guardian she’s ignored us. Glenn Greenwald initially cooperated with the Guardian but quickly became disillusioned. To his credit, he’s since been bitterly critical and mocking of the paper and its supposed “left” stalwarts Owen Jones and George Monbiot.
The argument, of course, is that cooperating with the Guardian allow dissidents to reach a mass audience they would otherwise be unable to reach. Before social media, there might have been some limited merit to that view. It’s much harder to sustain now that dissidents are able to reach audiences in their millions.
A corporate media system will tend not to focus on issues that fundamentally challenge the system. This would not create a successful “selling environment” for advertisers, who would go elsewhere. It would attract right-wing flak from politicians and other media. Pressure would mount on editors and journalists pursuing such a radical course. This is essentially what happened when editor Piers Morgan pursued a comparatively radical anti-Iraq war stance in the Mirror in 2003. His position was deeply unpopular with US shareholders who had him removed.
The “mainstream” system tends to flood the market with system-supportive facts, ideas, and voices. Dissidents may appear (less so in recent years)—in fact, it’s important that such “figleaves” do appear—but very much at the margins. Former Guardian journalist, Jonathan Cook, has commented:
“However grateful we should be to these dissident writers, their relegation to the margins of the commentary pages of Britain’s ‘leftwing’ media serves a useful purpose for corporate interests. It helps define the ‘character’ of the British media as provocative, pluralistic and free-thinking—when in truth they are anything but. It is a vital component in maintaining the fiction that a professional media is a diverse media” (see David Edwards and David Cromwell, Newspeak, Pluto, 2009, p.2).
Smouter: What is your assessment of left-leaning outlets like Novara Media, Politic Joe, and the once-mighty Intercept. Should we engage more with the corporate media, however hostile they are to our left-wing views, given the dire state of affairs?
We read The Intercept quite often when Greenwald was working there; much less so now. Novara has a mixed record: quite grim at times on Assange and Corbyn, but sometimes does excellent work.
Smouter: In light of the recent far-right violent mob protests and more far-right media dominating the British public, like GB News, Spiked Online, Triggernometry, Piers Morgan Uncensored, and Talk TV, how much do you find xenophobia in the British press influences people’s attitudes, as far as being hostile towards not just illegal immigrants and migrants searching for a better life. Now, even legal immigration is being campaigned against by the likes of Nigel Farage and the Reform Party and the more-far-right of the dominant Tory party. I’m curious what your response is?
The right-wing tabloid press have an appalling record in boosting xenophobia and anti-immigrant feeling. But so, too, do the supposedly progressive liberal press. All media present bombing and invading countries populated by brown-skinned people as completely natural and normal. You don’t have to dig very deep into liberal media coverage of the Gaza genocide to appreciate that Palestinians are depicted, and clearly viewed, as an inferior race whose lives are not remotely valued on the level of Israelis, US Americans or British.
Smouter: Where did you both stand on Brexit? Because quite a number of people on the left or far-left felt their voices and criticisms of the EU weren’t being heard, and John Pilger attacked the EU from a critical leftist perspective, but there’s no shadow of a doubt that the largely far-right press of Britain influenced people’s attitudes towards the EU and presented xenophobic and pro-corporate arguments to get folks to leave. What’s your assessment of that?
Your question already makes important points. We don’t have anything to add.
Smouter: Second-to-last question is talk to us about the late Greg Philo of Glasgow Media Group, and why folks, if they want to study history and how the media is an extension of unjust great power, should read GMG’s findings, especially when Greg examined British media’s coverage of Israel.
The Glasgow Media Group has done important work over several decades monitoring and investigating UK news media, as well as audience reactions and understanding of the issues covered (or not covered). GMG’s Greg Philo and Mike Berry have done particularly important work on Israel and Palestine, presented powerfully in two books, Bad News From Israel (Pluto Press, 2004) and More Bad News From Israel (Pluto Press, 2011).
Philo noted as long ago as 2011 that senior BBC news staff told him of how they were “waiting in fear for the phone call from the Israelis.” It is likely even worse today. The weaponizing of the charge of “antisemitism” by the Israel lobby, used with devastating effect to derail Jeremy Corbyn’s bid to become prime minister, has made it increasingly difficult for Palestinians and other critics of Israel to be heard. News headlines, and the content of broadcasts and articles, typically platform Israeli perspectives and talking points.
For example, Philo and Berry analyzed the first four weeks of BBC One daytime coverage of Gaza following the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack. They sought to identify which terms were used by journalists themselves (not in direct or reported statements) to describe Israeli and Palestinian deaths:
“We found that ‘murder,’ ‘murderous,’ ‘mass murder,’ ‘brutal murder,’ and ‘merciless murder’ were used a total of 52 times by journalists to refer to Israelis’ deaths but never in relation to Palestinian deaths. The same pattern could be seen in relation to ‘massacre,’ ‘brutal massacre,’ and ‘horrific massacre’ (35 times for Israeli deaths, not once for Palestinian deaths); ‘atrocity,’ ‘horrific atrocity,’ and ‘appalling atrocity’ (22 times for Israeli deaths, once for Palestinian deaths); and ‘slaughter’ (five times for Israeli deaths, not once for Palestinian deaths).”
They added: “But the issue goes beyond these differences. The Palestinian perspective is effectively absent from the coverage, in how they understand the reasons for the conflict and the nature of the occupation under which they are living.”
As we wrote in a media alert earlier this year, some BBC insiders have repeatedly attempted to raise their concerns with BBC management, to no avail. The essential conclusion about BBC News coverage of Gaza, they observed, is that of:
“A collapse in the application of basic standards and norms of journalism that seems aligned with Israel’s propaganda strategy.” [Our emphasis]
We can go even further. The BBC routinely sanitizes Israeli crimes and helps to “normalize the unthinkable,” to use the phrase deployed by the late Edward Herman.
Smouter: Please pay tribute to one of your best friends and greatest supporters, John Pilger, and tell us why leftists, anti-imperialists, and those who are from the UK and Australia should get into the work of John Pilger?
Meeting and becoming friends with John Pilger was one of the great things to happen to us both before and especially after we started Media Lens. Even before we knew him personally, we learned profound lessons from his journalism on the art of writing, structuring an argument, mixing insight, humour, creative use of language, and the spectrum of human emotions to communicate the causes of human suffering and the power of principled resistance. This was already a massive inspiration for us as thinkers and writers. He supported Media Lens from the very beginning. He helped us get a bi-monthly column at the New Statesman and pushed for a full monthly column. But his main support was sending us so many emails of encouragement and praise, often writing to suggest themes or angles for a media alert. It really was was an astonishing example of generosity that continued right up to his death. With significant exceptions, other dissidents are quite cool in lending support—Pilger was happy to help a couple of virtually unknown writers on the internet as much as he possibly could.
11. Normally I end my program doing the questionnaire done by Marcel Proust later the late popular French Broadcaster Bernard Pivot and later my hero the late James Lipton of Inside the Actors Studio, David E and Davey C its your turn starting with what is your favorite word?
DC: “Smirr” [it means a very light rain in Scots, almost like a fine mist].
DE: “Smör” [it means ‘butter’ in Swedish].
12. What is your least favorite word?
No answer.
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13.What sound or noise do you love?
DE: The sound of a dog eating and enjoying breakfast.
DC: The sound of the home crowd at St Mary’s football stadium cheering when Southampton score a goal.
14. What sounds or noise do you dislike?
DE: Hand-held circular saws.
15. What’s your favorite curse word?
DE: No curse word has made me laugh more than the C-bomb, as delivered by Larry David, for example.
16. What turns you on spiritually, emotionally, or psychologically?
DE: Turning off my thinking mind.
17. What turns you off?
DE: Too much mental activity.
18. What profession would you love to do?
DE: I’d like to have a tiny goat, goose and donkey farm for children to visit.
19. What profession would you not want to do under any circumstances?
DE: Anything that involves injuring or killing other people people or animals.
20. And if heaven exists what would you like to hear God say as you arrive at the pearly gates or whatever is your vision of the afterlife and even if your an atheist, please answer the questions?
DE: “All the suffering was just to help you grow. The fundamental nature of every living being is love and bliss. Everyone eventually arrives here and experiences these permanently.”
Well, we were joined on this 1+1 print edition, with David Edwards and David Cromwell of Media Len, a UK Media watchdog group, and a leading out at that which confronts the corporate/state media, subscribe to them, donate generously to them and get their books.
YS/JRE/SL
