{"id":1653,"date":"2015-03-03T13:09:09","date_gmt":"2015-03-03T11:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=1653"},"modified":"2015-03-03T15:53:50","modified_gmt":"2015-03-03T13:53:50","slug":"hsbc-and-the-sham-of-guardians-scott-trust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2015-03-03\/hsbc-and-the-sham-of-guardians-scott-trust\/","title":{"rendered":"HSBC and the sham of Guardian’s Scott Trust"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I\u00a0and others\u00a0accuse\u00a0the British media of systematic and consistent bias in favour of corporate\u00a0power, and point out that the media\u00a0is structurally part of that system of corporate power, we typically\u00a0receive emails from readers arguing\u00a0that not all parts of the media are subject to such pressures. Britain, we are told, is privileged to have two “liberal” media outlets, the BBC and Guardian, that are seen either as neutral or as a\u00a0leftwing counterbalance to the rightwing agenda of the rest of the media.<\/p>\n

Occasionally, it is also claimed\u00a0that Britain’s media regulator, Ofcom, is there to prevent bias, ensuring that minimum standards of\u00a0objectivity are maintained in news coverage.<\/p>\n

Here are three illuminating\u00a0articles and a short video that should help to dispel any such illusions about a\u00a0healthy and diverse\u00a0British media. Rather, the media in the UK is embedded in\u00a0the corporate world, and therefore incapable of fulfilling\u00a0its self-declared role as watchdog against abuses by the powerful.<\/p>\n

The first article, by Glenn Greenwald<\/a>, shows how Ofcom is just another tool of the British state to intimidate and exclude any voices, such as broadcasters RT and Iran’s PressTV, that might provide a narrative that challenges the official London-Washington consensus\u00a0on\u00a0world events. Ofcom has just announced yet another investigation of RT for “bias”. RT is not even allowed to discuss the case while it is being investigated. Greenwald points out:<\/p>\n

All of this underscores the propagandistic purpose of touting \u201cmedia objectivity\u201d versus \u201cbias.\u201d The former simply does not exist. Revealingly, it is British journalists themselves who are most vocal in demanding that Her Majesty\u2019s Government bar RT from broadcasting on \u201cbias\u201d grounds: fathom how authoritarian a society must be if it gets its journalists to play the leading role in demanding that the state ban (or imprison) journalists it dislikes. So notably, the most vocal among the anti-RT crowd on the ground that it spreads lies and propaganda \u2014 such as Nick Cohen [of the Observer] and Oliver Kamm [of the London Times] \u2014 were also the most aggressive peddlers of the pro-U.K.-government conspiracy theories and lies that led to the Iraq War. …<\/p>\n

This is about nothing more than ensuring that Western citizens are not exposed to the side of The Enemy. … Western countries love to depict citizens of their long list of adversaries as being propagandized \u2014 whether it be China, Iran, Russia, North Korea, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Syria, Venezuela, Ecuador, etc. etc. \u2014 even as they themselves work in all sorts of ways to ban their own citizens from exposure to those adversaries\u2019 views.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The second, by Seumas Milne<\/a>, reviews a new book offering\u00a0a history of the BBC through the difficult years when Margaret Thatcher waged a relentless assault against its supposed left-wing politics. Milne notes that in the years before Thatcher’s interference the BBC’s programming was in some\u00a0ways more liberal\u00a0than it is today, but even so:<\/p>\n

The corporation was always an establishment institution, deeply embedded in the security state and subject to direct government control in an emergency. The sexism at the BBC, as Seaton recounts, was appalling, as in many other workplaces, and ethnic diversity non-existent. Around 40% of the staff were vetted by MI5: those who failed the \u201cpolitical reliability\u201d test, often for the mildest of radical connections, were blacklisted \u2013 their personnel files marked with the symbol of a Christmas tree. To give a flavour of the relationship, one broadcaster still well-known today had to be brought home from a foreign posting in the 1980s after BBC management became alarmed that his relationship with MI6 was becoming too overt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thatcher lost no time in sacking the BBC’s\u00a0director-general, Milne’s father, and bringing into the BBC the new corporate boardroom culture she was cultivating throughout the economy. With it, the BBC became even more politically obedient than it already was:<\/p>\n

Once the government had demonstrated it could not only manipulate the licence fee to ensure BBC compliance, but summarily dispatch its leadership at barely one remove, what BBC director general or chair would do anything but bend the knee or jump ship? That is what happened in 2004, after a report by a tame judge into the death of the weapons expert David Kelly and BBC reporting of government deceit over the Iraq war led not to the fall of ministers or officials \u2013 but the resignation of the chairman and director general of the BBC. …<\/p>\n

Two decades on, in a symbolic mark of its creeping corporate capture, the latest BBC trust chair, Rona Fairhead, has become embroiled in the tax dodging scandal that has engulfed HSBC, of which she is also a non-executive director.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Finally, Nafeez Ahmed, an investigative reporter fired\u00a0by the Guardian for his work exposing the connection between Israel’s attacks on\u00a0Gaza and its interests in Gaza’s natural resources, exposes the sham of the Guardian’s Scott Trust.<\/p>\n

In the first 12 mins of the video below, he talks to RT’s Going Underground about the Trust and the reasons for his sacking \u2013 maybe this interview will offer Ofcom yet more grounds for\u00a0banning RT from Britain’s airwaves.<\/p>\n