donderdag 27 september 2007

De Commerciele Massamedia 90

Uit jarenlange ervaring weet ik 1 ding zeker: niets haten journalisten van de commerciele massamedia zo intens als een zelfstandig denkend publiek dat niet meteen elk praatje voor zoete koek slikt. Leest u deze hysterische reacties eens van Britse journalisten bij de commerciele massamedia. En lees vervolgens hoe 1 van hen op zijn nummer wordt gezet door Medialens:

'I, (FASCIST) ROBOT - THE BBC’S GAVIN ESLER LETS RIP
In response to our September 18 alert, ‘The Media Ignore Credible Poll Revealing 1.2 Million Violent Deaths In Iraq,’ BBC Newsnight presenter Gavin Esler sent one Media Lens reader the following response:
“Sorry but this medialens inspired stuff is very sophomoric. The last time I remember a robotic response from people like this was watching film of the nuremberg rallies. I always wondered why people marched to another's beat without any obvious thought from themselves. Perhaps you know the answer, or perhaps you merely intend to keep marching.
“Please don't write to me again in someone else's words. It is so embarrasing for you. Please learn to think for yourself.Gavin”
The polite and thoughtful email that elicited this response was sent by James, a masters student at Durham University. You can read it here: http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2611
The email contains several points that we did not even make in our media alert.
The irony of Esler’s focus on our alleged fascistic tendencies is that it has become very much the reflexive response of irate journalists over the last six years. In his enthusiasm for the war that has since demolished Iraq, the Observer’s Nick Cohen wrote to us on March 15, 2002:
"Dear ServilesI would have more respect for you if you showed the smallest awareness that a tyrant bore some responsibility for tyranny. I appreciate this is difficult for you, it involves coming to terms with complexity and horribly Eurocentric principles such as justice and universality, and truly I share your pain. But your for [sic] sake far more than mine, I'd like to know roughly how many deaths in Iraq are down to Saddam. If you admit that we're in double figures, or more, what should be done about it?Viva Joe Stalin"
The Independent on Sunday’s deputy editor Michael Williams described Media Lens emailers - who were challenging the paper's hypocrisy in ’saving the planet’ while banking the loot from fossil fuel adverts - as "a curmudgeonly lot of puritans, miseries, killjoys, Stalinists and glooms". (Williams, 'A bottle of bubbly for the best way to fly,' Independent on Sunday, January 22, 2006)
Peter Beaumont of the Observer cringed with disgust as he told readers how Media Lens was “a closed and distorting little world”, part of “a curious willy-waving exercise... Think a train spotters' club run by Uncle Joe Stalin." (Beaumont, 'Microscope on Medialens,' The Observer, June 18, 2006; http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1800328,00.html)
The Stalinist zombies were also very much on the march in the mind of BBC producer Adam Curtis, who interpreted our analysis of his series The Century Of The Self as us “stamping [our] little feet” and “trying to whip up an attack of the clones”. (Email to Editors, June 18, 2002)
The “clones”, Esler’s “robotic” respondents, are members of the public who care enough about the devastating impact of corporate media bias to take time out of their day to write to journalists. This in a society that endlessly seeks to persuade us to care only about our immediate self-gratification and our immediate families, while the environment collapses around us, while 2 million people lie dead in Iraq from twelve years of sanctions and four years of illegal occupation.
The Observer editor, Roger Alton, composed this response to one (also) extremely polite emailer:
"Have you just been told to write in by those c*nts at medialens? Don't you have a mind of your own?" (Email forwarded, June 1, 2006 - our censorship)
It could just be that Alton was also the “senior journalist” who anonymously described us to a BBC reporter as “poisonous c*nts". (Posted by BBC journalist David Fuller, Media Lens website, May 15, 2006)'

Lees verder: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php

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