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Feature Article
Government Control of the Media
- How safe is our democracy?
One of the things we have commented on in this magazine is the existence
of international organisations like the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral
Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations who are working for 'global
governance' (the current 'in' term which has replaced the now discredited
'New World Order'). An area of concern such groups have is to how to manage
popular opinion through the media. At a meeting of the Trilateral Commission
in 1991, its founder David Rockefeller said, 'We are grateful to The Washington
Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose
directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion
for almost 40 years. It would not have been possible for us to develop
our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of
publicity during those years.' The unification of Europe with a single
currency is a vital component of this programme. One of the obstacles
to this has been the hostility of Britain to this project. The present
British government is the most sympathetic ever to deeper Euro integration.
So it is in the interests of the globalists to keep this government in
power. The management of popular opinion through the media is therefore
an important part of the programme. Is this happening? According to an
article in 'The Spectator' (15/1/00) entitled 'The Silence of the Sheep'
by journalist Peter Oborne, the government has gained unprecedented control
of the media, largely as a result of 'more than a decade of conscious
effort by two New Labour media chiefs, Peter Mandelson and Alastair0 Campbell,
the Prime Minister's talented press secretary.' Mandelson is quoted as
saying, 'Of course we want to use the media, but the media will be our
tools, our servants; we are no longer content to let them be our persecutors.'
Oborne comments, 'It is a tribute to the Leninist clarity of purpose of
both Mandelson and his equally formidable successor, Alastair Campbell
that this objective has been attained. They are both doing their job and
doing it superbly well. They know that political reporting in Britain
is not about impartial presentation of the facts; it is about the naked
exercise of political power.' Oborne gives examples of how major newspapers
have been brought into line. In his judgment The Express, The Mirror,
The Independent and The Evening Standard all have very close links to
Campbell and 'New Labour can now claim friends, narks, allies and fellow-travellers
in senior positions on every national newspaper bar the Daily Mail.' One
of the main methods of gaining control over the press is the Westminster
political lobby. Journalists are fed exclusive stories and guaranteed
access to Ministers if they toe the Party line, while their colleagues
who hold firm to their independence are scorned, insulted and cut off
from news sources. In our Autumn 1999 edition we showed how government
spin doctors were manipulating public opinion over Kosovo. NATO spokesman
Jamie Shea said that during the bombing of Serbia he spoke every day to
Alastair Campbell. Shea said, 'Campbell knows how to deal with public
opinion in difficult situations.' In other words he is an expert at feeding
us a version of what is happening that reflects well on the government.
It is now clear that stories of Serb atrocities were hugely exaggerated.
Journalistic over writing had led the world to expect mass graves with
perhaps 100,000 victims. So far forensic investigators have uncovered
about 2000 victims, the vast majority of whom were killed after NATO began
its bombing. The bombing itself might have been responsible for the deaths
of between 1000 and 2000 Serbs and Albanians. 'Rape camps' and tales of
Serbs cremating bodies in large numbers now appear to be rumours without
evidence to back them up. As Serb atrocities were the reason given to
justify the bombing, one has to conclude that the public were being fed
propaganda for political purposes. Now that some 350,000 Serbs, gypsies
and other non Albanians have been driven out of Kosovo, demonstrating
the fallacy of the whole operation and reflecting badly on NATO policy,
the media have seriously under reported the situation. On top of all this
there is the appointment of Greg Dyke as Director General of the BBC.
Dyke, who has contributed generously to New Labour funds, was pushed into
this position against the misgivings of several governors with the direct
influence of Tony Blair and Chris Smith. Never before has the BBC had
someone with such close party political affiliations as Director General.
The politicisation of the BBC was very apparent in an interview I saw
with Shaun Woodward just before he defected to Labour. Woodward was quizzed
on his attitude to Clause 28 and disagreements with Hague over this issue.
Hague was calling for the retention of Clause 28 and opposing the teaching
of homosexuality as a positive life style in schools, which Woodward was
objecting to. The interviewer asked him very scornfully, 'How can you
remain in such a party?' The implication was that Hague was taking an
extreme right wing line, which no reasonable person could support. The
extreme right wing tag that is being applied to the Tories has been played
up in the media and is in itself an interesting issue. Some of the issues
that are considered 'extreme right wing' (and therefore by implication
verging on fascism) are:
- A belief that homosexuality is unhealthy and morally wrong and should not be promoted among the young.
- A belief that we should not allow any more power to be taken over by faceless bureaucrats in Brussels. ·
- A belief that there is a lot of good in the history and past values of British society.
In fact the attitudes of a large number of people in this country! During the 60's in my student days I was involved in extreme left wing activity (as were Labour Cabinet Ministers Jack Straw and Peter Mandelson). I recall some of the values we held and causes we campaigned for then: · Weakening the power of the police, especially through using the grievances of ethnic minorities and Irish nationalists. · Weakening traditional family values and campaigning for equality for homosexuals. · Attacking everything to do with 'White Anglo-Saxon Protestant' culture. Removing Christianity as the dominant faith and promoting multi-culturalism. · Portraying everything to do with Britain's imperial past as evil. · Working for international Communism in which the nation state would disappear. In those days that was the programme of the extreme left. Sounds a bit familiar? Today we are seeing a coming together of the media, the educational system and the government on a number of issues, which is creating a new establishment and a new orthodoxy. It is also creating a climate of fear in which people are afraid to express any opposing opinions. Behind all this there are international forces working towards the replacement of nation states with power blocs. International Communism may not be the driving force behind it now, but the alliance of big business, media and education with political forces aiming at world government is there for those who have eyes to see. We are not yet in a one party state and there is still the possibility of protest against the process that is going on. However most Christians in my experience are blind to what is happening and do not even consider that we should think about the kind of issues I have raised in this article. If things continue in this way, we will sooner or later wake up to the fact that: 'Justice is turned back and righteousness stands afar off; for truth has fallen in the street and equity cannot enter. So truth fails and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.' (Isaiah 59.14-15)
