Games Newspapers Play

November 26, 2006

Hide the Story with the Cynon Valley Leader

Newspapers love to play games with a pliant readership.

The most common game played is Hide the News Story.

Take a recent example …

Did you catch the news story there ?

Page 26 of the Cynon Valley Leader, November 16 2006.

Had it been pushed just a little further back it would have ended up in the darts or football results section of the newspaper. But that might have drawn attention to the story.

About the size of two or three postage stamps.

No ? Then try this …

Titled “Tesco expansion plan”.

Is this a continuation of the Tesco application proposed last year ?

Or is this a new planning application ?

If the latter, why no mention of the previous application ?

Why no context ?

Context such as the controversy that surrounded the initial land sale to Tesco in the 1990s, or more importantly, the fact that a large-scale Grocery Market Inquiry is being carried out by the Competition Commission.

Or why does the report not mention any of the key issues, like the fact that Aberdare, and nearby villages where local shops have been destroyed, will face traffic gridlock if Tesco expands any further ?

These questions above are useless as they are based on the premise that the media seeks to inform and shed light on the issues involved. That is a false premise.

Instead what is true is that obfuscation is central to the work of the media. Obfuscation, manipulation, persuasion, regimentation of the public mind, and control. Control is the important one.

A corporate oligopoly do not want a herd of citizens armed with useful and accurate facts. That might lead to thought and this could escalate. Who knows what that would lead to ?

There is therefore a sophisticated pretence of democratic discourse.

The role of the media in the corporate capitalist state is to create or manufacture consent (See Noam Chosmky or Walter Lippmann).

If we cast our gaze back to 2005. Cynon Valley Leader announced the news story that Tesco Aberdare had made a planning application. It immediately ran a news editorial praising the fact ‘new jobs’ would come to Aberdare.

The newspaper’s editorial was written as if that planning application’s success was a fait accompli. The fact was that Rhondda Cynon Taff County Borough Council’s Planning Department had yet to consider the application when the news editorial was published. Many people were opposed to the application, and many local people opposed the application.

The total control and triumphalism of the present neoliberal capitalist system we live under is frightening. Not a little frightening though, it is very frightening.

The American media activist Robert McChesney is a campaigner for reform of the media system in the USA. In the USA we see the nightmare scenario of media monopoly that lies ahead for us. McChesney observes :

Earlier in the twentieth century some critics called fascism “capitalism with the gloves off,” meaning that fascism was pure capitalism without democratic rights and organizations. In fact, we know that fascism is vastly more complex than that. Neoliberalism, on the other hand, is indeed “capitalism with the gloves off.” It represents an era in which business forces are stronger and more aggressive, and face less organized opposition than ever before. In this political climate they attempt to codify their political power and enact their vision on every possible front. As a result, business is increasingly difficult to challenge, and civil society (nonmarket, noncommercial, and democratic forces) barely exists at all. - Robert McChesney in ‘Noam Chomsky and the Struggle Against Neoliberalism’

The media are thus difficult to challenge but if we believe in Democracy we must resist attempts by the neoliberal order to exercise control over our lives through manipulation, through dominating and exploiting political discourse, through attempts to foist illusions on us that, in the words of Paul Baran, make us want what we do not need, and not to want what we need. These newspaper games are a very serious business.

Filed Under Corporations, Local, Media Analysis, Politics

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