Independent Kirklees

Broadcast media like the BBC work slightly differently from the print media in the ways they manipulate our responses to news events. Running orders – the channel’s way to signal its news priorities – are important, as are the emotional reactions of anchors and reporters. Just think of the way Steve Rosenberg, the BBC’s Moscow correspondent, half-stifles a sneer every time he mentions Vladimir Putin by name, or how he struggles to suppress a scoff at any of the Russian president’s statements. Then try to imagine any BBC reporter being allowed to do the same with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, let alone British leader Sir Keir Starmer. Another way to make us invested in some events but not others is by concentrating on what are called “human-interest” stories, taking ordinary individuals and making their troubles and suffering the focus of a piece rather than the usual talking heads. The BBC evening news, for example, has largely stopped reporting on Gaza’s suffering. When it does, reports occur briefly and late in the running order and they usually cover little more than the dry facts. Human-interest stories have been rare. The BBC broke with that trend twice on Tuesday’s News at Ten – in the midst of Israel twice targeting schools that were supposed to be offering shelter to Palestinians already driven from their homes by Israeli bombs. Did the BBC tell the stories of the victims of those air strikes? No, those attacks received the most minimal coverage. The first human-interest story concerned a Ukrainian mother, shown desperately searching for her child in the aftermath of the attack on the Kyiv hospital the previous day, as well as their later reunion. The second human-interest story, this one from Gaza, didn’t concern any of the many victims of the Israeli attacks on the school-shelters. It focused instead – and at great length – on a Palestinian man beaten in Gaza for opposing Hamas rule. In other words, not only did the BBC consider the day-old deaths of Ukrainians far more important news than Israel's killing that day of 29 Palestinian civilians, but it also considered the beating of a man by Hamas as a bigger news priority too. When we are encouraged to care about Palestinians, it is only when the odd one is being brutalised by other Palestinians, not when millions of Palestinians are being brutalised by their occupier, Israel, in their ghetto-prisons. The pattern to this skewing of news priorities, the constant distorted framing of events, is the clue to how we should decipher what the media is trying to achieve, what it is there to do. BBC news coverage all too often looks like it is exploiting any opportunity to highlight violence by Russia, in strict accordance with British foreign policy objectives. Equally, it all too often looks like the BBC is engineering pretexts to ignore or downplay violence by Israel, again in strict accordance with British foreign policy objectives. Ukraine is a key battleground for the West in its battle for global “full-spectrum dominance”, Washington’s central foreign policy strategy in which it positions itself so that no other great power, such as Russia and China, can challenge its control over the planet’s resources. The US and its western allies are ready to risk an entirely unnecessary nuclear war, it seems, to win that battle. Israel, meanwhile, a colonial fortress-state implanted by the West into the oil-rich Middle East, is a critically important ally in realising Washington’s dominance in its region. The Palestinians are the fly in the ointment – and like a fly, they can be swatted away with utter indifference and impunity. With this as our framework, we can understand why the BBC and other media fail so systematically to fulfil their self-professed remits of reporting objectively and disinterestedly, and fail to scrutinise and hold power to account – unless it is the power of an Official Enemy. The truth is the BBC, the Guardian and the rest are nothing more than conduits of state-corporate propaganda, masquerading as news outlets. Until we grasp that, they will continue grooming us. Read more from my latest article Why the news media’s job is to groom us here: jonathan-cook.net/blog/2024-…

Guardian obituary of Greg Philo, an academic whose decades of research revealed how the state-corporate media, especially the BBC, skewed the public's understanding of basic facts about major issues, from industrial relations to Israel-Palestine. His last book, Bad News for Labour, exposed the antisemitism smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn – which the Guardian had been at the forefront of promoting. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Guardian's role is not mentioned in the obit. Obituary here: theguardian.com/media/2024/j…

Sir Keir Starmer’s own political trajectory suggests an uncomfortable truth about international power politics. The closer western leaders move to power, the more pressure they feel to do Washington’s bidding – and that invariably means casting aside principle. Devotion to Israel – and a willingness to abandon the Palestinians to the death camp Gaza has become – has been one of the major conditions of entry into the West’s power club. During the election campaign, Starmer passed that test with flying colours. Which is why he – unlike his predecessor – received an easy ride from the British establishment, including its public relations arm, the corporate media. Ultra-rich donors, including those with close ties to Israel, have been lining up to throw money at Starmer’s Labour party, at the same time as membership numbers have plummeted. The reality is that we live in a world where the powerful pay lip service to human rights and international law, a world where they profess to aid the weak even as they assist in their slaughter. Oppression flourishes, obscured by their empty promises and endless dithering. For three decades, the West has advertised its benevolence and humanitarianism. It has launched invasions and waged wars supposedly to protect the weak and vulnerable – from Kosovo to Ukraine, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Libya. Democracy and women’s rights have supposedly been the West’s watchwords. But in truth, as Gaza demonstrates only too clearly, those claims were a tissue of lies. It was always about treating the world as a giant chessboard, and one where Washington’s right to achieve “full-spectrum dominance” was the driving principle, not protection of the weak. Talk of humanitarianism was there to obscure a deeper, more savage truth: might still makes right. And no one is stronger than the US and those it favours. The Palestinians, unlike Israel, have no weight in the international system. They are denied an army, and have no warplanes. They are denied control over their borders and their airspace. They have no real economy or currency – they are entirely reliant on the goodwill of Israeli financial institutions. They have no freedom to move from their slivers of territory, their ghettoes, unless Israel first agrees. They cannot even stop Israel from bulldozing their homes, or arresting their children in the middle of the night. No one on the international stage, least of all governments in Washington and London, really needs to take account of Palestinian interests. Abusing Palestinians comes at minimal political cost. Protecting them would offer few tangible political gains. Which is precisely why their abuse continues day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade. We live in a world of deceit, hypocrisy and bad faith. Britain’s new prime minister has shown he is already an arch-exponent of those dark political arts. Listen not to what he says, but watch closely what he actually does. More from my latest article Starmer learnt the price of power was support for genocide here: middleeasteye.net/opinion/uk…

Key takeaways from last night's UK election: * A near-record low turnout signals the utter disillusionment with the main political parties. * Despite facing off against the most reviled Tory party in living memory, Starmer's landslide of seats rests on a paltry vote share 5 percentage points below Corbyn's in 2017. * Starmer won chiefly because the right is in disarray, with much of it now fomenting and chasing after a white nationalist vote. * Starmer has sold his lack of a unifying political vision, and his refusal to offer a meaningful end to Tory austerity policies sucking wealth upwards to the rich, as the 'sensible' version of leftwing politics. That will only fuel voter disillusionment, leaving the far-right under Nigel Farage ready to pick up the pieces.

The damage done to Stonehenge is zilch. The cornstarch will wash away in the rain. The damage you're doing to the UK by sticking with Tory austerity; to Gaza by greenlighting the starvation of babies; and to the planet by reneging on your climate pledges is incalculable.