I have been spending a few days paying attention to foreign media resources, sparked by watching an hour of South African news TV the other night and realizing there are countries in Africa that I'm ashamed to say I'd never even heard of.I think the great American public would be best served, however, by some familiarity with the British press. Fox News watchers of the nation are united in their conviction that most of the American media is a haven for liberal lefties, and because they never get to see any real left-wing news or ideas they are oblivious to the stories that are ignored and covered up, and apparently oblivious to the fact that all the news outlets they think are so liberal are owned by big corporations and serve big corporate biases.
What interests me the most about the UK press is the Daily Telegraph.
The Daily Telegraph is the most right-wing of the broadsheet (ie. serious) British daily newspapers. They are solidly conservative, with a Libertarian leaning in some areas (such as ID cards, which the British government wants to bring in).
(Fuck, I hate it when I type three paragraphs and addicentally delete them!)
As I was saying before my accident with the keyboard, the Telegraph supports the Conservative party, war on Iraq, Bush, fox-hunting, and so forth, and is against Blair, the Labour Party, Europe, too many immigrants, anti-capitalist protestors, animal rights "terrorists," and assorted lefties. You can login to read using the email [email protected], password 55555
But I'll bet that if you don't look at the opinion pages, the average Fox viewer would think they were part of the Liberal Media. Sure, they don't much cover real left-wing topics like the evils of the WTO or the need for fair trade, but neither does the supposedly liberal press in the US. At least when they covered the last WTO protests they bothered to quote protestors to give some idea of what they were protesting about. They complain about all those depressed people who shouldn't be on incapacity benefit, but they don't question the need for a National Health Service. The UK is sufficiently more environmentally aware than the US that they might even seem green at times, since they mock the American need to drive around cities in pollution-pumping SUVs. Their news items don't betray too much bias against abortion or homosexuality, so they must be liberal!
Once you hit the editorial pages it all changes of course, but even the letters section contains more diversity of well-reasoned opinion than you'll ever get on Fox.
And if you follow the British news much you'll see the blatant conservative bias in their coverage of the pro-fox-hunting protests - police brutality (which in the UK is hitting people with truncheons rather than spraying babies in the face with pepper spray or shooting them with rubber bullets) is perfectly reasonable when perpetrated against anti-capitalists, anarchists, and bicyclists, but appalling when it's good old hunting, shooting and farming folk. Even when they are throwing projectiles at the cops, and cheering when policemen are injured. But at least they print a bloody letter from a police officer pointing it out!
(I do find it amusing that there was pretty much NO fighting between police and protesters at the last anti-war marches in London. Imagine that, one group protests for peace, another group protests for their right to gallop around the countryside ripping foxes to pieces and smearing blood on the faces of children new to the "sport," whilst occassionally damaging people's gardens and killing their family pets - who'd have thought it would be the pacifists who'd be peaceful and the blood sports enthusiasts who'd be throwing barriers at the police and getting whacked over the head for it?)
Hilariously, I learn from the Telegraph that Bryan Ferry's ex-wife and son's girlfriend appeared in court for their part in illegal protest activities. They turn up in a black cab (taxi), leaving the meter running while they're in court, dressed in "Gucci-style sunglasses" and designer scarves. Girlfriend proceeds to tell the court she is just a poor student. This is apparently why the conservatives think the fox-hunting debate is about class war - no matter how hard they try to come up with regular working class people to present to the public as your average fox-hunter, we somehow keep getting the impression that it's mostly a game for people who can afford to own horses. (As someone from the right-wing Express newpaper put it, if kids on council estates were tearing foxes to pieces with pitbulls, the good people of the countryside would be appalled and want them in jail for as long as possible.)
And there's another thing - Question Time. It's a mainstream TV program in which members of the government, two opposing parties, someone from the press, and usually some actor with political opinions, spend an hour facing (and being made to actually answer) questions from an audience made up of whatever members of the public turn up and get in. High-up politicians directly taking questions from the public. What an idea!
In other areas of the media, a recent UK edition of the women's magazine Marie Claire had a piece on how far-right groups in the UK, primarily the BNP (a racist, fascist group who have been gaining more ground by exploiting people's fears about immigration and lying about their actual policies and politics), have been using more women to try to give themselves a softer, friendlier image. It discusses the dangers of these groups, and in a sidebox about US right-wing commentators, profiles Ann Coulter (insisting that she's not a fascist, even though she's said liberals are traitors who should know we can kill them, women shouldn't be allowed to vote, we should repeal all laws back to before that hoary old freeing the slaves mistake, and we should kill leaders all over the Middle East and convert the people to Christianity).
You'd never get the British press publishing someone as patently demented as Ann Coulter. Okay, maybe The Sun or some other rightist tabloid would consider her, but she sure wouldn't be getting on any best seller lists, and it's doubtful even the trash tabloids would keep her on for long. (Ann Coulter really pisses me off - the hypocrisy of a woman who has gained everything from feminism, a professional middle-aged woman without children who would never have a voice if it wasn't for years of struggle by feminists who attacks them and extols the wonders of women who stay in the home raising kids and making homecooked dinners.)
So if your brain hasn't yet been entirely sucked out by Fox News Corporation, take a look around the rest of the world's press. It's the media, Jim, but not as we know it.
