1591: "Let's kill all the lawyers." The 2017 equivalent: get the journalists
What do Donald J Trump, Julian Assange, Corbyn supporters like Paul Mason and "The Canary" news website, Breitbart which is to the hard right what "the Canary" is to the hard left, Nigel Farage, many "Cybernat" hardline SNP supporters and Vladimir Putin all have in common?
Well, one thing is their attitude to the mainstream media in western democracies like Britain, which ranges from open contempt to making every attempt to discredit and undermine it.
In 1591, in his play Henry VI, Shakespeare put into the mouth of a rebel against the established order the words "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
The equivalent target today for unfriendly foreign governments and domestic anti-establishment candidates of right or left is the mainstream media.
There is a good column on the subject in the Spectator by Nick Cohen,
"Fake news: the far-left's favourite new excuse,"
in which he describes how the Corbynista left was attacking the media at Labour conference this week but quite correctly points out that Donald J Trump does exactly the same. He writes:
"Admirers of violence and lies must go carefully. As true cowards they must leave themselves an escape hatch in case they are forced to retreat. They never quite commit to the suppression of rights, the rigged elections, the secret policemen and the torture chambers. Instead they tell us we are not hearing the full story, and switch the argument.
The real problem is not the oppressive state and its suffering citizens, they say. The problem is the fake media. Not media faked by government propagandists and controlled by censors, not countries where every TV station and mass circulation newspaper must follow the party line, but the free media in their own country.
As individual journalists and news organisations are often stupid or biased or both, few people notice that they have changed the subject. Their listeners respond with enthusiasm."
He adds that people do not know, and may realise that they don't know, what is really happening in a foreign country whose language they might not speak,
"whose cities they have never visited, but they do know that they hate Fox News or the New York Times, the Daily Mail or the Guardian."
As former BBC political editor Nick Robinson said in an interview in the Guardian,
“Our critics now see their attacks as a key part of their political strategy. In order to succeed they need to convince people not to believe ‘the news’.”
He added: “Attacks on the media are no longer a lazy clap line delivered to a party conference to raise morale. They are part of a guerrilla war being fought on social media day after day and hour after hour.”
The Guardian wrote this up with the headline
"Alternative news sites waging guerrilla war on the BBC says Nick Robinson,"
but his comments and their article cover a broader guerrilla war: it's not just alternative news sites and the target is not just the BBC, those throughout the political spectrum who are courting anti-establishment support are doing this and the target is the whole MSM.
And as Nick Robinson pointed out of the various different groups which have adopted this strategy
"They would all be horrified to be compared with one another, since what motivates them is the belief that the other lot are not just mistaken but an existential threat to the future of their country, but they often respond in similar ways.
"Their most shared and liked stories are attacks on the MSM and the BBC in particular. They share a certainty – fuelled by living in a social media bubble – that we reporters and presenters are at best craven, obeying some diktat from our bosses or the government, or at worst nakedly biased."
As the New Statesman - which is hardly part of the "Tory Press" has pointed out,
The Canary is running a sexist hate campaign against Laura Kuenssberg,
and I'm afraid I do not think it is a coincidence that the BBC felt the abuse she has been receiving included sufficiently credible threats that they had to give her a bodyguard at Labour conference.
Nick Robinson also pointed out that the worst way the BBC or other parts of the MSM could deal with this campaign of hostility is to silence voices of dissent: his interview was headlined
"If mainstream news wants to win back trust it cannot silence dissident voices."
Absolutely right. As Nick wrote
"Shockingly, Churchill’s pre-war warnings about the dangers of German rearmament were heard by radio listeners not in his own country but in the US. The BBC, influenced by the government, muzzled him.
"The way Churchill was handled is a powerful warning of the dangers of the BBC believing it is being balanced by silencing the voices of those who do not represent conventional wisdom. It is an answer to all those who complained that Nick Griffin – who is, let me stress, no modern-day Churchill – should never have been invited on to Question Time.
"It’s a riposte to Brexiters who fill my timeline with demands that we should not interview “that failed leader” Nick Clegg, to Remainers who say the same about Nigel Farage, and to those who argue Nigel Lawson should never be interviewed about climate change.
"They should be challenged and if, as Lawson did on Today recently, they get their facts wrong we should say so. But they should not be silenced."
Quite.
Well, one thing is their attitude to the mainstream media in western democracies like Britain, which ranges from open contempt to making every attempt to discredit and undermine it.
In 1591, in his play Henry VI, Shakespeare put into the mouth of a rebel against the established order the words "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
The equivalent target today for unfriendly foreign governments and domestic anti-establishment candidates of right or left is the mainstream media.
There is a good column on the subject in the Spectator by Nick Cohen,
"Fake news: the far-left's favourite new excuse,"
in which he describes how the Corbynista left was attacking the media at Labour conference this week but quite correctly points out that Donald J Trump does exactly the same. He writes:
"Admirers of violence and lies must go carefully. As true cowards they must leave themselves an escape hatch in case they are forced to retreat. They never quite commit to the suppression of rights, the rigged elections, the secret policemen and the torture chambers. Instead they tell us we are not hearing the full story, and switch the argument.
The real problem is not the oppressive state and its suffering citizens, they say. The problem is the fake media. Not media faked by government propagandists and controlled by censors, not countries where every TV station and mass circulation newspaper must follow the party line, but the free media in their own country.
As individual journalists and news organisations are often stupid or biased or both, few people notice that they have changed the subject. Their listeners respond with enthusiasm."
He adds that people do not know, and may realise that they don't know, what is really happening in a foreign country whose language they might not speak,
"whose cities they have never visited, but they do know that they hate Fox News or the New York Times, the Daily Mail or the Guardian."
As former BBC political editor Nick Robinson said in an interview in the Guardian,
“Our critics now see their attacks as a key part of their political strategy. In order to succeed they need to convince people not to believe ‘the news’.”
He added: “Attacks on the media are no longer a lazy clap line delivered to a party conference to raise morale. They are part of a guerrilla war being fought on social media day after day and hour after hour.”
The Guardian wrote this up with the headline
"Alternative news sites waging guerrilla war on the BBC says Nick Robinson,"
but his comments and their article cover a broader guerrilla war: it's not just alternative news sites and the target is not just the BBC, those throughout the political spectrum who are courting anti-establishment support are doing this and the target is the whole MSM.
And as Nick Robinson pointed out of the various different groups which have adopted this strategy
"They would all be horrified to be compared with one another, since what motivates them is the belief that the other lot are not just mistaken but an existential threat to the future of their country, but they often respond in similar ways.
"Their most shared and liked stories are attacks on the MSM and the BBC in particular. They share a certainty – fuelled by living in a social media bubble – that we reporters and presenters are at best craven, obeying some diktat from our bosses or the government, or at worst nakedly biased."
As the New Statesman - which is hardly part of the "Tory Press" has pointed out,
The Canary is running a sexist hate campaign against Laura Kuenssberg,
and I'm afraid I do not think it is a coincidence that the BBC felt the abuse she has been receiving included sufficiently credible threats that they had to give her a bodyguard at Labour conference.
Nick Robinson also pointed out that the worst way the BBC or other parts of the MSM could deal with this campaign of hostility is to silence voices of dissent: his interview was headlined
"If mainstream news wants to win back trust it cannot silence dissident voices."
Absolutely right. As Nick wrote
"Shockingly, Churchill’s pre-war warnings about the dangers of German rearmament were heard by radio listeners not in his own country but in the US. The BBC, influenced by the government, muzzled him.
"The way Churchill was handled is a powerful warning of the dangers of the BBC believing it is being balanced by silencing the voices of those who do not represent conventional wisdom. It is an answer to all those who complained that Nick Griffin – who is, let me stress, no modern-day Churchill – should never have been invited on to Question Time.
"It’s a riposte to Brexiters who fill my timeline with demands that we should not interview “that failed leader” Nick Clegg, to Remainers who say the same about Nigel Farage, and to those who argue Nigel Lawson should never be interviewed about climate change.
"They should be challenged and if, as Lawson did on Today recently, they get their facts wrong we should say so. But they should not be silenced."
Quite.
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