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MediaShots Archive
All our previous MediaShots are archived here. We hope that these will form a basis for other media critics to employ their own time and energy in bringing the corporate media to account. Feel free to distribute these Shots...
Distorting Democracy - The Media and Venezuela
(added Thursday January 10, 2008)
Like much of the Western media, the Irish mainstream professes profound concern for Venezuela's current political and economic direction. This interest generates masses of column inches, covering everything from protests and elections to the most insignificant of events there – such as a planned daylight savings time change.
An instruction from civilisation to barbarism
(added Thursday October 4, 2007)
In the days leading up to and following President Ahmadinejad’s address at Columbia University during his recent trip to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, mainstream western media largely lost the run of itself in its eagerness to ensure that nothing he said could be interpreted other than through the prism of his being ‘a petty and cruel dictator’.
Tipping the balance west
(added Thursday September 20, 2007)
In 2003 a group of researchers at Cardiff University School of Journalism, Media & Cultural Studies conducted a study of the UK media’s reporting of the Iraq war [Shoot First and Ask Questions Later]. They found that the mainstream media, and in particular the highly regarded BBC, had been ‘too sympathetic’ to the government line.
The Enemy Without – Palestine and Democracy
(added Thursday June 21, 2007)
Following democratic elections of varying degrees of freeness and fairness across the Middle East in 2005 President Bush uttered these less than immortal words. He explained that “the advance of democracy leads to peace because governments that respect the rights of their people also respect the rights of their neighbours."
From Rhetoric to Reality
(added Sunday April 15, 2007)
The mainstream corporate media is without doubt the dominant source of information on current ‘newsworthy’ events. These corporate entities reach into almost every corner of every living room; they leave their impression on every coffee table and commuter carriage floor. But while they effectively shape our vision of the world, our influence on them remains marginal. We 'control' them through exercising ‘consumer choice’.
The authorities on criminality - The West vs Iran
(added Thursday March 15, 2007)
As readers of the Irish Times we enter into a ‘contract’ each day. For their part they provide "the best journalism in Ireland: reports that are honest, accurate and comprehensive; and analysis that is informed, fair and based on the facts." [The Irish Times - Message from the Editor, Geraldine Kennedy] [2] And for our part we offer ourselves as potential customers to it's advertising partners.
Gas, Gaeilge and the Media
(added Tuesday January 23, 2007)
Ireland's most influential news organisations are all to a large degree dependent on advertising as their principle form of revenue. And those revenues accrued are for the most part supplied by large corporations. In fact many of these news organisations are open about this dependency, RTE [Radio Telefis Eireann] state one of their guiding principles as; "[to] constantly re-evaluate our services in order to ensure that they reflect the needs of our audiences and customers in terms of content and platforms." It can reasonably be assumed that certain problems are bound to arise when the needs of RTE's audience conflict with the needs of its customers.
A crime within a crime within a crime
(added Tuesday January 9, 2007)
In 2003 the US led invasion of Iraq underlined in no uncertain terms the limited reach of international law. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated, “[the invasion of Iraq] was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal." That invasion and all the subsequent crimes within have amassed over 650,000 bodies, with one recent addition, the former leader of that country.
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