Blair: Media “Feral Beast”
Three cheers for Tony Blair. In a speech today, he called the British press a “feral beast.” The NYT’s Alan Cowell wonders: “was it justified, as Prime Minister Tony Blair did today, to call the press a ‘feral beast’?” Of course it was, mostly because it is true. The press often treated Blair in a ridiculous manner. Certain British newspapers passionately opposed the Iraq War and did their best to emphasize the mistakes / attacks / deaths as much as possible. If there was good and bad news to report, the bad news was frontpaged, while the good news could be read on page 25, left column, right below “cat eats fish.”
Blair said: “The fear of missing out means today’s media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no one dares miss out.”
Also very true: whenever something happens, the press jumps on it like a couple of jackhals.
Now, before I am sounding like someone who hates the press: the role of the press, in essence, is to report honestly, truthfully and objectively. This means that, on quite some occasions they report things and they ask questions, politicians, especially leaders do not want to be reported and / or asked. If the press is doing her job well, politicians will hate her. When a politician complains about the nature of the press (as long as politicians from all sides complain about it) it is a good sign.
Principally that is.
The real problem is that many journalists do not really keep their prejudices to themselves. And not only prejudice is driving them, they also have to ‘score’ time and time again. Blair:
[T]he media are facing a hugely more intense form of competition than anything they have ever experienced before. They are not the masters of this change but its victims. The result is a media that increasingly and to a dangerous degree is driven by ‘impact.’ Impact is what matters. It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamor, can get noticed. Impact gives competitive edge. Of course, the accuracy of a story counts. But it is secondary to impact.
The media’d better take the criticism to heart. Blair is quite right (except for the ‘victim’ part of course). The media caused this. The media is responsible for it. The media can change it.
6 Responses to “Blair: Media “Feral Beast””
[...] Michael van der Galien over at The Moderate Voice says (found via memeorandum): The real problem is that many journalists do not really keep their [...]
I love how outgoing politicians finally feel free to say things they should have been saying all along. I suppose it goes along with the whole “don’t bite the hand that feeds you” sort of thing though…
Too bad it creates such dysfunctional politicians and bad news.
Even the right wing nutjobs gave up on this meme long ago. There simply is very little good news in Iraq. Blair is just mad he got called on it.
Now he can spend his remaining years trying to wash the blood of more than 500,000 Iraqis from his hands.
Michael – I think the press has been FAR, FAR, FAR too easy on both Blair and Bush. These men made a dreadful mistake on Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands. They have blood on their hands and are not contrite at all for their mistakes. The Japanese have the right idea about what to do when a person makes the kind of monumental mistake these two men did. What should be the consequences when a person makes a mistake that involves many unneccesary deaths. Should we clap them on the back and say” jolly good job? Should they go to prison? Both men wanted the power and prestige that goes with their positions. Yet, both men will pay zero price for their errors. In fact both of them will become extrodinarily wealthy after they leave office. Ordinary people in their jobs, family and community pay prices for mistakes. Not these two.
If I were in their shoes I could not live with myself. If there truly is a G-d I would like to be a fly on the wall when they try to explain to Him/Her about WMD missiles on 45 minute call, drones spraying WMD in the US, non-existent WMD and Al Queda involvement etc.etc.etc. Maybe they will pay the ultimate eternal price.
agree with chris.
Also quite simply blair forgot the old line about ‘fooling some of the people some of the time’.
In his first few years in power blair and his government ran a masterful spin campaign which allowed them to dominate the media and get the longest honeymoon any government ever had.
Unfortunately for Blair after a while the media wised up and started ignoring the spin and started reporting how Blair & Co were attempting to spin. Add in the corruption, dishonesty and outright lying the Blair government fell prone to pretty quickly after coming in to power(and i’m not talking about iraq here but ordinary domestic politics) and the press went to town.
Blair’s reaction is simply one of someone who is both self-righteous and dishonest and who can’t understand why people are saying nasty things about him. What he can’t understand is that the press are doing their job. And that job isn’t simply to print admiring stories about tony blair.
Quite frankly given his track record blair has had a very easy ride from fleet street over the last few years.
The media do have their obvious bias (which other liberals strive to deny, without success), but c’mon, Tony Blair — there always has been a large amount of public dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq, even more than here in the USA, it often has seemed. A reality check on the media is what the public is doing and saying about the same subject at the same time.