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Corporate media's "blind and dumb" reporting on wealth inequality protests
Immediately the fingers of a human hand appeared and began writing on the plaster of the wall of the royal palace ... (Daniel 5.5)
In a story today about the #OccupyWallStreet protest, CBC News states:
there is little cohesion among the protesters, beyond a broad desire to redistribute wealth along more equitable lines.
Isn't that enough cohesion right there? Why doesn't this "broad desire to redistribute wealth" count as sufficient cohesion?
Deliberately mystifying statements like this are standard fare for corporate news media reports on any opposition to wealth inequality. Anti-globalization protesters at international summits are routinely dismissed as "anti-everything" or as rampaging rioters. In contrast (while I recognize the contexts are inherently very different), the mass protests across the Middle East this year were quite clearly defined by Western corporate news as "pro-democracy."
There's a handy term to describe what the corporate media's mystifying reports are up to: it's called blind and dumb criticism. The term was coined by the French cultural critic Roland Barthes, to describe a kind of wilfully ignorant or proudly anti-intellectual form of criticism; it "consists in confessing that one is too stupid, too unenlightened to understand a book reputedly philosophical":
To be a critic by profession and to proclaim that one understands nothing about existentialism or Marxism (for as it happens, it is these two philosophies particularly that one confesses to be unable to understand) is to elevate one's blindness or dumbness to universal of perception, and to reject from the world Marxism and existentialism: "I don't understand, therefore you are idiots."
The idea of blind and dumb criticism provides a useful tool for critical reading, especially since the "blind and dumb" ethos has so thoroughly permeated not only criticism but journalism and reporting of the ostensibly disinterested and balanced kind. Is blind and dumb reporting in the business section (which is where the above-quoted passage appears) produced to help business readers continue to ignore the proverbial writing on the wall?
Blind and dumb reporting serves neoliberal and neoconservative* hegemony by obscuring the arguments of those who oppose that hegemony. But thankfully, not all corporate news organizations so readily subscribe to it. Some European outlets (like Der Spiegel), Al Jazeera, and of course citizen journalists continue to publish plain-speaking, critical articles about wealth inequality, the political-economic reasons for it, and -- most refreshingly -- the reasons for organized resistance to its further entrenchment. On Sept. 27, Al Jazeera commissioned a friend of counter-culture radical Abbie Hoffman to write an o-ed; on Sept. 30, AJ's "top story" bore this plain-as-day headline: "US anti-corporate movement expands."
Meanwhile, the prevalence of blind and dumb commentary in most corporate news media underscores the need for teaching and practicing close reading skills, which can help greatly to pull at the threads of hegemony's tightly woven web. As Barthes reminds the blind and dumb critic:
You can of course judge philosophy according to common sense; the trouble is that while 'common sense' and 'feeling' understand nothing about philosophy, philosophy, on the other hand, understands them perfectly. You don't explain philosophers, but they explain you.
* George Elliot Clarke does a good job of explaining why these terms are more complementary than opposed in his essay "Liberalism and Its Discontents," in Literary Pluralities (208 n. 2).
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. "Blind and Dumb Criticism." Mythologies (1957). Rpt. in Who is this John Gault anyway? [blog].
Clarke, George Elliot. "Liberalism and Its Discontents: Reading Black and White in Contemporary Québécois Texts." Literary Pluralities. Ed. Christl Verduyn. Peterborough: Broadview P, 1998. 193-210.
The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Ed. Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy. New York: Oxford UP, 1991.
Schechter, Danny. "Behind the scenes of #OccupyWallStreet." Al Jazeera 27 Sept. 2011.
"U.S. anti-corporate movement expands." Al Jazeera 30 Sept. 2011.
"Wall Street protests spread." CBC News 4 Oct. 2011.
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Comments
I find it a bit weird to think of the CBC as representing "corporate" news, but after watching the videos I can understand that there is "a lack of cohesion". Rather disappointing to see the lack of mainstream media reporting, but I suppose that clearly demonstrates the issues inherent in a small group controlling broadcast mediums and the need for other channels (eg. open internet).
I got the impression that this was less about "wealth redistribution" and more about "equitable and just society". Effectively, concerns that corporate influence has corrupted democracy and a desire that should be fixed rather than a desire for cash handouts.
It was finding something I'd expect from privately-owned corporate media in a public-sector media report, instead, that prompted me to write about how prevalent this rhetorical move has become. (Is the CBC grooming itself for privatization? we might reasonably ask under the present regime.) To be fair, Schechter's op-ed for Al Jazeera says something similar about the movement's perceived incoherence, but on the whole it's a far better informed and more contextualized piece of journalism.
As for "wealth redistribution" and "more equitable and just society," is this me saying potayto, you saying potahto? They seem pretty tightly linked, imho. Along the lines of what a book like Wilkinson and Pickett's The Spirit Level argues.
I find the lack of reporting by the North American media disturbing, but feel better for the CBC covering it (even if I feel it did not cover it sufficiently).
Not sure it's the same vegetable, but it could because of my personal bias in using the "just society" terminology. One potato would be if corporate influence is being used to bend (or break) democratic rule why would someone expect just and fair decisions to be made. It suggests the system is broken, and these demonstrations are intended to be a way of expressing dissatisfaction and disenfranchisement. Two pototo, would be the premise that a "better" society is made with a different wealth distribution. Wealth distribution could be accomplished with a variety of approaches including the current democratic system (eg. tax redistributions) but then there would be no need to demonstrate except perhaps as a political awareness campaign. So I would say the first pototo, is the system is broken, the second pototo is wanting a bigger piece of the pie. I'm not sure which pototo it is, but in either case I would expect them to be hot.
I look forward to following up on "The Spirit Level", thank you for the link.
Looks like I'm behind the times. A new google search had over 5000 hits, so clearly I was just looking in the wrong place for coverage, but I still find it interesting that the first three pages of hits are within 48 hours.
Has this news clip passed your way yet?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yrT-0Xbrn4
Explained by Media Matters for America:
Fox News is sometimes a too-easy target -- their egregious offenses seem to make everyone else, like the CBC, look reasonable -- but they do make it really easy to look at how organized and purposeful media obfuscation is.
I dunno which vegetable is which any more, but I think direct action is a viable and necessary tactic because the version of "democracy" we use won't let us vote out capitalism, or vote in a more democratic version of democracy.
Thanks for parking that here; I saw it on Facebook and was amazed at this guy's super-articulate improv skills. (Others on FB were suggesting he run for the presidency.) I have to point out the performative role of Jesse's attire in this scene. Did Fox first approach him because he's sporting the Confederate Civil-War re-enactor look? And did he dress like thsi with an eye to baiting Fox?
I wasn't aware of the back story, but it's exemplary. Fox is such an easy target, true, and I never want to give it the oxygen of further publicity, but this video is an excellent illustration of the "blind and dumb" principle, hard at work to fog up the public mind.
Lastly, just want to mention that I'd like to see this
in sky-writing.
And then there's the rare but delightful analyss that gives one all types of food for thinking about the "weird global media event" that #OccupyWallStreet is. Not that it comes courtesy of the mainstream media, unless your mainstream media include Verso Books.
Wark, McKenzie. "How to occupy an abstraction." Verso Books blog. 3 Oct. 2011.
http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/728-mckenzie-wark-on-occupy-wall-street-how-to-occupy-an-abstraction
If you read nothing esle about the occupations, read this.