Newsnight goes a bit Chomsky

02Jul09

Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, FAIR, Robert McChesney, Media Lens and… Jeremy Paxman? That’s right, folks: if you’re looking for trenchant critique of media performance, rooting biased and misleading coverage in institutional structure and exploring the media’s broader social function beyond traditional pieties about the “adversarial press”, Newsnight is now the place to go. Sort of.

I’m referring of course to Newsnight’s presumably satirical hit-piece on PressTV, with Jeremy Paxman turning in a powerful performance as Chomsky, Martin Bright co-starring as Ed Herman and some poor bloke from PressTV playing, well, the likes of Jeremy Paxman and Martin Bright.

The piece, prompted by OFCOM’s investigation into charges that PressTV’s coverage has breached ‘impartiality’ guidelines, began with an introductory report by “culture correspondent” Stephen Smith that oozed condescension and contempt throughout. Paxman picked up where Smith left off, attacking PressTV’s representative with his familiar belligerence (familiar, at any rate, to leftists and other villains) and demanding to know how PressTV can possibly be independent when it is funded by the Iranian government (the first Filter – it appears Paxman has finally discovered the Propaganda Model).

Paxman and Bright took turns reading from the charge sheet, accusing PressTV of playing down the post-election protests in Iran, regurgitating government propaganda and reporting events within an interpretive framework that reflects the establishment line in Iran (hence, for example, explaining US policy formation in terms of “Zionist influence”). That all of this was delivered without a trace of irony might have left attentive viewers rather bemused.

This is the same BBC, after all, that frequently underplays or misrepresents resistance to British government policy, both at home and abroad;  consistently takes government claims at face value and almost without fail reports events from within the establishment framework. This is the same BBC whose political editor declared, following the invasion of Iraq, that Tony Blair “stands as a larger man and a stronger prime minister as a result”; whose Washington correspondent dared to ask, following the massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians by U.S. marines in Haditha, “How and why have the liberators ended up killing the liberated?”; whose diplomatic editor condemned British anti-war protestors for “undermining the political will to achieve more in southern Iraq” and whose director of news defended a correspondent’s claim that the US and Britain invaded Iraq “to bring democracy and human rights” by appealing to “speeches and remarks made by both Mr Bush and Mr Blair”. This is the same BBC that systematically privileges Israeli sources over Palestinian ones, that rigidly adhered to the official US/UK/Israeli line on the causes and objectives of ‘Operation Cast Lead’ and that even refused, in an unprecedented move, to air a DEC aid appeal for Gazans affected by the attack.

To illustrate its depravity, Paxman observed that PressTV had failed to show its viewers the death of Neda Soltani, an Iranian women shot and killed for protesting against the Iranian regime. Yet, when was the last time Newsnight aired footage of the deaths of Bassem Abu Rameh and Yusuf Aqel Srur, Palestinian demonstrators killed by Israeli forces backed by the British government?

Bright concluded by advising “serious journalists” to refrain from working with PressTV so as to avoid lending it undeserved legitimacy. He and Paxman might want to consider that advice themselves.

Filed under: Media, UK   |  6 Comments
Tags: BBC, Jeremy Paxman, Noam Chomsky, PressTV, propaganda model