Government in the UK: of the media, for the media, by the media.

The role of the media in Britain has been discussed to death in recent times. The hacking scandal and the long list of celebrities and ordinary families that were the victim to the Murdoch (and other) press' casual attitude to ethics and the law has been the ironic focus of the media itself. Navel-gazing has become the British media's recent obsession.

But this also brings to the surface the role that the Murdoch press and the media in general have in the decision-making process at the governmental level. The UK is not alone in the world in having an influential media, and this is in so many ways a great service to democracy.

But there is also a darker side to this. I wrote a short while ago about "Demarchy", and in that article I talked about something called "Ochliocracy", more commonly called mob rule. Mob rule is also another way of talking about decision-making by interest groups; when governments make their decisions simply based on the reaction to pressures by groups of people with special interests.
In the modern world this includes lobbyists and corporate interests, but in ancient and mediaeval times this was any number of periodic bouts of public hysteria, often engineered by populist demagogues eager for power themselves; in the Roman Empire, this was often how Emperors rose and fell from power; in mediaeval Italy, this was how city-states like Florence changed government; in modern Italy, it was how populist demagogues like Silvio Berlusconi were able to stay in power for so long while allowing the country to fall into financial ruin.

This is how riots start; in a dysfunctional society, this is how government policy is made. The modern term that spin doctors call it is "policy-on-the-hoof", but for successive British governments over the last twenty years, it was one way of trying to maintain their popularity.
The most important way that people in modern society get information is through the media; in Britain, this means news media like "The Sun" and "The Daily Mail"; the first is the most popular tabloid in the country, the second is the most popular "middlebrow" newpaper. As a result, much of the British public obtain their information from these newspapers. The newspapers would reply that no-one is forcing them to buy them, and that whatever viewpoints they share must therefore be reflected by their readers; this may be true.
But there is also another angle to this; by thinking about if the amount of column inches these newspapers spend on dicussing certain issues (such as violent crime, moral issues, celebrity intrigue, Europe, and so on) is a reflection of the relative concerns of their readers. By this measure, what comes first: the chicken or the egg? Do the media spend so many column inches on violent crime to reflect their readers' concerns, or are the readers so concerned about violent crime because they read about it so much in the media? Or is it a combination of both?

What has been proven by surveys is that compared to issues such as the economy and other immediate concerns, Europe is not a major issue for the average person on the street. They do not spend sleepless nights thinking about what bureaucrats in Brussels are doing.
It seems that the editors and journalists of "The Sun" and "The Daily Mail" do, though. Which brings us back to the point: where do people get their points of views from? If the media are there to reflect the public's concerns, why do some of them spend so many column inches talking about things that the average person has been proven not to be so concerned about?
"The Sun" and "The Daily Mail" are the two most Euro-sceptic newspapers in the country; they are also the two most popular. Of course the editors of these newspapers are entitled to their opinion, but I seriously wonder if their readers would be quite so sceptical of the EU if the editors of those newspapers spent a little more time focusing on what people can do to improve the British economy and less time on how bad the EU is for Britain.
There is a famous quote from Hitler: "If you repeat the lie long enough, people will believe it as truth". The problem with some sections of the media is that their journalists spend too much time on opinionated (and factually inaccurate or misleading) comment, and not enough on furnishing their readers with the ammunition to allow them to think for themselves. But it would be naive to think that this would change: newspapers are a business, after all.

So this means that news coverage by the likes of "The Sun" and "The Daily Mail" is fuelled by nothing more than profit. In theory (according to free-market proponents), this should mean that newspapers will be in a competition to tell the most factually-enlightening stories. Ha-ha, don't count on it. Newspapers are more often in a competition to sell stories that will either entertain or reinforce to people what they already think. In other words, market forces here act more as a dumbing-down mechanism rather than a way to encourage the spread of information. Who decides what "news" is? The newspapers, of course. In an open society, it is practically impossible to ignore what's happening in the world completely; in other other hand, media outlets are perfectly free to prioritise as they wish.
By "prioritising", newspapers like "The Sun" and "The Daily Mail" are deciding for their readers what is important and what is not, which brings us back to their reply that people are perfectly free to choose another newspaper if they don't like what they read.
But that's a simplistic argument. There are not an infinite number of newspapers, and it is true that most people in the UK, like everywhere else, buy it more for casual entertainment. There's nothing wrong with that, as much as those who would consider themselves "intellectual" might think so: it's human nature.

These newspapers know this, of course: that's how they remain so successful. But this media "prioritisation" also has an effect on government. The term "moral panic" is as old as the hills, and one about paedophiles was famously engineered by the tabloids ten years ago or so. The panic about Europe has been in the media for around twenty years, and has been consistently engineered by these same two newspapers. As a result, successive governments have been eager to pander and appease these sentiments.
We saw the partial result of that on Friday morning. Not wishing to seem "weak" on Europe, and eager for good headlines with the key newspapers, David Cameron pandered to the worst elements of the popular media. This is what happens when you allow the narrow interests of a few newspaper editors to dominate the affairs of government. This is the meaning of "Ochliocracy": the subversion of the democratic model through the media, moving from one moral panic to the next.
Alastair Campbell once described "The Daily Mail" as the worst aspects of British society masquerading as the best. In that sense, at least "The Sun" has the decency to be honest about its motives.

Crisis? It's the worst crisis since the last crisis...

Since the start of the month the headlines have been full of crises. Greek debt default; then the risk of Italian debt default; now the risk American debt default. In other words, the civilised world is running on default settings.
Funny that. Except it isn't. Or maybe it is. It depends on your perspective. And that's something which some in the media have long lost sight of.

Speaking of the media, the perspective of the media has been turned on its head in the UK recently. The revelations about the extent of routinely illegal practises at News International, and the emperor-without-his-clothes grilling of Rupert Murdoch and his heir apparent infront of MPs, make for fine 24-hour media saturation.
Which is all quite ironic in a couple of ways. First of all, this whole scandal reeks of Watergate-style corruption at the highest level, but with a 21st century twist. Whereas Watergate was all about abuse of power and contempt of the law by government in the USA, in this case we have abuse of power and comtempt of law by a private company in the UK that treats government, the police and the lives of innocents (and even the dead) as a plaything of the rich and powerful.

Perhaps nothing much changes in politics after all, but what is doubly ironic is the hypocrisy of the current media circus over the News International scandal is that there is strong evidence to suggest that some of the other UK papers were doing the exact same thing for years - hacking into phones to get headlines.
For example, hearing a recent Alistair Campbell interview, he quoted Tony Blair as describing the Daily Mail as "representing the worst of British values masquerading as the best". That sums up much of what is wrong with the British popular print media. The Daily Mirror are also being investigated.

As a reminder, this is the third great "institutional crisis" to hit the UK in the last few years. The financial crisis showed how bankrupt the banking system was (and still is, morally as well as financially). Then the expenses scandal showed how British politicians made massive claims from public expense to pay for anything from cleaning their moats to buying pornography (!). That they did so partly because the media also enjoyed trying to demean MPs as being "over-paid" (inspite of British MPs being a mocked profession, they earn less than headmasters or doctors in the UK), leaving them with little other option for everyday expenses.

But back to current crises. "Default" is the buzz word this month, because the Greeks, Italians and Americans are all talking about it. They said that a Greek default would bring down the Euro; so the other Europeans bailed them out. Although no-one seems to knows how many bailouts would be enough. Strange, and also shows how pointless economic theory is when no numbers make sense. The Italians were terrified that they might have to default too (which would be more serious as they contribute far more to the EU than marginal Greece), so they made massive spending cuts to stave off the panic. Then there is America, the empire of commerce to the world. Over there, the President is trying his best to stave off a default (a previously unthinkable idea, which everyone think might have apocalyptic consequences) while the opposition Republicans seem hell-bent on destroying their country's economic credibility and standing in the world simply because they don't feel like being helpful.

Then there is the famine in the Horn of Africa, a heatwave in America (though the latter hardly compares in human misery to the former), home-grown terrorism (the horrific attacks in Oslo)...and that just about puts us up to date, more or less.

So crises are happening every month. Though, we only know this because it's reported in the media. And the media have to choose what they deem "newsworthy" and what isn't. So maybe there are crises we don't know about because they're not that high up on the newslist - such as the continually melting ice caps in the North Pole, continually rising food prices, and so on.

Which kind of puts us nicely full circle. Looking at the media, and default settings. Maybe the media should focus more on its "default" setting: telling the truth, telling the facts; like good old-fashioned investigation that revealed the Watergate scandal, rather than the systematic, illegal, misuse of its influence to promote rumour and character assassination for its own ends.

This vicious media culture in the UK has taken many years to germinate, but has grown into a real cancer in the last ten to fifteen years; more or less coinciding with Tony Blair's rise to power as Labour leader in 1994, and his subsequent genuflecting to the icon of sanctimony, St. Rupert of Murdoch.
That's the other, final, irony about the media scandal that grows day by day. After the years of virtual terror that the Murdoch press put into British politicians and even the police, when thrust into the cold light of day, the eighty-year-old Murdoch looked a strange figure; seemingly out of touch, sometimes hesitant, at one moment claiming omnipotence over his empire, while at another time claiming ignorance of the activities of his senior staff. His son, James, seemed much sharper, but also was pleading ignorance. Which begs the question: who is really in charge here? Or, like many multinational corporations, is it a multi-headed hydra that is out of control?
Time will tell; it will also tell us how far the rabbit hole really goes into this particular "crisis".