Seated in the pre-dawn queue to buy tickets for the National Gallery's soon-to-close Leonardo exhibition this morning, with only my laptop to keep me warm, I thought to educate myself about a corner of the media forest I rarely visit. "What's Media Lens up to?" I asked myself.
It didn't come as a complete surprise to me to discover its most recent post is largely devoted to badmouthing the Guardian. As you may already know, Media Lens, founded in 2001 by a couple of bright and determined young graduates, devotes most of its energy to criticism of the liberal wing of the mainstream media – the Indy and the Observer, the BBC and Channel 4, as well as the Graun.
Well, that seems fair enough to me. Why should the liberal media, which is as capable of self-satisfaction as anyone else (including its critics), be immune from criticism, or precisely immune from criticism on the left as well as on the right – where it has been mocked and savaged in equal measure for as long as I can remember?
Naive, subversive, priggish, lentil-eating, sandal-wearing, feminist, humourless … the right's charge list is a long one. The left's is less fun. As Stephen Poole put it in a Guardian review of Media Lens's latest book, Newspeak in the 21st century, it's a useful irritant, albeit one which clothes its critique in "childishly apocalyptic polemic", artlessly framing its own narrative as truth challenging the "psychopathic corporate media". That would appear to include the Guardian's owners, the decidedly herbivorous Scott Trust.
This week's attack, The Silence of the Lambs, focuses on colleagues of mine, specifically George Monbiot and Seumas Milne, two of the Guardian's more radical leftwing contributors. In effect, Media Lens is saying, they trim their sails and pull their punches to accommodate their paymasters, their presence in the paper's Comment columns little more than a gesture to pluralism or dissent.
OK, if you say so. Most people have to trim their views at one time or another, though I have watched journalists smuggling dissenting opinions into even the Murdoch press with admiration for years. Media Lens doesn't do subtle. Nor do its more acceptable heroes, such as John Pilger or the Indy's Robert Fisk.
I'd call Monbiot and Milne rather powerful presences on the paper. I often disagree with them but I'm usually glad they're there. What's more, I'd argue that plenty of younger Guardian writers take a left slant on all sorts of things – including the shortcomings of the Labour party and the excess pay and bonuses enjoyed by top corporate executives (now there's a bit of subtle). It ought to please Media Lens but probably doesn't.
As an elderly herbivore of moderate opinions myself, I can tell you it's tough getting much of a defence of, say, Tony Blair, into the paper on occasion. When Blair first gave evidence to the Chilcot inquiry the Guardian was moved to run 10 – or was it 11? – signed pieces of analysis, all of which condemned him. There was a distinct lack of pluralism in the media that day, but I doubt if Media Lens spotted it.
I'm not the sort of writer Media Lens bothers to whip up a storm against much, though the last time they did – not very successfully – I was disappointed (that naivety again) that whoever was behind it chose to misrepresent my words and meaning. But there, that's media for you.
Apart from what strikes me as a strident conceit that they know how the world works but others don't – they may grow out of that, as most people do – the worry about Media Lens's analysis which disinclines me to seek wisdom on its site very often is that it betrays the narcissism of small difference that is so destructive on the left, much less so on the right (we'll make temporary exception for the degraded Republican primary contest).
If Channel 4's Jon Snow can't be recognised for the national treasure he is – an unabashed leftie who has beaten the system (but also has to compromise, as we all do) – what hope is there? I'd say he does more good for progressive attitudes than half a dozen Pilgers, wouldn't you?
I can best illustrate this point by reporting what I found when I Googled Media Lens's response to the Guardian's high-risk, high-cost assault on the Murdoch empire over phone-hacking. It's cold in the Leonardo queue (I've just been told I was early enough to get tickets) and I may be making a poor fist of it – we herbivores try to be fair – but here's what I found.
Read the New Left Project article yourself and ponder. The flavour is conveyed well enough by this passage: "It makes good business sense to expose the crimes of media competitors (as at Nuremburg, preferably crimes unique to the enemy)." But it won't create a more honest press, one more capable of standing up to "official propaganda", Media Lens's editors told the NLP interviewer.
There's a wealth of innocence in that conclusion which makes us lentil-eaters feel quite worldly. But I'm not sure that mean-spirited nit-picking which so badly misses the bigger picture is the best way forward. Times are tough for all media, including the liberal media. Bear it in mind, comrades: who would you have to attack if we weren't there?
