Paul Lashmar : News

Tragedies of the fourth estate

The recent crises must be understood in light of systemic pressures on the BBC's resources and the wider struggle to maintain healthy and well funded investigative journalism - an essential part of democratic accountability.

If prophecy can be added to the theatrical tropes of the BBC debacle, I predict it will not be long before the whole sad episode is turned into a major dramatic production. Indeed, the similarities are striking between the BBC scandal and the oldest of all surviving plays, Aeschylus’ tragedy “The Persians”: the bowed empire, the defeated leader, sinister politics, a scapegoat, the hubris, betrayal, incompetence, and recriminations are all there. There’s the chorus of wailing newspaper editors and MPs, many enjoying the disgrace of the BBC enemy. The stench of neo-liberal carnivores, like vultures gathering in a tree near the scene of death, hangs over the scene like the smell of rotting meat.

International Journalism MA

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The MA in International Journalism is designed so that students will have an all round grounding in multiplatform journalism skills and advanced understanding of the context of journalism in the modern world. The course addresses the global expansion in the journalism industry by contextualising different forms of journalistic practice within a framework of technological, political and cultural change. It also sets out to equip students with sufficient generic skills to adapt to future journalism industry developments. View student profiles

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Enquiries

Donna White
School of Arts
Brunel University
Uxbridge, Middlesex
UB8 3PH, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1895 267214
Email: pg-arts-admissions@brunel.ac.uk Programme Convenor: Paul Lashmar

Jstewart from Univ of Glamorgan has produced an excellent summary blog of the conference I spoke at on Wednesday.

Here’s an edited selection: “Are we witnessing a rebirth of investigative journalism, thanks to an armoury of new (web-based) weapons? Is the Wikileaks phenomenon the equivalent, for young journalists, of the Watergate investigation which inspired a previous generation (including the writer of this blog)?

‘Learn to hold a sword before you put on the armour of an investigative journalist’, that was the advice from the former editor of the Sunday Times, Harold Evans, in an interview recorded for a conference this week. His recommendation, to ‘become a reporter first’, represented one side of the discussion at Coventry University, about whether investigative journalism was dead or alive.

The Guardian’s David Leigh, who’s been at the heart of the reporting of the Wikileaks cables, joined the conference via Skype and emphasised the critical contribution of the journalist. ‘Dumping raw and random documents on the web does not change the world. What makes a difference is analysing them and making sense of them.’Making sense of the vast amounts of data now being dumped on the public (by the British government among others), certainly requires new skills and tools.

Paul Lashmar described a range of web-based resources, including Cablesearch which facilitates searching of the Wikileaks cables and Datatracker which makes it possible ‘for investigators to find resources, share information, and learn new “tricks of the trade”.’ He believes Wikileaks has given new energy to investigative journalism. Challenged on whether this really was investigative journalism, he replied: ‘It’s information we can do something with.’To read the blog click here

John Burns' "ministering angels" and "liberators"

By It's not surprising that war journalists who feel endangered would be grateful to the U.S. military for protecting them. Indeed, that's the whole premise of the embed program: having American journalists dependent upon U.S. forces for everything -- from their safety to their sustenance -- will render them grateful and will cause them to identify not as independent journalists but as members (and dependents) of the invading force. However understandable that might be, seeing the invading American army as "ministering angels" and "my liberators, too" cannot but shape and distort one's "reporting" on the war. To read full articleGlenn Greenwald

In this week's New Yorker, Peter Maass -- who was in Iraq covering the war at the time -- examines the iconic, manufactured toppling of the Saddam statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square, an event the American media relentlessly exploited in April, 2003, to propagandize citizens into believing that Iraqis were gleeful over the U.S. invasion and that the war was a smashing success.

Acknowledging that the episode demonstrated that American troops had taken over the center of Baghdad, Maas nonetheless explains that "everything else the toppling was said to represent during repeated replays on television -- victory for America, the end of the war, joy throughout Iraq -- was a disservice to the truth."

Working jointly with ProPublica on this investigation, Maass describes the hidden, indispensable role the U.S. military played in that event -- which has long been known -- though he convincingly argues that the primary culprit in this propaganda effort was the Americans media. That is who did more than anyone to wildly distort this event.

As usual, the Watchdog Press not only happily ingests and trumpets pro-government propaganda, but does so even more enthusiastically and uncritically than government spokespeople themselves.

The reason there's so little government censorship of the press in America is because it's totally unnecessary; why would the government even want to censor a media this compliant and subservient? Recall the derision heaped upon the media even by Bush's own former Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, for being "too deferential" to administration propaganda.

As soon as an entity emerges that provides genuinely adversarial coverage of the U.S. Government -- such as WikiLeaks, whistleblowers, or isolated articles exposing its malfeasance -- the repressive measures come fast and furious. But in general, it's no more necessary for the U.S. Government to censor the American media than it would be for Barack Obama to try to silence Robert Gibbs.

In describing the military-subservient mentality that dominated how most American establishment reporters covered the Saddam-statue incident, Maass includes these highly revealing anecdotes, including one about The New York Times' lead war correspondent, John Burns:

The media have been criticized for accepting the Bush Administration’s claims, in the run-up to the invasion, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The W.M.D. myth, and the media’s embrace of it, encouraged public support for war. The media also failed at Firdos Square, but in this case it was the media, rather than the government, that created the victory myth.

One of the first TV reporters to broadcast from Firdos was David Chater, a correspondent for Sky News, the British satellite channel whose feed from Baghdad was carried by Fox News. (Both channels are owned by News Corp.) Before the marines arrived, Chater had believed, as many journalists did, that his life was at risk from American shells, Iraqi thugs, and looting mobs.

"That’s an amazing sight, isn’t it?" Chater said as the tanks rolled in. "A great relief, a great sight for all the journalists here. . . . The Americans waving to us now -- fantastic, fantastic to see they’re here at last.” Moments later, outside the Palestine, Chater smiled broadly and told one marine, “Bloody good to see you.” Noticing an American flag in another marine’s hands, Chater cheerily said, "Get that flag going!"

Another correspondent, John Burns, of the Times, had similar feelings.

Representing the most prominent American publication, Burns had a particularly hard time with the security thugs who had menaced many journalists at the Palestine. His gratitude toward the marines was explicit. "They were my liberators, too," he later wrote. "They seemed like ministering angels to me."

The happy relief felt by some journalists on the ground was compounded by editors and anchors back home. Primed for triumph, they were ready to latch onto a symbol of what they believed would be a joyous finale to the war.