The Media Bogeyman

The Media ‘Bogey­man’

First­ly I am qual­i­fied to write on this top­ic. I did my first nation­al media inter­view in 1996, a full 28 years ago. Since then there is bare­ly a nation­al or local media out­let that I haven’t engaged with. Most of those engage­ments over all of those years have been hos­tile. I was gen­er­al­ly push­ing an indus­tri­al or cam­paign­ing issue to a media which has a sin­gle oppos­ing ide­o­log­i­cal focus and a nar­row own­er­ship that dic­tates con­trol and edi­to­r­i­al out­put and atti­tude. As a result I have been pil­lo­ried, defamed, tar­get­ed and abused. I’ve been ‘Pub­lic Ene­my Num­ber One’, ‘Mis­ter Mis­ery’, I’ve had nation­al news­pa­pers’ doc­tor pho­tographs of me to make me look as evil as pos­si­ble and I’ve had so many agen­das laid at my door that I’d need to build a lengthy dri­ve­way to accom­mo­date them all.

Yet in that 28 years I have nev­er hid­den from my respon­si­bil­i­ty to engage on behalf of what­ev­er cause I was advo­cat­ing at the time. It goes with the ter­ri­to­ry. So I under­stand more than most how the Irish media treat those who refuse to bend a knee to it. I’m ‘qual­i­fied’ to write this from years of raw and dif­fi­cult expe­ri­ence in the field.

So when, last Sat­ur­day, the media were yet again held up as the big bad bogey­man doing down the decent peo­ple I can assess the legit­i­ma­cy of those claims or whether it is sim­ply agen­da dri­ven hyper­bole. The claims on that day were entire­ly uncon­nect­ed on fact but very con­nect­ed in atti­tude and intent. The first claimant that par­tic­u­lar day (and it’s just one day of these con­stant claims) was from the Father of Cathal Crot­ty blam­ing the media for his Son’s trou­bles. The sec­ond was by a left wing blog blam­ing the media bogey­man for Clare Daly los­ing her Euro­pean Par­lia­ment seat. These claims are so ridicu­lous­ly base­less that they would be fun­ny, and in ways they are, if they were not seek­ing to per­pet­u­ate dan­ger­ous agenda’s, one of misog­y­ny and gen­der vio­lence, the oth­er of polit­i­cal pan­der­ing to dan­ger­ous pop­ulism. Whether the abuse is jus­ti­fy­ing a thug using his mil­i­tary train­ing to beat a defence­less young woman or excus­ing a woman Politi­cian not being able to defend her awful vot­ing record on behalf of her elec­tors the agen­da is clear – blame the ‘media bogey­man’ as a deflec­tion from basic unde­ni­able real­i­ty. In oth­er words cre­ate fake news and alter­nate facts to obscure real­i­ty.

In an era of a mas­sive swing to far right extrem­ism, to hate and xeno­pho­bia, even of emer­gent fas­cism, this is immense­ly irre­spon­si­ble. I have long under­stood that the neolib­er­al ide­ol­o­gy which con­trols the media has result­ed in it fail­ing to pro­vide a plu­ral­i­ty of voic­es and opin­ions to assess the issues that impact read­ers, view­ers, lis­ten­ers let alone the poten­tial solu­tions to those issues. I have long under­stood that even where alter­nate views are tol­er­at­ed that they are sub­ject to manip­u­la­tion and con­trol to make them at least unre­al­is­tic and quite often naïve or stu­pid. Solu­tions as sim­ple as build­ing homes to solve a hous­ing cri­sis or hav­ing a sin­gle tier health sys­tem free at the point of use are either not pre­sent­ed at all or, where they are tol­er­at­ed, are pre­sent­ed as impos­si­ble and even naive. There is not a sin­gle show, col­umn or out­let in any nation­al broad­cast or print media where the host or writer is allowed to approach the key issues of the day from an alter­na­tive per­spec­tive. Not a sin­gle one. And this is added to by lazy and delib­er­ate gen­er­al­i­sa­tions and fram­ing such as ‘gen z thinks’ or oth­er mean­ing­less gen­er­al­i­sa­tions about gen­der, age, race as if all these cat­e­gories have the same thoughts, inter­ests and even mate­r­i­al con­di­tions and cir­cum­stances. The inevitable result is a loss of trust in main­stream media and the resul­tant vac­u­um being filled with spin, lies, dis­in­for­ma­tion, con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and all of the resul­tant chaos and threats to social sta­bil­i­ty and even democ­ra­cy itself. So the prob­lems with our media? I get it.  I always have.

But feed­ing it is inher­ent­ly counter-pro­duc­tive and is a trait more akin to total­i­tar­i­an­ism than democ­ra­cy. Scape­goat­ing ‘the media’ is a cyn­i­cal exer­cise in tap­ping into a legit­i­mate broad mis­trust of main­stream today to obscure facts and actions that those pur­su­ing the agen­da are seek­ing to hide. So it is in these two, and many oth­er, instances.

It seems to me that from Moscow to Wash­ing­ton, from Tehran to Bejing, we are liv­ing through a rede­f­i­n­i­tion of the world order where extrem­ist fun­da­men­tal­ism is on the rise and the poi­son­ing of pub­lic dis­course is a key com­po­nent in this total­i­tar­i­an quest. This is hap­pen­ing in an inter­net age where, far from that age herald­ing a promised peri­od of enlight­en­ment, mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion are instead the dom­i­nant dri­vers and con­tent is dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly fun­nelled to us to feed prej­u­dices in a way that is com­plete­ly unreg­u­lat­ed. It is in fact con­trolled by the likes of Musk and Zucker­berg and it is man­aged to feed as much divi­sion as pos­si­ble. Rus­sia and Chi­na, Tik­Tok and Telegram, RT and many more out­lets are con­tribut­ing hand­some­ly to the total­i­tar­i­an pur­suit of hate and divi­sion. And it’s work­ing for them. Stu­pid is the new sexy. So what do we need?

We need a main­stream media that stops chas­ing these trends, a reac­tion which is only mak­ing that media itself more and more irrel­e­vant to more and more peo­ple. We need a media that at last begins to act respon­si­bly in pro­vid­ing a plu­ral­i­ty of opin­ions, solu­tions and con­trib­u­tors. This has been a hope for many of us for a long time now but the more essen­tial it becomes the fur­ther away it gets. The main­stream media itself is entire­ly com­plic­it in its own bur­geon­ing irrel­e­vance and near demise.

That how­ev­er is no excuse to buy into non­sense from the Father of a thug seek­ing to deflect from his Son’s guilt and his deserved pub­lic oppro­bri­um. It is even less so an excuse for those who know bet­ter but are seek­ing to gaslight us into blam­ing the media for a Politi­cian who betrayed her man­date and sub­se­quent­ly deserved­ly lost her seat due to her own actions and inac­tion, her own words, her own vot­ing record and her own hubris. Facts are facts, vot­ing records are vot­ing records, and those who seek to fur­ther dam­age pub­lic dis­course with delib­er­ate dis­in­for­ma­tion are under­min­ing their own democ­ra­cy and aid­ing the growth of extrem­ism.