"Worse than they've ever been"
Speaking to The Canary, Robinson said: Things are actually much worse than they've ever been at any point. We have a crisis.
The co-director of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies argued that's largely because of a combination of two points:
- Academics Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman's propaganda model is more relevant than ever.
- There is no longer any serious mainstream media challenge to establishment warmongering.
Chomsky and Herman's propaganda model views the corporate media through five filters. These are:
- Concentration of media ownership among the powerful.
- Compromising funding sources, such as advertising.
- A mutually beneficial relationship between journalists and their official sources (whom they rely on for stories).
- Flak (attacks from pro-establishment institutions or individuals for deviating from the official narrative).
- A culture of fearmongering, for example about foreign states or the 'war on terror'.
"Those filters are now more powerful"
Chomsky and Herman first published the propaganda model in 1988. But Robinson, chair in politics, society and political journalism at Sheffield University, said the filters have only got worse today:
Those filters are more powerful than they have been in the past... concentration of ownership... has increased and increased over the years. Reliance upon sources certainly continued... You also have this powerful effect... certainly in the last 20 years of this increasing financial insecurity in the mainstream media, which has created a situation where journalists have become ever more risk averse and... ever more reliant on public relations.Robinson then pointed to the late stage of the Vietnam War, insisting there was more dissent from mainstream journalists at that time. He contrasted that to 2019:
The mainstream media... have always been outgunned by the PR people. But that's more the case today than it ever has been in the past:... This increasing use and reliance on material which is generated by public relations whether it's from government or big business or other powerful actors.
We've had 17 or 18 years of... regime change war now, which the West has been instigating or fuelling... in conflicts from Afghanistan through to Iraq... It's difficult to find anywhere in the mainstream media a serious challenge to what is a very, very obvious war policy which has been pursued certainly since 9/11.The Guardian is just as bad
Robinson said outlets like the Guardian are only part of the problem. He echoed journalist John Pilger's wider point about the media when saying:
The Guardian has always been a mouthpiece for the establishmentHe also said that the establishment is trying to "regain control through almost direct censorship", citing Facebook gaming its algorithms and banning dissident political pages. Indeed, former White House cybersecurity director Nathaniel Gleicher recently oversaw the censorship of hundreds of Facebook pages. An array of these pages criticise governments and 'the establishment'.
The fightback
Because of the level of propaganda, Robinson championed the role of independent media:
The only place you hear people speaking truth to power now is in the alternative, independent media start-ups such as The Canary.As well as independent media, it is up to citizens to think critically about official narratives. We must fight internet censorship and ensure that free discussion can continue in online spaces. Together we can overcome the propaganda of the mainstream media which, Robinson says, is at its worst point in history.
I was pleased to see the comments about PR. PR is the same as the NHS stunt above. BBC started a series ten-odd years ago starring Stephen Fry and called 'Absolute Power' in which Fry acts as a PR expert and sells the creation of his own reality in substitution for what had really happened in the world - fluent lying for great profit. It was so precisely what passes for news these days in the West that BBC was obliged to take the series off air after only two seasons.
A third thing that should be addressed is the publication of changes of ownership. When the Guardian went bankrupt after 2008 it was picked-up by some banking types and quietly carried on as though it was still the socially responsible paper that reported Peterloo. The new owners have been able to castigate Assange and Wikileaks and to promote right-wing politics and people have become confused and doubtful. That requires correction.
All these lying people in positions of authority have been able to publish their nonsense because of the collapse of skill and ability in the journalism trade. I am told that many of the capable news reporters have left the MSM to become independent purveyors on digital sites but there remain the untutored youths for whom the job is a game. They need help. We should insist they receive it. It would likely achieve the recommendations of Leveson's enquiry in a way that answers the fears of those who mistrust government.