
Media | Confessions of a crap journalist
My so-called career.
“Your media is run by the Jews.”
This statement was made to me by an Arab professor over drinks with the same naïve confidence that accompanies self-evident statements such as, “Wimbledon is a major tennis tournament,” and “London is the capital of the United Kingdom.”
This view was, for him, simply obvious; only obtuse or ill educated people did not know it to be true.
I do not believe this to be a generally held view in the UK, and certainly not among the respectable middle classes; but perhaps I am naïve, and the view is widely held — if not widely voiced.
The statement is revealing in several ways, and not least in what it says about how Arabs view ordinary Europeans.
From the Arab perspective we’re dupes or fools — people to be pitied rather than despised — for we do not even know that our media is controlled by ‘the Jews’.
Remember, this was not an uneducated man. He was worldly and had attended the best universities in his country.
His was not the thuggish xenophobia or racial animus that is merely an expression of general resentment against the world, and that may attach itself to anyone who looks or acts differently.
His worldview — so far from the cosy, BBC-trusting one with which I was brought up — made me see for the first time quite how fragmented perceptions are about the media.
My grandfather was Jewish. And he was also a journalist.
And he was also my inspiration in seeking to become a journalist.
The Arab professor is, perhaps, laughing now.
This is more than enough for the average anti-Semite to vindicate their theory that the media runs on Jewish influence.
I am not a Jew, though. I haven’t the faintest idea how all the rites work, and I know nothing about Jewish life – save what is parodied in Woody Allen films.
And, frankly, neurotic and overprotective mothers are not the sole preserve of the Jews, anyway. It’s a universal archetype.
My Judaism extends only to the fact that I am aware that should I have lived under the Nazi regime my blood quotient under the Nürnberger Gesetze would have been sufficient to classify me as a Deutschblütiger.
I would not have been gassed — except by the keenest Nazis — but it’s close enough to make me think.
This is a sobering testament to the peculiar workings of the Nazi mind.
I, a man who feels not remotely Jewish (uncircumcised to boot), would have been scrutinised to see if I could pass as German.
Such was the preposterous working of the Nazi party’s so-called race science.
I can attest that, so far as I am aware, my journalism was never directed by any conscious racial or ethnic solidarity with the Jewish people.
Nor was I approached through esoteric handshakes to be inducted into a pro-Israel cabal, or any such nonsense.
But a denial is as good as a confession for the veteran anti-Semite.
§
Back to my grandfather.
This is how he became a journalist:
Demobbed from the RAF, he went to the local newspaper office, sat down in the reception area, and was sent — at last — to find a story.
This in itself shows the difference between what journalism was, and what journalism has become.
Journalism was once a trade; it is now a profession.
There are university courses. And college course. And exams. And grades. And… everything that can make a person suitably processed by the education-industrial complex.
I cannot say what is better or worse. From my own observation, the journalists I met who were pressed out through journalism schools had a narrow, parochial, and rigid view of the world.
Theirs was the worldview of the school book and the ideologue.
It was the apprentices and the people who fell into journalism through misfortune who had an inquisitive, broad, and wise approach to the business.
I did not emulate my grandfather’s approach exactly.
I started writing freelance articles, which turned into a portfolio — and that turned into a salaried job.
My motivations were threefold:
- Vanity: I always had wanted desperately to see my name in print. I believed that somehow this would make my existence more solid, and confirm all my intellectual pretensions.
- Women: I had just split up with my first girlfriend. I had been with her for six or so years, and was quite convinced that seeing my name in print would overcome the heartbreak. (Hint: This doesn’t work — face your demons etc.)
- Tintin: I liked Tintin.
- Laziness: Journalism is quite a lazy job.
This is not to say I was particularly any good as a journalist. These are the confessions of a crap journalist after all.
I muddled quotes and who said what more than a few times.
I sulked with phoney PR people.
I wrote exactly what I thought in a thoroughly sarcastic manner, which often led to concerned emails from editors along the lines: “Change this, or I will have to speak to your line manager.”
In short, I was a long way from the charming, personable, and enthusiastic journalist that my employers expected.
As the adverts always say: “With a bulging contact book and plenty of enthusiasm.”
My contact book was famine-thin, and my enthusiasm after the first year was terminal.
Those who believe that the media is run by editors and advertisers who issue strict orders as to what may or may not be published are somewhat misled.
There are, perhaps, publications — maybe connected to politics — who pull stories to serve their masters, but this was never my experience in my workplaces (aside from my obviously sarcastic or bitter articles).
Straight up proposals were usually taken seriously.
If there is censorship in the Western media, it is implicit.
The stories that are not written are not written because it would never occur to the type of person who is a journalist to write those stories.
This is partly connected to the character types who tend to become journalists.
But it is also connected to the expectations, education, traditions, and habits of those who work in the media. The bias is so hidden that none would call it bias, even if it were out in the open.
One way in which the media is consciously moulded by particular interests is through the press release.
The traditional media has pruned its journalists due to the Internet-induced financial crisis while at the same time competing with the Internet in story generation.
The simple solution to this problem is to rely upon press releases shorn of all their sugar-puff language to provide the skeletal facts about events.
But there is often limited time to check these stories, and so the media is quietly directed by public relations.
Public relations firms outgun journalists in money, time, and personnel.
They also lighten the load for journalists by offering press trips, freebies, and other sweeteners that inevitably feed back into how the companies and organisations are portrayed in the media.
There is no new scandal here. This has been going on for decades. The press release is also as old as the early 20th century.
The press junket is also a well-established tradition, but the decline in the number of journalists and the pressure of Internet publishing have increased PR power substantially.
I could never enjoy a junket. This probably seems churlish, since the junket is always a very fine affair; but knowing that you are being treated so as to buy your favour makes any pleasure turn to ash.
You are a whore.
We are all whores after a fashion, but there is a dignity in charging only a nominal fee.
A further means PR companies may use to influence the media is to restrict access to potential interviewees within a company.
It is hard to make an article compelling without original quotation from an interviewee, and so PR companies may dangle this opportunity before a journalist in order to achieve control over the final article.
Strangely, it was my observation that the school-trained journalists were the ones who relied on the PR companies more.
The apprentices or semi-amateurs were more likely to approach an interviewee dead — perhaps using their initiative to find a person’s contact information.
And so the years of schooling seemed to deaden independent enquiry and initiative instead of quickening it.
I have always found so-called alternative media as tendentious as the so-called mainstream media.
Alternative publications — usually associated with the far left and sometimes the far right — tend, in my experience, to merely reverse what they perceive the mainstream media to be doing.
Therefore, all corporations are bad. All police actions are bad. And so on.
But, in fact, even the much maligned mainstream media hits these targets — usually harder and more accurately than the alternative media. Rather than raising systemic criticisms, the mainstream media identifies responsible individuals and vividly shows where a system is failing.
A great deal of the alternative media is really alternative ideology — whether anarchist or Marxist — and tedious reading too.
§
“Doch hat der Staat sich nur blamiert
vor aller Welt trotz alledem,
und wenn die Presse Lügen schmiert,
das Fernseh’n schweigt trotz alledem.”Hannes Wader, Trotz Alledem
In the political realm everybody believes the media to be biased against them.
The left believes that the media is controlled by large corporations or (rarely these days) individual capitalists who direct their complexes to pacify the teeming millions with nonsense entertainments and race hate directed against immigrants.
This media complex naturally frustrates any attempt to reach the masses with a genuinely leftist message that would herald a new dawn for mankind.
That would frustrate the media’s ever-hunger for advertising profits and their owner’s own capitalist holdings.
This makes the media is the intellectual shield of capitalism.
The right believes that the media is controlled by liberal (if not Marxist) inclined journalists who see their role as nothing more than remoulding society in the most revolutionary ways on all issues from sex to economics and immigration to warfare.
These meddling penny-ante intellectuals are motivated by a rancorous envy at successful people. They would — if they could — destroy all that brings prosperity to the nation, along with dissolving the nation’s most sacred traditions.
The Islamists and the far right — as already discussed — believe roughly what the left believe about the media, except they hold that all the capitalists and corporations are run by ‘the Jews’.
This, I believe, more or less summarises the main Western(ish) (and, to the extent we are all Western, global) positions on how media bias works.
There are many different flavours and theories that explain the operations of media bias.
There’s Althusser with his Ideological State Apparatus — if one wants jargon heavy Marxist theory.
There’s Noam Chomsky and Julian Assange with the (faux?) naïve, “Tell the people the real facts, and change will occur” approach — if one wants an ideology that pretends not to be an ideology, and if one believes that facts are just facts.
There’s the ‘Cultural Marxism’ conspiracy — if one wants to believe that a rather grumpy and refined Theodor Adorno was really living in LA in the 1950s to hypnotise movie directors with high falutin’ Marxist theory.
Which — if any — are true?
This is difficult to answer, but I will observe that all our political positions rely on us playing the victim.
We are always struggling — despite all — against the fools and oppressors who stop our world from being perfect.
And the media we choose to watch will confirm us in our prejudices with respect to other media.
“That’s what the right-wing press say.”
“He read it in the Daily Mail.”
“Oh…the Daily Mail. I don’t read that.”
Yes, and make sure you say that with a sneer so that it’s really discredited.
These prejudices are often ridiculous.
After the recent Grenfell Tower catastrophe it was the Daily Mail who sent reporters out to doorstep the directors whose company was implicated in the renovation work associated with the fire.
It was the Mail that provided the full page spread that revealed their splendid lives that contrasted so cleanly with the holocaust in the tower.
This reflects, though, a political orientation towards an issue. The Mail seeks individuals to hold responsible for the catastrophe. The Mail seeks sensation and scandal.
The left wants to indict the system and not individuals — so it was not the Guardian or a smaller leftist paper that sought out the company directors.
But, strangely, it is the Mail’s individualistic and sensationalistic approach that provides the jugular indictment against capitalism.
The Mail’s story showed full-colour capitalism opposed to soot-blackened tenants. There could be no better damnation or commentary on the inequity at stake in how contemporary Britons are housed.
We choose the media world we wish to inhabit, and allow that to shape our reality.
This is why I am always rather sceptical of various reports into media bias.
What constitutes bias really depends upon where you are coming from in the first place.
A report on media bias may delight you or leave you indifferent depending upon what you hold to be a reasonable view of the world in the first place.
And, as we shall see, perhaps there is no one in control after all.
Journalists themselves tend towards the political left in my experience.
Aside from vanity, a journalist often wants to change the world for the better through their work. This leads one to a leftist position somewhat naturally.
Journalists are often in contention with the ultra well paid advertising department as to how much space is taken up in a publication by adverts, the nature of these adverts, and the copy that accompanies the ad.
This puts the journalist in the position of the somewhat under appreciated underdog against the people within a company who have all the cash.
A position that, again, tilts a person towards the political left.
Journalists are not usually very intelligent, but they are competent with words.
They excel, really, in manipulating people.
Their facility with words can lead them to have a better opinion of their intellectual capacities than they deserve, and the consequent envy at seeing others getting ahead when the journalist has a high opinion of themselves can also lead to a leftist position.
But many journalists see their position as a job to do, simply rotating between different publications according to where they can find a job.
This means that, contrary to an occasionally observed perception, the people who write for the Daily Mail or the Guardian are not fully rabid with their employer’s standpoint.
Obviously, it is not everyone who has a strong political view.
I feel sorry for those journalist who are committed openly as semi-activists on the left or right, and so come under pressure if their work deviates from the orthodoxies established among the activists.
They face a considerable temptation to simply feed the mob rather than think for themselves.
§
The media exists partly to antagonise us.
I once knew a rather serious young academic (all young academics are rather serious, I believe) who turned to me and said, “Why would they publish this if they know it is not entirely true?”
Her surprise was genuine. The article she had read in the Guardian had made her very angry indeed.
Why indeed? To raise your blood pressure a little. To get you awake over breakfast.
“How can he do such a thing? Doesn’t Trump know how important our trade relations are with Mauritius? That man!”
You didn’t know Mauritius existed until five minutes ago, and still have only vaguest notion as to what your country’s trade relation is with that island nation.
A nation you will forget by the seven o’clock bulletin.
But you are raging at your partner nonetheless.
You were invested in that little non-drama for a while.
§
The media is about crafting a story within the bounds of the law, the expectations of the public, and the considerations of advertisers.
What the law allows varies from country to country, though in the realm of the Internet our media environment has become free fire.
But, in practise, there is much ambiguity in what can be told in a story.
This means that even a story that is not intended to be negative can be perceived as such by the people it is about because they have a certain view of themselves that the story may puncture.
“I just don’t recognise myself,” they say as they read the story.
Humans all too often live believing that the story they tell about themselves is the story other people more or less buy, and that — further — they have a grasp on where they stand in a wider story about their lives.
This is not true.
We are mysteries to ourselves.
What the media shows us is not the truth about ourselves, but it may be a story that we did not expect.
This is why people are often aghast and distressed when the media reports on their lives — even in innocuous circumstances.
Strangely, they believe that the media somehow reports the solid truth.
It surprises people that, sometimes, a journalist will ask, “May I have you say this quote?”
That is the story being crafted.
When the public are disappointed by the inevitable variance of views (now quickly exposed by social media) on a story, a popular perception builds that the media cannot be trusted.
But this was because the initial trust was founded on an illusion.
Reporters and journalists sometimes do an honest job, and still leave people feeling misrepresented – if not actually libelled.
The media objectifies our varying human perspectives towards each other, which reveals the different ways — usually concealed — in which we are viewed.
We are left squabbling over the differences.
Consider, for example, how many different quotes and facts can be selected or rejected to write one article where the journalist has spoken to three people, visited a site, and done background reading.
We should always remember that the media environment is ephemeral.
A story is a story.
I knew this in an intellectual sense before I was a journalist. I know it experientially now.
If the public thought about the media for even a moment, they would realise that newsreaders, for example, are marionettes whose strings are pulled by producers, scriptwriters, technicians, and a dozen other background roles.
I know this, yet forget it so easily. The newsreader is so convincing. Her hair is so shiny. His voice so sonorous.
Authority!
I think HD television will do for the newsreader. Television has become too high definition. We can see the sweat. We can see the blemish. We can see the thinning hair. We can see where the wig joins the scalp.
I prefer the soupy, low definition television from the Seventies.
Reality seemed a lot heavier and more substantial then.
I could almost reach into the screen to stir it.
But the news on my screen now looks lighter than light.
§
Journalism is industrialised gossip.
I do not say this as a criticism against gossip, although gossip is generally looked down upon.
When we lived in small towns and villages we relied on gossip to maintain our social presence.
This was, for the most part, a domain dominated by women. With gossip, we learned about our true social standing — and, perhaps, gained useful intelligence about who was eligible for marriage or what land was worth buying.
In our contemporary societies this local gossip takes place across our social media, but we also live in large urban areas and meet many strangers everyday.
We cannot simply start a conversation by asking about a stranger’s politics, religion, or family affairs without risking alienation.
But we can start a conversation by talking about the news.
We may talk about football, the latest celebrity divorce — or the headlines.
It’s that or the weather.
And that is probably the most important role played by industrialised gossip.
The media provides us with a means to navigate our large societies, and it is useful in this respect.
What would we talk about otherwise? How to fill those spacious minutes before a meeting starts?
Small talk must be manufactured.
§
Journalists are paid gossips.
As such, the journalist is usually an extrovert.
There are introverted journalists: I.F. Stone, Julian Assange, and anyone involved in the vogue for data journalism counts in this regard.
But these are men in the minority.
The journalist is delighted to see you, but never genuinely delighted.
He’s delighted to see your indiscretions really.
An extrovert nature makes the journalist susceptible to crazes, manias, and fever-dreams of the psyche.
I believe this accounts for the errors of the media as much as ideology and financial influence.
The Iraq war, for example, was as much a case of mass hysteria as it was an ideological project or financial Chinese burn — though it was those too.
This is where it’s at. This is what is ‘normal’. This is preposterous. This the way to do it. It’s the latest thing. It must be right. Everybody does it.
The journalist will scream for homosexuals to be hounded from society one decade.
And the next decade, as mores change, demand that people who object to homosexuality be hounded from society.
And the journalist could change back as easily.
This accounts, somewhat, for the journalist’s misery.
These are people largely held hostage to the whims of the mob, even as they believe they dictate terms to that mob.
And the mob is not so much the public or the readership — often regarded with contempt by their fellow journalists.
The mob is other journalists.
Journalists are in a similar position to lawyers and politicians in that their job requires them to have a very elaborate and dishonest act.
We all have an act, of course. We act the role of ourselves, and we act our social role as doctor, receptionist, or whatever.
But politicians must trade in deception. Their act is extremely dishonest.
Lawyers also trade in deception, although deception of a different sort.
And so their act is very dishonest.
The journalist’s act is to meet people as a friend while secretly salting away choice actions and phrases to build a story.
In the most vicious cases, this means pretending to be someone’s friend while gathering information that will be used to frame that person as a villain, outcast, or moral garbage.
“What I don’t like about the job is always having to think, ‘Will this make a good quote?’ when I’m talking to someone,” a colleague said to me.
I remembered that quote well enough, didn't I?
This is why journalists tend to be drinkers or drug takers.
There is truth in the stereotype. There is truth in all stereotypes.
The drink helps with the gap that emerges behind the public role, and their private thoughts and feelings.
It is not drinking to dull the pain exactly. Rather, the journalist (and the politician or lawyer) must exist in a state of quite high tension.
They are always concerned that their schemes are about to be ‘found out’ and dashed.
For people who are generally extroverts — generally care a great deal what other people think of them — this is a very exquisite agony.
Drink helps one cope with these high anxiety situations, and — as it happens — press events and freebies are always a ready source of booze for the journalist who needs to close the perception gap.
I believe this also explains why politicians, lawyers, and journalists sometimes engage in completely reckless behaviour that is certain to ruin their careers if found out.
You know what I mean: The anti-gay politicians found receiving fellatio from a strapping fellow in an airport toilet.
There are many examples.
I believe the tension between the highly developed act, and the internal feelings of the individual becomes so acute that they engage in behaviour sure to smash their act for good.
It is as if the psyche revolts against the thousand and one petty deceptions that made their career, and breaks everything in one go.
This weak relation to the truth and authenticity is also why journalists, lawyers, and politicians are among the roles most despised by the populace.
These people live by lies and deception, but often pretend virtue as they do so.
This we cannot stand.
We want to go to the bathroom to vomit it all up after watching their phoney smiles and confected sweetnesses.
§
What is the best media strategy?
“No comment.”
This is what I now tell people to say if they are approached by a journalist.
Whatever the circumstances, one may profit through non-engagement with the media.
But this is not entirely the truth: there are really two brilliant media strategies.
The first is simple non-engagement: the “no comment” approach. This serves a person well whether they have been declared an enemy of the people, or are the subject of adulation.
If the former, then starving the beast of quotes, tit-bits, and ideas that may sustain a story is a useful approach to take to make the story die.
If the media seeks your glory then it’s as well to hide as well. This is the TE Lawrence* and JD Salinger strategy.
Your absence will make the media ever-more intrigued as to the ‘real’ you.
And so your fame will only increase — along with the sales of your wares.
Rare beasts command high prices.
The alternative strategy is the Gore Vidal approach.
Vidal claimed that one should never turn down sex, or the opportunity to appear on television.
If a person is prepared to completely engage in the media — be swallowed up by it — and take every opportunity to argue their point, then they may achieve a sort of invulnerability that is almost as potent as not appearing in the media at all.
The strategy is encapsulated in the motto: “Burn your reputation”.
If you lose it, you have it.
George Galloway and Donald Trump have achieved this.
No matter how much dirt is flung at them these men are ‘characters’ or rogues (rarely loveable) who role with the media punches.
The worst strategy is to attempt the middle course, and — as the jargon goes — ‘manage’ a person’s reputation through selective press releases, limited interviews, and other attempts to control or negotiate with the media.
This alway breaks down in the end because there is no way to control the media. When the control system does break down people feel betrayed or misled.
The media and public hatred towards the managed media target is all the more vicious.
The media also resents the attempts to control its access to a subject, and so sharpens its fangs all the more to take revenge on the subject when their image management becomes unstable.
The person who uses this strategy is perceived as phoney and inauthentic while at the same time being vulnerable to charges of cynicism and profiteering.
In short — as with much in life — either throw yourself in all the way or stay out.
Do not attempt the middle course, even though it is the middle course that most celebrities, politicians, and corporations tread.
And, in the end, they are burned up.
(Caveat: I am not a public figure. This is an analysis or an opinion. If I ever become a public figure — which I do not intend to do — I will tell you if any of this makes any sense whatsoever. Don’t act on it. I haven’t been there.)
§
In the middle of the 20th century intellectuals agonised — as intellectuals are want to do — over the mass media society.
Television, radio, newspapers, and cinema combined to create a media mono-message that made humans into one dead mass.
Read concerned editorials from the time, and you will hear about the intellectuals huddled around their paperbacks.
They were the last men. The book a token of human individuality.
I remember when there were four terrestrial television stations in my country — and great excitement that there would be a fifth, which never lived up to expectations.
We lived under the audio-visual equivalent to the great glass domes that cover the never built Mars colonies in Nasa concept art.
The media was our protective coating; its hermetic seal allowed our society’s atmosphere to be gently controlled.
And now?
The old media exists only as larger planets in a solar system of views, opinions, reportage, and outrage.
The BBC is the equivalent to Jupiter. Its mass exerts a huge gravitational pull, and so it still has great influence
But there is a Kuiper Belt of other media that pulls individuals into eccentric orbits.
The seal is broken.
Contra the mid-century intellectuals, the problem is no longer mass conformity.
The problem is finding anything in common at all.
The intellectuals now agonise and nostalgise, “Remember when everyone watched the same soaps on television? Remember the camaraderie? Remember the community spirit around the water cooler? What holds us together?”
What indeed?
Dad watches Top Gear on his iPad. Letitia watches a vlog about K-Pop. Jake scrolls a forum on motorbike repair. Mum is scrolling through those funny cat videos Jane posts on Facebook.
The old media has not really accepted the change. It reported the Arab Spring. It reported the London riots. It hired for social media.
But it is fatty and inauthentic.
A vlog made by a railway obsessive from his basement may have low production values, but it can give its audience hour upon hour of authentic content that matches their enthusiasm for a topic.
Why bother with the old media attempts to cover similar areas when you can find real detail from the social media?
Why watch a chat show where the guests have ten minutes to trailer their book, song, show, or film when you can watch your favourite guest sit down for three hours with a well known podcaster?
Why have the olives when you can have the main course?
I do not know how the media giants will fare over the next decade, but it seems that their fate is set to be major content producers slowly having their share chewed away by the ever diversifying online content soup.
We look at the demographics and know that many of these big players will not last.
Their audience is already in the care home or mid-retirement.
The future: Arab Spring. London riots. Trump. And on.
I am not sure that those intellectuals who feared the creation of zombified mass societies in past would be so please by what has come to pass.
After all, what preceded the mass media was no more individual. When the coach visited your village once or twice a week a bundle of the Hansard would be dropped off.
The one or two literate men in your village would take turns to read the parliamentary news in the pub for a laugh.
That was your media consumption, and it was as total and unvaried as anything the 20th century mass media created — and in many ways less varied.
What we have now is a greater jump than between the 19th century rustic and the 20th century newspaper reader.
Do you feel liberated now all authority is in doubt?
We are the media. We are our disorder.
§
How do I stand with regards to the media now?
I don’t take it very seriously at all.
I am bemused when people become angry with Trump — a television sprite it is unlikely they will ever meet.
He is an image. He is thousands of miles away.
There is nothing we can do about him, and what is presented to us of him is only a fractal of reality anyway.
I check the media once a week. I laugh at what nonsense has surfaced that week.
I miss about a hundred thousands crisis and disasters in those six days.
Last week, a crisis in Korea — it was the end of the world.
Again.
And I feel perfectly relaxed about that.
My life is no different.
All I have removed was useless information that made me agitated.
And it is delicious to hear the news on another person’s lips.
Whatever could be going on now?
I shall pretend I know.
—
Edit: 25/08/17 I take this from Alan Watts.
