One of the most compelling images conjured up by the revolution in Egypt over the past few days came to me courtesy of an Al Jazeeri reporter on Friday evening who informed his audience, in the wake of Vice President Suleiman's statement that Mubarak had 'waived the presidency', that the news anchors on Egyptian state TV were to be seen smiling broadly. For some reason I found this quite an emotional concept and came gie near wibbly as a result. It's been an emotional rollercoaster watching human dignity stand so steadfast in the face of brutal oppression. Only someone with a heart of flint would fail to be moved by the Channel 4 news interview Jon Snow did with Egyptian human rights activist Dr Hossam Abdalla and his Glasgow born son Khalid Abdalla, the actor from such films as the Kite Runner and Green Zone, who was with the crowd in Tahrir Square.
Therefore, it was interesting to read this morning that one of the first effects, following the collapse of Mubarak, is that State Television and pro-government media have about faced as fast as a Labour MP totalling their expenses column. According to an article on Al Arabiya's website 'State TV and pro-Mubarak newspapers portrayed the hundreds of thousands of protesters as a minority of troublemakers. While raucous protests raged in downtown Cairo, state-run Al-Nil TV showed serene videos of the Nile River.'
It's rather telling that on the Thursday, 24 hours before the actual day of departure, journalists at the pro-government al-Ahram newspaper, possibly sniffing the fresh air of change, demanded the sacking of their editor and the publishing of a front page apology for their 'unethical coverage'.
All of this got me to thinking about pro-government newspaper mouth pieces and state controlled radio and television and how lucky we are in Scotland to be living in such a free and democratic place, where our media are unfettered from the terrible pressures of oppressive and indulgent forces and report everything fairly with a straight bat.
Then I sobered up.
No matter which way you look at it, depending on the vagaries of poll results, at the very least one-quarter to one-third of people living in Scotland believe Scotland should be Independent. Yet this swathe of the electorate are ignored by our state broadcaster and pro-Union mouth-piece media and newspapers. Opponents of Independence have had decades to build up a culture of Union dependence within these vast organisations. Others have pointed out where political allegiances lie in newsrooms across the country, where personal relationships are dismissed as mere tittle tattle. Yet, personally I know of a great number of media people, who are keen on the idea of this illusionary better nation. In a previous career I was the director of a peripatetic film and television festival that drew media practitioners from the 'Celtic' countries to Scotland where they could embrace and celebrate their individuality and differences. Friendships made at the festival still survive some 12 years on, many privately agree with what myself and other Scottish blawgers say about the inherent Labour bias in our media. At least one, senior executive is troubled by the bias his organisation projects on news. Yet, the status quo continues. This week has seen Iain Gray go into hiding, the gray pimpernel is nowhere to be found, obviously our unbiased journalists have looked everywhere to ask him the simple question of, when he was first made aware that Labour in London were 'actively facilitating' the return of el-Megrahi to Libya?
Only one journalist found him, the Observers Kevin McKenna, who must surely buy his mouthwash in bulk, has penned the most ridiculous hagiography since the publication of 'Mugabe: My Misunderstood Years.' If you can bare the indignity of a professional journalist becoming a porn fluffer then read on.
Personally, I'm looking for more than Jackie Bird dropping her folksy-grinning-everything's-alright-go-back-to-sleep routine and go into a prophetic Howard Beale rant-a-thon as in 'Network'.
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Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I remember during all the stuff going on in Serbia, the BBC always quoted reports coming from the TV stations there as coming from "State-owned" television - implying that we couldn't necessarily trust the reports. It was such a commonly used phrase, it just rolled off the tongue. Then one day I realised it was our own "state-owned" television telling us this. And that all the "Independent" terrestrial tv stations in the UK are all "state-licensed"
Then again, the alternative appears to be Murdoch-owned television. Is there any way to have genuinely independent - or genuinely un-biased media?
I don't know what's happened, but I can now read your blog without crashing my router. That's why this might seem like my first appearance, but it isn't really - I used to have a quick glance, then have to reboot.
Don't mutter about stopping blogging again - righteous indignation is a wonderful thing and wee have too little of it. I hate the exhortations to calm. Saw someone somewhere saying that visceral hatred of the Labour Party was bad, because there were still to be found among their members a few people of principle. Just exactly like the Gestapo, in fact - there were probably some sweet family guys in there, who meant well and always remembered your birthday - but that isn't the salient point. Visceral hatred (if we must use the phrase) looks to me like the civilised response to these gangsters. Keep up the anger.
Hi Kim, good point, then again look at the Egyptian revolution. I watched the live stream from Al Jazeera online. It was coming at you undiluted, straight from the streets. Via live tweets and facebook updates. It was only when I sat down of an evening to watch it on BBC, ITN or SKY that I discovered it had been sanitised and presented with, in the interests of fairness, the other side, notably those Mubarak apologists who sleazed on about the thirty years stability Mubarak provided. Hey, what's the problem of your kids missing finger nails and rendition flights between stable friends?
In answer to your question, I honestly think citizen blogging is all that's left.
Hi Vronksy, I haven't a clue why my seething whimsy would crash your router!
I don't do hatred, there's been enough people that have circled planet me firing bricks to cause that kind of teetch clenching hatred, but I refuse to give into an emotion!
Labour are simply lower than a pregnant snakes belly in my eyes. The few elected reprasentatives I've met in my time are terrifed of straying out of their sphere of knowledge and loyalty. They don't do 'bigger picture' thinking. For that I pity them.
Talking of mouth piece journalism. I stopped of at t eshops onthe way home and noticed the Sunday Mail have gone hell for leather on the Jim Devine story,with a front page and four inside devote to dragging every possible wrong thing the feller ever did.
Rather tellingly there's not one mention of the party that he was an MP for.
I defy anyone to scroll through the article and find the word 'Labour' anywhere in the actual text.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sunday-mail/2011/02/13/shamed-mp-jim-devine-s-aide-tells-all-the-booze-smears-bets-and-fiddles-86908-22920316/
That McKenna article is a belter. Don't know how I missed it.
(Perhaps I thought it was Guardian football scribe Kevin McCarra, but it was too shite even for him)
You really needed a stronger warning ahead of thon article.
While McKenna fawns though Gray appears to struggle to capture the "lowland Labour" idealism that is ascribed to him.
Not for Gray a hero of the stature of John MacLean, Jimmmy Reid or others of the great Scottish labour movement mould.
Instead Gray drools over Howard Wilson.... Says it all that he seeks his iconography from Downing Street and not Cldeside.
Excellent suggestion Mr or Ms Awareness Gap. I shall invest in the Special Discretion Required warning triangle beloved of C4 in the 1980's, which naturally led to glamorous hooligans getting a touch of the high brow in pursuit of gratuitous art house cinema nudeness...
I was working in Egypt.
I just couldn't get over the fact that all the local lads had the BBC Arabic service turned on 24/7 so that they could get honest reporting.
For a Scotsman, that's irony.
Andrew,
That is the irony of it all.
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