Posted by The Editors
on November 4, 2009, 9:22 am, in reply to "Rubbish"
: That is utter rubbish. The vast majority of
: articles in the corporate media accept
: climate change as a fact.
I certainly don't agree it's that clear cut even in terms of direct references to climate change. But there are other factors: vast numbers of corporate media articles are in complete denial on climate change and comment as if it doesn't exist and isn't/shouldn't be a factor in people's thinking. You provided a few links, I could provide you with a thousand and one celebrity-penned and other articles promoting holidays to far off places in travel supplements from just this week's press. That's just one category. Then there are reports on the latest high-performance cars and so on... These, combined with the adverts, have a simply incalculable impact on the mindset of readers (and TV viewers of the filmed versions). Andy Rowell of Spinwatch, who has often written for the Guardian, put it particularly well:
"Advertising reassures people that it is OK to buy and consume. It provides a [psychological] safety net to make it acceptable to consume. What makes this so important is the media are often the windows through which we see the world. If we open a paper and see fast cars it makes it acceptable to drive one, if we see cheap flights it makes it acceptable to go on one."
You can't seperate this impact out from the impact of the media science articles, which are often excellent. And you can't separate the corporate media out from the rightwing bloggers, as Monbiot did.
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