Media Lens' latest assault upon shite and outrightly biased reporting

The Media Lens crew rock!

Their take on the BBC adds some very much needed perspective to the ongoing furore over that organisation's intransigences.

But it is when they start laying into the tabloids that the really painful truths emerge:

"The elite is very much unified on the need to siphon billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into the arms industry and into militarism more generally. Ordinary citizens are largely unaware of their own stake in this and are very much immobilised by effective propaganda, for example from tabloids like the Sun - a billionaire’s propaganda organ parading as a faithful friend of working people. The Sun trains readers to associate militarism with patriotism and lethal arms programmes with ‘jobs’. Thus the tabloid's July 25 headline:

“Carrier job joy.”

The paper commented: “Two massive new aircraft carriers are to be built in Britain, safeguarding thousands of jobs for years.” (‘Carrier job joy,’ The Sun, July 25, 2007)

This was all Sun readers needed to know about the spending of nearly £4 billion of their money on Cold War weaponry in a world refusing to address the terrifying, perhaps terminal, threat of climate change. The carriers will take 40 aircraft each - the Ministry of Defence intends to buy US-made Joint Strike fighters at a further cost of £12 billion. A Mirror headline read:

“Joy as ship deal seals future for troubled yards - just the jobs.” (Maggie Barry, Mirror, July 26, 2007)

Just as democratic citizens, renamed “consumers”, are supposed to be concerned only about the impact of world events on supermarket prices, so working people are supposed to be grateful for “jobs”. The Mirror article contained comments from six individuals supporting the decision - not a word of dissent was printed."

(Bold emphasis is my own).