{"id":5095,"date":"2021-03-10T13:04:20","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T11:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=5095"},"modified":"2021-03-17T00:45:22","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T22:45:22","slug":"piers-morgan-media-power-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2021-03-10\/piers-morgan-media-power-game\/","title":{"rendered":"We&#8217;re being endlessly played by the media as the toppling of Piers Morgan underscores"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is an extraordinary \u2013 and dangerous \u2013 five minutes of &#8220;mainstream&#8221; TV. It is five minutes of a black women\u2019s rights activist trashing Piers Morgan to his face and on his own show, Good Morning Britain, as he tries to defend the Royal Family from the fallout of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2021-03-09\/like-the-diana-story-meghan-markles-fight-with-the-royals-will-ensure-nothing-really-changes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Meghan and Harry interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Shola Mos-Shogbamimu hurls a barrage of unprecedented invective against Morgan, calling him a \u201cliar and disgrace\u201d, &#8220;disgusting&#8221;, a &#8220;racist and misogynist&#8221;\u00a0and all but tells him to shut up. This treatment doubtless paved the way to his walk-out a day later and his departure from the show.<\/p>\n<p>Even though I agree with pretty much everything Mos-Shogbamimu says, especially the parts of about the Royal Family and Britain&#8217;s racist, colonial past, the interview nonetheless made me feel almost \u2013 but only almost \u2013 sorry for Piers Morgan, one of the most thoroughly obnoxious narcissists on TV.<\/p>\n<p>I strongly urge everyone to watch this clip, but only after you have inoculated yourself from its powerful narcoleptic effects by reading my health warning below.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RsObE9_XVr0\" width=\"520\" height=\"300\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The segment is a masterclass in how the corporate media so capably and thoroughly manipulates us that we end up willing our own hypnotisation into a political trance.<\/p>\n<p>Every moment of Mos-Shogbamimu\u2019s attack on Morgan is being stage-managed \u2013 though not by her, she\u2019s simply the unwitting medium through which the deception is perpetrated. View it as a sophisticated lullaby, masquerading as fearless honesty, singing us deeper into sleep.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, this bedtime song has three verses, intended to transform us each time into a zombie cheerleader for a different cause: first, either for Meghan or the Royals; then, for Morgan or Mos-Shogbamimu; and thirdly, for Morgan or the Good Morning Britain execs who are really pulling the strings.<\/p>\n<p>This is a trilogy of corporate media-managed celebrity drama designed to prevent us from thinking about what\u2019s really going on in our societies, societies run by and for psychopathic corporations like Good Morning Britain&#8217;s broadcaster, ITV.<\/p>\n<h3>Thought experiment<\/h3>\n<p>To fully understand how confected and bogus this segment is from start to finish, I suggest you carry out a small thought experiment.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine for a moment this same scene playing out but not between Morgan and Mos-Shogbamimu feuding over Meghan\u2019s personal, celebrity agonies. Imagine it taking place instead two years ago between Morgan and an equally outspoken supporter of the then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine this isn\u2019t about the issue of whether a mixed-race boy will be allowed to call himself &#8220;prince&#8221;, or whether Meghan has felt depressed and isolated by her treatment from the Royals, but about much larger matters of political and public urgency: say, the antisemitism smears used to demonise Corbyn and his party, or the sinister corporate media campaign against him.<\/p>\n<p>Then imagine that, like Mos-Shogbamimu, Corbyn\u2019s ally is given five minutes to berate Morgan, calling him a liar, a racist, a misogynist, and telling him to his face to keep quiet and listen.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine further, if you can, that the Corbyn supporter not only feels bold enough to say all these things on Morgan\u2019s own show but is allowed to get away with it. Not only does Morgan fight back with one arm very visibly tied behind his back, but his own GMB execs let the segment run and run, preventing him from shutting down the interview, either verbally or by turning off the video connection.<\/p>\n<p>Can\u2019t imagine it? Of course, you can\u2019t. Because it would <em>never<\/em> be allowed to happen. No ally of Corbyn\u2019s would ever be given five minutes to trash Piers Morgan while upholding the rights of working people or criticising the rigged nature of the corporate media.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The problem isn&#39;t that Piers Morgan is a d*ck. It&#39;s that, like him, we keep getting suckered into vehemently taking sides on personal dramas that are completely irrelevant to the future of humanity <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/SC6GKbL4DQ\">https:\/\/t.co\/SC6GKbL4DQ<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Jonathan_K_Cook\/status\/1369552828096802818?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 10, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Car-crash TV moment<\/h3>\n<p>Which means, of course, that Mos-Shogbamimu got to bad-mouth Morgan at length \u2013 however justifiably \u2013\u00a0<em>only<\/em> because GMB execs wanted her to.<\/p>\n<p>They used her to send a message to Morgan that he was on the way out, which is why he sits and takes the tirade sheepishly (for him). They used her to wash their corporate hands of any taint that they might condone racism. They used her to persuade viewers that GMB and other corporate media are able to hold themselves up to fearless scrutiny. And most important of all, they used her to engineer a car-crash TV moment that has dominated headlines across the media\u00a0and will gain them a larger audience and bigger profits.<\/p>\n<p>And all of that happened at no meaningful political cost to corporate Britain. The same racist, corrupt, war-mongering system will carry on as before.<\/p>\n<p>Piers Morgan was set up, first with this confrontation with Mos-Shogbamimu and then the following day in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dumptheguardian.com\/media\/2021\/mar\/09\/piers-morgan-storms-off-set-of-good-morning-britain-in-meghan-row-alex-beresford\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a more restrained clash<\/a> with his own weather presenter, Alex Beresford. Morgan got the message loud and clear. He was being played by the programme he fronts.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, too many of us still don\u2019t understand that we are being played too. And unlike Piers Morgan, we have everything to lose and nothing to gain from this cynical corporate power game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every moment of Mos-Shogbamimu\u2019s five-minute attack on Piers Morgan on his own show is being stage-managed. View it as a sophisticated lullaby, masquerading as fearless honesty, singing us deeper into sleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5096,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6],"class_list":{"0":"post-5095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-media-criticism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5095"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5103,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5095\/revisions\/5103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}