The media is a key site of struggle; it is the arena of liberal pluralism in which political ideologies and their social impacts are contested.  It can be argued that the media commodifies public concerns by creating moral panics and constructing folk devils, who appear to be the cause of wider social problems.  However, the media also constrains the tyranny of the majority.  It holds the powerful to account by highlighting inequalities experienced by marginalised groups, which would have otherwise gone unnoticed.  An example of this is Amelia Gentleman’s investigative journalism that brought the Windrush Scandal to public attention. Nevertheless, we should not overlook that the media accumulates capital by appropriating our feelings, thoughts and attention:, psychologically, physically and sociologically.  

The mass media is adept at sensing our feelings of inertia, and has the power to change our priorities and refocus our concerns, regardless of whether a significant issue has been resolved.  Consequently, the media entertain us by converging our gaze as we passively drift from one scandal to another: from Windrush to contaminated blood, to postmasters .  However, in all the injustices mentioned above, the media often downplays the clandestine role played by our absent or unaccountable State, in precipitating serious harms on the public.  A reason why we might overlook the inability of government to govern, is that all our respectable fears concerning the maintenance of the social order, are built on the need to believe that our rulers are fundamentally decent, democratic and accountable to the public who they ‘supposedly’ serve.  Although a ‘few bad apples’ might slip through the political net from time to time, believing in the general good of government suppresses our existential fears about the future.  However, neoliberal governmentality takes a laissez-faire stance, and its philosophy of social and economic individualism aligns with the news values of the media.  Therefore, the pursuit of truth and social justice are not necessarily objective aims of our news agencies.

With no government to steer the ship on course, the public will do one of two things: i. bring down its veil over the signs and symbols that indicate the disintegration of society’s moral tapestry, and subsequently sleepwalk into impending disaster; or ii. subject the ‘folk devils’, who they perceive to be the source of social strain, to the tyranny of the majority. Unaccountable governmentality = MOB RULE!  Which side of this equation is the media on?

A problem of neoliberal governmentality is the absence of government, alongside the ever-increasing presence of the market in public life.  We elect governments to protect our interests and defend our rights as citizens.  However, the primary interest of businesses is profit, and not the well-being of people.  

The culture of individualism – especially competition, choice and rampant consumption – promoted by the political philosophy of neoliberalism, represents the values that bind modern society together: I consume, therefore I am I.  Under the ideology of individualism there is no longer any expectation for government to act as the moral referee, implementing legislation to facilitate fairness in society.  Political accountability and governmental responsibility are concepts of the past-truth era.  

The travesty of the neoliberal market society is that every market demands capital for individuals to be able to purchase the goods on offer. However, only a relatively few have the capital to improve their life-chances and opportunities by competing for goods in the market. situations of education, labour, housing and health. Consequently,  the poor are punished for their poverty and blamed for the wrong choices they have made, which have increased their exposure to bads in the risk society [see chapter 6].  

How can we use social media, to ensure that the government implements policies and legislation which are in the interests of society, rather than businesses?

Use your response to provide examples of specific inequalities where policy changes are needed, and what kinds of policies should be implemented.

My gripe is politically [in]correct racial classifications, created by liberal pluralists in positions of power, who then apply them with little or no concern for the reductionism they entail.  

The problem of minority ethnic invisibility arises when all non-White ethnic groups are viewed collectively as Black or people of colour, or in terms of gender, as men or women of colour.  These ascriptions subtly conflate the histories of all non-White groups into a single rainbow-like melting pot.  They also obscure the disparities and unevenness of ethnic oppressions, and the different relationships that minority groups have had with capitalism and Empire.  

The problematic that I refer to here as the medical model political classification system, in which a label of one size fits all, is evident in the struggles of women of African heritage [i.e. Black in the classical sense].  The politically [in]correct ascription of the nomenclature Black – as contemporarily applied to all non-White females – generalises their unique exploitation under different phases of capitalism.  For example, under the agrarian modes of nascent capitalism in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, Black women were classified by law as items of goods under the Navigation Acts.  This classification legally dehumanised the bodies of African women and men, whilst facilitating the exploitation and appropriation of their labour on the plantation fields.  However, as property under habeas corpus, additional dimensions to the oppression of Black women were rape and impregnation by their White owners.  As children automatically inherited the enslaved status of their mother under the British Black Codes and French Code Noir, the bodies of Black women were also used by their White European masters to biologically reproduce their slave labour force. 

The racial economic experiences and labour exploitation of Black and South Asian women have to some extent been similar, under the latent modes of industrial capitalism in the mid 20^th century.  Although culturally different, and defined by their colonialist and imperialist experiences of Empire, both groups of women were exploited as menial labourers in Britain’s declining manufacturing and production industries.  In the modern service sector, Black and South Asian females have become a reserve army of emotional labourers.  They are over-represented in cleaning and caring occupations, in which low-paid work is often performed under stressful conditions, with very little contractual rights.  However, the contemporary economic racial inequalities experienced by South Asian women are intersected by the additional dimension of their religious culture.  This makes their gendered labour-market experiences unique.

Throughout history, the general social and economic statuses of Black [in the classical sense] and South Asian women  have generally been lower than those of their White counterparts.  However, the application and acceptance of the term women of colour, reduces the unevenness of their patriarchal struggles to the level where they are represented – and generally perceived  – as being the same.  There is more harm than good, being done by the efforts of liberal pluralists, to be politically correct.  The term people of colour subtly suggests that White is not a colour, and in doing so normalises White as the default position, whilst homogenising historical racial, ethnic, gender and cultural differences, into a single collectivity.  WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Regarding the ongoing conflict in Gaza, the media published numerous claims, without any evidence, that Hamas beheaded Israeli children on October 7th. It is important to note that the killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians that took place on October 7th cannot be justified. However, publishing claims of children being beheaded without evidence did not help the situation. It only served the malign purpose of inciting hatred by commodifying public fears, particularly those concerning cultural differences. If it was the case that Hamas had committed such abhorrent acts then the evidence would almost certainly have surfaced in either the legacy media or via a social media platform. This is an example of the media distorting the truth and racialising public fears, where Islam and is concerned.

Under Tony Blair’s Government, Britain and the U.S. were instrumental in destroying Libyan and Iraqi, social, cultural, economic and political infrastructures, and in doing so, killing countless of innocent civilians in the process.  Rather than unilaterally condemning the invasion, the media labelled innocent lives as ‘collateral damage’. More recently, the American bombing of Iran has not been vilified by the media, in the same way that Russia has been demonised for attacking Ukraine. Both are illegal wars and innocent lives have been lost in both cases. However, the racial framing of race and cultural differences is absent in the case of President Putin and Russia. Therefore, the war in Ukraine has a lower value to the media in its schema of public fears.

The discourse of language is a political tool favoured by the media and political classes. The rhetoric used by Trump regarding Iran, i.e. ‘uncivilised’ ‘scum’ ‘murderers’ ‘about to build a nuclear weapon’ etc., has no evidential basis. However, it was the same racial framing used by Blair and Bush to justify their politically religious crusade of the ‘good Christian guys in the West’ versus the notorious ‘bad Muslim actors in the East’. The dogwhistle politics of the relationship between race and Islam, reinforces the public’s underlying but nevertheless unsubstantiated fears about race and religion. Muslims are misrepresented by the media as posing more of a threat to global stability, than a child-like, autocratic, egocentric and delusional President in the White House.

Comment on the post above, or respond to the tasks below and post your comment:

Provide at least one real-life example of how the media distorts the truth and amplify public fears about race and cultural differences.

Is the media’s ‘Islamophobia industry’ based on real public concerns, is it just a moral panic in which Muslims are portrayed as the folk devil for everything that is going wrong in society?

My Gripe.  I have never thought that Russell Brand was even remotely funny.  His stand-up routine of promiscuous and misogynist “jokes” were distasteful to say the very least.  What I found interesting about him was the way that he was enabled by the media, the same media that now vilifies him.  Undoubtedly, his niche worldly outlook appealed to the peculiar tastes of a very broad sector of the market.  Why else would he have been given the oxygen of publicity and media air-time?  Now the same powerful “faceless suits”, who use the media to control and commodify public opinion, have decided there’s more money to be made demonising him, rather than cultivating his pathetic brand [pardon the pun] of toxic masculinity.  I watched the C4 documentary, which supposedly highlighted the evidence against Brand.  It seems quite clear to me that he is guilty of having consensual sex with a sixteen-year-old child, if you can call having sex with a vulnerable young person consensual.  However, from what I have seen in the C4 documentary, the rest of the evidence against him is debatable.  Let me be clear: I certainly do not condone rape or any other forms of sexual and emotional violence against women, children or even men for that matter.  However, we will never really know what took place between Brand and his accusers in private.  The accusers all had sex with him, which is without doubt, but the circumstances are contested.  Apparently, Brand has been sacrificed by the media on the altar of public opinion and found guilty without a trial.  If he really did what he is accused of, then he should go to prison, but to incarcerate him there has to be evidence. I’m not sure if having sex with a sixteen-year-old minor is an imprisonable offence; if it is, then lock him up.  What’s Your Gripe?

All this fuss about artefacts stolen from the British Museum is simply the chickens coming home to roost.  It’s ironic as the institutions, organisations and individuals who donated those valuable artefacts to the British Museum, stole them from various nation states in the first place.  No country has ever asked the British Museum, or any other museum for that matter, to “take care of” their historic and valorized symbols of nationhood, as if they were somehow incapable of doing so.  Most of the artefacts in UK museums, presented as belonging to Britain, were taken by force and people were killed in the process.  

Do you think that it is time for the British museum, and the institutions built on colonialism and the theft of resources from colonised nations, acknowledge the wrongs committed in the name of Empire – and the impact they continue to have on racialised groups?