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Linking the riots to the media scandal

Prof. Grave Riddle, August 12, 2011.


The technical sense of medium, as something with its own specific
and determining properties (in one version taking absolute priority over
anything actually said or written or shown), has in practice been compatible
with a social sense of media in which the practices and institutions are seen
as agencies for quite other than their primary purposes.
- Raymond Williams, Keywords
Id better start by explaining the above quote and its relation to what I want to talk
about, namely the connection between the riots and the recent media scandal, which
is being pushed out of public short-term memory. To clarify the use of the
word media within our society and the history of this society, Williams distinguishes
three specific senses. The first is that of an intermediary, as in mediation, so we could
say that the media is something we use as an intermediary between us and the events
going on in the world. I assume this is the case because we feel that the world moves
too fast and is too big for us to have any synthesizing grasp on it. The second sense is
that of media as a thing, a sense that is clearer now after buying CDs, Cassettes,
Floppy Disks, etc, as blank media. The third sense is similar to the first sense, but
has a sharper historical determination, in that media is a platform for capitalism to
sell its products, through advertising.
So capitalism has exploited our general acceptance of reality as mediated. Now this
could get very postmodern and wordy at this point, and we could get into discussions
of whether the world exists or not, and so on. But I just wanted to talk about how
much we rely on the media for our individual and socialised (I mean something like
when we share opinions automatically with our immediate social groupings; family,
friends, work) worldviews.
I have been conducting some social research in various pubs and social clubs in the
Midlands area. On the night of the Hackney riots, I found myself watching the BBC
News channel with some locals in a social club in Coventry. I wont repeat some of the
more extreme opinions, but one guy was telling me about how (on a tangent) we are
all affected by the cuts equally, both rich and poor have to make sacrifices, and
furthermore we all have the opportunity to make money and be successful if we
would just work hard. You may be surprised, but I couldnt articulate anything better
than Thats fucking BOLLOCKS, and that was the end of the discussion. I mean, I
dont want to get into this now, but it seems pretty obvious to me and anyone who
has thought carefully about the cuts that this statement is simply false. There is a
fundamental qualitative difference between one family not being able to go on
holiday this year, and another family having to move to another area because their
housing benefit wont cover the rent anymore. And there are a million more

examples. The other point about equality of opportunity is a much harder argument,
but come on, for fucks sake. Who believes this explicit neo-liberal ideology? And this
is the worrying part: this guy who regurgitated this ideology is what you would at one
point in history have called a member of the working-class. To emphatically agree
with my colleague in the last post, this is not a classless society, there has never been
such a thing in all (social) history, anyone who believes this really needs to look more
closely at reality.
And back to the idea of the media as mediating reality. Not only is the media a
vehicle for advertising, it is now the properly integrated ideological vehicle for the
government, whoever that happens to be. This has been proved by the media scandal,
and has already been forgotten by the huge percentage of people who have taken the
media coverage of the riots at face value, and have regurgitated their far-right
reaction/explanations. In fact, the BBC effectively prepared the public for David
Camerons speech, the latter being only a summary of the formers 24hour coverage.
Now it is difficult to say who influences who more, the media or the government. The
media scandal has shown us that the Conservative/New Labour/New Conservative
procession of governments courted the media to ensure their respective victories, but
then once the media have been bought out this in turn makes the media a
propaganda vehicle for the government. I think the real point is that we have seen a
growing consensus between Labour and the Tories, and this consensus is in turn
shared by the media as a whole, and so there isnt really any problem anymore. Its
just a matter of sharing the wealth and power and maintaining some kind of
equilibrium (and hoping no one, as in the public, finds out). What Im talking about
is the old capitalist realism again; we have no ideologies except the ideology of neoliberalism, and as history marches on and our memories get worse (left to rust by bad
education and the diminishing need to be interested in history) an increasing
majority subscribe to this ideology.
As we can see from our previous two posts, we are dealing with an almost
overwhelming negative reaction to the riots. It makes sense, and again, in many ways
rioting is obviously bad. But the give away with this negative reaction having its
roots in ideology for me is the inability to distinguish between disagreeing and
understanding. I mean, I wouldnt burn anything down. Im really not a violent
person. Perhaps when the revolution comes I might get stuck in, but at the moment
Im pretty much a pacifist. But it is possible for me to think that the acts of rioting
that took place are something I wouldnt do, and in many cases went too far, but also
I am able to rationally examine why they happened. It is even possible to both
strongly disagree and empathize with a single act of violence (even when it directly
affects me). In no way does understanding how the rioting is somehow fundamentally
determined by its socio-economic conditions undermine my own personal reaction or
final opinion. David Cameron, and initially the media, although they are now trying
to neutralise the socio-economic position by reification, really didnt want us to be

able to perform this critical distinction. Boris Johnson insisted four times within a
single hour in separate parts of London that we mustnt talk about the socioeconomic factors, because it only justifies criminality.
There is no alternative within the mainstream media to this right-neo-liberal
ideology. The BBC is the worst, and if you are watching live on TV, you can choose
between the BBC or Sky. I think Sky is actually better, in terms of it having more
resources to cover more of the actual live action. During the riots, the actual live
footage was very sparse, and the BBC didnt seem to be willing or able to get its
cameras anywhere near what was actually happening (I realize that cameras were a
target for aggression and theft). From talking to people, friends, family, it seems that
not only is there only really a source of ideologically compromised information, but
also that this source of information is taken at face value, so much so that its opinions
can be regurgitated unmediated in heated conversation as if facts.
My first personal real experience with all this was in connection to the student
protests beginning last year. I was at Millbank, and although I didnt smash anything
or go in the building or throw fire extinguishers at anyone, I was there in solidarity
and also shouting obscenities at Nick Clegg and co. and demanding they vacate their
positions of power immediately. And then I went home and watched BBC News, and
was appalled. Ive never been so inaccurately represented in my life. I felt betrayed
and violated, specifically because it was the BBC who I thought would at least be
impartial. But again, what we got was some knee-jerk preparatory propaganda for the
coming official statements by the Condem government. Never again will I trust the
media, but when reality is mediated in such a fundamental way by BBC News, Sky
News and the papers, its difficult to lose this common sense trust without a similar
experience of betrayal. You can have arguments in pubs which get to the point of real
aggression when you are saying I was there, it wasnt invaded by Anarchist thugs, we
all wanted Millbank to be occupied and it only turned nasty when the police
appeared!, and the other guy is just telling you what the media said. Yes, we could
get into that postmodern argument about the reality itself being mediated by my
experience of the News, and TV and films, etc, but I insist that being there should
have some kind of argumentative weight against the regurgitated media ideology.
Anyway, the government and the media are in this neo-liberal ideology together. This
means that so are a scary majority of the public. The combined influence of the
media, the government and the almost unchallenged economic foundation of
capitalism, which fuels and determines this consensus, is just too powerful. Like Sofia
said, it is dangerous to use the word fascist flippantly, but we should have learnt
how dangerous it is to have this kind of power and influence in combination.

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