Interview with Bill Moyers

Thanks Mike Taylor for the link to this article.

MEDIA MONSTER KILLER
Corporate Media, Coming of the Rapture, and the Culture of Fear: Coffee Talk with Bill Moyers
by Nick Welsh

Spend five minutes on the phone with Bill Moyers, dubbed by some “the conscience” of American journalism, and it’s abundantly obvious that the man is troubled, and profoundly pissed off; though it’s doubtful someone so imbued with good Southern manners would use such talk. Now 70, Moyers has spent most of the past 55 years hunting the truth behind his craft, a working journalist tracing the twisted paths of power for both newspapers and television. Embodying that rare combination of graciousness, dignity, and passion, Moyers has been audacious enough to tell “the truth behind the news,” rather than to report the “he-said-she-said” ping-pong that often passes for news. And the truth about the news business — and democracy — as Moyers sees, could not be more grim.

The mainstream news media, Moyers laments, has taken a dive at a time when the power of the Republican Party has never been more absolute and more morally bankrupt. As a result, public discourse has been reduced to a scream-fest dominated by such unabashedly conservative media giants as Fox, Clear Channel, and Sinclair, who’ve become “echo chambers” for the Bush administration, if not outright propagandists. And when it comes to the realities of bare-knuckle politics, Moyers is hardly some pious sissy. For three years he worked closely with former President Lyndon Johnson, whose ferocity as a political infighter was exceeded only by his reputed Machiavellian genius. After his stint with Johnson, Moyers went to work for CBS; in 1986 he created his own independent production company, Public Affairs Television.

‘I never took him as a compassionate conservative.
I’m a Texan. I saw what he had done to Texas and I knew he would do to the nation what he had done to Texas.
And by God he’s done it.’
— Bill Moyers

Via Public Affairs, Moyers explored not just the political but the spiritual dimension of American life, introducing the likes of anthropologist Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth) and poet Robert Bly to the American public. Over the past three years, Moyers became best known for his searing weekly news series NOW — broadcast Friday nights on public television — which painstakingly dissected the worrisome cross-pollination between political and corporate power.

Late last December, Moyers pulled the plug on NOW. He had no time for anything else, he explained, and his five grandchildren weren’t getting any younger. And at age 70, neither was he. Moyers is hardly retiring from life; rather he’s launching what he called his “third act.” On March 1, Moyers is set to appear at UCSB’s Campbell Hall to kick off a fundraising campaign for the university’s Arts & Lectures program — where he’ll be interviewed by acclaimed Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Two weeks ago, he gave me a chunk of prime time on the phone, and the following is an abbreviated version of that conversation.

NICK WELSH: When you arrive in S.B., there could be 500 reporters from all over the world covering jury selection for the Michael Jackson trial. Any interest in a firsthand look; any gut reaction to seeing so much journalistic time, energy, and resources devoted to such a trial?

BILL MOYERS: First, I think the other 500 will handle the heavy responsibilities of reporting that trial. And second, I once said to a judge, “You know there’s no justice in the world.” And he said, “That’s right. Get on with it.” I have learned at this advanced stage in life not to grieve over what I cannot change and not to be disturbed about what doesn’t bother me. It’s unfortunate that so much attention could be given to the trial of a Michael Jackson as opposed to covering the truth behind the news. But there’s no institution more immune to criticism than the media. I don’t waste any time, energy, or grief over the reality of a world saturated with celebrity. I mean, the BBC — which I listen to every morning — led yesterday with the announcement that Prince Charles is going to marry Camilla what’s-her-name. As did the New York Times. This is a startling announcement? I thought maybe the rapture had begun.

In your parting shots prior to going off the air, you accused conservative news outlets like Fox of being a propaganda arm of the administration — or at least a vast echo chamber. These outlets are incredibly popular though, bringing to mind Al Capone’s famous line, “I’m just giving the people what they want.” So when you look at the ratings, why shouldn’t we conclude that Fox and O’Reilly are what the people want?

I don’t dispute that. It’s certainly what the people who watch that want. I’ve never challenged that. They’re giving their ideological audience what that ideological audience wants. They bought into a belief system that can’t be challenged by any evidence to the contrary.

If that’s the case and that’s so bad, then why do you think the other media outlets — the ones that don’t buy into this approach — are having such a hard time competing?

I think mainstream journalism has been driven to the lowest priority on the scale of values of the mega media companies that own them. Journalism and the news business don’t always mix. And we now have big media companies that own the journalistic organs and that’s not their top priority. When Michael Eisner says he doesn’t want ABC news covering Disney activities you realize there’s a chilling effect on corporate journalists that proscribes their boundaries. With a few honorable exceptions, you cannot count on the big media companies to put journalism above other values in their hierarchy of values. There was a study done a year ago in which one-third of the journalists who responded said they were asked to kill stories that were offensive to the clientele of their corporate bosses. So you have a very neutered mainstream media, and you have a powerful ideological megaphone in Fox News and talk radio for the right wing. So there’s an imbalance today and the right wing has the dominant megaphone in America.

As feeble as you say mainstream media is, it still reported many of the most notable failures of the Bush administration: no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; no postwar planning for Iraq; new policies that condone torture in Iraq; an all-out attack on environmental regulation; tax policies that favored the rich and destabilized the dollar. Still, Bush got elected. The first time around, he managed to run as the compassionate conservative, but this time, the information was out there for anyone to see …

I never took him as a compassionate conservative. I’m a Texan. I saw what he had done to Texas and I knew he would do to the nation what he had done to Texas. And by God he’s done it. He’s turned the environment over to the polluters, he’s turned the courts over to big business, and he’s turned the schools over to the religious right. I was not fooled by his prevarications and his camouflage and his deceits.


But all that was out there in plain view. How do you account for this?

There are always a lot of people who prefer the comfortable lie to the uncomfortable truth. In this case, a majority of voters knew exactly what you’re saying, yet voted for him none the less. They did so for one of two reasons. First, Bush had America scared to death. And fear was the dominant issue in that campaign, not moral values. Second, many of Bush’s supporters buy into the belief system that he and his allies have propounded. And in that belief system — which is supported by Fox News and talk radio — no evidence to the contrary can be permitted. Ideologues embrace a worldview that cannot be changed because they admit no evidence to the contrary. The Washington Post had a story about a study recently about how even if what people first hear turns out to be wrong, they still tend to believe it’s true. That’s because, if it fits their value system, they don’t change it after they learn it’s not true. It’s a weird phenomenon. I’d also say conservatives have never been more politically dominant and more intellectually and morally bankrupt. Because of that they can keep their troops believing the Big Lie. The Big Lie is that the threat of Al Qaeda is greater to us than the threat of low wages, environmental pollution, the growing inequality in America, or the terrible failure of the Bush policies on schools. People just didn’t want the uncomfortable truth to disturb the comfortable lie.


At the risk of twisting your words, I thought I read somewhere that you said the reason we went to war with Iraq had nothing to do with oil or fighting terrorism or spreading democracy but because of Bush’s religious beliefs about accelerating the coming of the Rapture. Am I getting this right?

You are twisting my words. I didn’t say that about Bush. I said the the reasons Bush went to war were not the reasons he gave: There were no weapons of mass destruction and there were no ties between Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center. I also said there are a lot of people — 15 percent of the Bush electorate are people who believe in the Rapture — who believe that Jesus is coming again and that that belief diminishes their interest in addressing issues like the environment. I have no idea whether Bush subscribes to that, and would not want to suggest that he does. But I do know for a fact there are millions of people who are part of the conservative constituency, who believe the end-times theology that turns Earth into a transit station to heaven, and who actually believe the Rapture cannot come until certain biblical prophecies are fulfilled.


For those secular people not in touch with the Rapture index, could you explain what that’s all about? Is this some fringe group of nut balls or is this more mainstream and we just don’t know about it?

I do not look at them as nuts. They are perfectly sincere; they believe the Bible is literally true. I would never describe them as nuts. Some of them are my cousins.

But you are describing a relatively extreme worldview and I’m trying to get a sense of how many people hold it.

According to a Gallup poll, one-third of the American electorate believes the Bible is literally true. Among that one-third, there are millions who believe the prophecies in the Book of Revelation. And they believe in the Rapture index. The best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes of the Left Behind series written by Christian fundamentalist and religious right-winger Timothy LaHaye [co-written with Jerry Jenkins]. These true believers believe that once Israel has occupied the rest of its biblical land, legions of the antichrist will attack, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. Those Jews who have not converted will be burned and the Messiah will return for the Rapture. I’m not making this up. These people are sincere, serious, polite people who will tell you they feel called to help bring the Rapture on as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That’s one reason they’ve declared solidarity with Israel as a Jewish settlement and backed up their support with money and volunteers. They see war in the Middle East as not something to be feared but welcomed because it’s part of the biblical prophecy.


You write a lot about the right-wing media and right-wing Christianity. Is there a connection there, and do you find it odd that the right-wing conservative networks have led the charge in smutifying the airwaves and that they led the T&A quotient?

It’s so interesting that one of the chief critics of smut in television, Brent Bozell, who runs a right-wing media watch group [Media Research Center], is silent when it comes to the public standards of Rupert Murdoch’s sleaze empire. They do have a double standard. They are silent about the fact that it’s capitalism, and that it’s the media tycoons who are polluting the public sphere.


To what extent do you feel that the left has ignored that issue at their own peril?
That there is a genuine and sincere outrage over the pornification of the airwaves and that it’s not just right-wing Christians who are offended?

This is not a monolithic country, contrary to what people feel. This is not a left or a right country. The networks wouldn’t be making money if there wasn’t a large percentage of people who watch and appreciate that stuff.


The Christian right has been around for a long time. But it seems it’s gained new intensity. Is this a function of the gay marriage issue or is there something else that accounts for its current strength?

Not all Christians are the same. There are evangelical Christians who believe in stewardship of the environment and there are fundamentalist Christians who believe that the environment is just a passing phenomenon and we ought not to pay any attention to it. It is a great danger in America that we have allowed simplistic bumper-sticker notions to dominate what is a complex society with a lot of different views. I just read a letter from a guy in Indiana who home-schools his children and goes to church every Sunday and deplores what happens in popular culture but is a liberal when it comes to economics. I know there are a lot of people who are conservatives and Christians who do not share the Republican ideology.


Why don’t we hear from them?

The mainstream media doesn’t give a damn. It wants the most flamboyant outspoken sensational Pat Robertson it can get.


So is the only option for them to get their own media outlets, kind of like Al Franken is doing with Air America?

I don’t think that will be possible. They don’t have the money, for one thing, and secondly most of the outlets are taken up. If a group of [liberal] churches were to try to provide an alternative, it’s too late. The stage has been bought, the arena’s been filled.


Thanks for the grim picture. Where do you get your news?

I use the Internet widely and I read 10-12 newspapers every week and 50 magazines every month. I scan them. You have to work hard to stay informed in this society. You can’t take any one newspaper or any one magazine and expect to be informed. You have to work at it. Anybody who has the energy and the time and the will can be informed today. But you can’t do it by listening to one broadcast or watching one cable channel or reading one newspaper. You really have to become your own editor today. I think that’s both exhilarating and exhausting. It is also a necessity. You can’t rely on the networks. You have to read the other side and listen to the other side. I spend as much time with conservative Web sites and conservative journals as I do with the New York Times, Washington Post, or the L.A. Times.


You worked for Lyndon Johnson, who was destroyed by the antiwar movement despite being some sort of Machiavellian genius. Bush on the other hand hasn’t been fazed by the antiwar movement, even though there were hundreds of thousands of people protesting since long before we even went to war. What’s Bush got that LBJ didn’t?

He’s got a contained war for one thing, and a war without a draft, for another thing. Iraq is not Vietnam. We made the same mistakes we made in Vietnam. Their information and judgment is no better than ours was in Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson misinterpreted the events in the Gulf of Tonkin and too quickly committed the U.S. to escalating the war on the basis of inadequate information. That’s what they did in Iraq. But for sheer scale and scope, Vietnam was far beyond what Iraq is. Unfortunately, it’s been very destructive to the Iraqi people, but because of embedded journalism and terrorism, the public doesn’t see or care about what’s happened to Iraqi citizens. You had 55,000 Americans killed in Vietnam — 1,400 killed in Iraq. The sheer scale of the violence and the death and destruction in Vietnam — which was a well-covered war — brought home to Americans the immorality of that war. The ends did not justify the means. You’ve also got a more compliant press. Lyndon Johnson railed against journalists but he never tried to keep them from being in Vietnam. That was a war under a looking glass. And Iraq has been very carefully censored. And very carefully contained, and successfully kept largely off the radar screen.

Seymour Hersh talks of Vietnam being a tactical war, Iraq being a strategic war — meaning that the stakes are a lot higher than in Vietnam.

This war was sold to us as a means of containing terrorism and has actually created more terrorism. It’s inflaming the Muslim world in a way that Vietnam didn’t inflame the rest of the world. Let me put it this way: Iraq is a war with consequences for billions of people who don’t live there. Vietnam was largely a war with terrible consequences for the people who fought and the people who lived there but it didn’t have a great fallout for the rest of the world. It’s dangerous to read any historical event into the present reality. But it is possible you can learn from the past, and that lesson is: Be damn sure of your information. A war is too terrible to undertake on a mere suspicion.


Do you see this mushrooming beyond the scope of Vietnam?

I don’t think anyone knows right now the extent to which downstream consequences of the policies in Iraq will create continuing alienation and vengeance on the part of the Muslim world. It’s our policies that are driving so many people to hate us. Some of that’s unjustified, some of it isn’t. But you’re asking questions that will take journalists 50 years from now to answer.


You’re a Texan. LBJ was a Texan. Bush is a Texan. There’s all this myth about Texas. Does that give any edge in understanding this guy? Or is Bush really a Texan or just an East Coast Brahmin masquerading as a Texan?

He’s Texanized American politics. I was never fooled by it, but if you go home to Texas today, it’s a Christian empire. The state of Texas is a Christian nation. Conservative Christians dominate everything there. I don’t know Bush. I’ve never met him. I don’t know if he’s a likable man or not. But I know if I met him I would ask him, “How can you grow up well-churched and well-loved and well-taught and be so utterly insensitive to other people’s reality? How can you be so indifferent to people?” He’s a privileged man who is the ally of people who are trying to undo the social contract in this country and to take us back to the pre-1932 period, when it was every man for himself and American economic strategy was to let the animal spirits of capitalism run and everyone take the consequences. I do not understand that. Except to say that if a son of privilege cannot see beyond his own prerogatives and is therefore unable to feel and see how life is for others, then that’s a tragedy and a political travesty.


The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Do you think it’s possible that whatever Bush’s true intentions were in Iraq, they might lead to a free democratic nation?

I hope things go well in Iraq. Too many people have died and too much suffering has occurred and too much treasure spent for it not to. I do not think you should go to war based on a suspicion, as I said earlier; but having gone, I certainly don’t want the people who have been beheading their own people to win. It remains to be seen if we wind up with a theocracy or not. But again, it is too early to predict the outcome of the forces that have been let loose in Iraq.


If you were a young man coming up today, do you think you’d go into journalism again?

If you want to go cover Michael Jackson, I guess yes. But if you want to be a serious student and analyst of the world, if you want to do really good journalism and journalism that tells the truth as you see it, then broadcast journalism is not the place to go today. There are still good newspapers. If you’re young today and you have a fire in your belly, you’ve got to follow it because it’s that fire that will sustain you in moments of low wages, in the face of indifferent editors and hostile owners, and a public at large that doesn’t care. But if it were me, I’d probably do the same thing over again.

Bill Moyers: In Conversation with Naomi Shihab Nye,
Tuesday, March 1, 8 p.m.,
UCSB’s Campbell Hall.
Call 893-3535.

IS THE EARTH REALLY FINISHED?

March 1, 2005

MEDIA ALERT: IS THE EARTH REALLY FINISHED?

Countering Despair with the Momentum of Hope

"What goes against the grain of conditioning is experienced as not credible, or as a hostile act." (John McMurtry, philosopher)


Bizarre Conversations

Climate crisis is not a future risk. It is today's reality. As Myles Allen, a climate scientist at Oxford University, warned recently: "The danger zone is not something we are going to reach in the middle of this century. We are in it now." (Roger Highfield, 'Screen saver weather trial predicts 10 deg rise in British temperatures', Daily Telegraph, 31 January, 2005)

Human-induced climate change has been killing people for decades. Climatologists estimate that global warming has led to the deaths of 150,000 people since 1970. (Meteorological Office, 'Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change', 1-3 February 2005, Table 2a. 'Impacts on human systems due to temperature rise, precipitation change and increases in extreme events', page 1; www.stabilisation2005.com/impacts/impacts_human.pdf) By 2050, as temperatures rise, scientists warn that three billion people will be under "water stress", with tens of millions likely dying as a result.

At such a desperate moment in the planet's history, we could simply throw up our hands in despair, or we could try to reduce the likelihood of the worst predictions coming true. The corporate media has yet to examine its own role in setting up huge obstacles to the latter option of hope.

Consider, for example, Michael McCarthy, environment editor of the Independent. McCarthy described how he "was taken aback" at dramatic scientific warnings of "major new threats" at a recent climate conference in Exeter. One frightening prospect is the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, previously considered stable, which would lead to a 5-metre rise in global sea level. As McCarthy notes dramatically: "Goodbye London; goodbye Bangladesh".

On the way back from Exeter on the train, he mulls over the conference findings with Paul Brown, environment correspondent of the Guardian:

"By the time we reached London we knew what the conclusion was. I said: 'The earth is finished.' Paul said: 'It is, yes.' We both shook our heads and gave that half-laugh that is sparked by incredulity. So many environmental scare stories, over the years; I never dreamed of such a one as this.

"And what will our children make of our generation, who let this planet, so lovingly created, go to waste?" (McCarthy, 'Slouching towards disaster', The Tablet, 12 February, 2005; available at http://www.gci.org.uk/articles/Tablet.pdf)

This is a remarkably bleak conclusion. McCarthy glibly notes the "inevitability of what [is] going to happen", namely: "The earth is finished." We applaud the journalist for presenting the reality of human-caused climate change. But the resignation, and the apparent lack of any resolve to avert catastrophe, is irresponsible. As Noam Chomsky has put it in a different, though related, context:

"We are faced with a kind of Pascal's wager: assume the worst and it will surely arrive: commit oneself to the struggle for freedom and justice, and its cause may be advanced." (Chomsky, 'Deterring Democracy', Vintage, London, 1992, p. 64)

Following McCarthy's anguished return to the Independent's comfortable offices in London, one searches in vain for his penetrating news reports on how corporate greed and government complicity have dragged humanity into this abyss. One searches in vain, too, for anything similar by Paul Brown in The Guardian.

The notion of government and big business perpetrating climate crimes against humanity is simply off the news agenda. A collective madness of suffocating silence pervades the media, afflicting even those editors and journalists that we are supposed to regard as the best.


Contraction and Convergence: Climate Logic for Survival

In 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was agreed. The objective of the convention is to "stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will avoid dangerous rates of climate change." The Kyoto protocol, which came into force in February, requires developed nations to cut emissions by just 5 per cent, compared to 1990 levels. This is a tiny first step, and is far less than the cuts required, which are around 80 per cent.

One of the major gaps in the climate 'debate' is the deafening silence surrounding contraction and convergence (C&C). This proposal by the London-based Global Commons Institute would cut greenhouse gas emissions in a fair and timely manner, averting the worst climatic impacts. Unlike Kyoto, it is a global framework involving all countries, both 'developed' and 'developing'.

C&C requires that annual emissions of greenhouse gases contract over time to a sustainable level. The aim would be to limit the equivalent concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to a safe level. The pre-industrial level, in 1800, was 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv). The current level is around 380 ppmv, and it will exceed 400 ppmv within ten years under a business as usual scenario. Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels today, the planet would continue to heat up for more than a hundred years. In other words, humanity has already committed life on the planet to considerable climate-related damages in the years to come.

Setting a 'safe' limit of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration actually means estimating a limit beyond which damage to the planet is unacceptable. This may be 450 ppmv; or it may be that the international community agrees on a target lower than the present atmospheric level, say 350 ppmv. Once the target is agreed, it is a simple matter to allocate an equitable 'carbon budget' of annual emissions amongst the world's population on a per capita basis. This is worked out for each country or world region (e.g. the European Union).

The Global Commons Institute's eye-catching computer graphics illustrate past emissions and future allocation of emissions by country (or region), achieving per capita equality by 2030, for example. This is the convergence part of C&C. After 2030, emissions drop off to reach safe levels by 2100. This is the contraction. (Further information on C&C, with illustrations, can be found at http://www.gci.org.uk).

Recall that the objective of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is to "stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will avoid dangerous rates of climate change." Its basic principles are precaution and equity. C&C is a simple and powerful proposal that directly embodies both the convention's objective and principles.

Last year, the secretariat to the UNFCCC negotiations declared that achieving the treaty's objective "inevitably requires Contraction and Convergence". C&C is supported by an impressive array of authorities in climate science, including physicist Sir John Houghton, the former chair of the science assessment working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1988-2002). Indeed, the IPCC, comprising the world's recognised climate experts, has announced that: "C&C takes the rights-based approach to its logical conclusion."

The prestigious Institute of Civil Engineers in London recently described C&C as "an antidote to the expanding, diverging and climate-changing nature of global economic development". The ICE added that C&C "could prove to be the ultimate sustainability initia­tive." (Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, London, paper 13982, December 2004)

In February 2005, Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute was given a lifetime's achievement award by the Corporation of London. Nominations had been sought for "the person from the worlds of business, academia, politics and activism seeking the individual who had made the greatest contribution to the understanding and combating of climate change, leading strategic debate and policy formation."

Although Meyer is at times understandably somewhat despondent at the enormity of the task ahead, he sees fruitful signs in the global grassroots push for sustainable development, something which "is impossible without personal and human development. These are things we have to work for so hope has momentum as well as motive." ('GCI's Meyer looks ahead', interview with Energy Argus, December 2004, p. 15; reprinted in http://www.gci.org.uk/briefings/EAC_document_3.pdf, p. 27)

And that momentum of hope is building. C&C has attracted statements of support from leading politicians and grassroots groups in a majority of the world's countries, including the Africa Group, the Non-Aligned Movement, China and India. C&C may well be the only approach to greenhouse emissions that developing countries are willing to accept. That, in turn, should grab the attention of even the US; the Bush administration rejected the Kyoto protocol ostensibly, at least, because the agreement requires no commitments from developing nations. Kyoto involves only trivial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, as we noted above, and the agreement will expire in 2012. A replacement agreement is needed fast.

On a sane planet, politicians and the media would now be clamouring to introduce C&C as a truly global, logical and equitable framework for stabilising the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. Rational and balanced coverage of climate change would be devoting considerable resources to discussion of this groundbreaking proposal. It would be central to news reports of international climate meetings as a way out of the deadlock of negotiations; Jon Snow of Channel 4 news would be hosting hour-long live debates; the BBC's Jeremy Paxman would demand of government ministers why they had not yet signed up to C&C; ITN's Trevor Macdonald would present special documentaries from a multimillion pound ITN television studio; newspaper editorials would analyse the implications of C&C for sensible energy policies and tax regimes; Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace would be endlessly promoting C&C to their supporters. Instead, a horrible silence prevails.


Leaders as Moral Metaphors of a Corrupt System

We conducted a Lexis-Nexis newspaper database search to gauge the relative importance given to different topics in climate news reports by a number of major environment reporters. The following figures relate to the five year period leading up to, and including, 25 February 2005. We investigated to what extent equity, and contraction and convergence, entered into mainstream news reports on climate, in the best British press.

Michael McCarthy (Independent) Number of news reports
"climate" 232
"climate" + "industry" 80
"climate" + "Blair" 53
"climate" + "equity" 0
"climate" + "contraction and convergence" 0

Geoffrey Lean (Independent on Sunday)
"climate" 105
"climate" + "industry" 40
"climate" + "Blair" 38
"climate" + "equity" 0
"climate" + "contraction and convergence" 1

Charles Clover (Telegraph)
"climate" 136
"climate" + "industry" 47
"climate" + "Blair" 38
"climate" + "equity" 0
"climate" + "contraction and convergence" 0

Paul Brown (Guardian)
"climate" 287
"climate" + "industry" 137
"climate" + "Blair" 48
"climate" + "equity" 1
"climate" + "contraction and convergence" 1

John Vidal (Guardian)
"climate" 193
"climate" + "industry" 98
"climate" + "Blair" 31
"climate" + "equity" 1
"climate" + "contraction and convergence" 0

This is not a rigorous scientific analysis, of course, but the numbers +are+ highly indicative of hugely skewed priorities. Out of a grand total of 953 articles across the Independent, Independent on Sunday, Guardian and Telegraph, C&C was mentioned only twice, as was equity. On the other hand, industry was addressed in 402 articles, and Blair was mentioned 208 times, both almost entirely from an uncritical perspective.

One might counter that pronouncements on climate by Tony Blair, as prime minister, should be deemed automatically 'newsworthy'. But we must also bear in mind what Blair actually represents, even if the media conceals it well. Canadian philosopher John McMurtry explains:

"Tony Blair exemplifies the character structure of the global market order. Packaged in the corporate culture of youthful image, he is constructed as sincere, energetic and moral. Like other ruling-party leaders, he has worked hard to be selected by the financial and media axes of power as 'the man to do the job'. He is a moral metaphor of the system." (McMurtry, 'Value Wars', Pluto, London, 2002, p. 22)

Although public trust in Blair has collapsed after his many deceptions over Iraq, the media continue to present him as a fundamentally well-intentioned leader pursuing the interests of the nation. Thus, whenever Blair, Bush and other corporate-backed political leaders are given prominent news coverage, the media is in effect promoting its own business goals of profit and power. This is inimical to any reasonable prospect of averting climate catastrophe.

Contraction and convergence is the only serious global framework on the table for plotting a route out of the climate crisis. That C&C, and the concept of equity, can be so systematically ignored by the corporate media, is yet another damning indictment of the media's systemic failings. It is incumbent upon us all to push these issues onto the news agenda.


SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. When writing emails to journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone. You could ask questions along the following lines: In your reports on climate change, why do you never address equity, or contraction and convergence?

Write to Michael McCarthy, environment editor of the Independent:
Email: m.mccarthy@independent.co.uk

Write to Geoffrey Lean, environment editor of the Independent on Sunday:
Email: g.lean@independent.co.uk

Write to Charles Clover, environment editor of the Daily Telegraph:
Charles.Clover@telegraph.co.uk

Write to Paul Brown, environment correspondent of the Guardian:
Email: paul.brown@guardian.co.uk

Write to John Vidal, environment editor of the Guardian:
Email: john.vidal@guardian.co.uk

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