In some ways, but far from all, I was a mildly precocious kid. For example I began to be a regular reader of The Economist from my early teens, long enough to see long term pictures and trends, but equally long enough to develop a brand loyalty.
From the beginning, I appreciated the conceit of the The Economist: that it was a newspaper, not a magazine, like the lesser titles based in America, such as Time or Newsweek, but more, that its editorial judgement was based on a set of principles that emerged from an almost high table approach to the issues of the day. Structured and academically rigorous, sure, but most of all intelligent. The Economist was committed to political ideas, a liberal-conservative point of view that was not subject to the whims of fashion. More to the point, both editors and contributors were not merely ivory tower thinkers, they were often financial practitioners and extraordinarily well connected and well informed. Thus the opinions expressed were often strikingly different to the conventional wisdom. Reading a magisterial editorial was tapping into the considered views of All Souls or Bilderberg, or most of the British establishment's in-house intellectual think tanks. This is, of course not to say that such intellectual heft was always right- in fact the pleasure of reading the newspaper was the glee with which they occasionally espoused losing causes, such as the abolition of the British monarchy. In the end though, such puckish humour was part of the charm of the thing.
The point of The Economist was that it almost always took seriously the idea that journalism was the first draft of history. However, that ivory tower perspective has been undermined by the current and sustained attack on democratic values, in which the media in general, far from being the recorder of history has become a battlefield to shape a preconceived narrative, rather than any kind of search for truth. As with financial bankruptcy, the moral bankruptcy of the media has come in two stages: slowly and then very quickly. In Britain, the slow bankruptcy began with the acquisition by Rupert Murdoch of The News of the World in 1969. It is beyond the scope of this commentary to address the full phenomenon of Murdoch, he was, and at time of writing remains, one of the worlds most powerful media moguls, Suffice it to say, however, that while the press barons of the 1930s had always proposed political agendas through their ownership of the media, Murdoch took it further and took it with a far more radical political agenda. Murdoch's possession of the sordid secrets of many in the British establishment allowed him to use leverage in certain cases- as Conan Doyle's Charles Augustus Milverton had fictionally done decades before. For Murdoch though, the currency was not merely vulgar money, it was power. Nor was it the necessarily the crudities of personal blackmail. Even the threat of a hostile editorial or lead story in The Sun would give Prime Ministers pause. Not that blackmail was beneath the tabloid culture that emerged after Murdoch's entry into the market- indeed the dark back story behind the phone hacking scandal was the degree to which intrusive journalism was used to make the lives of its victims extremely unpleasant. Some stories- the affair between John Major and Edwina Currie- remained spiked until the story could do no harm, while others were released into the full glare of tabloid publicity.
So far, so unsurprising. What has changed in the past decade is that whereas once a media point of view would at least take some notice of what was true, now the media is not based on reporting of facts, but seems to have given up the reporting of facts in favour of the distribution of propaganda. Again Murdoch has been at the forefront of the process- Fox News reports the stories it selects as the greatest use for an agenda that is increasingly hard right in subject and in tone. It should not come as a surprise either that this tone serves the corporate interests of big business. Mr. Murdoch's interests are conservatively estimated to be over $13 billion personally, rising to over €24 billion when taking into account his family interests. Big Media is big business. Increasingly though, Big Business is acquiring Big Media. Massive consolidation is driving the emergence of fewer and far more powerful media outlets. In most examples of this the issue is not editorial direction- it is simply cash. The problem is that proprietors driven solely by the almighty buck are locked into an ever more concentrated groupthink. What is important is not what is true or fair or kind, but solely what is profitable. This again supports an agenda that ignores freedom or social contribution and focuses only on the bottom line. Despite the initial idea that social media would foster greater diversity of opinion, the algorithms that drive traffic in fact foster the same kind of ideas as shock jocks or the Murdoch media. Extremism gets clicks, well thought out argument is ignored.
The consequences of this forced extremism includes the return of fascism and this is not simply a cultural or political phenomenon, it is an economic one. The Economist seems surprisingly perplexed at the emergence of the far right. They shouldn't be. The fact is that their editorial decision to engage with fascist commentators, such as Steve Bannon, rather than dismiss them, is not merely weak kneed, it is a failure of intellectual confidence which of all journals, one might have thought The Economist would be immune to.
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