Before I went to bed last night, I was thinking about journalism. You could say that’s about as raunchy as it gets in my life these days, and you’d be at least partly right, but it was a quote from the Guardian/Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr that got me thinking: “Democracy *will* die in darkness. If a journalist isn’t telling you what’s happening…who will?” I suppose I could leave it at that because my admiration for Cadwalladr for telling truth to power and holding the seemingly unaccountable to account knows no bounds but those two simple sentences get right to the heart of the matter. So, what is the dictionary definition of journalism:
Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the “news of the day” and that informs society to at least some degree of accuracy. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (professional or not), the methods of gathering information, and the organizing literary styles.
That makes a great deal of sense and at this point I would draw your attention to one small section of the definition which I feel is vitally important which is that journalism “informs society to at least some degree of accuracy.” Now, there is inevitability of writing being subjective. My writing – and I would certainly not call myself a journalist – is unquestionably subjective because it’s my blog. These are my opinions, my viewpoint, my experiences and they are rarely “news”. For news, you rely on journalists, right? Well, here we have some blurred lines.
If you are watching the far right TV channel GB News, it is questionable whether you are watching actual news or opinion pieces dressed up as news. Of more concern has been the BBC’s lurch towards tabloid style journalism as the corporation joins the right wing gutter press, like the Mail, Sun, Express and Telegraph in particular, in attacking the new Labour government in ways it simply never did in 14 years of Conservative misrule. Rarely has “telling truth to power” been so subverted by lazy, populist journalists like ‘Tory’ Laura Kuenssberg and the political editor Chris Mason. Sky, in the form particularly of Beth Rigby and Kay Burley, has joined the BBC in setting aside, intentionally or otherwise, impartiality in order to obtain, or worse still create, stories and hype up mere trivia, like Keir Starmer’s Taylor Swift tickets.
Newspapers like the Mail blur the lines of what is actual journalism and what is opinion to an alarming level. Do they inform their readers “to at least some degree of accuracy“? They would certainly say they do. I am not so sure.
I awoke to find an opinion piece in The Guardian by prime minister Keir Starmer, who says his government “will always champion press freedoms”, “journalism is the lifeblood of democracy”, “journalists are guardians of democratic values” and “there can be nothing more traditional, democratic or British than a robust free press, fearlessly holding the powerful to account.” Well said, Keir. So, that’s all right, then? Well, no, actually.
It is extremely questionable that actually we do have a free press. Granted the government does not control the media, except by way of its powerful spin machine, ruthlessly exploited by the last Tory government. It does not tell journalists what to write or say. However, if it is not the government giving us the news, then who is?
In terms of most newspapers and much of the TV broadcasting worlds, the ownership is largely in the hands of very rich individuals and corporations. Of the national dailies, only The Guardian is owned by an independent trust and the BBC is owned and paid for by the rest of us by way of the TV licence fee. But even these different and in terms of the BBC its unique method of funding does not appear to maintain a healthy level of independence. The upper echelons of the corporation are populated by Tory place men which may, or may not (I can’t know for sure), explain its rightward shift.
My old MP, Tony Benn, spoke an awful lot of bollocks in his lifetime, but he was one of the few senior politicians to counter the idea that we had a free press or anything like it. The rich and power control who says what and the ordinary working man and woman has no access to the levers of press and general media power. Benn said the actions of newspaper owners were “to campaign single-mindedly in defence of their commercial interests and the political policies which will protect them.” The first time I heard Benn argue that actually we didn’t have a free press at all, will have been around 45 years ago and I have never doubted, given all I have learned since, that he was right.
In his excellent article, Starmer asserts that “journalism. is the lifeblood of democracy” and in theory he is right. “We believe in being held to account,” he adds. But who is holding Viscount Rothermere to account, or Rupert Murdoch, or Paul Marshall? Should, you might well ask, media owners be held account at all?
In the 1930s, Joseph Goebbels created the template for propaganda by seizing control of the news media, arts and information in Nazi Germany. Look where that took us. No one is suggesting that the UK is helding down a similar path but nonetheless media ownership in our country is in the hands of hugely wealthy hands, most of whom, as Benn put it, “campaign single-mindedly in defence of their commercial interests and the political policies which will protect them.” This is rarely in the interests of working people. For the working man and woman, “Vote Conservative” is essentially the same thing as calling on Turkeys to vote for Christmas or chickens to support Colonel Sanders.
If you say that we have a free press, then what do you mean? Free for who? The billionaire elite, who own most of it, or the majority of the population who have no input into this ‘free press’ at all? The best you could argue, I feel, is that the current arrangements are better than the Goebbels version but then I would no more want Rupert Murdoch to control the press than I would the government.
We need, more than ever, good journalism. Good journalism gave us Watergate, the MPs’ expenses scandal, the Post Office scandal and of course Carole Cadwalladr’s exposés of the so called ‘Bad Boys of Brexit’ who almost wrecked our country. Bad journalism gave us the Mail, GB News and most of the hate-filled bile that these days passes for news. As ordinary folk, we need to sort out the wheat from the chaff, to decide for ourselves what is real and what is make believe, what is an important story and what is the figment of a hack’s imagination.
When press freedom actually means media access and ownership limited to the rich and powerful, then we are on a dangerous road and that is currently the road we are on. To repeat Cadwalladr’s quote “Democracy *will* die in darkness. If a journalist isn’t telling you what’s happening…who will?” should make all of us think a little more. And maybe we all need to think a bit harder and read a little more to work out the difference of what is real and what is make believe. Question everything. Just because the headline on the front page of the Daily Mail shocks you doesn’t mean it’s true.
