Thursday, October 02, 2008

Who Makes the Political Weather?

The New Statesman has a lengthy feature called THE WEATHER MAKERS, which asserts that politics is being shaped not by the party leaders, but by a complex network of super-powerful press and media players. Well worth a read.

UPDATE: UK Libertarian blog has an analysis of the NS article HERE.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Everyone in the know has long been aware that the world is actually run by the Illuminati.

Anonymous said...

True, Joe, but then you get events like the Irish rejection of the EU Constitutution (hurrah for them), in the face of all the heavy handedness of the 'illuminati', and it restores your faith. Or it restored mine, anyway.

neil craig said...

The unmentioned elephant in the room in the article is the BBC & ITV. They are far more powerful than any newspapers & can be relied on to support big government solutions to anything whether it be alleged global warming, the economy or bombing foreigners. This, more often than not but not always, works against the Conservatives

Guthrum said...

Flawed arguement from the New Statesman, just because somebody controls the mediated message, it does not follow that those at whom the mediated message is directed will accept that message.

This was dramatised in V for Vendetta when the schoolgirl just said this is 'bollocks', after watching a Government broadcast.

I had the good fortune thirty years ago as part of my degree course to attend a series of lectures on how Governments have manipulated their message over the last one hundred years. Nothing much has changed in thirty years.

The danger comes when the authorised press is in bed with the Government, and fail to read the mood of the people. The French Monarchy got it badly wrong in 1789, and the Russian Monarchy in 1905, when it thought that it had full control over the media. Underground pamphlets circulated in abundance during the English Civil War.

The BBC is virtually a state organ held hostage by the licence fee, The Thunderer now just wimpers, Blogs are the angry observations on a political elite that no longer even pretends to listen.

In the medium term this is politically dangerous.

Anonymous said...

I'm with Guthrum, it's a matter of trust. If we don't trust what we are being told we will either refuse to listen, switch off, or broadcast an alternative text.