Why I Intensely Dislike The Media Especially During Times of War and Class Conflict -- GREEN EVENTS

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Date Posted: 13:25:30 04/21/03 Mon
Author: Sandra Claire Leslie
Subject: Why I Intensely Dislike The Media Especially During Times of War and Class Conflict

Why I Intensely Dislike The Media Especially During Times Of War and Class Conflict.

The problem with the media and their false consciousness is that they are a part of the professional and administrative class who have little or no experience with the point of production (other than the medias' autistic production) and the lives of working people in factories, building sites, shops, transport, refuse collection and so on. For them all is a leap from design to finished product as if the
whole process in between happened by magic. They look at a building and see only the architect but, as always throughout history, things exist through blood, sweat and toil and not because of magic, nor any sort of miracle. And technology, which is the tools of historical
ingenuity for less blood, sweat and toil (dead labour supporting living labour), has enslaved us within redundancy, warfare and futility within capitalism because we became trapped within these professional and administrative media perspectives.

Thus the media sees things as a drama production with key-players being politicians, religious clerics, military, doctors, police, charities and other administrators. Manual workers become invisible, and where they do come to exist - always as statistical victims and voting fodder - they are forever dispensable media consumer objects
that are reduced to mere extras within the whole fantastic anti-production. In this way it becomes increasingly less difficult for governments to wage war since the main victims will be viewed as dross with unsophisticated feelings and of little consequence - and eventually as of no consequence whatsoever. In the exact same way that the wholesale slaughtering of cattle was presented during the
foot and mouth outbreak.

Therefore the behaviour of manual workers (in Iraq at present) is also presented as that of the rabble - undisciplined and without purpose when the reality is quite the opposite otherwise all things would truly become chaotic - anarchy isn't chaos because warfaring archy is. However, if you are convinced that things only get done
because there are directors then directors are all you will focus on while the rest of the picture becomes blurred and soft focused. During times of war and class-conflict such as strikes for better pay and conditions, these things become even more fantastic, moralistic, absurd and ridiculous, not because the media conspires to lie and to
take sides but because they don't know any better and play the role of alienated idiot savants - entertainment is their game.

However, that picture is rapidly changing as events unfold clearer than ever before. Ignore the media interpretation, including the so-called liberal and left wing intellectual papers since they are a part of the problem as well as the right wing. We don't need to see ourselves on TV either to know that we are real and that what we have said and done was important to us. And when you demonstrate and complain to the professional and administrative class (even when you
are a part of it yourself) then make your complaints direct,
persistent, innovative and irritating since complaints procedures are designed to humiliate and have nothing to do with free speech let alone justice.

Sandra Leslie (Easter Sunday 2003).

PS I witnessed this public dispute between a group of women last week here in Plymouth, which was interesting. The dispute was not directly connected to the war, however, one of the women was the wife of a marine who believed that she was entitled to certain privileges to win the dispute because her husband was serving in Iraq. This attitude only served to wind the other women up more because the
media keeps going on about the military here all the while as if nothing else exists here. Most of the military are transitory also.

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