The World is a dangerous place.

can you not use essays and tutorials to explore these ideas ronan? i think you SHOULD write about politics, becuase you actually mind how it's being ruined by ppl you think are fools.

i can see how it's not much fun standing up in a class and dissenting in order to make yrself the mean comedy target, but it might be interesting to ask, all innocence, Why is it always Nike? Why does the left also trade in cliches? Buy a Socialist Worker (or dublin equiv) and write a piece on demoralising and self-destructive cliches in Left Journalism. Take a Pilger to pieces: he's a good journalist as in ferreting out little- noted facts, but he is a FANTASTICALLY TERRIBLE writer and political analyst. Chomsky has been cruising on no-brainer since the Balkans also. "Can you actually build a mass movement by sneering at everyone not yet in it?"

Good left(ish) sources on these issues: C.Hitchens (recently "expelled" from the left for apostasy over Afghanistan, and often massively irritating, obnoxious and snobby); A.Cockburn (CounterPunch, which he edits, is as a whole a bit too unchoosy, but he writes very funny stuff about why the left shoots itself in its own feet via bad writing and lazy thinking). (There are links to some of these on Radio Free Narnia. ZNet is worth checking out: plenty you can pick BIG holes in, but some good stuff also, moving, humane, not so up itself...)

I would use essays and tutorials but when your lecturer is the female Noam Chomsky you've got to worry about your marks. It's not that bad that I posted to ILE surely.

I do give my opinion on it, in front of the whole class, I'm not shy, and people do listen to the stuff I say, however I'm sure it's pretty much lost. I'm not being smart or I don't want to be when I say that most of the class don't get what I'm trying to say, mainly because as soon as I open my mouth it's as if I'm defending human rights abuses or George "satan" Bush. It's scary how much of a concensus there is in the room on EVERYTHING.

I think at this stage, fuck it I'll probably write an essay on it, we've to do a "Course Diary" thing so I can probably write something good in that. But when your lecturer talks in sensationalised terms about how the coverage of the "children being killed in Afghanistan daily" is not top drawer, you've got to wonder, why bother.

Thanks for the advice re:books/authors. It will be alot easier if I've read proper literature to back up what I'm trying to say, instead of forming my own notion of it. Yeah I'll try and vent this stuff into essays in future, sorry.

ConsenSus for fuck's sake. If only more people did Latin.

Ronan
Just from here i know you are a damn fine writer, so write the bs for school and find other outlets for the "real" writing . For example D.O.A (www.adquecy.net) is looking for national columnists and i am sure that yr uni paper accepts political peices , as well as any of those free weeklys if you start a portfolio. Even start a blog or website, alot of great news that slips by is written there. What i am saying is write as much as you can outside trad sources

(btw i totally didn't mean keep this stuff in yr essays and OFF ile, by all means talk abt it here... i just meant yes dissent in LECTURES can be intimidating or seem a bit fruitless because of course everyone in the room is nosing for the consensus and the marks... but in tutorials can you not ask/ discuss a bit more openly) (the fruitlessness is actually i think directly related to the apparent one-sidedness of mainstream media coverage: the "other" side have NO SKILLS in open debate, so get squeezed out of public arguments very quickly, and flounce home arguing to themselves that they must have won because they were RIGHT, rather than ask why they actually lost the argument — espite being right — as every eye in the audience glazed over...)

damn that petard of mine edna.

conSensus, surely.

"consensus" maybe?

Sounds kind of whiny, Ronan. What exactly is your point, that the cliches get in the way of a more rounded worldview? Or are you lamenting the reductionism in perspective and language that is made in academic environments in order to approach a subject? What is your beef with, the consensus opinions in your class or the general challenges of discussing appropriate terminology when involved in 'news interpretation' ?

Because if you dissent, and are actually interested a diversity of viewpoints, then "arguing over all these stupid word definitions like 'the west' and 'the international community'" may not be so much "the kind of crap that makes you want to laugh at the liberal movement," but rather the basic steps by which you define commonly- used terms so you can have a discussion about the profession they take place in. Is that a hallmark of 'liberal' education? Are you suggesting that discussion of such is just the province of privileged ivy-league leftists? I can see the kind of associations that would invoke, and I'm familiar with the stifling frustration that results when the mindset in any discussion is too monothematic, but I don't think it wise to downplay the significatory power of words, especially in a medium that uses a strict economy of them in order to fit into magazine-length articles or newspaper columns. It's easy to see why you'd be annoyed at a situation where a blanket concept like 'America' was seen as the cause of every terrible effect in the world, but it's hard to shake the impression from your entire post that you're just not interested in the energy involved in entering the argument.

yes dare, but the herman-chomsky explanation of WHY mainstream media er "privileges" some stories/interpretations and ignores others is basically IT'S BECAUSE THE WORLD IS RUN BY A CABAL OF 12-FT TALL LIZARD PEOPLE

ie it is NO HELP AT ALL to any trainee journalist, who discovers (all too quickly), that the way stories routinely er "evolve" is almost all to do with niggly little deadline panics about lack of clarity/overlength

Chomsky nevah played the Second House at the Glasgow empire etc etc: it's true that there are mainstream cliches galore to be avoided, but they are not the only enemy

mark s & ronan of course not living & training in the u.s. the 'lizard people' summation doesn't help me at all either and is maybe talking over mine and otherpeople's heads. my experience with u.s. media is quite a bit different - it's a little more complicated than deadlines, etc. they're quite corrupt.

'lizard people' = the profit motive. I have friends who have been smeared, I've seen things distorted that I witnessed first-hand, or left out because they're not saleable. At some point you have to stop excusing these assholes for their lack of care. This is common knowledge over here. I oughta know, I studied with them...and dropped out.

Liberals think their job is to be shocked, constantly, and repeatedly, by each new horrifying fact. And then to lament the state of the world, usually blaming something far away (i.e. east of the pond = America, west of the pond = "multinationals"). Iz politiks therefore bad? Or are liberals irritating? Oh & Hitchens abandoned the left a long time ago, as I recall. Cockburn was playing similarly flirty with scary libertarians round the Balkans stuff.

"the profit motive" = they are not printing stories because when they do less people buy the papers (=> less adverts can be sold) = they are hiding things from us because we are in effect asking them to

so where does "they those bastards" begin and end? those who own the media? those who work in it? those who consume it (or rather don't, when it's full of things we don't want to read)

it's true that the media set-up in the UK is very difft to that in the US, but neither of them are centrally controlled or patrolled: eg populist radio in the US is some way outside the newspaper-TV consensus (it's far from leftist, but again that's at least partly to do with bad political judgment endemic to the left since the 60s).

"the profit motive" = they are not printing stories because when they do less people buy the papers (=> less adverts can be sold) = they are hiding things from us because we are in effect asking them to

Bzzzt, but thanks for playing.

There's this little thing called advertising....newspapers don't make a profit from sales.

i.e., the corporations continually underestimate the public and play it conservatively. This is borne out in independent opinion polls. I love how you blame the public and not the corporations - what a great populist you are. I guess you've never had to work with managers and managers-to-be, day-in, day-out. Must be lovely. Your logic is simplistic and doesn't try very hard for clarity vis-a-vis the hoi polloi. The state of radio in the US has zip to do with 'the left'. There's this little thing called the FCC which is controlled by corporations. It would be nice if an American would comment on American affairs for a change. I'm dissatisfied with this quite removed and simplistic assessment of affairs here.

Oh how I dearly wish I had your grace in extending consideration and forgiveness toward those in power but I'm so burdened with other things.

This may be an insane leap of the imagination, but don't they need to sell papers so people can READ the ads???

actually one of the issues i'm getting at is that NEWSPAPERS themselves, the actual technology of getting news-stories into print is — partly by virtue of the moment in history that they emerged — *intrinsically* politicised in particular (pro-elite?) ways, the process itself, irrespective of the politics of who's running the machinery (notorious factoid, possibly untrue: most Sun [U] journos are left not right). So what I'm saying abt trainee journalists is that they're not taught ways to think outside the box in ref THIS: to jigger with the system (cf what michael moore's done, for example: i can recall pilger being patronising abt Roger and Me back in [whenever], basically for not being "proper journalism"). Pilger's hand- wringing docs (which of course have high production values and high profile in the UK) (not to mention he is currently a senior writer on the second biggest UK tab) I believe wrote the book for Blair's style of direct emotional appeal to the electorate eg what Pilger achieved in re Cambodia and Ethiopia in the 70s and 80s, Blair "built on" in Bosnia and Afghanistan: a specific (brilliant) technology of emotional manipulation. Basically young journos are taught — interpreting ronan a bit I know — that media goes bad because it's controlled by the corrupt and the evil => corollary = "what's the point, the lizard ppl control it all anyway we can't win"

What they shd be being taught is "there's more than one way to skin a cat" (or vegan equiv)

Yes, so that the American middle-class elite can read them. The majority in this country who are not middle-class do NOT read them at all and WHY? Because they're not served by the consumerist, middle-class-oriented media. And even people who buy the papers are not necessarily buying them for hard news. Don't make me puke with this assumption that 'regular' people read the paper. You know what 'regular' people, you know, the people who are affected by all the shit that's not reported tell me? That the papers are a bunch of lies. But I guess that's all their fault for not buying. But if you get off your ass and do the RESEARCH instead of caricaturing people's views, you'll see case after case of stories that were diluted or squashed because of intimidation from advertisers. I had one corporate PR person tell me that they can't support anything 'with an anti-corporate message'. Please.

Excuse me for the illiterate rant. It's not politically useful to me to give a shit about people who 'make innocent mistakes' so they can make 3x as much as me. I gave that up, so I don't have much sympathy.

media does not determine is the other thing -- blaming the media does tend to transform the orig. notion of false consciousness (i.e. false identification of interests with those of the ruling class [i.e. what's good for the U.S. is good for the citizens of the U.S.]) into not an ideological question but simply a factual one, on the order of a giant matrix-ish conspiracy. Mags like the economist, papers like the wall street journal -- they lay it all on the table, for anyone that can approach them armed with the appropriate critical tools.

You know what 'regular' people, you know, the people who are affected by all the shit that's not reported tell me? That the papers are a bunch of lies.

And you've talked to all of them?

My larger point being -- agendas are everywhere, and you have yours.

"Can you actually build a mass movement by sneering at everyone not yet in it?"

Bah. Sterling always says it better than me.

Ronan, Roland Barthes distinguished between "the political" and "politics". To him, the political is the fundamental order of history, people's daily interactions with each other and the like. Politics is the discourse in which we frame these events, or as he put it snidely, "the same old story." Not the most profound analysis, I know, but I think it's important in your case because, to me, you seem like you care a lot about the political, to the point where you are angry about the limitations politics is putting on your ability to comprehend it in a meaningful way. I think people like you are exactly the sort of people who should be writing (new) politics, and I think Anthony's suggestions for how to go about this in an unconventional way are very good. I also think the situation with your professor is endemic in pretty much every subject in the humanities. Switch to, say, literature, and you'll just find yourself railing against a class full of Derridian or Bloomian mouthpieces, or something.

But to play devil's advocate for a minute, I think one reason there is so much emphasis on cOnSeNsUs among the left is because there's a sense of urgency among many people that "We need to act now!" and this of course precludes any really nuanced discussion. One of the few good things to come about after 9/11 is that it's pointed up the silliness ineffectual nature of much to this urgency, and there really has been a broadening of the debate, at least in America (or my little corner of it, anyway). Maybe your class is just a little behind, I don't know.

Mark S, I hate to defend Chomsky, since he's currently probably one of the intellectually snarkiest people alive, but I always thought the valuable part of his critique of the media (going back to the 70s at least, when he was still vaguely relevant) was that it wasn't the 12-foot tall lizard people standard controlled- conspiracy bit. He traced a very plausible scenario for how people go through processes of socialization that shape a particular world view which often prevents them from asking certain questions or adopting certain perspectives on various issues. These limitations are going to be amenable to people working together (especially people faced with deadlines) because their political shorthand is conducive to an analysis that appears to be getting somewhere and not reinventing the wheel each time out (apologies for wretched cliche). But they lose sight of the other possible ways of approaching their subject that they've left out, and if they think of them at all they justify their own viewpoint with appeals to the CoNsEnSuS, or advertising dollars, or Pulitzers, or whatever. It's not just one big thing, it's a bunch of little things acting on each other over time, and it's not limited to the media; you see the same pattern happening under any roof where people congregate and attempt to communicate with each other.

I remember my globalisation lectures and mass communication lectures...I only had to open my mouth and Wally would bellow "I DISAGREE"...

pointed up the silliness ineffectual nature of much to this urgency

Goddamn Babelfish. What I meant was pointed up the silliness and ineffectual nature of much of this urgency.

ie it is NO HELP AT ALL to any trainee journalist, who discovers (all too quickly), that the way stories routinely er "evolve" is almost all to do with niggly little deadline panics about lack of clarity/overlength

I don't mr s.hole@pfag was reading my posts particularly carefully, but this one here wasn't terribly clear from the outset: yes of course you will have argts over "that's not our editorial line"/"the advertisors won't wear it", and this may well be far worse in the US than in the UK or Eire, but the majority of the argts you will actually *at leas to start with) find yourself having will be PRESENTED as being over technical matters, and that's really the arena you HAVE to learn to win in (the other one you can only win in if you're very lucky or very clever-devious, I suspect). I suppose I object to what Ronan's describing as actually being (ultimately) a kind of politics of despair and disconnection, as opposed to, well, engagement. If s.hole@pfag is correct, then there's no point anyone who isn't already totally at one with the corporate line actually bothering to become a newspaper journalist in the first place: sad if true (maybe), but not impossible I suppose.

xerxes: howso? i saw it as more creating a "bunker mentality".

Xwerxes I don't object to people defending Chomsky (Herman is a difft matter heh). I was quite downcast by the *immediate* response post 9-11 (two months), which was (I thought) business-as-usual x 10 — which is also why I said on that other thread whatever it was you picked up on and corrected. If you're right, well, fantastic: and yeah, I should probably check some of my OWN links more often. When my new computer is delivered the revolution starts...

a kind of politics of despair and disconnection

That's very true and the thing that's particularly annoying is that she's trying to market it to us as a "DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE, YOU ARE THE NEW GENERATION" type schtick SOMEHOW. I mean when I suggested it wasn't as black and white and it was the people as much as any shadowy elite, she turned it on me as being "cynical", as if I was the tired old hack who had no faith in humanity and loved my corporations or something.

Bunkers = also a kind of roof under which people congregate ;)

Well, education was a big one for Chomsky (being err unconventionally educated as he was), which I think Ronan's situation illustrates nicely: even an area which is supposed to be open to all sorts of questioning of status quos (plural? Help me, Edna) still manages to form pools of consensus opinions that can be stifling and from which those who deviate too forcefully are excluded. Over time the ones who are selected to be the pundits (or at least the ones who have the incentive to stick with it) will reflect that consensus, or some form of it. The point is that it's part of imperfect human nature, and should be recognized as such so we can deal with it properly instead of hiding under ideological umbrellas of "objectivity" and the like.

Mark: Chomsky post-9/11 in his flap with Hitchens was like one of those creepy mechanical fortune teller machines that grinds its jaws and wiggles its ears before spitting out a card with a readymade answer on it. It's like he was shredding Hitchens's columns while playing hopscotch with the little green men in the corner; i.e., I think he is now citizen no 1 in La La Crank Land (though hopefully this will change).

is there something endemic about the kind of argts people have in mark s's deadline/clarity sphere that push a certain slant, despite purportedly being a space free from political considerations?

yes tracer, it pushes the writing towards local cliche/shorthand, ie within the context of the familiar writer-reader assumption in any given publication it tends to affirm the conventional: no time/space to explain the difficult, the unexpected, the convoluted, no time for a writer to be uncertain or admit to confusion or bafflement, to break with stereotypical dynamics, to win the reader's confidence in making leaps into the unknown

yeah, i've got an agenda. so what raggett? i'm really tired of your smug alpha male attitude around here even if no one else wants to call you on it. you don't talk to people as if they are human beings for whom this stuff is not an issue which you can discuss with detachment. I never said I talked to every one of them, did I?

Saying I 'have an agenda' doesn't mean shit. Please try to not write in cliches next time.

Err, mr. 'dfag', admittedly I am a newcomer here, but in my mind, one of the very nice things about the (often very intelligent and thoughtful) discussions people have on these boards is that people don't take criticism to their posts personally, and share a mutual respect for each other even if their opinions differ. This helps to, I think, to promote even more thoughtful responses, because people generally take criticism to their posts as constructive, gentle criticism; therefore, it doesn't make much sense to lash out at someone who has an opinion that differs from your own. It makes more sense to use criticism to better formulate your own

I write about politics, sometimes, Ronan. But when I use a cliche (the repetitive mentions of Nike were irritating me 10 years ago, yes) I know how to punish myself.

Mark S makes me think I'm such an inarticulate fool, sometimes. Fantastic thread, this, from all corners.

Geeta, being a thoughtful soul, has a better answer than I could come up with. :-) Yes, my original answer was flip, though no more so than yours, dfag, though you did then explain further. Still, you're coming in with attitudes to burn and answers already beyond question -- which in light of the comparisons here about 'fundamentalists of the left' is a bit unsettling. If you think I have all the answers and am above it all, relax -- my opinion is just that. Is yours just yours?

Mark summed it all up with his quote, I think. Are you here to sneer solely, or to debate and discuss? Right now I'm only detecting the former.

Just to play devil's advocate again, the reason Nike was targeted so heavily was a strategic move on the part of many various groups of activists who thought they could turn the branding impulse on its head, i.e., Nike in commercials = sweaty hard body jordan sex success (google searchers: welcome!); subverted as: Nike = national (grassroots) conciousness of exploitation + young indonesian girls + you paid $125 for ugly shoes what are you a moron? Whether this has been successful/good strategy/necessary is up for debate, but Nike was deliberately targeted pretty much solely (haha) because they were the most successful at whut was being fought, i.e., TOTAL WORLD DOMINATION.