Jim D. reasonably asks: Michael, shouldn't it be basic that we should distrust all of the bourgeois media -- not just the GUARDIAN -- because they have clear bourgeois biases, including favoring the national security state, etc.? Even though the New York TIMES doesn't seem to be connected with the CIA, I am very careful with what I believe in their stories.
===== Yes, absolutely right. The UK press generally serves a much more unified "market" which can be segmented according to politics and again according to presumed degree of affluence/education, giving highbrow rightwing crap, middlebrow rightwing crap, lowbrow, etc. The Guardian has traditionally occupied the "left", and has been put to use in various ways over the last 30 years, not least in helping to hobble Wilson/Callaghan/Foot Labour, supporting the breakaway Gaitskellite successor SDP, and ushering in the New Labour ascendancy. An analogous job to the dishing Labour from the left tactic is being accomplished now by the Daily Telegraph, which is more likely to complain of the Conservative Party selling out, and thus support every idiot punk Thatcherite who declares loyalty to the cause. A while back I deliberately inserted the mischievous little paragraph from Private Eye noting Telegraph editor Charles Moore's sighted exit from MI5 HQ. Given Britain's smaller size and historically more unified news media space, it's a very cosy club indeed. This means all newspapers are ripe for manipulation, overt and covert. It also means that information, however partial or distorted, can inadvertently leak out from time to time, especially when different branches of the secret state are conducting their own turf wars, as with the long tussle between MI5 and MI6, and even between different "wings" of MI5 itself. I suppose picking on the Guardian goes back to a point raised by Michael P. back in March/April or thereabouts, when he queried why it was that a significant proportion of forwarded news articles are from the Guardian. This got us into the merits of that specific paper, and on to Mark Jones' point about the historic relationship between the Guardian and the intelligence services, followed by Michael Pugliese's interventions, followed by my own research into the British state following the IMF UK 1976 episode, etc. There are people here who are on record as praising the reliability of the Guardian, and it maybe needs to be reiterated just how questionable that particular source really is, for all its housing of worthy social democrats over the years(e.g. Roy Hattersley), and even the odd radical (Paul Foot, Mark Steel - now at the Independent, Gary Younge, Seumas Milne). There are still plenty of Polly Toynbees, Jonathan Freedlands, Martin Kettles, Peter Prestons, Matthew Engels to keep the liberal intelligentsia happy. (But far better is the Tory Geoffrey Wheatcroft.) The image of the Guardian as hammer of the right is helped by its recent history of bringing down various Conservative Party Ministers, including Neil Hamilton and Jonathan Aitken. But the related point made by Mark Jones regarding the realignment of the permanent government towards New Labour and away from the increasingly unstable and unpredictable Conservatives, riven with factions and infighting thanks to the punk Thatcherites, adds a different gloss to the apparently laudable conduct of the Guardian as a haven of campaigning journalism. The Guardian also got in on the "stop Portillo" campaign, playing a bit part to the major roles taken by both Telegraph titles, whose own contributions were so clearly orchestrated to produce a wholly predictable outcome (Thatcher denying all support for Portillo just prior to the crucial MPs' vote) show that security service mischief-making is far from over in the British news media. You continue: BTW, traditionally the CIA was the "liberal" spy agency in the US (compared to the FBI). Its agents were sophisticated Ivy League types who hobnobbed with (and corrupted) liberals, social democrats, and laborites. The CIA traditionally embraced a more long-term and "enlightened" perspective than the FBI. Is the MI5 the same way? If so, one can learn something from them (and their allies in the media) while being extremely careful not to believe everything they say. ===== There is no doubt that MI5 has housed some seriously reactionary types over the years, too extreme even for many colleagues. MI6 has its own horrible history, laid out in detail by Stephen Dorril in his recent book, but, yes, if one can make comparisons then MI6 would be analogous to your characterisation of the CIA. Particularly in Northern Ireland, MI6 comes out rather well compared to the ruthlessness which characterised MI5 operations there, and which contributed to many civilian deaths and subverted whatever minimal norms of bourgeois liberal democracy remained. As Peter Taylor revealed in his "Brits" series and book, it was via MI6 that Mrs Thatcher broke her vow and "talked to terrorists". Meanwhile army types were horrified at what MI5 were getting up to. Some of this is revealed in both the David Leigh and Dorril/Ramsay books on the Wilson plots. There is also a much longer, detailed study by Paul Foot, "Who Framed Colin Wallace?", Wallace being an army information officer who was being fed all sorts of smears regarding Wilson, but whose uncovering of an establishment paedophile ring led to him being framed for manslaughter and jailed. It gets more complicated when someone like Foot, for example, who has no truck with the British state, can be relied upon to indulge his sectarian tastes by rubbishing e.g. Arthur Scargill, whose limitations are apparent to many on the left but whose pariah status on the right means that leftists' disaffections can be exploited, as with the attempt by Robert Maxwell and Roger Cook in 1990 to frame Scargill and Peter Heathfield for the misuse of NUM funds and the pocketing of large sums of Soviet miners' money sent to help striking British miners. Thus, to answer your question, I think it's a mixture of instinct, historical knowledge, cross-checking and inspired guesswork. An important question to answer is, "whose purposes are served by this reporting?" The advantage of a forum like this is that the latter particularly can be tested and others who are informed on related and similar matters can add to the common understanding. Marx's notion of determinations is useful here, given all the subtexts encountered in some of the topics we have focused on in recent times, whether on the IMF in Britain, the marginalisation of punk Thatcherism, the ascendancy of New Labour, etc. Not to mention the rather more global role performed by the Financial Times in its campaign against James Wolfensohn. In closing, you ask: BTW2, what is PRIVATE EYE's connection with the intelligence goons? ===== That's an intriguing one. I tried to cover that in my review of David Leigh's book, noting the relationship of certain individual staff members to the state (Auberon Waugh, Patrick Marnham, e.g.) and their toleration by editor Richard Ingrams whose own sympathy towards Thatcherism and loathing of Harold Wilson significantly skewed the content of the magazine, and led to the departure of people like Paul Foot and the noticeable reduction of commitment by other founders like Willie Rushton and John Wells, who were unhappy with the rather one-sided nature of the satire being employed. In certain respects the latterday Ingrams Eye looked like a comic book version of the Spectator. Under Ian Hislop's editorship, it's become a more equal opportunities satirist again, and Rushton and Wells returned, as did Paul Foot, to be joined by Francis Wheen, while old hacks like Peter Mackay, Nigel Dempster and Patrick Marnham were booted out. Meanwhile former owner Peter Cook encouraged Hislop to develop the investigative reporting side of the magazine. I think there is a generally healthy distrust of state and corporate power displayed in most of the magazine's contents. That attitude can, of course, be exploited by some in the intelligence services to score tactical points. To be independent of the goons does not immunise one from their manipulations. But I would reckon that the Eye's head and heart are generally in the right place, as concern state and corporate power at least. On the basis of current evidence, anyway. Michael K.
