How the media have made us less free

I find it ironic that one of BBW’s great strengths is just how media savvy it has become, and as a result how much attention it generates. It hits exactly the right notes with its exposure of the ridiculous, petty and more often than not insidious state intrusions into so many aspects our everyday life. It’s crucial that this work is continued, but it may have to be done in a greater variety of ways.

Just walking about the place, drinking, travelling on public transport and most of all driving your car generates enormous surveillance from local authorities and nationally controlled surveillance bodies with private companies following the state trend with great gusto. The irony comes from the fact that it is the media that is so often at the heart of the cause of so many of the measures against which BBW is campaigning.

To put it simply the Daily Mail fails to see its dual role in first creating the outrage over a rape, murder, disaster or state failing, and then excoriating the authorities for the often draconian effects of the measures they put in place in response. This contradiction needs to be highlighted and acknowledged. It might not matter if it were not for the fact that our political elite, including virtually all politicians and even the civil service, believe that the media is everything to them – they live or die by its coverage; just read Chris Mullins political diaries* if you don’t believe me.

So they speedily kow-tow to the media and with a deference not applied to anyone or anything else, especially to ordinary British people or traditional values.

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