Journalists stuck between two very different worlds

by Maxwell Davies
Several problems confront us as part of the media. For this sake I begin this article, which is neither left nor right leaning; I want to explore this issue. Recently I picked up a flier from an anarchist vendor, which criticized the media as many deplorable qualities that seemed counter-productive to the media as a whole.

Primary to this is the criticism that, “The media is an inherent part of the power structure and therefore, an economy of all rebellion and of every attempt to create free life.” As much as this criticism seems founded in fact, it got me to wonder what the role of Marx, Babeuf and Marat happened to be, but perhaps they have become too antiquated to be truly relevant to contemporary discussion. Has rebellion become too passé to have a legitimate avenue in the media?

Following this, another criticism is, “The democratic state is able to allow such a broad spectrum of opinion precisely because opinions are basically substanceless. Opinions are ideas that have been drained off all vitality… they have become harmless ideas drained of all vitality … they have become harmless blathering that ultimately strengthens the democratic state by making it appear tolerant and open as compared to feudal or dictatorial states.” As a representative of the media, I wondered whether it was a matter of just appearance or whether it actually does make a democratic society more tolerant? Can journalists overcome the engine that fuels their prosperity – namely greed and the quest for capital?

Can we as consumers deliberately opt out of the system and create our own identities without reacting to the establishment? It seems relatively impossible, since even as one opts out of the mainstream, one chooses to use the conventional images to create an identity out of the counter-culture.

“The media has another essential function. It is the creator of images for consumption. It creates celebrities and personalities for people to look up to and vicariously live through. It creates role images for people to imitate in order to invent their identity.” How can the media reply to such a criticism when the creation of images is supply-demand based by capitalists and those who consume? It is precisely this consumerism that fosters a Lego-block construction of identity, which even by opting out of consumerism, it just appears as another set of blocks to build with. Can one be anarchistic without buying into the system even by opting out deliberately?

“In dealing with the media on its terrain, one chooses to give up determining one’s own actions on one’s own terms.” To illustrate this I undertook a chess challenge with Ricky, the sports editor, this week where I will be reduced to a handful of easily digestible factoids, while only having a fraction of things that approximates me and represents my “essence” of my personality.

Can one move beyond this stage of mediation and still have meaningful discourse?

Will “graffiti, posters, communiqués, papers, magazines and pirate radio” really be able to express human ideas without “putting them through the masticating mechanisms of the media?” The problem that I have with this approach is that it seems to in turn form its own media, its own rhetoric, agenda or evangelical mission, where the method does not seem to have any additional meaning aside from the words or ideas expressed, and as much as one wishes to escape this mediation between real events and the reader of what happened, the event is inevitably colored by the reporter of the incident. Such a discussion lead us to the final and most important question, “Journalists are the enemies of anyone who is exploited and no longer wants to be so… their inevitable dependence on all the groups in power, in fact, sets them against all those who are not in power. Even if one were to open some source for truth in a newspaper, one would drown in the sea of banality and lies that it contains.” Such a critique seems to apply well to the left-right media bias debate that has been an ongoing concern in contemporary times. Such a question circumvents the main concern that all media functions to manufacture consent among the readership at the expense of truth, free-thinking and respect for individualism that this nation is ideally founded upon, and is really driven by capitalistic companies intent upon selling their own opinions to the readership.