More News Not Fit To Print

Sometimes a story isn’t news. It might be important and insightful, even titillating. But there isn’t the time or space for reporters to tell it. Oddly enough, this often applies when stories revolve around them.

How else to interpret the silence when a former director general of the BBC says journalists are collectively “part of the problem” with how we’re governed?

“The evidence that our democracy is failing is overwhelming,” Greg Dyke told Liberal Democrat conference-goers this weekend, “yet those with the biggest interest in sustaining the current system – the Westminster village, the media and particularly the political parties, including this one – are the groups most in denial about what is really happening.”

They duly proved his point. The host of the meeting where he spoke, Liberal Vision, was a website run by the party’s ex-spokesman. It made no mention of Mr Dyke’s remarks. Neither did a single national newspaper, or broadcaster, with the exception of his old employer, the BBC, which got its retaliation in early by quoting itself as saying “its coverage was taken extremely seriously and was highly regarded by the public” and thus couldn’t possibly be part of Mr Dyke’s “Westminster conspiracy”.

To the corporation’s credit, however, it did at least report a string of quotes. Mr Dyke, who was fired in a fight with the government over its false Iraqi intelligence, said: “I tried and failed to get the problem properly discussed when I was at the BBC and I was stopped, interestingly, by a combination of the politicos on the board of governors,” plus “the Labour cabinet” and “the political journalists at the BBC.”

The former ought to come as little surprise. The BBC’s top executives are appointed by the government of the day. Like his chairman, Gavyn Davies, Mr Dyke used to be a donor to the Labour Party. As the corporation’s founder, Lord Reith, observed of the establishment: “They know they can trust us not to be really impartial.”

This is not the mantra managers usually spout. “The absolute first building block keystone of the BBC,” argues the current director general, Mark Thompson, “is delivering impartial, unbiased news.” In practice something different happens.

Media ineptitude? We’ve been framed

As views that frame stories shape their message, “free market” and “growth” propagandists control the news

[A version of this article appears in the current edition of the British Journalism Review. Owing to an editing error, which I didn't have the opportunity to review, one of the quotations has been misattributed in print. The reference to facts "being fixed around the policy" of invading Iraq was made by the head of MI6, not MI5, as the print edition states. A formal correction is pending.]

By Daniel Simpson

When G20 leaders met in London this spring, it seemed there was only one question to ask: could they save the world? Whether you take your news salmon-tinted from the Financial Times, prefer it balanced by the BBC, or glean the basics by osmosis via The Sun, the story is the same. Understandable, perhaps, given the scale of global crises, and the lack of bright ideas on how to respond, at least among powerful G20 governments.

Their London summit solution, a $1.1 trillion bailout for the moribund financial system, was as preordained as the media chorus that hailed it, give or take the odd caveat. After two days of photo opportunities, the G20 agreed to pump less money into the International Monetary Fund than they spent last year on weapons. But to assuage journalistic doubts, their mantra was simple. The final communiqué made a dozen references to “restoring”, “supporting” or “sustaining” growth, apparently oblivious to the prospects of success, not to mention the hideous consequences. According to the philosopher John Gray: “The project of promoting maximal economic growth is, perhaps, the most vulgar ideal ever put before suffering humankind.” It is also the most suicidal. Because of the way we live, more growth means consuming more oil, coal and gas, and clogging the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, which stays there for a century, heating it up. Three days before the summit, an FT headline screamed: “Drive for growth ‘will ruin planet.’” This revelation was buried in the news-in-brief section. And it duly vanished down the memory hole, despite originating from government advisers, whose views are generally used to frame the news.