SCANDAL OF COPORATE MEDIA MYTHS
Millennium Leia | 09.10.2001 09:25
Propaganda and the distortion of news events has now become one of the most disturbing features of a mainstream media that promotes the views of a powerful elite at the expense of a powerless many. Charges of how protests and actions of civil disobedience have since become the butt of a media regime that emasculates news values and re-writes history for hidden agendas is a serious one – but the response is usually silence. (Part 1)
The BBC, which for so long, has described itself as the bastion of objective journalism, is one of the primary culprits of the new culture of gentle propaganda. Its own coverage of the miners strike in 1984 was the first major example of how the corporate media was colluding with authorities to undermine a protest when it was forced to alter an earlier news bulletin when radically different film coverage was shown on the early ITN news.
The BBC’s account of the miners’ strike on June 18 1984, which later became known as the Battle of Orgreave, was the first major example of news management. It began on the early BBC newsreader Moira Stewart showing an image of a man (one will assume a miner) kicking a policeman and was used as a representation of the day’s events. This image continues to be held in the BBC archives and no doubt will turn up when the state feels the need to congratulate the Thatcher government for undermining the right to picket, protest and strike.
Stewart’s commentary on the early evening BBC news read as follows: ‘Over 5,000 pickets at Orgreave fought a pitched battle with over 2,000 police and the latest tally was 93 arrests, 28 policeman and at least 51 pickets injured. Mr Scargill, who had been directing operations on a two-way radio, was later found sitting on a kerb looking stunned after policeman with riot shields had run by under a hail of stones. Ambulancemen treated his head injury and then helped him to an ambulance which took him to a hospital where he is being kept overnight. He believes, he was hit by a riot shield. A senior police officer says he saw him slip off a bank and hit his head on a sleeper but doesn’t know whether he’d already been injured.’
Note how the BBC first suggests the miners’ leader Arthur Scargill was orchestrating the violence by using a two-way radio (not too dissimilar to suggestions of why protestors use mobile phones). This statement is later contradicted when the news report claims that Scargill was not even alert enough to know whether he had been hit over the head by a police riot shield or if he had conveniently fallen over a bank. The report ends by giving credence to the statement of a police officer making a vague suggestion of how Scargill may have sustained his head injury. This was then followed by a sensationalist eyewitness account by John Thorne who claimed, "The attacks on individual policeman were horrific. The police commanders said it was a marvel that no one was killed."
This rather thorough account of the day’s event was however disputed by ITN reporter Phil Roman. Film footage showed police lines opening to give way to horses galloping into crowds of protesting miners who were merely standing around at this stage. The police then used their batons to take full advantage of the chaos created by the horses charging into the crowd. One image showed a policeman giving continuous blows to a man lying on the floor. Another showed an arrested miner being led away by police. He was heard saying to a camera crew, "You want to get in there and see what they’re doing."
Channel Four newsreader Peter Sissons went one step further at 7pm when questioning the chief constable of South Yorkshire. He said: "Do policeman truncheoning miners to the ground risk disciplinary proceedings?"
The BBC version of events was dramatically revised for the Nine O’ Clock News when describing police behaviour. The report said, ‘The attacks on individual policeman were horrific but the riot squads gave no quarter using their batons liberally.’ "It was a miracle no-one was killed, " said one police commander.
The BBC failure to engage in objective reporting when dealing with politically sensitive issues undermines its role as a democratic medium. Its stance could not be better stated than through the words of former director general of the BBC John Birt who was quoted in The Listener 10 March 1988 as saying, ‘film pictures to go with the words’. This statement is clearly designed to suggest that the news agenda should be formulated in advance. This undermines the very essence of any journalism let alone good journalism.
The Thatcher government first realised the advantage of manufacturing news when it began a libel action to stop the airing of BBC’s Panorama Maggie’s Militant Tendency. The programme alleged that the right wing of the Conservative party had a neo-Nazi contingent but the end result was that 1,000 pages of BBC evidence and 30 eyewitnesses were never seen or heard.
The news reporting skills gained by the illustrious helm of the BBC elite have since grown into a strong force that has engaged in biased reporting of protests on May Day, June 18, Seattle, Prague, Gothenburg and more recently Genoa amongst countless others. This distortion became the catalyst for the formation of Indymedia.
New Labour government is continuing this legacy with a venom. It has abused this process further by attempting to use legislation to undermine dissent be it by anti-capitalists or any protests as well as attempting to remove the right to a jury trial. The reporting of this year’s May Day where the corporate media was planted with various stories of the use of weapons and military-style tactics was yet another example of filming pictures to go with the words. But the images and the reality of the day showed a very different picture. It showed how an embarrassingly costly and overwhelming police presence was overshadowed by a legitimate democratic protest.
Indymedia through its contributors has now become the eyes and ears of people who are no longer prepared to watch or read manufactured news. The thinking viewers and readers now have a voice to challenge and question biased and distorted news reports. We are living in an age where only a quarter of the public who bothered to vote endorsed a New Labour government that wrongfully claims a democratic mandate. Never has a free press without a corporate bias been so necessary and vital. Democracy is under threat – not by the bogeyman called terrorism but the man who uses the legal cloak and claims to represent you in Parliament. Information is the tool until a true democracy emerges out of the ashes of state abuse.
Watch this space for further media scandals when reading, listening, questioning and enjoying!
The BBC’s account of the miners’ strike on June 18 1984, which later became known as the Battle of Orgreave, was the first major example of news management. It began on the early BBC newsreader Moira Stewart showing an image of a man (one will assume a miner) kicking a policeman and was used as a representation of the day’s events. This image continues to be held in the BBC archives and no doubt will turn up when the state feels the need to congratulate the Thatcher government for undermining the right to picket, protest and strike.
Stewart’s commentary on the early evening BBC news read as follows: ‘Over 5,000 pickets at Orgreave fought a pitched battle with over 2,000 police and the latest tally was 93 arrests, 28 policeman and at least 51 pickets injured. Mr Scargill, who had been directing operations on a two-way radio, was later found sitting on a kerb looking stunned after policeman with riot shields had run by under a hail of stones. Ambulancemen treated his head injury and then helped him to an ambulance which took him to a hospital where he is being kept overnight. He believes, he was hit by a riot shield. A senior police officer says he saw him slip off a bank and hit his head on a sleeper but doesn’t know whether he’d already been injured.’
Note how the BBC first suggests the miners’ leader Arthur Scargill was orchestrating the violence by using a two-way radio (not too dissimilar to suggestions of why protestors use mobile phones). This statement is later contradicted when the news report claims that Scargill was not even alert enough to know whether he had been hit over the head by a police riot shield or if he had conveniently fallen over a bank. The report ends by giving credence to the statement of a police officer making a vague suggestion of how Scargill may have sustained his head injury. This was then followed by a sensationalist eyewitness account by John Thorne who claimed, "The attacks on individual policeman were horrific. The police commanders said it was a marvel that no one was killed."
This rather thorough account of the day’s event was however disputed by ITN reporter Phil Roman. Film footage showed police lines opening to give way to horses galloping into crowds of protesting miners who were merely standing around at this stage. The police then used their batons to take full advantage of the chaos created by the horses charging into the crowd. One image showed a policeman giving continuous blows to a man lying on the floor. Another showed an arrested miner being led away by police. He was heard saying to a camera crew, "You want to get in there and see what they’re doing."
Channel Four newsreader Peter Sissons went one step further at 7pm when questioning the chief constable of South Yorkshire. He said: "Do policeman truncheoning miners to the ground risk disciplinary proceedings?"
The BBC version of events was dramatically revised for the Nine O’ Clock News when describing police behaviour. The report said, ‘The attacks on individual policeman were horrific but the riot squads gave no quarter using their batons liberally.’ "It was a miracle no-one was killed, " said one police commander.
The BBC failure to engage in objective reporting when dealing with politically sensitive issues undermines its role as a democratic medium. Its stance could not be better stated than through the words of former director general of the BBC John Birt who was quoted in The Listener 10 March 1988 as saying, ‘film pictures to go with the words’. This statement is clearly designed to suggest that the news agenda should be formulated in advance. This undermines the very essence of any journalism let alone good journalism.
The Thatcher government first realised the advantage of manufacturing news when it began a libel action to stop the airing of BBC’s Panorama Maggie’s Militant Tendency. The programme alleged that the right wing of the Conservative party had a neo-Nazi contingent but the end result was that 1,000 pages of BBC evidence and 30 eyewitnesses were never seen or heard.
The news reporting skills gained by the illustrious helm of the BBC elite have since grown into a strong force that has engaged in biased reporting of protests on May Day, June 18, Seattle, Prague, Gothenburg and more recently Genoa amongst countless others. This distortion became the catalyst for the formation of Indymedia.
New Labour government is continuing this legacy with a venom. It has abused this process further by attempting to use legislation to undermine dissent be it by anti-capitalists or any protests as well as attempting to remove the right to a jury trial. The reporting of this year’s May Day where the corporate media was planted with various stories of the use of weapons and military-style tactics was yet another example of filming pictures to go with the words. But the images and the reality of the day showed a very different picture. It showed how an embarrassingly costly and overwhelming police presence was overshadowed by a legitimate democratic protest.
Indymedia through its contributors has now become the eyes and ears of people who are no longer prepared to watch or read manufactured news. The thinking viewers and readers now have a voice to challenge and question biased and distorted news reports. We are living in an age where only a quarter of the public who bothered to vote endorsed a New Labour government that wrongfully claims a democratic mandate. Never has a free press without a corporate bias been so necessary and vital. Democracy is under threat – not by the bogeyman called terrorism but the man who uses the legal cloak and claims to represent you in Parliament. Information is the tool until a true democracy emerges out of the ashes of state abuse.
Watch this space for further media scandals when reading, listening, questioning and enjoying!
Millennium Leia
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