Fwd: Guardian Greenwash

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Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:24:27 UT

Medialens Media Alerts

 

Guardian Greenwash

 

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

 

RAPID RESPONSE UPDATE: GUARDIAN GREENWASH

 

The Refusal To Publish Letters Is Just One More Example

 

January 27, 2004

 

“A giant oil company professes to take a ‘precautionary approach’ to global

warming. A major agrochemical manufacturer trades in a pesticide so hazardous it

has been banned in many countries while implying that the company is helping to

feed the hungry... This is greenwash, where transnational companies are

preserving and expanding their markets by posing as friends of the environment

and leaders in the struggle to eradicate poverty.” (Kenny Bruno, Greenpeace

Guide To Greenwash)

 

 

It’s Snowing Emails

 

On January 8 we published a Media Alert noting the Guardian newspaper’s

hypocrisy in recommending measures to combat climate change while filling its

own pages with car, aviation and other advertising. However, our criticisms

focused on much more than just hypocrisy. We invited readers to write to the

Guardian to address some fundamental issues:

 

“Why, in reporting the catastrophic effects of global warming, do you make no

mention of the global corporate efforts to obstruct even trivial action on

climate change and to destroy the environment movement? Why are these political

and economic factors bringing mass death to our planet unworthy even of mention

by you and your newspaper?”

 

Guardian environment correspondent Paul Brown reported being “snowed under” by

emails. He told one reader his ”email count had gone up to 20 an hour of similar

letters attacking [sic] both me and the paper.” (Forwarded to Media Lens,

January 21, 2004)

 

A large number of these letters were copied to both the editor and the letters

page. Many focused specifically on the conflict of interest between honest

reporting and dependence on big business advertising. For example:

 

“Dear Mr Brown,

 

Where am I to go for serious coverage and debate on the big issues of climate

change and global warming? Would the front page headline DEAD PLANET not sell a

few papers? Or are the airline, automotive and energy industries such big

players that their muscle skews your angle on this topic? As a dissatisfied

consumer of your product could you do me the favour of clearing up once and for

all what it is exactly that you produce: is it a platform for advertisers or a

medium for serious, free-thinking analysis of the facts?

 

" Does it not irk you that while you scribble by beeswax candle light and resolve

to take fewer baths, the transnational corporations pollute and plunder like

never before?

Regards

[Name withheld] " (Forwarded to Media Lens, January 11, 2004)

 

The media consistently claim to be open to all ideas and voices – people who

think otherwise are told to “read the paper” or to pay closer attention. So how

did the Guardian respond to arguments challenging its independence and honesty

as an integral part of the corporate system?

 

Letters in response to the Guardian’s climate reporting were published on

Friday, January 9, but not one mentioned the concerns described above that had

poured into the paper’s inboxes on January 8. None of these letters appeared on

Saturday, January 10, or on Monday, January 12.

 

On the afternoon of January 12 - four days after the original article on climate

change had appeared - we emailed the Guardian’s readers’ editor, Ian Mayes. We

outlined the substance of our January 8 Media Alert, and asked about the

letters:

 

”Why was not one of these letters published on the letters page? We noticed that

in following days the Guardian editors did find space for adverts for Citroen

cars, Chrysler cars, Fiat cars, Toyota cars, flybmi.com, the easyJet sale –

‘every+one+ must go’ - and another full-page advert for ‘2 for 1 flights’.”

 

We received no response, but the next morning (January 13) the following letter

appeared on the Guardian’s letters page:

 

" Headline on Thursday: 'Global warming to kill off 1m species'; Friday: 'Top

Scientist attacks US over global warming'; Saturday: '2 for 1 offer on flights

to the US.' Joined-up thinking? "

 

It is supposed to be a given that the letters page honestly reflects a

newspaper’s post bag. But this short letter on the lack of “joined-up thinking”

at the Guardian, appearing five days after the original article, did not

remotely reflect either the volume or critical content of the emails sent to the

paper.

 

Did the Guardian simply censor these letters for fear that they might damage its

credibility and/or the performance of the American Airlines “2 for 1” flights

offer?

 

An alternative explanation might be that the Guardian felt that these letters

were mere robotic responses to an ‘extreme pressure group’, and so did not

qualify as authentic correspondence to the letters page.

 

There are two problems with this argument: first, a substantial number of

letters forwarded to us were sent before and/or independently of our Media

Alert. Secondly, the Guardian clearly +did+ feel that the large number of

complaints merited a substantial response in the form of an article by the

readers’ editor, Ian Mayes: ‘Flying in the face of the facts - The readers'

editor on promotion, pollution and the Guardian's environment policies.’ (The

Guardian, January 24, 2004,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1130062,00.html)

 

A very obvious question arises, then: why did these scores of letters merit a

column of this kind but zero representation on the letters page?

 

 

Mayes Serves Up A Liberal Herring

 

Bizarrely, Mayes’ article focused on the Guardian’s ‘green credentials’, on the

fact that its journalists spent £520,000 on flights in 2002, on the prospect of

the paper planting trees to compensate for these flights, and on the possibility

of inviting readers to pay more for flights to cover the cost of compensatory

tree planting.

 

This was a classic example of what we like to call a ‘liberal herring’ – the

device whereby the liberal media focus intensely on comparatively trivial issues

as an alternative to addressing issues that are damaging to powerful interests.

The Guardian’s response was particularly disturbing to us because it was a

perfect example, in microcosm, of how corporate cynics sought to neutralise the

green movement throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Then, as now, sincere public

concern was channelled into futile cul de sacs, with corporate power thereby

freed to continue pursuing maximum profits in minimum time regardless of the

cost to people and planet.

 

Mayes then wrote:

 

“To return to the promotional offer of two transatlantic flights for the price

of one. The environment editor, and the environment and agriculture

correspondent of the Guardian were among those who saw it as, to put it very

mildly, completely in conflict with the Guardian's editorial policies on global

warming. They could perfectly understand its conveying an impression of

hypocrisy on the paper's part.”

 

But: “No one I have spoken to in the Guardian believes the curtailment of such

offers, let alone airline advertising, is a serious option.”

 

Again, many letters did deal with the issue of hypocrisy. But the central issue

was the undiscussed contradiction of a profit-driven corporate press reporting

on disasters rooted in corporate greed.

 

On January 26, in response to Mayes’ greenwashing article, the Guardian

published one letter from the CEO of Future Forests insisting there are “simple

steps that we can all take to actively address the climate change and

environmental impacts caused in our day-to-day lives”.

 

Planting forests is indeed a simple step. One might think, though, that an even

more obvious response for an honest newspaper would be to offer a semblance of

balance by publishing views challenging corporate ownership and control of the

media itself – if only on the letters page.

 

In response to Mayes’ article, and the letter from Future Forests, we sent a

third letter. This, too, has not been published.

 

We would like to express our thanks to the many readers who have written to the

Guardian, providing a powerful example of how popular pressure can begin to haul

previously taboo subjects onto the agenda.

 

Please read Ian Mayes’ response at the link provided above and write again to

him, the letters page and the editor (see Suggested Action below for sample

letters).

 

Some readers might wonder at our motivation in continually bothering the press

in this way: are we nuts?! Are we just grumpy malcontents with chips on our

shoulders?

 

Consider that predictions of the extinction of fully 25% of our world’s species

by 2050 have already vanished from the media’s radar. If experts had warned that

nuclear terrorism threatened 25% of the world’s species, politicians, think

tanks and other state-corporate interests would have been frantically discussing

the issue. The media would have responded with endless front-page articles,

high-profile commentaries and reporting. But an honest appraisal of the causes

of, and solutions to, climate change is deeply threatening to the powerful

interests that dominate politics and media. And so the media is happy to let the

most appalling threat of our time drift quietly into the shadows.

 

Our motivation, very simply, is that we believe that our lives, the lives of our

children, indeed of much animal and plant life on this planet, are in grave

danger. We believe, further, that the means of mobilising popular support for

action to prevent this catastrophe – the mass media – is fatally compromised and

in effect silenced by its very structure, nature and goals.

 

This is no joke; it is not some kind of power-baiting game played out for fun.

The drastic limit on rational free speech in response to potentially terminal

problems has to be exposed, challenged and changed, or there may well be no

future for any of us. We need to pressure the corporate media, and also to build

and support not-for-profit alternatives as rapidly as possible.

 

 

SUGGESTED ACTION

 

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for

others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain

a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

 

Write to Guardian readers’ editor Ian Mayes:

 

Email: reader

 

Preferably using your own words, ask him:

 

How can you justify your article, ‘Flying in the face of the facts’, in response

to scores of complaints from readers? Many people wrote complaining of the

Guardian’s silence on corporate obstruction of action on climate change, and

many challenged the Guardian’s impartiality given its dependence on advertising

revenue. Your article focused merely on the Guardian’s in-house green

credentials, and on the charge of hypocrisy, while making no mention whatever of

these far more serious topics. The primary issue we are seeking to raise for

discussion is this: How can a profit-driven corporate press – one that is an

integral part of the wider, climate-bashing corporate system - possibly be an

impartial source reporting on the devastation wrought by that same system?

 

Write to Paul Brown at the Guardian.

 

Email: paul.brown

 

Ask him:

 

How do you explain the fact that not one of the scores of emails sent to you and

copied to the letters page have been published by the Guardian? Is this not,

itself, a good example of the way in which important facts and ideas are

prevented from interfering with corporate media priorities, including advertiser

sensitivities?

 

Write to Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger:

 

Email: alan.rusbridger

 

And, very importantly, the Letters Page:

 

Email: letters

 

Please also send all emails to us at Media Lens:

 

Email: editor

 

Visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org

 

Please consider donating to Media Lens: http://www.medialens.org/donate.html

 

This media alert will shortly be archived at:

http://www.MediaLens.org/alerts/index.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

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