Posted by The Editors on October 27, 2009, 10:20 am, in reply to "Monbiot on Blair"
Message modified by board administrator October 27, 2009, 10:22 am
Monbiot, like Mark Thomas, like Naomi Klein, in recent articles also in the Guardian, has nothing to say about the media, much less about the Guardian. This at a time when the corporate media, for the first time in 100 years, is losing ground to non-corporate, not-for-profit sources of information newly available on the internet. For the first time in a century we have a realistic opportunity to support, build and entrench powerful non-corporate media able to challenge the worldview of the powerful as communicated endlessly through the Guardian, the Independent, the BBC and the rest. So why isn't it happening? Because people still have not woken up to the fact that these media are a huge obstacle to progressive change, that we should not be supporting them with our coins or our writing. Why are they not waking up?
A key reason is that high-profile, much-loved dissidents (we love them, too!) like Monbiot, Klein and Thomas publish their work in media like the Guardian. This has a massive impact on readers' sense that the corporate media is full of dissent, is a supporter of progressive change. It isn't; it's a propaganda system for power - but a little dissent goes an awful long way in giving people the wrong idea. Their appearances stifle the idea that there is a need to turn elsewhere, to develop new forms of media. The more dramatic the better, from the media's perspective - arrest Blair! Marvellous! This is just what they want to see - tiny doses of high-profile dissent keeping us all in our corporate media consumer boxes. This is actually a disaster for progressive change.
If once there was no choice, that argument is fast becoming absurd. Democracy Now! ZNet, Realnews.org and others are showing what is possible.
Monbiot's article +is+ excellent (apart from the crucial media omissions on the Downing Street memo - we devoted a whole chapter to them in Newspeak) - but it's appearing in the +wrong+ place.
Imagine if Monbiot, Klein, Thomas, Pilger, Milne, Fisk and co created a website together dependent solely on donations. Imagine if their fingers were finally free to tap the truth about the corporate media - imagine if they took them apart, utterly, as they are well capable of doing. Do you think people wouldn't support them?
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: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/26/making-blair-eu-president-crazy
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