The new media rightwing: case of Lord Conrad Black
African Focus By Tafataona P. Mahoso
In the last two instalments we showed that the media are shaped by
major events while in turn helping to shape events.
In the UK, instead of Prime Minister Tony Blair being forced to resign
over the Iraq scandal, it was Robin Cook and Claire Short who resigned;
in the US, instead of President Bush being forced to resign over the
same scandal, it was a peripheral advisor Richard Perle who resigned.
Forms of political corruption and lying far worse than what was exposed
in the 1974 Watergate scandal have this time been glossed over, with
blatant lies being dismissed as mere "exaggerations".
But the question does arise: Is there really a rightwing in Western
media? When Richard Viguerie announced in his book The New Right:
We Are Ready to Lead (1980) that the new right would seek to stop
media exposes of rightwing leaders similar to the unmasking of Richard
M. Nixon in 1974, did he really mean that the new right had an agenda
for the media as well as businessmen ready to invest in such an
agenda? Indeed Viguerie was serious.
By the 1990s there were enough "media moguls" benefiting from
Reaganiste and Thatcherite rightwing policies to make a clear
ideological difference in the coverage of national and international issues
in the West itself as well as in the South and East.
The rightwing investors benefiting from rightwing deregulation were partly
the subject of Robert McChesney�s Rich Media: Poor Democracy
published in 1999. The magazine Index on Censorship for
September/October 1994 also published a special issue on these
"media moguls" emerging from the landscape of rightwing media
deregulation.
In 1995, Jay G. Blumler and Michael Gurevitch also dealt with the same
problem in their book, The Crisis of Public Information.
By 2002 the rightwing model of media investment and deregulation had
been marketed widely around the globe in the name of media freedom
and independence. In one country, Venezuela, for instance, the new
media were used to organise a coup d�etat against the popularly elected
government of President Hugo Chavez.
According to the president's report to the United Nations on January 16
2003, the media modelled after US rightwing ideology were involved in
organising the treasonous acts:
"Who planned that bloody coup d�etat? The Venezuelan elite with foreign
contacts; the owners of private TV stations in Venezuela; four big TV
stations already called by people. You know what the people call them?
The four horsemen of the Apocalypse. In the name of freedom of
expression, the proprietors of those TV stations trampled on truth and
led and continue to lead the conspiracy because it has not ended.
"I will give you an example of what happened in Venezuela on April 11
2002. I was taken prisoner and taken to a Venezuelan island in the
Caribbean. But before that, the only state TV station was taken off the
air by the coup plotters, helped by (new) cutting edge technology.
The four horsemen of the Apocalypse (�free and independent�) spread out
to the [military] garrisons and places where the civilian and military coup
plotters had gathered where you would not find a TV camera, backed by
microwaves and satellites ready to go on air.
They had their equipment in place at the palace, and even while I was
still there they gave orders to the journalists not to let the president of
the republic go on air
"Later on, when I was already imprisoned, they began to broadcast a big
lie to the world, one of their many big lies. I refused over and over again
to sign the resignation presented to me by the coup plotters. Even
though they threatened to kill me I told them: �I will not resign away the
power given to me by the people, so you can do whatever you wish to
me�."
Of course the big lie was that the four free and independent stations
broadcast to the whole world that the President of Venezuela had
resigned his post in favour of the coup plotters. They lied to say that the
president had signed a resignation decree, which they themselves had
written. The four free and independent stations refused to announce any
news contradicting their lie.
The people were told through their own movement that the independent
media�s announcements were lies. So the people took to the streets
and overwhelmed the coup plotters. Later, state TV stations were freed
and turned on, enabling the people to know the truth.
In other words, the CIA-sponsored coup d�etat was finally defeated when
the people as the first media mobilised against the plotters and their
foreign-sponsored �independent� media.
Now let us look at the particular orientation and views of one example of
a rightwing media mogul, Lord Conrad Black.
This is what Professor McChesney said of him in 1999.
"In Canada, vocal right-winger Conrad Black . . . who owns 437
newspapers globally in an empire that generated revenues of (US)$2,2
billion in 1997 � owns 61 of that nation�s 101 daily newspapers, and
over one half of Canada�s newspaper circulation."
By 2003, this Canadian right-winger had become so successful in the
US that he also owned more than 100 titles in the Chicago area alone,
where his biggest paper is The Chicago Sun � Times. His recent
venture is The New York Sun, launched in 2002.
In Britain, the same right-winger owns The Daily Telegraph. He also
owns the Jerusalem Post in Israel.
So, Conrad Black is known globally as a right-winger. But what are
some of his views? We gather some of them from his speech: "Winning
Strategies for Hard Times," which he gave in June 2003 at the World
Newspaper Congress, World Editors Forum and Information Services
Expo, in Dublin, Ireland. He was invited there because of his star
performance as a rising media mogul benefiting from the rightwing
deregulation of media markets.
The first major point he made in his remarks was that editorial
independence is nonsense. Business executives of newspaper
companies must take charge of the quality of newspaper content. He
called the myth of editorial independence "the insane segregation of
commercial and editorial management".
The second major point he made was to praise the media policies of US
presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush senior, and now George W.
Bush. Not only did these presidents engage in dismantling decades of
US media regulations through the Federal Communications
Commission, but they also made sure to appoint right-wing
commissioners to run the FCC.
The current chairman of the FCC is, in fact, US Secretary of State Colin
Powell's brother. Black said the changes made in US regulations were
also being made in Britain through the new Broadcasting Act bill there.
The third major point he made was that he had accepted the invitation to
speak at the conference on condition that he would choose his own
topic and his topic of choice was "Current Anti-American comment in
the international media".
In other words, while most media critics and scholars around the world
were saying that the global media were too soft when analysing US
policies around the world, Black felt that there should be no criticism of
US policies in the global media. However, Black acknowledged that US
unipolar politics had polarised the world.
"Almost all major non-American nationalities, at least in their political
leaderships, tend now to divide between advocates of co-operation with
the United States and those who seek to stand on each other�s
shoulders and construct an alternative source of power and influence."
Black felt that the effort by midget nations to band together against the
US bully was both wrong and futile. It was also wrong for the media to
encourage resistance to US hegemony.
Instead of encouraging resistance to US hegemony, the global media
should tell the world that US unipolar supremacy was "an opportunity
rather than an affront to all civilised people". In other words, it was
uncivilised to oppose US domination of the world.
The fourth major point of Black�s address was an attack on nations
which have refused to deregulate, liberalise and commercialise their
media in accordance with rightwing neoliberal ideology.
He recognises that the US information hegemony amounts to cultural
imperialism and he makes an astonishing recommendation: That the
best solution for small media markets is not to regulate media and
cultural production but to "produce a competitive and superior popular
culture" to counter the US dominance.
His argument does not seem genuine. On the one hand, he said media
regulation is unwise because it is doomed to fail, since the power of
global media companies is overwhelming. On the other hand he said the
same small communities and countries whose regulations are bound to
fail in the face of US-based media giants "should produce a competitive
and superior popular culture" to that of US-based giants instead of trying
to regulate the media.
If small nations� regulations are doomed to fail because they are small,
does Black genuinely believe the same small nations can compete in
the media and culture field against the same powerful forces but without
any regulations?
The countries where Zimbabwe is getting the worst Press � Britain, the
United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand � are all dominated
by rightwing media empires.
Zimbabwe's efforts in media regulation and land redistribution are clearly
the opposite of the policies most media moguls want and from which
they have benefited.
Mitayo Potosi
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