Media Control, an article

In the wake of recent attacks on alternative media in Italy a co-founder of I-Contact Video network in Bristol penned the following about media control occuring closer to home.

Media is Latin for middle... and the middle men who, every day, decide what's worthy of our attention have surely been more barricaded in their ivory towers than in the 21st Century.

During the miners strike, on the day of the Orgreave riot, the BBC transmitted pictures of the miners' violent reaction before they transmitted the police baton charge. Events can be turned on their head by unscrupulous and lied to media and this happens - when the establishment is up to totalitarian tricks and when the media's out of touch.

Since the mid 1980's Cabinet Office civil servants have been in daily touch with BBC News editors giving 'advice' about what stories and angles should and should not appear in the news. The system of D-Notices warning that certain stories might be a 'threat to national security' further intimidates editors and journalists telling them what can and can't be said. The most significant news is what we're not being told.

But the most pernicious trend, particularly in broadcast media is the decreasing independence of so-called 'local' channels. Once independent HTV West is now part of the Multinational Carlton empire which, after outbidding Thames TV (who Thatcher wanted out following their controversial 'death on the rock' documentary) for the London franchise is poised to control the whole ITV network.

Consolidation has happened in print as in TV and radio. In 2000 Bristol's Venue listings magazine was taken over by the Northcliffe Group, part of the Daily Mail empire and owners of all the various print news in Bristol except our regional Big Issue.

The BBC, bastion of public service broadcasting is desperately trading on its reputation. Greg Dyke, Director General, is the first self-made millionaire to fill the post.

Modern media myopia is reminicent of the High Priests of Ancient Egypt, who had the final say on what heiroglyphics the scribes carved inside temples. Whenever, as historians have since found out, a battle or campaign was lost, the event is notable by its absence from the record. Their written history consisted only of glorious victories. History in the electronic age is again being written by the financial winners, the owners.

On the the margins, Bristol's alternative press provides a relief valve for the frustration felt as the city struggles to converse with itself... but it's not too inconvenient for the big three: BBC, HTV and Northcliffe, those alternative media have a massive problem, distribution. They only reach a fraction of the population.

A puzzling new magazine 'This Is Bristol' has appeared, also published by Northcliffe, to compete with their newly aquired Venue. The title has caused many a chuckle around the city. If the bland advertorial contents of 'This Is Bristol' really were Bristol much of the city's population would commit suicide.

Modern corporate scribes, staff journalists, are penned up in ivory towers. These beleagured souls don't even own their own words. Almost without exception pieces written by todays broadcast and print journalists are

owned by the corporation they work for. If a publisher wants to bring out a book of their work the author gets no say in the matter and royalyies are payable to the corporation not the author. Such are the marvels of 'intellectual property' and corporate copyright grabbers.

Ivory Towers also because of the massive security around these newsrooms. Why? Who documents the stream of aggrieved callers screaming 'sensationalism!', 'inaccuracy!'. When the Evening Post was successfully sued for libel last year not a squeak in any of the local press. A story that would have been the talk of the town may as well not have happened. The bin next to the letters page of the Evening Post one imagines stuffed with glimpses of the real world and embarrassing flaws pointed out in articles.

Reporters at the Post can spend weeks without leaving the newsroom. Much easier to plagarise a glossy corporate press release than cover a real story. Which reporter's going to get the most lavish buffet lunch at a corporate press conference today? How many of them can afford to stop to think 'is this news or just a corporate announcement'?

Some days you can cut the air with a knife in the Post newsroom. The management are refusing to allow a newsroom ballot on union recognition even though well over half the Post's journalists are members of the union. Northcliffe looks to be the first newspaper group to be taken to court by the National Union of Journalists to force them to have a ballot.

In the thirties Daily Mail proprietor Lord Rothermere made it clear he thought only Hitler and Mussolini could save Europe from the red Russian peril. His lead articles were used by the Nazis as propaganda. "May I join

the miriads of those who, on your birthday, will be wishing you long life to crown your efforts to achieve good government, liberty and peace", he wrote to Hitler just before the outbreak of war.

And don't tell me that the Nazi sympathies of our Daily Mail and Northcliffe proprietor Lord Rothermere in the 1930's have no relevance today. On the front page of last week's Bristol Observer, a free Northcliffe paper (not delivered to the poorer areas of the city) gypsies are condemned as filthy parasites. The reporter didn't bother to get the gypsies viewpoint. After all gypsies can't read can they.

The brutal police raid on the independent media centre at the G8 summit in Genoa two days ago reminds us that as this New World Order rolls along only money is sacred. The banking and business world is becoming one with the mainstream media with, never mind the means of production, the means of communication in the hands of a tiny cabal of executives.

The http://www.indymedia.org.uk internet concept is simple - anyone can submit video, audio or copy, edited or unedited. If you don't have a computer visit your local IMC and hand it in in person. One person or a group of people, organised however they wish, edit every week, day or hour's submissions for the main pages. What emerges is not a counter-agenda but a different agenda. The views expressed on the mainstream news are taken for granted, indymedia builds on that basic knowledge filling in many of the gaps by covering stories that would not make it to the TV news. But Indymedia can also add background to or contradict stories the mainstream ARE covering.

If we don't want to implode like some Medea-Persian city-state, if we're serious about resisting plutocratic rule where private banks and corporations control our government and what we think. If we want to let our city breathe again we need this Bristol Indymedia centre, soon as.

Northcliffe have bought up the Evening Post now, but it was originally set up in the thirties to oppose their takeover of Bristol's newsprint. The Post was started up using second hand presses and based in an old leather factory beside Bridewell Police Station. As the first bundles of the new paper were wheeled out on Monday April 18th 1932 a small crowd was waiting. Men threw their hats in the air and cheers rang out.