davethegrinch.net

Dave says:

Even though I’m comfortably enveloped by the house in which I grew up, firmly entrenched in the suburbs of my youth, warmly ensconced in the Home Counties of England, that is no excuse to be lax in my observations of the weird and wonderful cultures of the world even if it is one I was once part of. This is the longest consecutive period I’ve spent in the UK since I climbed aboard the metaphorical tramp steamer ten years previous destined for the New World. Things have changed and not all for the best. In true British tabloid style, I now present part one of a multi part expose of the sordid and scandalous life of a once great nation.

Part one: The Press
Britain has a long and proud tradition of producing the world’s best tabloid newspapers. Not the US National Enquirer style of absurd alien landing fantasy headlines but a litany of nasty career and life destroying exposes and general muck raking libel inducing four page special features. They also have a long and proud tradition of putting topless girls on page 3 - for the uninitiated, quite a surprise over morning tea. These papers were for the working class. Those who considered themselves middle class would take the Daily Mail or Daily Express: no bouncing breasts but plenty of sport and lifestyle features. The upper classes would attempt to convince themselves, the newsagent who sold them their daily newspaper and their fellow commuters of their superior intellect by slogging through the dry but world renowned The Times, The Observer or The Independent. But all that has changed. The Times, Observer and Independent are no longer broadsheet newspapers and with that they also removed their editorial remit for broad news. They wandered aimlessly into the mostly harmless Daily Mail and Daily Express territory just as the Mail and Express decided their new middle class was, in fact, more interested in boobs than news. It’s unclear to me if the British public decided to dispense with quality journalism or if it was the other way round.

However, my issue is not with the standard of journalism but rather with its ability to very subtly brainwash its readership. The lower tiers of the British press have always considered themselves the peoples’ champion, the voice of the weak and downtrodden but when that editorial style creeps upwards into the ‘qualities’ (as they were once known) the public is unable to separate subjective editorial content from objective reportage - it all becomes just ‘news’ and once it’s news it is fact and therefore the truth. Objective reporting doesn’t sell, it’s boring, but hyperbole does and the more hyperbole that is subtly inserted the more it becomes ‘news’ and the easier it becomes for the publisher to exert their political leanings onto their readership. Throw in a couple of stories about sex, give away free DVD’s with your paper and you have the perfect combination of winning the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of the general public. What corporation could resist controlling the political and cultural leanings of their customers as well as turning a handsome profit?Here’s the frontpage headline and subhead from The Daily Mail (Saturday June 16 2007):
Divided Kingdom
Now prescriptions join the list of benefits free to Scots but not to the English (who, guess what, get the £50m bill)
this story is continued on page 15 under the headline:
The New ApartheidConsidering Scotland is part of The United Kingdom that’s a pretty inflammatory and exaggerated headline (the story is no better). Headlines of affairs that affect Britain involving ‘non-friendly’ countries are fantastic exercises in marginally politically correct xenophobia.Two days later The Daily Mail ran a story detailing a report that accused the BBC of liberal bias. The only attributable quote in the whole piece (which ran to about a third of the length of the entire story) was from the owner of the very same newspaper expressing his disgust at the BBC and complaining the nobody was representing the “conservatives with a small ‘c’”. Again, the agenda of the media moguls finds it’s way into apparently objective reporting. It is just this dangerous trend in journalism that worries me and should also worry the ordinary Brit too.

So, why am I standing on my soapbox shouting at you about this? As shall be seen in my next couple of topics, Britain is fast becoming a less tolerant, more introverted and less informed country and the media is actively encouraging this by a combination of exaggeration and nationalism. The country may be spiraling downwards towards a form of extremism that is malevolent yet culturally accepted. The kind of centrist-extremism the religious right in the United States have spent the last twenty five years perfecting resulting in 40% of the American public now believing their policies to be acceptable. Now, if you think my remarks are hyperbole I dare you to read part two.

Part two: Politics
The European Union is ever expanding and over the the last few years the expansion has reached the former Eastern Block countries. Not surprisingly tens of thousands of impoverished Eastern Europeans have moved west for a better life. And, also not surprisingly, they will do the jobs that the Western Europeans are reticent to do and at a much reduced wage. This is the same situation as the southern US states experience with Mexican immigrants except within EU countries this is legal and therefore the new immigrants are also entitled to their share of public programs such as education and health care. Britain is no stranger to immigration. Back in the 1960’s they opened their doors to the citizens of their former colonies and there was a massive influx of West Indians, Indians and Pakistanis. In a BBC poll conducted this week, 68% of Britains believe there are too many immigrants in the UK and 48% believe the immigrants are preventing Britons from receiving their rightful share of public health care and benefits. But it’s not just the Eastern Europeans causing concern. The Muslim youth of those original immigrants from the 1960’s (now 2nd or 3rd generation British) are becoming more and more militant as they feel simultaneously isolated from both their roots and British culture. The threat of domestic terrorism looms large. And all the while the press become increasingly nationalistic as they encourage hostility from the British public on issues such as tax money being spent on translation services for government services or multi-culture/multi-faith public programs. Racism is on the rise. Some people I’ve spoken to have used, at best, the third person pronoun ‘them’ when discussing the issue but more often band around names that are less than flattering of either the immigrants or themselves. However, the rhetoric is just thinly veiled newspaper headlines, an opinion decided upon from reading the headline of that morning’s paper that reveals less about the intellect of the speaker and more about the power and danger of the press in the UK.

This becomes even more apparent when talking to people about the impending departure of Tony Blair. After ten years in power, this week sees him step down from his Prime Ministerial post. Blair is nationally unpopular but when I ask people why they are pleased to see him go they all say the same thing - they blame his involvement of the UK in Iraq. Of the dozen or so people I asked, balanced arguments were thin on the ground yet everyone said the same phrase: “He’s just Bush’s lapdog”. How could so many people not only be of the same opinion but use the same phrase to describe it? Well, last year the British printed media went on a Blair jihad and made “Bush’s Lapdog” a national phrase. (Google ‘bush’s lapdog’ if you don’t believe me). Now, millions of people are using a newspaper headline as a reason to force their most successful Prime Minister since Winston Churchill to step down.

Of course, Nationalism is nothing new to the once greatest empire in the history of mankind. But the sun set on the British Empire in 1946 and there is no room in today’s world for such beliefs. The American media does nationalism better than anyone else. When was the last time you saw the US media show images of Old Glory or an effigy of Bush being burnt? Do you know how many unfortunate Iraqis have been killed since the US invasion? No, but I bet you know how many Americans have. It would be terrible if the UK followed the US towards this “Made in the USA” form of journalism.

So, that’s it for now. Not very cheery I’m afraid but then reading a story about us visiting Big Ben wouldn’t give you anything to think about and how can you live vicariously through us without spending some time considering the poverty in Nepal, the horrors of begging in India or the rise of media inspired nationalism in the UK? I’ll try and make you laugh in the next post, I promise.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 1:40 am and is filed under Europe, Global Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.