George Monbiot is a wealthy elite-educated corporate journalist who occasionally criticises corporations but, because he is paid to believe that the corporation he works for is magically exempt from the system it is part of, never seriously criticises either The Guardian or the system. He describes himself, oxymoronically, as a ‘professional troublemaker’.

Monbiot represents the left-most limit of the left-most national newspaper in the UK and therefore, in some ways, his views represent the limit of acceptable thought in the British media. For this reason I sent him a few critical tweets, and then, after his disgraceful and hypocritical email to MediaLens, the following email, which he responded to.

I realise this will be one of innumerable emails you receive on the topic of Medialens and being a corporate stooge, and it will be enough if you get past the first few paragraphs, let alone respond, but I have a perspective that is, despite your recent tweet to me, independent of Medialens, and which I would very much like you to consider.

As I have tweeted to you a few times, I can find nothing in your work, or in the work of any other writer at the Guardian, on the corporate agenda and systemic bias of The Guardian: meaning that the corporate, totalitarian structure of the Guardian will, like the corporate structure of any organisation, necessarily rewards and promotes structurally compliant views. 

Totalitarian: a word never applied in the Guardian to the west. We do not live in a society dominated by one totalitarian party or dictator, but dominated by a totalitarian system. It is not politicians, share-holders or illuminati that determine what you or any other journalist at the Guardian writes, but a system which reward people who avoid looking too deeply at that system.

How often, in the Guardian, do we read about the systemic (structurally consistent) approach the west takes to resource-rich countries? about how the ongoing system of corporate-led capitalism underlies the wars of aggression the west (and NATO) have fought over the past hundred years? about the system which impoverishes most members of society and then makes independent community action impossible or illegal? about the system which (overtly or covertly) deprives us of access to the wilderness, darkness, silence, death and collective creativity? about the system which puts professionals in a position of complete dominance over our lives? and, yes, about the system which skews the ‘impartial’ BBC, Independent and Guardian (and Murdoch’s comics of course, but they make scant pretence of impartiality) towards establishment friendly views? I could go on, and on. The players are damned—the politicians, fat-cats and big-wigs—and occasionally some of the individual corporations are accused. But how often does the entire system come under scrutiny, in your writing or in anyone’s in the ‘mainstream’ media?

And by system I do not mean ‘capitalism’, an (occasionally Marxist) umbrella term for consumption and financial greed, which does occasionally get a kicking. I mean the totalitarian system which takes children out of the context of their social lives, imprisons them in school for eight hours a day, forces them to pay attention to matters alien to their natures, buys them off with scores and prizes, funnels them through highly indoctrinating universities (particularly elite universities), and then slots them into corporate / government jobs which all serve, above all, the system. Human beings are capable of educating themselves, feeding themselves, defending themselves, entertaining themselves, healing themselves and housing themselves, yet nowhere on earth, except in the poorest furthest-flung communities (independent from the system) do they do this. Everywhere the full human being has had his powers sold off (privatised in the truest, and most taboo sense of the word) to professionals and corporate producers.

Regardless of what you may think of this, you will surely agree that this kind of analysis and critique is nowhere to be seen in the Guardian. What I am asking is, could it possibly be that the Guardian is part of that system? And that being part of it leads to the hiring and promotion of journalists who will not seriously criticise the system or host organisation, focusing instead on the players, companies and fairly superficial definitions of capitalism?

I do not worship the propaganda model (and have attempted to expand its reach), but the reason that Medialens rightly insist on applying it to the Guardian (and the reason that no Guardian journalist ever does) is not merely that advertising funding, establishment flak, elite training or wealth of journalists, corporate ownership (or corporate-linked trust ownership), dependence on establishment sources and ideological belief in free-markets, democracy and whatnot affect news output, but that these things are all part of a system which the Guardian is also part of and which, by its very nature, cannot promote into positions of responsibility journalists which highlight this system (or which deeply criticise the host organisation), any more than a health organisation can promote doctors who seek to give people the means of curing themselves or who identify the cause of their malaise as work, school and society.

Of course fragments of this kind of critique can occasionally be found in the mainstream press. Writers such as Chomsky, Pilger, Fisk and yourself do get something of a dissenting voice in, but, firstly, these are exceptional and unusual cases; the overwhelming majority of voices in the media are completely conformist, secondly, these writers are enormously popular and help sales, which, given the totally opposite message of the rest of the host organisation, ends up serving the host system, and thirdly they do not criticise their host-organisation and rarely expose the deep system it is part of. Its not so much that I am asking for a single piece of radical insight into the totalitarian structure of the mainstream left-liberal press, because that does pop up, from time to time. Rather I am asking why such radical insight is so vanishingly rare and fragmented, and why you never seriously question this, preferring instead to lay into the easy targets that Murdoch and co offer.

There are a few controversial statements in this mail. I will be happy to go into detail if you find the time to respond.

Yours kindly,

Darren Allen

p.s. As I tweeted to you before, I urge to you look at how one of your bosses, Michael White, handled my questions about this topic.



GM’s reply to me

Hi Darren,

Thanks for this. I don't have time to respond to all of it. But v briefly:

"I can find nothing in your work, or in the work of any other writer at the Guardian, on the corporate agenda and +systemic+ bias of The Guardian"

That could be because I regard this perception as mistaken. There's a whole bunch of us working independently for the Guardian (I go into the building once or twice a year) who never get a steer from anyone about what we should be writing and what line we should take. I have used the Guardian as a platform for continued attacks on corporate power and the system of totalitarian capitalism.

And yes, I have used that term. See, for example, here, here and here. There are plenty more.

Try re-examining your claims in the light of what the Guardian actually does publish, rather than what you imagine it publishes.

With best wishes,

George


My response

Dear George,

Thank you for replying. Its nice to see you do use the word totalitarian, but it seems we are applying that word to different things as you seem to believe that the Guardian is magically exempt from the system. You say this:

That could be because I regard this perception as mistaken. There's a whole bunch of us working independently for the Guardian (I go into the building once or twice a year) who never get a steer from anyone about what we should be writing and what line we should take. I have used the Guardian as a platform for continued attacks on corporate power and the system of totalitarian capitalism.

As I mentioned in my mail (and as Chomsky and Medialens regularly point out), the system works by only employing and promoting people who will not look too deeply into it*. You don’t have to get a steer from anyone when you wouldn’t be where you are if you connected your host-organisation to totalitarianism, if you began exploring how its corporate ties, its elite-educated journalists, its profit-motive, its advertising funding, its ideological commitments etc shape the hiring and promoting of journalists and if you seriously asked not why radical structural insight never appears in your paper (as it obviously does, along with, I am happy to see, the word totalitarian), but 1) why it is vanishingly rare 2) why the middle class liberal press almost completely limits its criticisms to consumerism, individual politicians, manufacture and corporations without systematically connecting it to the entire middle class professional** system and 3) why it is never self [meaning, in your case Guardian], directed... if you wrote about all that, you’d have about as much chance of getting hired by the Guardian as I have.

I hope you are able to find time to respond to this point.

All the best,

Darren Allen


* I’d say that you represent the outer radical limit of the Guardian.

** Meaning education, law, health and, yes, left-liberal journalism.


George did not respond to this. MediaLens, however, responded to George.