Oxfam recently launched their ‘Fair Play’ publication to aid fair and accurate media reporting of asylum and refugee issues. Newspapers have often used the image of the ‘threatening young male’ accompanied with stories of asylum seekers ’swamping’ and ‘flooding’ Britain.
The UK, at it’s peak, had applications from 100,000 seeking refugee status. Syria, a relatively poor country with a population of under 10 million, is currently hosting 2 million Iraqi’s. The UK stands 8th in Europe for the numbers of asylum seekers relative to population.

The reality is at least 60% of asylum seekers in Britain are educated to degree level or higher. Their qualifications are not recognised in the UK, denying the country access to a pool of professionals who want to work on these shores.

With a poll showing that 98% of Scots get their information on these issues from the media, it’s time journalists started using context and ditched the daily mail rhetoric.

“A human brain lay beside the highway. It was
scattered in the sand, blasted from its owner’s head when the Americans
ambushed.”

These are words we seldom read when told, by our ‘objective’ media, about the state of the war in Iraq. Why not? Well, you, the paying customer, shouldn’t have to read anything of the sort. It’s the sort of news that will put you off your brunch. Thankfully, the military are more than adept at protecting you from such reality.

Anyway, surely we get plenty of reality television shows as it is and that I’m a celebrity is gruesome enough. I mean, watching a minor celebrity munch on a cockroach, that’s hard to watch. Doubt if they should be showing that before the watershed. I thought there were rules about such coverage.

Ok reader return to the opening quote taken from British journalist, Robert Fisk‘s article about the Iraq War, from the Independent, in 2003. That is the reality of Iraq and all wars: death and destruction. Those controlling media output are scared of showing you how horrific war actually is. The military are not only at war with regimes but also with you. They have hijacked vocabulary to such an extent that invasion becomes liberation, slaughtered children become collateral damage.

The Vietnam War was the last where the media had a freer range to obtain information and report more of the horror of war. In the aftermath of Vietnam it was the media that were seen to have been instrumental in the American defeat. The media has been tightened up radically since then.

The first Gulf War saw the media in effect quarantined, and holed up in a hotel, away from proper access to information. The military selected certain people from the press to be taken and shown what they wanted them to see. Simply put: the military using the media as their weapon for mass propaganda.

The current war in Iraq saw the media press the Pentagon for greater access. The result was a formal structure of embedded correspondents. However, unless there is access to other resources, the embedded reporter will gain nothing but a controlled and limited knowledge of the reality. The true horror of Iraq then reaches us in a packaged and sanitised form that has the public unaware of the unimaginable atrocities taking place in Iraq.

A study by the school of journalism at Cardiff University-showed that 90% of BBC’s references to weapons of mass destruction suggested that Saddam Hussein actually possessed them and that, by clear implication Bush and Blair were right. Just the misinformation the military wants in the mainstream.

Weapons of mass destruction or as the Americans and British call there on WMD’S: deterrents were the justification for invading Iraq. The media passed this on like somebody might pass the salt. It was picked up and delivered without a second thought.

Where the high ideals of the fourth estate, there to hold governments to account? What we got was government using the media as a mouth piece. The subsequent and on-going death and destruction in Iraq has been met with the bomb of silence.

Silence, for example, about the plight of Iraq’s children who are dying in hospitals for lack of the most elementary equipment:

“Save the Children estimate that 59 in 1,000 newborn babies are dying in Iraq, one of the highest mortality rates in the world. Up to 260,000 children may have died since the 2003 invasion.” (Colin Brown, ‘The battle to save Iraq’s children,’ The Independent, January 19, 2007)

Despite the fact that the war in Iraq is reported daily in most U.S. newspapers and networks around the world, the Australian journalist, John Pilger stated: “We get the illusion that we are seeing what might be happening in Iraq. But what we’re getting is a massive censorship by omission; so much is being left out,” he said. “We have a situation in Iraq where well over 100,000 civilians have been killed and we have virtually no pictures. The control of that by the Pentagon has been quite brilliant. And as a result we have no idea of the extent of civilians suffering in that country.”

A New York Times editorial declared: “If we had known then what we know now, the invasion [of Iraq] would have been stopped by a popular outcry.” It was the journalists’ job to have known it then. They did not do their job but did instead what those in power wanted them to do; misinform the public, resulting in unimaginable suffering.

The suffering has continued yet the military, so very skilful with how they deal with the press; continue to use the media as their tool. Censorship is the ammunition they use on those at home. If we think of war as a painless, technological affair-we’ll find it easier to support it.

Robert Fisk also points to the censorship being imposed on the Iraqi media. The U.S. administration has set up a committee for press censorship in Iraq, which means the Iraqi press can publish anything to remind people about the terror of Saddam, but is not allowed to write freely about current events crucial to them and their future.

The media is under tight control around the world. In Australia Rupert Murdoch controls 70 percent of the media and just five corporations manage broadcasters in the US. ”We live in an age of information,” John Pilger said. ”Yet the media is not attacking the ruling system. The media has never before been so controlled, and propaganda is all around. Most of us don’t even see it.”

Richard Falk at Princeton has described the process. We are indoctrinated to see foreign policy, he wrote, “through a self-righteous, one-way moral/legal screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence.”

Edward S Herman in his landmark essay, “The Brutality of Evil”, said the function of the media was to “normalise the unthinkable.” The function of the media has to be to tell of the true horrors of war, the death and destruction which take place in epic proportions in Iraq and elsewhere. The military are winning the battle for the right kind of publicity in Iraq. If more people know it as a battle they are waging, perhaps the power of public opinion can fight back.

A Ninja travelled on the monoline to the battle of Libor.

I’m confident I could excite Spielberg with the above tag line. He would surely sense the potential for a futuristic movie here: time travelling Ninjas fighting in the galactic city of Libor. Perhaps not loaded with Oscar potential but guaranteed to put bums on seats.

Doubtless some of you business types out there see a plagiariser in your midst. Why is this man basing a movie on those with no income, no jobs or assets? Look at the effect that has had on the London Inter-bank offered rate…I hear you say. Spielberg won’t touch this you declare with confidence, the great director throwing good money after bad. It’s almost too laughable to say aloud.

Yet aloud it must be said. The sequel must be based on clarity. It must speak the language spoken by its audience. These three short sentences are shouting loud and clear: make sense to those to whom you speak.

To the majority of you, who can’t be labelled business types, I apologise. It’s the fourth paragraph but it’s never too late to say sorry. If I have whetted your appetite for what sounds like a summer blockbuster then you may call me a fraud. That last word helps us get on the right track. We all know what fraud is and are doubtless aware of businesses who have been charged with it. This is what I am writing about here: business and finance. Or the inter-galactic language often used to cover it.

My movie tag has three terms from the world of business and finance. The second paragraph provides the definition of two of them. (Apologies for the word search task.) The third word is monoline and I have found a wonderful line from a journalist who makes the meaning almost self-explanatory:

“The first thing to understand about monolines is that they are not monolines”

Understand that I don’t understand. Surely this is not information that I need. This must be for the boardroom or the lecture theatre? Yes, if anywhere, it should be there. It must also be on the pages of papers like this in the lingua franca of our readers. The world of business and finance impacts on you: it effects how much you can spend, how secure your assets are and what plans you can make for the future.

I think we are all aware of the much, and rightly, publicised credit crunch. We read of bank runs, house-price crashes and get the general point that the global banking system has seen better days.

The last six months of this has seen papers barrage us with terms, jargon and esoteric language which have most of us running for the sports pages.

Business and financial news is now front page news. Papers, radio, TV, the internet and every medium you can think of or imagine in the future is, or will be, talking about business and finance. It is prominent in news pieces because it is relevant to everyone. Banks have been lending money to people who can’t pay it back and have stopped lending it to each other because the financial system is in chaos. Pensions, employment and house prices are all affected by this and everything else that transpires in the jargon filled business world.

JARGON:

“Obscure and often pretentious language marked by circumlocutions and long words.”

Or to me and you: alienating the reader. Headlines talk of downsizing, reports tell us of companies out-sourcing and feature articles hale business leaders who think outside the box. The headline should declare job losses, the report should outline jobs are being lost to another area and the feature should applaud said business whiz for doing their job…by thinking!

Many of the words and phrases used are empty in meaning. The following two headlines didn’t have me mimicking oliver twist, with his cry: please Mr Journalist Sir can I have some more. Ok, not exactly what the Dickens lad said but you get the idea. Feast on the following:

Credit crunch writedowns set to go on

Staking your futures on a hedge fund may not be a good thing

Headlines should grab your interest, entice you to read more. Journalists are in the communication business, there to inform the reader of what’s going on and how it impacts on them.

The use of too much unexplained business jargon has my accusing nature filled with irritation at what is simply arrogance and snobbery. The English language is a rich resource and the perfect tool for the journalist to use when talking to us. It has an estimated arsenal of half a million. The journalist must employ this great tool of the writing trade to explain terms that you can’t omit and replace the jargon that champions the obscure.

Perhaps there is a fear that to banish jargon and business vocabulary born from the world of science is to dumb down the content. It is, however, to make the information accessible; to provide the reader with essential news on issues of relevance to them.

Listening to Andrew Verity, of the Wake Up To Money radio show, gives me hope. He said that his job is to put business jargon and language in a form we can all understand. This is what the reporter is there for and you-the reader (and paying customer!!)-deserve nothing less.

Demand explanations, tell journalists to do their job. Translating business jargon into real speak may not be a simple task but is the task of the journalist not the reader. We are not talking here of information merely relevant to those plying their trade in the city but financial realities that will dictate your spending power and economic security. You already have a job, deciphering another language will not be top of your list for a second. The journalist must be your translator.

I refer all journalists to the first two words in the Economist style guide on jargon:

Avoid it.