freely associating

Seeing as Brian brought up Max Gogarty I wanted to add my two peneth worth to an affair that has been sorely under reported. I mean I basically agree with everyone else that the whole thing was thoroughly heart warming. Still I want to waste a bit more bandwidth doing so.What I liked was the unveiling of the utter hatred that Guardian readers have for Guardian journalists. I suspect (hope) that it reflects a wider hatred people have for media land’s hegemony. One commenter talked about a Ceaucescu moment, the look of shock and disbelief that came over the dictator’s face as the crowd booed his speech was evident in the Guardian journalists’ cynical avoidance and misrepresentation of what was happening. At first I thought they were just trying to fan the flames at poor Maxie’s expense but on reflection I think they just couldn’t comprehend the sheer resentment at their shitty practices of class reproduction. Their response was an attempt to engineer a moral panic about Cyberbullying to deflect attention away from concrete media practice.They seem to have cast loose that particular sinking ship now though and the last couple of pieces on the affair have drawn the focus back to the practices of hegemony. This guy even cites Chomsky.

“Now, a Chomsky might say that if someone’s calling for one aspect of the media to be controlled, odds are they have an interest in the rest of the media; specifically that they want the message from their portion to get through; to swamp, devalue, undermine, counter the uncontrolled message. Chomsky always draws back from claiming an active overarching conspiracy - I do too; I can’t see how an orchestrated conspiracy could pervade every aspect of the mainstream media. Far easier to postulate a series of hidden hands - recruitment that favours those like yourself, training practices - like internships - that favour those with money, commissioning policies that - sorry Max - favour the well connected.”

It’s serendipitous that this storm in a teacup has occurred just as Nick Davies’ book on media practice gets reviewed and the word churnalism enters the vocabulary. Not that this hegemony stuff should be the basis of our politics but of course it has an effect and it’s interesting when its concrete workings get an airing. Not least because we’ve had our own dealings in that world.

keir