Blog comments on Media Lens

A reader asked for our reaction to comments made on his blog about the media and Media Lens..

Thanks, Jon. Good to see an intelligent discussion on these issues. Thanks
for the kind words on the book. Would be interesting to conduct an
experiment by lending the book to one of your more sceptical pals and seeing
if it has any effect (either way!)...

Comments below:

Tom said:

"i think we are privelleged in this country to have newspapers like the
independent, and the BBC, who may not be entirely impartial, but i'd have
them over Fox News and the Daily News anyday."

It's commonly argued that the British media are superior to the US media.
Interestingly, Noam Chomsky - a very experienced and astute media watcher -
disagrees. He says "not better, just different", and cites the New York
Times as the one paper he would read if he had to choose. A good example is
Bush and Blair's truly audacious campaign of deception over Iraqi WMD - a
half-decent media would have exposed this instantly. But even the most
obvious questions were never asked - it was quite staggering.

Tim said: "I don't see how it is particularly different in essence to other
news providers, in that you have to give your trust over to them to believe
that they are reporting factually (which I do). Handing stuff over to the
public is admirable, but not really the way to ascertain truth."

I disagree strongly - there's no reason why anyone should trust a single
word we say, and we don't expect them to. People should examine our
arguments critically, check our sources (check if we've selectively chosen
or manipulated quotations - it's very tempting to do) and decide for
themselves if we're making sense or not.

We +are+ different from the mainstream media in one key respect - we are not
corporate, that is we are not profit-oriented, in fact we are not even
revenue-oriented. We write for free and if people like it, they can send us
donations, but we're happy to do it for free. We think that motivation is
key in determining journalistic willingness and ability to report honestly.
US press critic, George Seldes said it well as far back as the 1930s:

"The most stupid boast in the history of present-day journalism is that of
the writer who says, 'I have never been given orders; I am free to do as I
like'. We scent the air of the office. We realise that certain things are
wanted, certain things unwanted." (US press critic, George Seldes, quoted
Extra! November/December 1995)

We aspire to be motivated by concern for suffering, by compassion - by
contrast, media businesses are legally obliged to prioritise profits above
all other considerations (see Joel Bakan's book, The Corporation). That
makes a difference, we think.

rob said: "what makes it any more true than othe media sources? i visited
the site and, as suspected, it came across almost instantly as left wing."

Again, nothing makes our version of events intrinsically "more true" -
readers have to decide for themselves if our arguments are credible. We try
to make this possible by openly providing, say, the mainstream media view on
why the UNSCOM weapons inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 - were they
kicked out or withdrawn? Are we doing it honestly? Well, we cite many
referenced examples from the UK and US media, which can all be checked. We
then contrast these arguments with checkable evidence presented by credible
experts (or are they? people can decide) - chief UNSCOM weapons inspector,
Scott Ritter, for example, UNSCOM chairman Rolf Ekeus, and so on. We also
quote from US and UK media reporting at the time in December 1998. We then
invite readers to come to their own conclusions.

Often we aren't asking readers to take our word for anything - we're
pointing to referenced facts and experts that can be checked, so that people
can decide for themselves. After all, if we - two people writing on the
internet - came out and said: 'We believe the inspectors were withdrawn, not
thrown out, in December 1998', people would say - 'Well who cares what you
think?!' And it would be a very fair point.

Best wishes

David Edwards