Positive squatting, spin on nothing new... except G is not being its usual right wing and neo liberal self - why are you printing on here, could it be you are trying to generate interest...

What are you talking about? The Guardian isn't right wing, it's centre-left. As for neoliberal, do you even know what that means? The paper may not be an expression of revolutionary anarchism, but it's not pro-neoliberalism. Its economic views tend towards fluffy social democracy/reformist capitalist.

I disagree with its politics too, but what's to be gained by misrepresenting what those politics are? That's a game played by the right and authoritarian leftists.

unlike the poster above me, i think thats actually quite an interesting piece. thanks for posting. there is it seems to me a general public perception of squatters as dirty junkies and any mainstream press article which dares to step over that stereotype is doing quite well.

for people who dont know them here are some good infolinks about squatting and social centres more generally:

 http://socialcentresnetwork.wordpress.com/
 http://socialcentrestories.wordpress.com/
 http://zinelibrary.info/cracking-the-system

viva la spike!

Any defence of the Guardian and its right wing editorialship is a joke and especially from some idiot trying to use the word anticapitalist to legitimise such a defence. Why do you think everyone wants alternative forms of media. The Guardian is a defender of the Labour Government, which is perhaps the most neoliberal Government one can imagine.

Go and read Medialens anyone if anyone can be bothered to dissect the disinformation and misinformation peddled by the likes of The Guardian. Please also note all the stuff that is going on that they never tell you about and they wonder why no one wants to read it. Personally I have read articles in The Guardian about places in which I lived defending very dodgy Labour sorts and condemning anyone who disagrees as trouble makers and even making false allegations about violence. So God only knows what rubbish the Guardian print ordinarily. This is the main reason I cannot be bothered what swp Guardian defender cum false anticapitalist thinks. So no, I won't be reading the crap guardian, I will read books giving me real information on real topics rather than waste any time, money or effort on some crap neoliberal Labour apologist paper.

Squatting is brilliant, its about sharing spaces, finding and making living spaces and being creative which is the antithesis of most people who own property as they think a new design is creative. I think squatting has always been socially accepted, after all, remember the original Chelsea set and various places in London that became fashionable because of vibrant squatting communities. People only managed to live there because of squatting. Only right wing nutters and the bourgeoise property freaks hate squatters but that is because they are hateful, self interested greedy people.

1. Did I defend the Guardian? No. I simply pointed out that your critique was wrong.

2. SWP member? My first post pointed out that misrepresenting someone's political position is something the authoritarian left do. I'd hardly have a crack at the authoritarian left if I was in the SWP would I? If you're interested my politics are anarchist with influences from the autonomists and the left/council comms. Anticapitalist enough for you?

3. The Guardian defends the Labour Party from a centre-left perspective. Their framework is that of mainstream bourgeois politics. They're anti Tory, and anti the right of the Labour party. Pointing this out does not make me a defender of their politics.

4. Again, the Guardian's perspective is not neoliberal. As I said, it's roughly on the mild social democrat side. Look at the regular columnists like Milne and Toynbee. Larry Elliot, their _economics editor_ is not in favour of neoliberalism. His last book was called 'The Gods that Failed: How Blind Faith in Markets has Cost us Our Future'. This does not make him a marxist, or even necessarily left wing, but it does prove that he is not a neoliberal.

5. As I said before, it helps no one to misrepresent another's politics when providing a critique. To call the Guardian right wing and neoliberal means that you are not critiquing their genuine liberal politics. I am quite happy to argue against centrists or social democrats without characterising them as right wing. No one will take you seriously if you just throw phrases around rather than offering a genuine argument. Calling them right wing means you can offer no real distinction between their position and that of, say the Express. I think the Guardian and Express's political positions are wrong, but for very different reasons.

6. The reason why Media Lens go after the Guardian, Independent, Observer, BBC is precisely because these bodies are _not_ right wing. Media Lens are trying to make the point that the liberal media is just as capable of supporting the status quo (through the Chomsky propaganda model) as the genuine right wing press are through their clear bias. That's why they rarely bother with the Mail, Express etc.

I am not sure who you are anticapitalist but that aside, I do not agree with you. What is going in the world is not being reported and this is a sinister state of affairs, so this can only be construed as a news black out as far as I am concerned?

I read Media Lens to find out how much ordinary what is known as stock PR news that the Guardian and other so called Liberal newspapers report distort. If you are who you say you are, you will know that there is quite a significant amount and the sinister aspects are denial and the purpose of dealing with news stories means their reporting ends up having a similar impact to no doubt what you would call the right wing The Telegraph.

But papers like the Guardian are more sinister because for people like you, I sympathise that you may be hanging on to the idea of the Guardian. You mention Polly Toynbee, I have been at talks with her and I am always looking for responses beyond what the media like to portray. Her answers are right wing, sugar coated and sure enough, they are played up and down in media style but her views support the status quo in the worst new Labourite ways.

However, my experience of The Guardian and its worth came from their reporting of activists and ordinary communities in the UK - they either go for lies or blackout - this is not news. The experience was that New Labour with the help of the Guardian did their utmost to engender hatred and racism, no one believed them because they went out of their way to find out if it was true. The reports were lies, total lies and everyone realised how much rubbish The Guardian print and this is a good reason not to trust them. Newspapers should publish corroborated news not PR for their friends. What The Guardian printed was not only right wing but fabricated lies. I see no major difference between them and the Express and the Daily Mail. They serve the same purpose, an agenda that has little to do with readership and so they do not deserve to have one.

It is for this reason that the Guardian is no longer worthy of being read by many people I know. It is directly because of such experiences but this is OK because The Guardian is the real loser, the people will and are replacing these newspapers with something more worthwhile. In my case books, it is for this reason, I feel I have a right to call information that is right wing, right wing.

Look, right wing does not mean 'bad'. It does not mean 'ideas that you disagree with'. Right wing refers to a set of political positions. Me denying that the Guardian is right wing does not mean I am supporting it. For what it's worth, I find most 'left wing' thought wrong, including that expressed in the Guardian.

If you can see no difference between the politics of the Guardian and the politics of the Mail then you are deluded. How can you conduct an argument against a centre-leftist if you are not engaging with their ideas? You can't refute liberalism if all you are doing is you're offering arguments against conservatism.

Again, the fact I offered Milne and Toynbee as examples of the paper's columnists does not mean I agree with them, they were examples of people at two ends of the social democratic spectrum you tend to find in the paper. Calling her right wing just means that you do not understand what right wing means. The fact that I assert she is slightly left of centre does not mean I agree with her. You seem to believe that left wing means good, right wing means bad. If you want an example, Wikipedia describes her as a social democrat. Please do not try to argue that social democrats are right wing in any commonly used sense of the word.

The fact that the Guardian distorts information does not make it right wing. It might be worth you reading up on Chomsky/Herman's work on the media, or reading Media Lens more carefully. Media Lens are not arguing that the Guardian is right wing.

Of course you have a right to call information that is right wing right wing. You also have a right to call information that is not right wing right wing. It's just that you'd be wrong, as you have been in this case.

Glad to see you dropped the smear that I was SWP, and the assertion that the Guardian is neoliberal though.

Hands up if you've gone looking for love, stability, affection, someone special or just the hope of orgasms with no more strings attached than a Guardian tracking cookie.

If you haven't realised that a newspaper's breeding program is the best proof of its social bias and have not compared the programs of the Telegraph, Mail and Guardian - then you're quite probably not getting the most of your internet browser. There are over 90,000 Guardian readers just gagging for it here  http://dating.guardian.co.uk/s/splash/

You don't really need to bring Chomsky into it nor even recall one of the few instances when a D notice or Cobra committee activity in the UK became visible. ( I refer to the follow up on an article published July 13, 2005 "We rock the boat: Today's Muslims aren't prepared to ignore injustice", by Dilpazier Aslam. He was then a "Guardian trainee journalist"... he was also a member of the political organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir. He lost his traineeship. It all stayed quiet except for a small "correction" piece of July 23, 05  http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2005/jul/23/correctionsandclarifications till the French equivalent of the Guardian, "Liberation" published a report in their print edition morning of July 27th 2005.  http://libe.com/page.php?Article=313814 (it's now a dead link but still discussed on French blogs) by which stage the "fuller explanation" which had been refered to in the "correction" then appeared in the evening :-  http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/aug/27/commentanddebate.mainsection

anyway - the cartoons are good.

Where should we go for information, comment and analysis on world and political issues then I used to think Indymedia was a good source of information but now seems to just be a bunch of puffed up baffoons talking shit.

I thought that last comment was going to ask where should people go to find partners without taking part in commercial newspaper breeding programs. But instead it was the lame "where do you go to get informed"? If it's not one of the indymedia nodes (there are loads) then wikipedia, wikileaks, & mix a bit of reuters and bbc (who always give relevent links to the horsies' mouths).

on the more important question of replicating our future generation, an awesome task I realise -
I'd suggest squat parties - coz there's someone special for everyone some people might like seminars & conferences, pottery classes, community service sentences, rehab appraisal interviews, std clinics, free dianetic questionaire opportunities, a hare krishna nosh-up, university is always a good one (except for the open university), on holidays, by random chance.

I wish anticapitalist would not infer silence as agreement or invent consensus when there is none. I wrote the Guardian is involved in right wing propaganda orchestrated by this Government whose policies are having a devastating impact here and in the rest of the world and these policies are right wing. Anticapitalist seems to think if I call this left or right it can mysteriously have an identity making it left even if what is being done is ultra right wing. you cannot and it not a very intelligent argument but interesting that you now rely on an arbitrary definition to establish credentials that supposedly make you and the paper left wing even if you publish material that is more ultra right wing than the Conservatives. The centre left, right left arguments are first year media school and carry no real truth in a world where newspapers are the sycophants who print less information than most people know and never really tell you what is going on. Newspapers should print news and there is no news in this newspapers on key issues affecting the UK and the rest of the world. This tells us all something about the UK power base, the left and right are one of the same, something anarchists have always known. It is odd you call yourself an anarchist as your posts show that you do not even understand the meaning of anarchism.

I do not want to upset anticapitalist as previously suggested but let me correct another misstatement. I am not simply disagreeing with the reports of the Guardian and this is not the basis of my calling them right wing. I accused The Guardian of being right wing as well as distortion and misinformation and I have not withdrawn this statement at all. When I did read The Guardian, we would notice how it misrepresented facts and how the paper would give platforms to ultra right wing people and then drop in the odd acceptable social justice type author to give the paper credibility amongst its traditional readership. sorry we saw through it then as we do now. So we did not buy it then and we will definitely not be buying this sort of rubbish in future.

I do not bother reading the silly Guardian anymore or worrying about what they write but I am more keen to explore the more positive ideas put forward by iosaf. For the moment, freedom from press fascism of The Guardian or other pretenders is enough for those or want to have time to think about a different world rather than waste their time thinking about what is essentially corporate trash.

I think we did something positive, a pact not to buy corporate newspapers left us open to explore other possibilities and starting to have real news information through alternative sources.

You see, now you're just annoying me, I was trying to be polite. Now as well as being incoherent and trying to misrepresent my politics you are being insulting.

How many times do I have to point out that the definition of right wing isn't something you can play about with? It's a reasonably objective definition - it is you who is using arbitrary measures. Just look up the definitions of left and right wing. Please, because apart from anything else, you're making yourself look like a tool.

I keep referencing stuff and you keep ignoring it. I gave you a clear reference to demonstrate that the Guardian's economic position was not neoliberal, given their economic's editor wrote a book against neoliberal market supremacy. I also gave a reference to state that Toynbee is a social democrat, albeit at the liberal end. You just make dumb assertions without any evidence to back them up. If the Guardian is a right wing paper, you should be able to find plenty of mainstream sources to back this up. You have none. Even the vague source you mentioned, Media Lens, does not claim the paper is right wing. As I pointed out before, the reason they focus on the Guardian is precisely because it is a liberal paper.

The Guardian isn't shit because it is right wing, it's shit because it's liberal and centre leftist. If it was as you say, ultra right wing (surely that would make it fascist?) why does the Wikipedia entry on it say "Editorial articles in The Guardian are generally to the left of the political spectrum"?

Which ultra right wing people does The Guardian give a platform to? Give me names. Again, think about what ultra right means. I don't see Nick Griffin writing weekly op-eds there, do you?

Why can't you understand that left wing stuff is shit too? How many times do I have to point out that I am not defending the Guardian? It's just that I prefer to base my critique on an honest assessment of its politics. Would you have called Pravda right wing just because it printed misinformation?

As to not understanding the meaning of anarchism - I have been involved in anarchist politics for years. My activity aside, I'm guessing I have read more Kropotkin, Bakunin, Goldman, Malatesta, De Cleyre, Ward, Bookchin, Castoriadis, Brinton, Marx, Mattick and Pannakoek than you. I can't imagine any of those writers being impressed at your poor grasp of political positions. I didn't want to get into this kind of willy waving, but I can't believe your arrogance in coming out with this drivel and then accusing me of not understanding the meaning of anarchism. You seem to think anarchism is about sounding oh so wadical. I bet you think anarchism's something to do with not eating at McDonalds.

Learn to read, learn to write, go and find out the meaning of the terms 'left wing', 'right wing' and 'anarchism'. A read of some of the library articles at Libcom might help you on the last bit. I hate being this blunt, but really, you're trying my patience.

Lastly, some more references to the Guardian's political leanings. Oh, and although I've said this a million times, me pointing out that the Guardian is liberal left is not me defending it. Why do you find it so hard to grasp that basic concept?

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian
 http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BritishNewspapers
 http://www.world-newspapers.com/uk.html
 http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060706021426AA1YdnN
 http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/761987.html
 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_14_57/ai_n15631102
 http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/8534,opinion,why-the-guardian-isnt-right-about-the-right
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_America
 http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/columns/medialife/n_8938/
 http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?f=172&t=37193
 http://www.nationalreview.com/seipp/seipp200410210841.asp
 http://www.editorsweblog.org/newspaper/2005/09/uk_why_the_guardian_did_it_the.php
 http://www.blurtit.com/q521113.html

Right, I'm slightly less angry now.

Some direct points and questions now that I have calmed down. I know you will avoid them, as you have no basis for your arguments, and ignored earlier direct questions, but hey, I'm a sucker for lost causes.

1. Back up your claim that I do not understand the meaning of anarchism. Look at the anarchist faqs, they may help you understand anarchism a little better.  http://www.infoshop.org/faq/index.html . It's probably the most authoritative source around, being written by anarchists and rigorously sourced and referenced. Then point out where I have contradicted them. Note by the way that anarchist faq occasionally cite Guardian articles that, for example, show the fallacies of neoliberalism. Oh noes! The anarchist faq writers are ultra right wing!!!!!!11!!!

If you cannot back up your claim with reference to widely held anarchist tenets, then you are wrong.

2. If the Guardian is right wing (and now you're actually claiming ultra right, which is laughable), cite some mainstream newspapers, thinktanks or similar bodies who are centre-left.

3. Explain why centre left papers would not distort information. Explain why distorting information makes the Guardian right wing.

4. Explain why Media Lens have never claimed the Guardian is right wing.

5. Leaving aside the question of the Guardian's position, what is the difference between centre leftists and right wingers? If you try to claim that there is no difference, explain why they disagree with each other, and over what.

6. List some ultra right commentators who write in the Guardian. Cite some ultra right editorials. Here is the archive of editorials -  http://www.guardian.co.uk/tone/leaders .
Here is the list of people who have contributed to the Guardian's opinion columns.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/list/contributors . I'm estimating maybe 400 ish names there. Offhand I can see a couple who are right wing. If you were correct, the majority would be right wing - even ultra right. Which ones are? Are they a majority? How many ultra right wing (that is generally taken to mean neo-fascist or neo-nazi by the way) people are there?

Note - for a definition of ultra right look here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_right

If you cannot find a majority of right wing opinion, then you are wrong. Remember, you cannot just claim something is right wing, this has to be in the accepted definition of right wing. At the moment you just assert things. You may as well claim that trees are right wing. To argue a point you have to use evidence and rationality. Making statements and evidence free claims in the way that you do reveal your arguments to be hollow.

7. To help you understand where the Guardian and the Labour Party sit politically here is a quick guide. This is first week GCSE politics stuff, but hey, it appears you need it.

The Labour Party sprang from the Labour movement. It was never particularly radical, and included a range of opinion from the start, but could be broadly described as social democratic. If you want to get all left com about it you could view it as the left wing of capital. Its clause 4 called for the common ownership of the means of production. This is an ambiguous aim, and the closest it came to realising this was through the introduction of the welfare state and nationalisation. Typical statist social democracy. Fast forward past the to-ings and fro-ings of the 70s and 80s and you get to Blair and 'new labour'. Blair represented a 'modernising' faction in the party. He got rid of clause 4 - more symbolic than anything else, but this marked this faction's ascendency in the party. It is this faction that is in government and calling the shots. This faction's politics are a melange - the odd bone thrown to those with memories of a vague social justice agenda (the minimum wage), but lots of pro marketeering too, not to mention creeping authoritarianism.

As well as the new labourites there are other factions in the party. Compass is centre-left. Tribune are 'old labour', people who follow the core values of the party against the 'modernisers'. The Campaign group are further to the left - they'd be on the left win of the social democratic spectrum.

The Guardian is roughly somewhere between Compass and Tribune. They criticise the right wing actions of the labour leadership from that perspective.

Now I know this is very hard for you to understand, but the fact I am saying this does not mean I am a supporter of any faction within the labour party, or of the Guardian. Yes, I know, as a philosophical concept it's a tough one, up there with Wittgenstein's puzzlers.

Take a deep breath, and read this next bit slowly - the reason I am saying all this is because it is very important to be able to critique the opposition honestly and clearly. If you critique, say, a member of the SWP by having a go at the politics of the Liberal Democrats, then there are consequences. They will ignore you, you will look foolish, and their actual ideas will not have been challenged.

As I've said before, I hate being put into a position of basically having to patronise you, but your understanding seems to be incredibly limited.

The poster I was arguing with is obviously a complete fool. For the record, one of his/her comments had to be removed by the mods as there was a hint of anti-semitism to it.

More evidence of the poster's ignorance from the hidden post - "it gave a platform to David Aaronovich, a hate filled Nazi Jewish person". David A is one of those Euston Manifesto type pro bombing liberals. Calling him a nazi betrays yet more deep ignorance. But the ignorance is compounded, as David A is not a Guardian columnist but a Times columnist. After he left the Guardian, the paper ran a series of spoof columns satirising the 'liberal interventionist' line that Aaronovitch was now spouting.

"You seem to bring in Chomsky to give yourself credibility, I have read Chomsky, you clearly have not, read what Chomsky has written and see if the Guardian has even printed the facts and research he publishes let alone covered the issues in an intelligent way."

I have read Chomsky, either more than the poster has, or perhaps just more carefully. Chomsky is clear too about the role of liberals. Again, distorting information does not make one right wing. As an example, the poster I am arguing against has been distorting information throughout our argument. I do not think s/he is right wing, just lacking in coherence or any kind of political understanding.

The poster states:
"Have you read the book Guardians of the Liberal Media by Medialens authors. I suggest that you read it because you seem to post relying on the fact that your audience has not read anything, they have I am afraid and this means this exposes your ignorance."

This is hilarious. I have read the book, in more than enough depth to know what the actual title of it is.

"The days of The Guardian are numbered and not because it is left wing but because it has supported a right wing agenda led by probably the most autocratic corrupt right wing fascist Government of all time. You probably call the Government party centre left though!"

Awesome. I guess Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and Pinochet are feeling like failures now. Not to mention Thatcher.

As I've explained, I think the current government's political position is complex, with pretty right wing elements around immigration and international economics and some centrist social policies to mollify some of the core labour support.

As to the Guardian's position, I think it would rather a labour government than a tory one, but would prefer liberal left labour policies to those currently enacted.

I don't know how many times I have to repeat this, but yet again, I do not support the Guardian or the Labour Party. You know, what with me being an anarchist and all. I just disagree with them for clear and honest reasons.

You do not seem to understand that I do not want to have a left and right debate because there is no difference between the left and right so I will leave that to whichever anarchist arm you represent.

I will quote one of Pilger's famous stories

It was about the Cold War and concerned a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. “I have to tell you,” said the spokesman, “that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV day after day that all the opinions on all the vital issues are the same. To get that result in our country we send journalists to the gulag. We even tear out their fingernails. Here you don’t have to do any of that. What is the secret?”

What is the secret? It is a question seldom asked in newsrooms, in media colleges, in journalism journals, and yet the answer to that question is critical to the lives of millions of people. On August 24 last year the New York Times declared this in an editorial: “If we had known then what we know now the invasion if Iraq would have been stopped by a popular outcry.” This amazing admission was saying, in effect, that journalists had betrayed the public by not doing their job and by accepting and amplifying and echoing the lies of Bush and his gang, instead of challenging them and exposing them. What the Times didn’t say was that had that paper and the rest of the media exposed the lies, up to a million people might be alive today. That’s the belief now of a number of senior establishment journalists. Few of them—they’ve spoken to me about it—few of them will say it in public."

You carry on having your elusive argument or whatever you want to call it. As I have explained to you, the only problem for people like you wanting this debate is that there are loads of people not interested in having the left right conversation on the level you want it anymore. Personally, I see no difference between left and right because they peddle the same lies and expose the same fascist form of language. I am left so therefore I am this... I am right so therefore I am this...What if I am not any of those things, I am a human being who believes in human rights, am I left or right, who cares? you obviously do, so carry on as other people have more important things in life to worry about then how the Guardian is perceived, they could not care less.

Wow. Did you actually read anything I've written?

If there's no difference between right and left then why are you so insistent that the Guardian is right wing? It seems to be very important to you to believe this in the face of all the evidence I've presented, none of which you have even acknowledged, let alone addressed.

Your Pilger quote has nothing to do with anything I've argued. As I've repeatedly said, I don't agree with the Guardian, I agree with Chomsky's propaganda model, the Guardian fits it very well.

"who cares? you obviously do, so carry on as other people have more important things in life to worry about then how the Guardian is perceived, they could not care less."

But you obviously do, much more than me. Again, why get so het up about trying to call the Guardian right wing if you don't think there's any difference at all?

To say that there is no difference between left and right is somewhat silly. I regard most positions on the left and right to be pro-capitalist, but that doesn't mean they are identical. To ignore the difference between a social democrat and a marginalist is ridiculous if you are to try to refute their individual arguments in favoue of capitalism.

You know I've shown your arguments to be stupid, otherwise you wouldn't try to change your position, and you'd have tried to refute the evidence I'd put forward.

call it what you like, you are selling a right wing propaganda agenda and people do not want it... good luck though

This starts with the start of the quote like so "
In the first two weeks of December 2002, Media Lens published a total of three alerts on exchanges with Guardian columnist George Monbiot ('George Monbiot Responds on Iraq and "Just War"', December 2, 2002; 'George Monbiot Responds Again on Iraq and "Just War"', December 7, 2002; and 'Final Exchange With George Monbiot On The Guardian And The Propaganda Model', December 10, 2002. See: www.medialens.org).

These exchanges followed a comment we had made in a Media Alert on November 27. We quoted Monbiot as follows:

"[I]f war turns out to be the only means of removing Saddam, then let us support a war whose sole and incontestable purpose is that and only that..." (Monbiot, 'See you in court, Tony,' The Guardian, November 26, 2002)

We wrote:

"Monbiot would doubtless deny to his last breath that his support for an assault against just this shattered Third World country as a last resort has anything to do with the ceaseless propaganda that has poured from the tireless cynics of the Bush/Blair administrations and their media commissars. He holds his views (+he+ believes) because Iraq +is+ a special case, not because propaganda has +made+ Iraq seem a special case. This is the awesome power of deception - fascinating for everyone except the people on the end of our bombs." ('Iraq - Panorama Editor and Guardian Editor Respond', November 27, 2002)

During the exchange that followed, Monbiot referred to Media Lens in his Guardian column accusing us of "ridiculous evasion" and "intellectual wriggling".

On December 3, 2002, Monbiot wrote: "I must end this letter with an apology. I do not have time to write another, as I have a very busy schedule. So please do not expect a response to your next reply." On December 12, Monbiot wrote again: "This really will be the last thing I write."

We heard no more from Monbiot until October 10 of this year when we received the following email in response to our October 10 Media Alert: 'Lulling Us Into Submission':


Dear David and David,


given that this is the first time in a long time you have mentioned the Daily Telegraph, and then only because it is mentioned in an article in the Guardian, do I take it that you do not read the Telegraph, or, for that matter, the Times, the Sun, the Mail, the Economist or the Spectator? I ask because almost everything you write appears to be directed against the liberal media, rather than those outlets with the greatest readership, the greatest power and the widest global ambitions, and which, incidentally, match your interpretation of how and why the media works far more closely than the liberal media do. I find it hard to understand why you concentrate almost exclusively on the omissions and contradictions of the liberal media, and ignore the real centres of power.

Yours Sincerely, George Monbiot


It's an important question that has occasionally been raised with us by readers. We were happy to explain our rationale in our response on October 13:

Dear George

Many thanks for your letter; we hope you're well. As you know, we believe that the UK media serve as a powerful propaganda system defending the interests of state-corporate power. We believe that powerful elites are able to fix the premises of media discourse, to filter what the public are told, and so to effectively manage public opinion.

While, as we discuss below, many people recognise the establishment-friendly nature of the right-wing press, many also take comfort from the idea that it is balanced by an independent, open and honest "liberal media".

The problem is that this "liberal media" also provides reporting and commentary based on a framework of assumptions shaped by the needs and goals of the same system of power. Because this power is rooted in corporate greed and state violence, the media, including the "liberal media", is complicit in crimes against humanity, including genocide in Iraq.

A typical presumption found throughout the mainstream media is the idea that British governments generally act with benevolent intent. Thus Guardian editors talk of "Britain's reputation as both a respecter and champion of human rights." ('Rights and wrongs', The Guardian, March 6, 2000) Leading Guardian columnist Martin Woollacott has written that "the foreign policies of democratic states, beyond the basic requirement of ensuring physical security, are now based firmly on two pillars - trade advantage and human rights". ('The see-through reality of sanctions', The Guardian, August 31, 1996) In a book on the Labour government, Guardian writers Polly Toynbee and David Walker refer to Blair as "a high minded champion of human rights". (New Labour In Power, Manchester University Press, 2000, p.254)

Facts and voices contradicting this idea of benevolence are largely excluded from the "liberal media". British historian Mark Curtis makes exactly this point in his book, The Ambiguities of Power:

"The main argument in this study is that the systematic link between the basic priorities and goals of British foreign policy on the one hand and the horrors of large-scale human rights violations on the other is unmentionable in the propaganda system, even though that link is clearly recognisable in an analysis of the historical and contemporary record." (Curtis, The Ambiguities of Power, Zed Books, 1995, p.117)

If opposition to ongoing and additional horrors of this kind is to have any chance of success, the propaganda system as a whole must be exposed, challenged and undermined. We need large numbers of people to see through the illusion that we have a liberal media, and to work to fashion windows of honest discussion both within the mainstream and through the development of honest and compassionate alternative media.

As you know our analysis is based, in part, on Herman and Chomsky's "propaganda model of media control". Last year you questioned the applicability of the model to the British media, and so we asked Edward Herman, who drew up the model, for his opinion. This was his response:

"On the applicability of the model to Britain, one can go through that list of filters and ask whether they fit. Ownership? Blatantly true with Murdoch, an important media proprietor, and no reason to think they are less powerful in Britain than in the US. For the BBC, the impact of government is probably at least as severe as under Thatcher, and she brought intervention to a pretty high level I do believe. Advertising? Why not effective in the UK in its usually subtle way. Sourcing? Little basis for difference from the US, although I suspect not quite as bad. Flak? Possibly not quite as bad, but flak from government and powerful lobbies is surely real. Ideology? Anticommunism, market ideology, possibly not quite as powerful as in US, but probably real--and the force of patriotism and demonization of enemies I suspect is as great and powerfully affecting ability to speak honestly on Israel or Iraq." (Email to Media Lens, December 9, 2002)

In short, Herman is in no doubt that the propaganda model can indeed be used to explain and understand the performance of the British media - he is a big supporter of our project.

This brings us to the issue of why we focus so intensely on the "liberal media", especially comparatively honest media like the Guardian and the Independent.

The reason, as we mentioned above, is that one of the main objections to the propaganda model consists in the argument that while right-wing media do indeed defend established state and corporate interests - through Black's Telegraph, Murdoch's Times and Sun, and so on - this is balanced by "liberal media", which do not. According to this argument, the "liberal media" are doing a pretty good job and need merely to be supported in their efforts to counter right-wing propaganda.

The applicability of the propaganda model to the right-wing media is often considered uncontroversial. For example, we discussed the model with Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, and Observer editor, Roger Alton, in December 2000:

David Edwards: "There's a radical analysis of the media which says that wealthy owners, parent companies, advertisers, and the profit orientation of the media, act as filters that tend to remove facts and ideas that are damaging to powerful corporate and state interests. Is that an argument you're aware of? Is it something you'd agree with?"

Alan Rusbridger: "It's understood. I think that does work, and obviously the general interests of most of the people who own newspapers are going to be fairly conventional, pro-business, interests. So, you know, I'm sure that is broadly true, yes."

Rusbridger of course rejected the model's applicability to the Guardian:

"But then we're not owned by a... We're owned by a trust; we haven't got a proprietor. So we're in a sort of unique position of being able to discuss this kind of stuff." (Interview with David Edwards, December 22, 2000, www.medialens.org)

Roger Alton gave a similar response:

"You would be unlikely to find some perfectly hostile story to Sky in the Sun. And you'd be unlikely to find an analysis of Northern & Shell in the Express. You'd probably be unlikely to find a savage attack on the Spectator in the Telegraph. A lot of that is partially also related to shared opinions. If you are a highly Christian, traditional, sort of Little Englander, anti-Europe, you would be unlikely to want to come and work for a paper like this one." (Interview with David Edwards, December 20, 2000, www.medialens.org)

Even mainstream editors, then, accept that the propaganda model can account for the performance of the right-wing press - there seems little to be gained from continually stating the obvious. However, we have mentioned the Telegraph in a range of Media Alerts this year - in two Alerts in March, two also in April and two in May, and most recently on June 6. Coincidentally, we are currently preparing a Guest Media Alert by Matthew Randall comparing the performance of the Telegraph with the Guardian in their reporting on asylum and immigration issues. It makes grim reading.

Nevertheless, the real test for our argument lies in the claim that the best media, the "liberal media", are not servile to power in the way of the right-wing press.

Our work, and the work of many others, has shown that the "liberal media" does not at all act as a counter-balance to the right-wing press. Instead it is a vital element of a propaganda system protecting established power. As Chomsky has pointed out, the role of the "liberal media" is to consider the range of 'respectable' thought and to draw a line: "to say, in effect, this far and no further".

The lethal result is that there is minimal mainstream media opposition to even truly historic state-corporate abuses of power, and certainly not enough to generate the kind of mass public awareness and outrage required to challenge and end these abuses.

In his latest book, Web Of Deceit, Mark Curtis writes:

"The liberal intelligentsia in Britain is in my view guilty of helping to weave a collective web of deceit. Under New Labour, many commentators have openly taken part in Labour's onslaught on the world... To read many mainstream commentator's writings on Britain's role in the world is to enter a surreal, Kafkaesque world where the reality is often the direct opposite of what is contended and where the starting assumptions are frighteningly supportive of state power." (Curtis, Web Of Deceit, Vintage Books, 2003, p.4)

John Pilger recently wrote a searing indictment of the "liberal media" - the Guardian and Independent very much included:

"'The New Special Relationship' was the next good news, with Blair and Clinton looking into each other's eyes in the garden at No 10 Downing Street. Here was the torch being passed, said the front page of the Independent, 'from a becalmed and aimless American presidency to the coltish omnipotence of Blairdom'. This was the reverential tone that launched Blair into his imperial violence."

Pilger adds:

"By the time Robin Cook launched his infamous mission statement, putting human rights at the 'heart' of foreign policy and promising to review arms sales on 'ethical' grounds, not a sceptical voice was to be heard coming from liberalism's powerhouses. On the contrary, the Guardian counselled Blair not to be too 'soft centred'. (John Pilger, 'The Fall And Rise Of Liberal England', New Statesman, October 13, 2003)

Both Pilger and Curtis do occasionally appear in the mainstream, but they are tiny islands of honesty in an ocean of power-friendly propaganda.

Pilger describes how "An epic shame and silence covers much of liberal England."

This is the same silence and shame we have exposed in analysing the performance during the Iraq crisis of the paper that hosts your column, the Guardian.

We showed how, in the year prior to the invasion, the Guardian rarely made any attempt to evaluate the success of the 1991-98 UNSCOM inspections, ignoring crucial claims by senior UNSCOM weapons inspectors that Iraq had been 90-95% disarmed of WMD by December 1998. Chief UNSCOM inspector, Scott Ritter, for example, claimed that Iraq had been "fundamentally disarmed" by December 1998 and offered no threat. At time of writing the Guardian and Observer website lists 10,811 articles mentioning Iraq this year. Ritter's name has been mentioned in 14 of these articles. According to its website, Ritter has been mentioned in 6 articles in the Independent this year.

Like the rest of the "liberal media", the Guardian gave almost no coverage to the claim by UNSCOM inspectors, the CIA, and others, that any retained Iraqi WMD would by now likely be "harmless sludge". The Guardian repeatedly claimed that inspectors had been thrown out of Iraq, contradicting its own reports in 1999 and early 2000. The "liberal media" as a whole made vanishingly few mentions of the 250,000 Iraqi victims of the 1991 Gulf War, or of the 1 million civilian dead as a result of US/UK sanctions.

In all the endless discussion about Iraq's recent history, the "liberal media" has almost completely buried former UN humanitarian coordinator Denis Halliday's damning references to the "genocidal" effects of US/UK sanctions. Halliday has been mentioned in 2 of the 10,811 Guardian and Observer articles mentioning Iraq this year. The list goes on...

Instead the "liberal media" has been filled with literally tens of thousands of articles and news reports echoing US/UK propaganda.

John Pilger wrote recently:

"My own view is that had the great broadcasting institutions and newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic not merely channelled and echoed the agendas and lies of government, but instead exposed and challenged them, the Bush/Blair attack on Iraq would have been made untenable."

We agree - the media played a crucial role in making war possible. We believe that the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent and the BBC acted as a kind of media 'Blair' to the Telegraph's 'Bush'. In other words we are proposing a judgement on the "liberal media" comparable to Michael Moore's recent judgement on Blair:

"Thank you, Mr Blair. Without you, Bush would have had to invade Iraq alone. But he needed at least one major ally to make it look like it wasn't just the Americans doing the nasty deed. The American people were against going it alone. Once you hopped on board, Bush had the cover he needed. You made that happen. You are the one who gave us the Iraq war. I hold you more responsible for this mess than little Georgie." (Michael Moore, 'Michael Moore's message to Tony Blair', The Guardian, October 7, 2003)

The "liberal media's" betrayal of the British public contributed to the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqis, while the lives of millions more have been plunged into yet more unnecessary chaos, horror and suffering. This is one reason why we focus so intently on the "liberal media".

What is your view of the Guardian's reporting on Iraq?

Best wishes

David Edwards and David Cromwell
Media Lens

Ends with a quote like so"

anticapitalist..
you can call yourself an anarchist and describe yourself as this and yet everything you argue and say is the antithesis of any kind of independent and liberal thought and your arguments defending the leftwingness of The Guardian are even more disturbing as you seem to think people who do not read the paper actually care about such definitions. They read the facts and they assess them on the basis not on the basis of artificial definitions.

I am afraid tenuous reporting anomalies is anecdotal, you will recall that you started with the squatting story, it seems that you think readers are stupid enough to think yesterday the Guardian said this but today it was a bit positive about squatting, so therefore readers believe it is left wing and will therefore like it when compared to others and criticism from media lens should therefore be viewed positively and this makes them left wing. Sorry it does not work like this largely because people have alternatives called the net.

Yesterday people quoted how other newspapers reported the right wing bias of The Guardian objecting to the removal of Blair under the notion that this was a political decision. Do you think anyone believes Blair was not a political appointment and is he left or right wing? Is that relevant in today's world? it is in yours but not in many other people's minds but you seem to want this debate in isolation and do not understand that many people have moved on from left and right and this is perhaps they did not adopt the propaganda Labour culture that pervaded England at a certain time. You probably have a defence for the Blair story, no doubt it is not too dissimilar to how politicians defend supporting banks that have failed with billions of pounds while telling ordinary people not to moan about financial difficulties? Contradictory but somehow you think people are actually listening to key words, they are not...

I was the only one who responded to your quotes where as few people pointed out alternatives to mainstream media and you have tried to use this as a platform for a case that no one is interested in listening. I apologise for not responding earlier but i wanted to dig out this medialens quote.

So I wanted to take the time out to send you a post that highlights the problems you so clearly cannot face in your own arguments. I am not responsible for not being able to deal with right being left and left being right, you are and if you cannot deal with it, I am sorry but you are not my responsibility, perhaps you can ask a family person or friend to have this discussion with you.

I do agree with you on one thing, I admire the patience of david edwards and david cromwell but not all of us want to trail through what people who know less than extremely bright ordinary people know and think - this is why we do not watch television and why we do not buy rubbish newspapers. it is called being alternative ...