This is the last of a series on Medialens (see also parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) – it documents their bizarre attempts to rationalise censorship.
(Update, 13/1/10 – see footnote 5)

Medialens recently banned at least three people from their board/forum (over the course of a few days), to the consternation of some of their followers. One of the banned, former Reuters and New York Times correspondent, Daniel Simpson, documents what happened to him. Another was banned after posting a link to Daniel’s article on the Medialens message board (it was immediately deleted by the Medialens editors, leaving no trace). A third poster, ‘Max’, was quietly disappeared after a few days of polite, on-topic (but apparently off-message) posts.¹

I was banned by Medialens a long time ago (June 2006). More recently, when George Monbiot asked why I was banned, Edwards and Cromwell (the Medialens editors) replied that, “One reason is that he has repeatedly accused us of lying”. To support this (false) claim, they linked to a Media Hell page containing one of a few cases in which I accuse them of lying² – in October 2007, over a year after they banned me.

(In fact they’d banned me along with several other people who had challenged their attacks on Iraq Body Count. Their “official” reason at the time was that I was “bombarding” them with posts – another demonstrably false claim.³)

Liars?

In addition to being “creative with the truth”, Medialens’s reply to Monbiot was revealing in other ways. They’ve never addressed their falsehood about IBC (mentioned in the Media Hell page they’d linked to) which I’d demonstrated was a knowing falsehood² – nor have they denied it, apologised for it, or made any attempt to correct the damage done by it. Rather than addressing the matter of substance, they asked Monbiot: “Would you allow Shone to post this kind of thing about you on your website message board, if you had one?”

George Monbiot was probably unaware that the Medialens editors had posted at length (under the pseudonym “Woofles”) in the comments section of the Media Hell page which so offended their sensibilities. On this and a few other Media Hell pages (eg here, here and here) their arguments in the comments section are taken apart by other posters (including Daniel Simpson, aka Raoul) – something you don’t often see on the Medialens board, due to their face-saving censorship.

“Hounding and Destructive”

We banned Raoul Djukanovic/Daniel Simpson from this board for incivility and hounding. (David Edwards, Medialens forum, 12/12/09)

The problem is when the criticism becomes hounding and destructive. (Medialens’s reply to poster ‘Max’, before banning him)

The “hounding and destructive” claim seems to be Medialens’s default justification for suppressing views and removing people. I’m reminded of the reasons that police give for removing campaigners from political conferences, etc.

If you read the censored material (before it’s deleted) you usually find that it’s no more “hounding” or “destructive” than most of what’s allowed. In fact the real “hounding” seems to come from those who support the Medialens editors by demonising those who have been banned or censored. For example, Daniel Simpson was likened to an “extremely obsessive & fanatical stalker“. Medialens’s disciples lined up to label the second recently banned poster (‘Max’) a “troll” and “liar“. One wrote: “I wish you would simply p+++ off.“)

All of this was allowed to stand by the Medialens editors. Occasionally a lone voice of reason would be ignored:

Branding people who disagree with you ‘trolls’ simply promotes ‘group think’ in my view (Medialens message board, 16/12/09)

It’s curious how a lot of the people who go against ML on some subject end up being characterized as “extremely obsessive & fanatical stalkers” – it’s so automatic, it’s practically a natural law around here. (Medialens message board, 1/12/09)

Around the time that Medialens were hyperventilating about my claim that they’d lied, their supporters had coalesced into a mob to attack me: “jumped up little amateurish twerp”, “shoddy and dishonest”, “dishonest and shoddy”, “careless and dishonest”, “a bad liar”, “a troll”, “the prototroll”, “a troll and a spoiler”, “an obvious troll with a grudge”, “a evil little wanker” (by email), “pathological”, “a questionable character”, “a deeply pathetic character”, “a neo-liberal fella (or being paid for by them)”, etc.

Presumably noticing that several long threads attacking me contained about 95% “hounding” and 5% “argument”, George Monbiot intervened with a post suggesting that the Medialens faithful actually read what I’d written (in a blog entry) rather than “simply dismissing or vilifying” me.

Edwards and Cromwell apparently found it neither “hounding” nor “destructive” for someone to be vilified in this way (without being able to respond) on their message board, since they appeared to allow all the insults and character assassinations to stand (with the exception of a few words edited out).

Incidentally, the Medialens editors wrote that they were surprised to see George Monbiot “boosting [my] cause” (whatever that means). More recently, they were happy to smear Monbiot in an article that ZNet refused to publish due to a passage which “implied that a very excellent journalist, George Monbiot, was protecting corporate interests” (in the words of ZNet editor, Michael Albert, who added that “We refuse to give silly and destructive claims and formulations credibility” (posted to Medialens messageboard, 16/7/09).

“Nobody is being censored”

The Medialens editors’ peculiar logic is that they aren’t really censoring anyone because there are “any number of sites” that would host the things that they delete. They’re not suppressing free speech, they assert, because free speech is available elsewhere, and because “virtually 100% free speech is literally a click away” on one of their other forums – unless, like Daniel Simpson or those who challenge Medialens’s attacks on IBC, etc, one happens to be banned from that forum as well.⁵

The argument that “not-quite-free speech is available at forum B” doesn’t help if you’re being accused in forum A (of, say, “aiding and abetting in war crimes”) – especially if forum A has a much larger audience for spreading the baseless accusations. If the mass media employed Medialens’s argument to rationalise suppression of dissident views, Medialens would no doubt be outraged, with a bad case of adjectivitis.

Edwards and Cromwell have a habit of failing to think through the consequences of their own “logic”. Nobody is ever really censored, since free speech is available somewhere else? So why, one wonders, did Medialens complain bitterly when the Guardian website removed their off-topic post (which was clearly intended to “hound” a Guardian journalist over an old issue). Why weren’t Edwards and Cromwell content to take their beef to their own “B” forum, with its “virtually 100% free speech” almost guaranteed?

Another outstanding piece of Medialens reasoning is that people who have no message-boards of their own shouldn’t criticise Medialens’s censorship:

If you check the websites for FAIR, Monbiot, Pilger and many others, you’ll find they don’t have a board like this allowing messages to be posted without prior approval (or they don’t have message boards at all). Nor do critics like Kamm, Bob Shone and Mike at Media Lens Watch who accuse us of not tolerating dissent. (Medialens message board, 11/12/09)

As for “gagging” you, I guess we could claim IBC are gagging everyone by not having a comparable message board. (Medialens’s reply to a banned poster who’d defended IBC)

Or, as Edwards/Cromwell childishly replied after their censorship and general ignorance on IBC-related matters were revealed in a debate with IBC’s Josh Dougherty: “Where’s your message board, Josh?”. Perhaps Medialens’s plan is to save the planet with petty remarks based on astonishingly bad logic? (For an update on this, please see footnote 4).

Manufacture of (bogus) consensus

As noted above, Medialens sometimes (perhaps often?) prevent people from defending themselves against accusations made on an ostensibly open, public message board (which they claim is read by thousands, including influential media folk). They offer bizarre rationalisations, but only when the censorship is exposed – otherwise it happens unnannounced; posts and posters simply disappear.

I first noticed this in 2006 after a number of people had criticised Medialens’s attacks on Iraq Body Count. Before long I realised that at least four such people had been banned (plus another, the former BBC journalist, David Fuller, who was hounded off the board by sneering, personal attacks from compassionate, respectful Medialens disciples). Criticism of Medialens on this topic eventually dwindled because only one person was left to post it – presumably Medialens realised that banning IBC’s Josh Dougherty (the lone remaining dissenter) would be bad PR for them. Confronted with mob-like animosity and remarkable ignorance, Josh eventually stopped posting, and Medialens finally had their no-dissent “consensus”.

A bogus “consensus” is a more serious matter than a biased “alert” (or blog entry, etc). In the latter case, the reader makes an allowance for individual viewpoint (or “bias”). An ostensibly “free”, “open” “consensus” is more comparable to a poll result – it’s seen as more significant than one individual’s opinion. This seems far from trivial in terms of influencing wider debate (see, for example, the Spiral of Silence communication theory). Anyone who witnessed the extension of Medialens’s bogus consensus (eg over IBC) from their message board to other, similar, forums might see a similarity to the kind of group-think encouraged by mass-media hysteria-rags. The real problem occurs when a “consensus” becomes resistant to facts. (In the Medialens/IBC context, some of the resisted facts are listed here and here).

‘New media’ censorship – stupid analogies

Medialens once gave the analogy of a “living room” for their message board. Why should they allow disruptive types into their living room, they asked. Someone pointed out that when Medialens put signs in their “living room” window accusing antiwar campaigners of “actively aiding and abetting in war crimes“, they should expect their polite “living room” ambience to be “disrupted” by demands that they remove their false accusations. (The person who pointed this out was banned at some point).

They no longer appear to use the ‘living room’ analogy. Instead they’ve opted for the ‘meeting hall’:

You couldn’t really have a climate denial fanatic at a Greenpeace meeting organising a climate change campaign endlessly insiting (sic) that the whole basis of the campaign was wrong. [...] You’d find a way to stop the disruption. (Medialens message board, 18/12/09)

Of course, “disruption” in meeting places suggests something physical: chairs kicked over, objects thrown, shouting, a concrete obstacle to proceedings, etc. One might question how this is analogous to someone simply posting a link to an article which Medialens disapprove of. (Medialens have deleted such posts and banned posters – on more than one occasion – for such harmless “disruptions”).

Note also Medialens’s use of the term “fanatic”. (They once banned someone with the “explanation” that he was “a fanatical defender of IBC“). “Fanatics” might be easy to spot in meeting halls (or at least security personnel at Labour/Tory Party conferences seem to think so, even though these “fanatics” may appear, to the rest of us, to be harmless pensioners who happen to disagree with Jack Straw, etc) – but it’s difficult to judge whether a poster to a message board is a “fanatic” if one can’t read his posts because they’ve been deleted without trace.

To delete or not to delete? As Tony Blair would say, it’s a tough decision. And as the Medialens editors do in fact say, “It’s very difficult and fraught”. Centuries of real struggle towards free speech weighed against the need to protect a web message-board from… “disruption”.

Control freaks & dogmas

I’m as optimistic about the democratic potential of “new media” as Medialens claim to be. But there’s a flip side to it – a control-freak’s delight, which Medialens seem to be taking advantage of. For example, by preventing someone from participating in a debate by secretly changing his password, while stating that he remained a “registered user” (with the false implication that he was able to participate – see footnote here). What kind of scenario in a real meeting hall would be analogous to that?

In 2002, George Monbiot wrote the following to Medialens (after being attacked by them):

Rather than offering a clear, objective analysis of why the media works the way it does, who pulls the strings, how journalists are manipulated, knowingly or otherwise, you appear to have decided instead to use your platform merely to attack those who do not accept your narrow and particular doctrine. [...] You appear to me to be confronting one form of bias and intolerance with another.

And that seems to be the main problem with Medialens. The more invested they are in a “narrow and particular doctrine”, the more likely they’ll have a protective instinct which makes censorship of “disruptions” to it seem appealing and easily rationalised.

Meanwhile, if Edwards and Cromwell are ever interested in hosting a real meeting in a real meeting place, I’d be happy to contribute some non-disruptive views. You might like to ponder how the following meeting of campaigners would play out on a Medialens-style message board:

Footnotes

1. Here and here are a few of the posts typical of the banned poster, ‘Max’, which apparently caused a “disruption” for Medialens. A lone Medialens supporter commented in favour of the banned poster, but this was ignored or quickly forgotten.

(Stop press: As I write I see that Medialens have just deleted another post. Unusually, they’ve notified the poster, David Sketchley, of the deletion – perhaps because he’s been a loyal supporter. Edwards/Cromwell explain that they’re “not keen on posts that accuse journalists of lying”. But apparently they’re happy enough to see the above banned poster, ‘Max’, accused of being a “little liar”.)

2. I don’t make such accusations lightly; this was an unambiguous, clearly documented lie. As I’ve explained in both the Media Hell page mentioned and in this ZNet article, Medialens wrote (in Oct 2007): “In the past, IBC’s response to the suggestion that violence prevents journalists from capturing many deaths has been, in effect, ‘Prove it!’” As Medialens know, IBC have always stated the exact reverse: “it is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media”. How can we be sure that Medialens knew about this? Because they had quoted IBC’s statement in an earlier “alert“. (They still have not corrected their falsehood – or indeed any of the others I documented at ZNet.)

3. The Medialens editors’ “official” reason for banning me was provided in their email to me (18 June 2006). They accused me of “swamping” and “bombarding” their message board. When I’d pointed out that only 1 in 40 posts on their board was mine, and that mine were “mostly direct, concise responses to attacks on IBC”, I received no reply.

In stark contrast to the Medialens editors’ version of events, here’s one of Medialens’s supporters from that time, SueC, writing (20 June 2006) about me and the banning: “he was unfailingly courteous on the board and is a committed media activist writing excellent letters and emails to journalists and broadcasters; his only crime as far as I could see was in being a bit too good in argument”.

4. ‘Sean M’ has contacted me to ask: “Interesting blog but what do you say to Medialens’ argument that websites without a message board (e.g. yours, IBC’s) are in effect censoring ‘everyone’?”.

To use Medialens’s analogy of a meeting hall, which of the following would you say constitutes censorship:

a) Noam Chomsky gives a televised lecture, but is pressed for time, so there’s no Q&A period.

b) Noam Chomsky gives a televised lecture with a Q&A period, but the organisers have gagged those sympathic to his views.

Is Chomsky “gagging everyone” by allowing no Q&A in the first case?

Incidentally, I allow full reply from anyone I’ve criticised, posted underneath my blog entry if they request it (see also footnote 5). Would Medialens publish a reply from IBC directly under their original IBC “alerts”, or email it to the recipients of those alerts? Obviously not. (They won’t even allow me to respond on their message board to their ‘alert‘ attacking me).

5. Update (13/1/10). David Edwards’s response to this blog entry was to republish it whole (but with the links missing, a picture caption misplaced as a subheading, ruined formatting, etc) on the Medialens forum, without my permission. But it wasn’t just a careless copy-n-paste job. He’d edited it slightly so that the automatically-generated WordPress caption “comments closed” stood out, as if it were a separate heading. Above it, he writes: “Bob Shone doesn’t allow +any+ comments on his website – and yet he accuses us of censorship!”

In fact I allow full reply from anyone I’ve criticised, posted directly underneath my original blog entry if they wish. I’ll even allow them to be impolite and disrespectful. David Edwards has never bothered to check with me. Consequently his claim is false. So, I registered with the Medialens forum to correct his error (I’ve never posted there before), but they refuse to activate my account. So: banned from their “virtually 100% free speech” forum before I’ve even posted a word.

As for Edwards’s warped logic (regardless of whether it was based on a false premise in the case of my blog), one can do it justice only with images:

“the Mirror, along with the other anti-war daily newspaper in Britain, the Independent, was vindicated” — John Pilger (on Iraq coverage)

George Monbiot writes in the Guardian that Tony Blair is a “mass murderer”, “contemptuous of democracy” who “greases up to wealth and power and lets the poor go to hell”. Medialens responded by criticising Monbiot: “This type of dissent is one of the bars on our prison cell”. When John Pilger (a friend of the Medialens editors) writes similar things in the corporate media about Blair, Medialens praise him (endlessly).

Medialens have done us a favour by encapsulating much of the idiocy (and double standards) of their own approach in a brief few paragraphs. Let’s see if we can peel away their rhetoric to reveal the illogic. On the subject of George Monbiot, Naomi Klein and Mark Thomas appearing in the Guardian, they write:

Their appearances stifle the idea that there is a need to turn elsewhere, to develop new forms of media. The more dramatic the better, from the media’s perspective – arrest Blair! Marvellous! This is just what they want to see – tiny doses of high-profile dissent keeping us all in our corporate media consumer boxes. This is actually a disaster for progressive change. (Medialens editors, 27/10/09)

So, their appearances “stifle” ideas? How does that work? Monbiot writes in the Guardian that Blair is a mass murderer, and this “stifles” the idea that “new forms of media” are necessary? But new forms of media are already here, and readers are probably using them to access Monbiot’s article (since most will probably read it on the web, where it’ll be posted and linked to in innumerable forums, message boards, alternative media sites, etc).

When Pilger writes in the mass media that Blair is a war criminal, Medialens celebrate his dissent as hard-hitting and uncompromising – an important and necessary piece of truth among the lies. But when Monbiot writes that Blair is a mass murderer, Medialens want us to see it as a “tiny dose” of “high-profile dissent” that’s cynically used by the media to keep us all in our “corporate media consumer boxes”.

So what is the difference here between Monbiot and Pilger? (Apart from the presumably irrelevant fact that Monbiot has criticised Medialens, whereas Pilger has praised them to such a degree that you might suspect nepotism). Is it that Monbiot’s dissent in the Guardian comes in “tiny doses”, whereas Pilger’s dissent in corporate newspapers is more extensive?

Actually, no. Monbiot’s anti-corporate dissent appears regularly in the Guardian; Pilger’s appears in tinier (or less frequent) doses in various newspapers. Is Pilger’s language more uncompromising than Monbiot’s? Again, no. Monbiot, to repeat, writes that Blair is “one of the two greatest living mass murderers on earth”. Ultimately it doesn’t matter how “hard-hitting” Monbiot is – he can’t win when measured against Medialens’s double standards. The standard applied to Monbiot is: “The more dramatic the better, from the media’s perspective – arrest Blair! Marvellous!” That’s certainly not the standard they apply to Pilger when he uses dramatic language to denounce Blair in the “liberal” media. The first few lines of one of Medialens’s “alerts” provide a typical example of how dramatic language apparently “matters” when it’s Pilger talking:

Writing in the New Statesman last month, John Pilger made the point that matters:

“By voting for Blair, you will walk over the corpses of at least 100,000 people, most of them innocent women and children and the elderly, slaughtered by rapacious forces sent by Blair and Bush…” (Medialens Alert, 3/5/05)

We could compare Pilger and Monbiot on the volume of their criticism specifically of corporate media, but why would we want to conduct such a pointless academic exercise when we could be spending our time exposing, say, the ostensibly respectable Daily Mail framing which spreads hate-filled bigotry like a virus to millions every day? The answer of course is that Medialens’s followers prefer to point the finger of blame at dissenters like Monbiot. One of them, for example, writes: “as the Editors say, Monbiot has nothing to say about the complicity of the mainstream media”. This kind of ignorant claim has been refuted several times on the Medialens message board. One poster to the board provided a long list of examples of Monbiot criticising the media (only to find himself immediately – but no doubt coincidentally – prevented by the Medialens editors from posting anything further. See footnote for further details*).

Although the Medialens editors claim that appearances of dissenters in the ‘liberal’ press “stifles” the idea that we need something better (ie non-corporate), this didn’t stop them from making an appearance in the mainstream:

We, ourselves, write an occasional column for the New Statesman. We do so on the condition, agreed with the editor, that we are free to criticise the press generally and his magazine in particular. And there is much to criticise. (Medialens Alert, 25/6/03)

Indeed there was “much to criticise” in the New Statesman. Alas, the Medialens editors “bent the rules” (their description, referring to their own “rules”) and wrote fewer words criticising the NS in their entire run of columns than Monbiot wrote criticising the Guardian in a single Guardian article. I’ve written about this at length in a previous post. Medialens’s response was to argue that the NS was only “small beer”, that they had “bigger” targets – in contradiction to their previously stated intention (see quote above) that they wanted the freedom to criticise the New Statesman “in particular”. (It’s worth noting that Medialens wrote more words criticising me – a mere nobody – in one of their ‘Alerts‘ than they wrote criticising the NS in their entire run of columns).

Given Medialens’s hypocritical performance with regard to their NS column, they’re in no position to be taking score here. Nor are they in a position to lecture Monbiot about unwittingly supporting the Guardian’s “propaganda system for power” role (as Medialens put it), when their own idea of a shining example, John Pilger, openly praised the Mirror, Independent and (to a lesser extent) Guardian for not promoting establishment propaganda over Iraq.

The quote from Pilger at the top of this blog entry is from Pilger’s own website, johnpilger.com. Actually, it’s not clear if this is really Pilger’s own site or an ITV site – each html page title begins “ITV”, and there appears to be an ITV logo on every page. (An interesting sidenote here: Medialens once publicly emailed Naomi Klein to interrogate – sorry, politely question – her about the Guardian logo on her own website).

Where does ITV fit into Medialens’s theology? Angel or demon? Well, it’s obviously part of the same “propaganda system for power” that Monbiot is allegedly supporting via his dramatic anti-Blair dissent in the Guardian.

If Pilger’s own website is hosted by corporate power and advertises corporate power (which it seems to), where does Pilger fit into Medialens’s suggested scheme for non-corporate “new media”? Could Pilger not move his website somewhere else? Somewhere less associated with the bloody mass slaughter of millions? Have Medialens publicly queried Pilger about this (in the same way that they queried Naomi Klein)? Not to my knowledge.

Conclusion

As you may have guessed by now, I’m subjecting Medialens’s approach to the absurdio** treatment. Where does their “logic” take us when applied (consistently) to John Pilger?

As well as praising the Mirror and Independent (and Guardian to a lesser extent) over their Iraq coverage, Pilger has described the Independent as an “anti-war” paper. And, of course, he has written for each of these papers – he’s provided “tiny doses” of dramatic dissent (just what the “propaganda system for power” requires, according to Medialens). Medialens are in fact aware of this. They’ve written:

we reported how two honest commentators with the power to expose the destructiveness of corporate domination – Noam Chomsky and John Pilger – have been treated by The Guardian and The Observer. Again, they have both appeared in your papers, giving the superficial appearance that the Guardian is a friend of freedom. (Medialens Alert, 6/8/02)

But as Medialens put it here, the problem is the way Chomsky and Pilger have been treated by the media. It’s not their fault that their dissent is being cynically used to present a “superficial appearance”. But it’s the fault of Monbiot when it happens to him. Otherwise why would the Medialens editors repeatedly and very publicly challenge him over his Guardian “appearances” (even to the extent of asking if he’d considered resigning from his column over the Guardian’s Iraq coverage. Medialens, it should be noted, didn’t ditch their own NS column over the NS’s “shameful” Iraq coverage).

Why read anything but the Mirror? After all, Pilger wrote headline antiwar pieces in it and heaped praise on its (then) editor, Piers Morgan. Does that not “stifle” any idea that “there is a need to turn elsewhere” for the truth?

Piers Morgan was editor of the Mirror when it published a front-page picture of Greg Palast, under the headline “THE LIAR” (see picture above). Presumably this was a favour from Morgan to someone in the New Labour government (Palast’s investigative journalism at this time, published, ironically, in the Observer, was damaging and humiliating for Blair, Brown and Mandelson). Let’s apply one of Medialens’s favourite rhetorical devices here: “imagine if”. Imagine if the Mirror had done to Chomsky what it did to Palast. Would Pilger have later bathed Piers Morgan and the Mirror in praise (as he did here)?

There’s really no way around it. Here’s the email that the Medialens editors haven’t yet sent to John Pilger:

Dear John,

You know how much we respect you and admire your work. We must, however, put the following to you, as we’ve been making similar (and very public) criticisms of George Monbiot and others for similar reasons for a long time now. We personally prefer your work to Monbiot’s in many ways, but if we’re really honest with ourselves, many of the criticisms we make of Monbiot could equally apply to you… (snipped)

Sincerely,

David & David

SUGGESTED ACTION
Write to the Medialens editors to ask them why they apply double standards when it comes to Monbiot and Pilger.
Email: editor@medialens.org

* Ken Farrell from mediahell.org posted a long list of examples of Monbiot criticising the mainstream media (including the Guardian). He was stopped by the Medialens editors from posting any further. Someone on the Medialens board queried the Medialens editors about it. It took them 9 hours to reply with some BS about Farrell still being a “registered user” (they didn’t say whether he could post or not). It turned out (from someone who knew how these boardhost boards work), that what Medialens had done was prevent Farrell from posting by changing his password, while leaving him still a “registered user”. But the game was up by the next morning and the Medialens editors (as if to reinforce their previous misleading version of events) said they were now deregistering him.

** “Reductio ad absurdum treatment” would sound a bit pompous.
# This post, though making a few serious points, is intended as a tongue-in-cheek parody of a Medialens ‘Alert’.

BS stands for Belief System(s). Ideologues often claim that their BS is based on evidence, and it usually is. With enough ingenuity you can find evidence to support even the most absurd claims. But the real test is in addressing the evidence against a given claim. That’s where ideologues show themselves to be little more than BS-merchants.

Take my favourite example, Medialens. They assert that “professional rigour” in the Western media “does not exist”. And in their writings they provide evidence in support of this claim – eg cases where “professional” journalism has been “biased in favour of powerful vested interests” (to quote Medialens). So far, so good. But what about the cases which do appear to meet reasonable standards of “professional rigour”? Well, in the Medialens universe such cases don’t really exist – they only appear to. You see, the “Western” media excels at creating “appearances” which serve power interests, and any evidence which seems to refute Medialens’s claim is just such an appearance. This is the kind of BS which is “logically” set up so that it cannot be refuted. It’s closed BS, circular reasoning – ie worthless in a “scientific” sense.

Still, Medialens are big on “evidence”. In a response to criticism by Steven Poole (author of Unspeak), they wrote:

So we don’t just “bathe everything” in mad polemic. We recognise exactly how extreme these claims may seem and invite readers to consider serious evidence that they can be justified. (Medialens editors, 10/10/09)

The “extreme”-sounding claims (which Poole had criticised) were from Medialens’s book, Newspeak in the 21st Century:

the BBC is part of a system of thought control complicit in the deaths of millions of people abroad, in severe political oppression at home, and in the possible termination of human life on this planet

How would you “justify” these claims with “serious evidence”? Well, you’d first have to understand how a “system of thought control” can be “complicit” in anything. We’ve got a “war on terror” – perhaps we’ll soon have juries finding “systems” guilty of crimes against humanity?

If the BBC is part of a “system of thought control”, what do we mean by BBC? Do we mean each and every BBC employee, or are we referring to a more abstract BBC “culture”? If the former, does a BBC employee remain complicit in “the possible termination of human life” at weekends? And if the latter, are we talking of an institutional culture which is part of a larger system which is in some way complicit in crimes against humanity? Could we be any more abstract in our claims? Is there anyone on the planet who isn’t a part of this “system of thought control” in some sense, and if so, how would we know for sure? How would I, or David Edwards or David Cromwell or Gandhi, Jesus, Buddha or Noam Chomsky go about demonstrating, with serious evidence, that we’re not, on some level, part of the system which is “complicit” in the deaths of millions?

Steven Poole found Medialens’s response to his criticism “ridiculous“.

Steven Poole (author of Unspeak) criticises Medialens’s book, Newspeak, in his Non-fiction review roundup for the Guardian:

[Medialens] claim that “the BBC is part of a system of thought control complicit in the deaths of millions of people abroad, in severe political oppression at home, and in the possible termination of human life on this planet”. So runs their counterproductive tendency to bathe everything in childishly apocalyptic polemic; they also affect to know what is going on “unconsciously” in journalists’ minds, and seem unaware that their own preferred descriptions of events are often just as rhetorically framed as the versions of the “psychopathic corporate media” (on which they nonetheless rely for factual reference).

Who knows what Medialens’s disciples will make of that. Perhaps they’ll see Poole as an unwitting “servant of Power”, or something. Anything but allow that he might have a point. I’ve read Poole’s book, Unspeak – it’s full of useful observations, and although it owes something to George Lakoff’s approach, it struck me as being original and “radical”. Which is more than can be said of Medialens’s output.

Poole is smart enough to immediately home in on Medialens’s own special “rhetorical framing”, which creates its own forms of “newspeak” and “thoughtcrime”. I imagine Orwell spinning in his grave over Medialens’s inappropriate and/or unintentionally ironic book title.

Postscript: other reviews

In addition to Steven Poole’s Guardian piece (see above), there are a couple of other reviews of Newspeak that I found perceptive:

Through a lens darkly, by Phil Chamberlain – for Tribune magazine
Attack of the Clones, by Max Dunbar – for 3:AM magazine

This just in. It concerns a couple of old posts (this & this – which have just had a lot of traffic from the New Statesman magazine website):

Just linked to your blog from this New Staesman page. I liked the comment [there] claiming Media Lens “very thoroughly” answered your charges of hypocrisy. They “very thoroughly” addressed something,  but it certainly wasn’t that!

Only one thing wrong with your response on the “misrepresentation” thing ~ you should have mentioned the bit in their alert [link] where they say it’s “vital for democracy and freedom” that journalists do “hurt the feelings” of their employers (by subjecting “their host media to serious and sustained criticism”). That really nails it in your favour, and it’s actually in the part of the alert they quote to attempt to show you’re “misrepresenting” them.

How do they manage to bamboozle people like that?

http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2009/08/bbc-wing-bias-corporation

Cheers,
Tom

Yeah, point taken – I missed that. But it was redundant anyway (see ‘logic check’ below). How do they hoodwink people? I don’t know. I suppose the power of language in “evangelical” settings is undeniable – it can make people writhe on the floor and speak “in tongues” (ie in gibberish). And I guess one gets equally bizarre effects in political cults – memory loss, hysteria, paralysis of logical brain functioning, and a net effect of persuasion.

Talking of logical dysfunction, try this:

Basic logic check

Consider the following statement: It’s astonishing that person X is unwilling to perform activity Y.

What inferences can you draw from that, in plain English (since this isn’t formal mathematical logic – it’s what’s known as ‘informal logic‘). Think about it for a moment…

If you’re stuck, here’s a clue. You could logically infer a prior expectation that X is willing to do Y, or that he/she “should” be willing. Otherwise, why would anyone be “astonished” at X’s unwillingness? Is the validity of this inference conditional on the nature of Y? If your answer is “no”, I would agree. Even in the extreme case of Y as an “impossible” activity, the inference seems valid. (Of course, in that case, one would wonder why it’s “astonishing” that X is unwilling to do the impossible).

(Note: paraphrasing often consists of a straightforward unconditional inference, especially when the original statement is simplified by the inference.)

Quote source: Medialens message board 18/3/09

In March 2009 a remarkable “discussion” took place on the Medialens message board. It’s no longer available there, and a Google search shows nothing, so I’ll post a few excerpts here…

To summarise: Stephen Soldz, a long-time advocate of the Lancet studies (on Iraqi deaths) changed his mind about the Lancet 2006 study, and wrote, “I do not feel that their estimate of 650,000 post-invasion surplus deaths can be trusted”, and, “the study cannot be considered reliable”.*

Not surprisingly, the Medialens crowd were outraged. One Medialens follower (Gabriele Zamparini) wrote that Soldz was providing “propaganda for the mass murderers”. The Medialens editors added that Soldz’s mind showed signs of being affected by “propaganda weathering and erosion”. Soldz, who’d been a Medialens supporter upto this point, described the Medialens discussion as follows:

I do think that what occurred here is in the spirit of the Stalinist Gulag, or perhaps the Maoist criticism-self-criticism session, though on a vastly different scale, since, thankfully, the folks here are powerless. With one exception, there was no attempt at any real dialog, there was simply a process of finding grounds to dismiss me, combined with a constant hectoring because I didn’t phrase things the way that is to be officially tolerated. But it was the lynch mob psychology that was the most disturbing, and the fact that no one said “STOP!” The message implicitly was being sent to anyone who might publicly deviate from the group consensus that this is what will happen to you should you deviate.

The fact that I received private emails from people who were afraid to speak out against this here is a terrible sign. I would never engage in “dialog” with this group again. [...]

I used to think that we needed a group like Media Lens in the US. Now I am simply thankful that this particular flavor of Stalinism hasn’t yet emigrated. The society you fight for would end up, despite the nice words, as being one of the jackboot stomping on the human face forever.

Thankfully, not all Medialens supporters succumb to the mob psychology. A dwindling few think for themselves. One of them responded to Stephen Soldz’s remarks:

I myself have long given up expecting to enjoy the freedom to participate in open and fair debate here. The last straw came when one of my posts vanished without trace. When I enquired, the [Medialens] Editors admitted they had deleted it. Their excuse that “it didn’t add anything to the debate” struck me as disingenuous. Plainly they were preserving the precious feelings of one of their favoured sons. They could not cite any board rules which it had violated. Seeing this happen, another thread contributor abandoned the board for a long time, though he has since returned. My response was to stay here and post occasionally but to give up the prospect of serious debate governed by anything resembling the principles of logic.

The Editors also claimed to be concerned that valuable truths are being lost in excessive feuding. But they were happy to signal their support for the attack dogs against you [Soldz] in this thread. This must mean that they alone know what these valuable truths are in advance. This is contrary to the principle of freedom of speech.

*Stephen Soldz’s piece on the Lancet 2006 study is available at Znet: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20890

[For the full text of the Medialens message board thread which I've quoted from, please contact me via the About page]

Last year I wrote about Medialens’s attack on Nick Davies’s book, Flat Earth News. I said they’d attempted to portray Davies as a “company man” with “nothing serious to offer”, whose analysis is “flawed”, “naïve”, “old” and “very superficial”. Medialens then replied that:

This is a distortion and in fact a complete reversal of what we wrote. (Medialens editors, 10/3/08)

In fact, I’d quoted Medialens accurately, but they objected that:

Our “nothing serious to offer” comment referred specifically to Davies’s material on proposed solutions, not to the book as a whole. (Medialens editors, 10/3/08)

They also replied that they’d “repeatedly praised the book”.

Perhaps, at this point, you’re unclear about Medialens’s real opinion of the book. Did they “repeatedly praise” it, or did they dismiss it as “very superficial”, “flawed”, “naïve”, etc? Presumably they didn’t do both simultaneously – at least not congruently or sincerely. To help make your mind up, here (exactly one year later) are some new comments from Medialens on Flat Earth News:

Davies’s book was very superficial. His major ‘findings’ were absurd but useful to the mainstream propaganda system – the reason he’s had so much high-profile coverage. You’re not helping people by encouraging them to take him seriously. And of course it just encourages him… (David Edwards, email to Nik Gorecki, posted by the ML eds to their message board, 9/3/09)

Davies is “a Guardian man,” as he’s happy to admit – that tells you pretty much all you need to know about the seriousness of his “expose” of the media. It’s like “a party man” declaring the truth about the Communist party in the Soviet Union and being hailed by the Soviet media as a courageous, amazing whistleblower. It’s complete nonsense. (Medialens editors, ML message board, 9/3/09)

Just take a look at his book – honest journalists are under so much pressure these days they can’t do their jobs properly any more. Utter nonsense. I have literally received greater clarity in discussing these issues with my 11/13-year-old nephews and niece. [...] It’s wrong even to label Davies’s analysis a high school-level production – it’s not that it’s dumb or ill-informed – it’s just not honest. And all these people pretending he’s saying something profound and important – it’s classic Emperor’s New Clothes stuff. (Medialens editors, ML message board, 9/3/09)

In case the Medialens editors regard these accurate quotations as a “complete reversal” of their views, I’ll include the latest example of their “repeated praise” of the book:

There are some good parts in the book – the Observer material on the suppression of Ed Vulliamy’s WMD story +is+ interesting – but should we really be satisfied with crumbs when he blithely misses the whole of the bigger picture? (Medialens editors, ML message board, 9/3/09)

Do you get the picture yet? If not, this final quote from Medialens should do it [my emphasis]:

Davies’s book focuses on side issues and trivial nonsense, and simply ignores everything that really matters about the corporate media. But what’s so extraordinary is that these are really huge, blindingly obvious issues – really big stuff that anyone can see. But for him other stuff matters more. It’s a classic example of how thought control works in our society. It’s not something to be praised; it should be exposed. It’s this stuff that finally kills people. It’s this quiet turning away from what really matters, from what could change things, that ultimately leaves children without limbs in Gaza, mothers with their heads torn off. (Medialens editors, ML message board, 9/3/09)

So, while Medialens claim to “repeatedly praise” Davies’s book, they are saying it represents the kind of “stuff” that “finally kills people”. Medialens use a peculiar “logic” of attenuated complicity to attack their opponents (Davies, Monbiot, Adam Curtis, etc). They regard anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs as potentially (or actually) “complicit” in mass killing (in fact they once stated on their message board that anyone who voted New Labour, post Iraq war, was complicit in war crimes). They seem blissfully unaware of where this logic can lead. (Clue: much of the violence in the world stems from self-righteousness and closed belief systems. And remember: the Holy Inquisition arose from a belief system in which the “saviour of humanity” personified compassion and non-violence).