Questions for Time magazine

Friday, April 13, 2007

(This is an expanded version of an earlier post called "Questions for Time magazine"; the material relating to Time is down in the second half of this).


The Islamic State of Iraq has posted claims of responsibility for the Green Zone bombing, (thanks to veteran chat-site navigator Abu Aardvark for calling attention to that) which the ISI says was carried out by a suicide bomber. These claims, which can be found among other places on the "news" forum of muslm.net, are signed by something called the Fajr Media Center, and there isn't any question they have been issued by the ISI organization. The following comments have to do with a different question: Assuming ISI responsibility, there are reports about a relationship between the attack and the emerging dispute between AlQaeda/ISI on the one side and the domestic resistance groups apparently led by Islamic Army in Iraq on the other.

Al-Hayat says there was a video announcement yesterday by someone known as Abu Suleiman al-Atibi who calls himself the "lawful judge of the Islamic State of Iraq", and the paper has this to say about it, after describing the events of the bombing:

The AlQaeda organization had threatened yesterday to "cut off the head of those who resist [us], and [he said] in a video message, "I warn the tribe of those among the proprietors of party and politics, who make a weapon of double-dealing..." and he added, tacitly referring the differences that have widened recently between AlQaeda and Iraqi armed groups, "we will cut off their hands and we will strike them in the neck".

The Al-Hayat reporter then refers to recent interview statements by the head of the Islamic Army in Iraq that have been taken loosely to mean a degree of openness to the idea of negotiating with the occupation. But at least for English-speaking readers it is worth noting what the Islamic Army person actually said (in an Al-Jazeera interview), because the reports in English having passed from hand to hand, have gotten a little distorted. Here's the relevant quote from the interview:

We do not reject in principle talks with the Americans or others, and we have laid out many times in official and other media our conditions for such talks, and we have emphasized that there are two conditions for successful talks, first that the American congress issue a binding decision announcing a complete withdrawal by a fixed date, and second, recognition that the resistance is the legitimate and sole representative of the Iraqi people.

(This interview was published April 10, so the Awni Qalamji piece in Al-Quds al-Arabi, summarized in the prior post, was probably at least partly a reply to this, warning against thinking there is any possibility of any voluntary American withdrawal. Qalamji is associated with the domestic resistance. I'm sorry I'm reporting these out of chronological order).

In any event, if the statement by the "judicial officer" cited by Al-Hayat this morning is authentic, and the paper's acceptance of it suggests it is, then apparently the the hard-line domestic resistance represented by Qalamji wasn't the only group alarmed by even this conditional suggestion of negotiations.

Still, there is something considerably fishy about what Time magazine is reporting on its website about this.

In its article yesterday on the Green Zone bombing, Time said this:

Within an hour of the explosion, a message from the al-Qaeda-controlled Islamic State in Iraq was posted on a prominent militant website, muslm.net, calling the blast a "message" to anyone who cooperates with "the occupier and its agents." It said ominously, "We will reach you wherever you are"

And Iraqslogger printed what it said was a screenshot of the item referred to, which you can see here. The text in red says: "This (referring to the GZ bombing) is a message of the Islamic State of Iraq to the Islamic Army: Anyone who is going to negotiate with the occupiers and their agents, we will find them wherever they are".

But notice the light blue strip at the top, right above the yellow exclamation point. In an authentic posting, that light blue strip is a little wider, and serves as the background for a couple of important pieces of information printed in black. At the right-hand side, there is always the screen-name of the poster, and a button next to that name, triggering a pull-down menu with two items: You can look at all of the postings of this particular individual (even if you are not a registered user); or you can look at his personal information (for which you have to be registered). And at the left-hand side, also against the background of the light-blue bar, there is the date of the poster's registration as a user, and the number of his "participations", which means either postings or postings and comments. This obviously serves as a rudimentary or entry-level check on reliability, because it shows how long the person has been posting, and what he has been posting.

Anyone with the expertise to find a posting like this would obviously first check the name of the poster and his posting history, to see if he is a known quantity or not. Iraqslogger said it wasn't taking this as necessarily an Al-Qaeda message. "The statements" of the Islamic State of Iraq, it said, "are usually more detailed with more verifiable information, often containing florid prose and multiple references to the Quran." But really, the first question is where Iraqslogger got this screenshot, because it would seem if they went to the muslm.net site and saw it there themselves, the light-blue bar would in fact be the background for the name of the poster and the other information to be found there. And if they got it from Time, then the same question: Where exactly did Time find it, and where is the basic information one looks for printed on that light-blue bar?

The solution, of course, is to go to the site and find the posting ourselves. But I do not see it there, and as far as I am aware, no one else has found it there either.

This is not just a question of the authenticity of a posted message, if in fact there was one, because unless there is some explanation, this would be a question of Time magazine relying on an obvious, clearly recognizable forgery to anchor a news story. The lead to its story yesterday went like this: "In an assault apparently aimed at chilling negotiations between the Iraqi government and a faction of the insurgency, the Iraqi Parliament, located in Baghdad's high-security Green Zone, suffered a bomb attack." The phrase "apparently aimed at chilling negotiations..." refers to the supposed posting in question.

A light bulb goes off on the Washington Post editorial page

Tuesday April 10, 2007 07:59 EST

Even more than most national journalists, The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt has been a stalwart defender of the Bush administration with regard to the U.S. attorneys scandal. On March 26, 2007 -- just two weeks ago -- Hiatt wrote:

Mr. Gonzales finds himself in this mess because he and others in his shop appear to have tried to cover up something that, as far as we yet know, didn't need covering. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president -- with the advice and consent of the Senate. The president was entitled to replace any he chose, as long as he wasn't intending to short-circuit ongoing investigations.

While the Editorial acknowledged that there appears to have been what Hiatt politely called "shifting explanations for the eventual dismissals of eight federal prosecutors," he argued that there was no evidence of any underlying impropriety with regard to the firings themselves.

But today, Hiatt has another Editorial on this scandal, and he says exactly the opposite of what he said two weeks ago. Today's Editorial focuses on the dismissal of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, and argues:

THE DISPUTE between Democratic lawmakers and the Bush administration over access to documents and interviews with officials about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys seems to be escalating, not resolving. That's unfortunate, because it's become clear that the administration must make more information available than has been forthcoming. Perhaps the clearest case for that -- and the most troubling evidence of improper political motivations -- involves New Mexico prosecutor David C. Iglesias.

In just two weeks, we went from firings that "didn't need covering" to "troubling evidence of improper political motivations." That's progress. The Editorial notes that Igelsias was never on any of the lists of prosecutors targeted for dismissal until November, 2006 -- shortly before the firings were complete. Hiatt asks:

How and why? The answers, though still incomplete, do not paint the Bush administration in an attractive light.

After recounting the fact that New Mexico Republicans Sen. Pete Dominici and Rep. Heather Wilson were both pressuring Iglesias to prosecute Democratic officials in New Mexico based on "voter fraud" accusations (accusations which Igelsias, after reviewing the evidence, concluded lacked any merit), and that Dominici repeatedly called DOJ to complain about Iglesias' failure to prosecute those Democrats (complaints which Igelsias labelled "reprehensible," because those demanding prosecution had no idea whether there was actual evidence warranting prosecution), Hiatt notes:

In addition, New Mexico Republican Party Chairman Allen Weh complained to White House adviser Karl Rove about Mr. Iglesias. And, last but not least, President Bush himself passed on to the attorney general complaints about U.S. attorneys, including Mr. Iglesias, who were allegedly failing to aggressively pursue voter fraud cases.

Mr. Sampson's testimony showed that Mr. Iglesias was added to the list after Mr. Rove also complained to the attorney general about Mr. Iglesias's supposedly poor performance on voter fraud. This revelation not only adds to the evidence undercutting the attorney general's professions of ignorance about the whole episode; it deepens the sense that the judgment about whom to fire was influenced, if not dictated, by political considerations.

Hiatt then outlines the multiple questions that Karl Rove must answer -- questions which demonstrate just how central Rove's involvement is in this entire scandal:

What prompted Mr. Rove's complaint? Did he speak with Mr. Domenici or Ms. Wilson? Was there in fact a problem with Mr. Iglesias's record on voter fraud? Was he dismissed for failing to bring voter fraud cases that he did not believe were justified by the evidence? Was voter fraud the real reason for his dismissal, or his alleged absenteeism because of military service? Or was it because he failed to produce in time an indictment that could have been helpful to Ms. Wilson's endangered reelection bid?

There are reasons to be skeptical about what happened here.

Everything Hiatt argued here has been known for many, many weeks -- really for months. Yet until today, Hiatt and his comrades in the national press were insisting that there was absolutely no underlying impropriety here -- and that there was no reason other than petty political games which could possibly motivate anyone to want to question poor, beleaguered Karl Rove under oath.

But the whole time, all of the evidence Hiatt just cited was publicly known. And it has been exactly that evidence which bloggers and then Democratic Senators were pointing to in order to insist that there was substantial evidence to suggest very serious wrongdoing with regard to the reason these prosecutors were fired.

From the beginning, one of the key aspects that has made this scandal so significant, and so disturbing, is the clear evidence suggesting that at least some of these prosecutors were fired for failing to pursue criminal prosecutions against Democratic officials -- prosecutions designed to advance Karl Rove's long-standing and well-known voter suppression efforts. These suspicions are backed (as Hiatt finally recognizes) by substantial evidence.

Much of the evidence is, admittedly, circumstantial, but that is so precisely because we have not yet had full hearings with the key witnesses/culprits and full disclosure of key documents. And the reason the pool of information is still so incomplete is because the White House, cheered on by the national media, has steadfastly refused to reveal what it knows (and what it did), choosing instead to hide behind precarious assertions of "executive privilege."

All of this is precisely why it has been so frustrating to watch our national media scoff dismissively at this scandal. If journalists are not interested in allegations that federal prosecutions are being politically manipulated by the White House and DOJ -- with a desire to suppress votes for partisan reasons as one of the motives -- then what executive wrongdoing would they ever find worthy of attention?

Like most of our elite opinion-makers, the most important priority for Fred Hiatt is to demonstrate his superior insight and sober, excruciatingly restrained judgment. So he writes this Editorial as though these are all new revelations and without acknowledging that he made the exact opposite claims just two weeks ago. But better late than never.

Now it's the very, very esteemed Fred Hiatt and the Post Editorial Page -- rather than merely the loudmouth partisan dirty blogging masses -- recognizing that the U.S. attorneys scandal involves accusations of very serious wrongdoing, along with substantial evidence to support those accusations. And even Hiatt now recognizes that Rove and even the President are quite near the center of it all.

Perhaps this Editorial is a signal that national conventional media wisdom will shift. Maybe Time Magazine can find some space to inform their readers about ongoing developments, and the rest of our national press will stop viewing the effort to question Karl Rove and obtain key White House documents as nothing more than a petty, fun game which is just an annoying distraction from the Very Important Business which the Beltway needs to conduct. Whatever it is that caused Fred Hiatt to make arguments today that are the exact opposite of what he said only two weeks ago, let's hope there is more of it.

* * * * *

It was announced yesterday that this will be the last week for Sam Seder's Air America program. Sam is one of the most insightful and well-informed interviewers anywhere, and the cancellation of his show is a genuine loss. I will be on his program this morning, at 10:30 a.m. EST, as part of his final week. The live audio feed can be heard here.

-- Glenn Greenwald

Lies My Paper Told Me: Targeting Iran By Distortion

Lies My Paper Told Me

We can't just blame the media alone for not telling the truth -- we've got to face the fact that audiences are paying to hear those lies.

By Allan Uthman, Buffalo Beast
Posted on March 24, 2007

While I'm one of those big complainers about deception in the media, I have to admit I get a giddy thrill out of reading it. As with any addiction, I've developed an increasing tolerance and require an ever purer dosage of insidious lies and appeals to conformity to get my kicks. Now I have a special appreciation for the most extreme variety of corporate press dishonesty: articles written solely to insult reality.

There's a pattern that articles seem to follow when some poor bootlicking journalist is tasked with refuting an objectionably true piece of information, despite having no coherent case against it. Usually, the majority of the piece will assess the offending claim and generally summarize the evolution of the controversy. This first 80% or so of the article will read like a regular, reasonably evenhanded piece of journalism, perhaps even containing sympathetic quotes from the suspect claim's proponents. Then, having nearly filled their word-count and still at a loss for a decent argument, the author will make a wild U-turn and hurry through a brief, entirely subjective, incomplete and patently idiotic dismissal of whatever point they were just explaining, a tacked-on "there, there" to soothe their tender, easily rattled readers. It reeks of editorial interference, but what's really remarkable is how clumsy and transparent the process is.

I recognized this pattern last year, when The New York Times addressed the fact that, despite having been quoted as saying "Israel must be wiped off the map" by every man, woman and child in the United States over the past year, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a frequent victim of deliberate mistranslation, never actually said that. A correct translation, according to many native Farsi speakers, goes something like, "The regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of history," and was a direct quotation of Ayatollah Khomeini.

The article, by Times deputy foreign editor Ethan Bronner ("Just how far did they go, those words against Israel?"), is really something special. Of course, a regime -- that is, a government -- vanishing from the page of time doesn't evoke the apocalyptic image that a nation wiped off the map does, and this specific misquotation has done probably more than any other piece of domestic psy-ops to vilify Iran. It's an effective lie, so it must be saved, and it's Bronner's job to do it.

Despite Bronner's obvious reluctance to go along, the facts practically dragged him kicking and screaming toward the inexorable conclusion that Ahmadinejad didn't even say the words "Israel," "wipe" or "map." Bronner sprinkled a generous portion of bullshit throughout the piece, stating that the verb translated as "wipe" is transitive when it is intransitive, and even arguing that the fact that the Iranian president actually said "the regime occupying Jerusalem" instead of "Israel" makes the statement worse, because Ahmadinejad "refuses even to utter the name Israel." That is some amazing spin, I have to admit. But Bronner still cannot deny that "map" is wrong and significantly different in tone than "pages of history," even offering weak excuses for the error, and at least acknowledges that Ahmadinejad referred to Israel's government, not the whole of Israel. He really can't avoid decimating the original misquotation, which was and still is so oft-repeated in the media.

But then an amazing, incongruous thing happens: he draws precisely the opposite conclusion flatly contradicting his own analysis. Immediately after admitting that "it is true that he has never specifically threatened war against Israel," Bronner's final paragraph is outrageously illogical and cowardly. Check it out:

"So did Iran's president call for Israel to be wiped off the map? It certainly seems so. Did that amount to a call for war? That remains an open question."

What the fuck? He didn't say "Israel," he didn't say "map," but it "certainly seems" he did? And frankly, drawing solely from the evidence presented in Bronner's own damn piece, whether the statement was "a call for war" is decidedly not an open question. The reality here is that there was only one possible conclusion to this article from the minute that the Times decided to address the subject, and that, at a loss for a reasonable way to support that conclusion, Bronner simply banged it in at the end, regardless of the fact that it doesn't make the least bit of sense at all.

Why bother even writing that nonsense? Because now, in every news source and every individual online or verbal argument on the matter, people can say that The New York Times looked into the issue and concluded that the quote is legit. It's piss-poor sophistry, but, apparently, it'll do in a pinch.

You can see the same pattern at work in a recent article in Newsweek about the raging faith-based shit storm over a new documentary produced by James Cameron, The Jesus Family Tomb, directed by Simcha Jacobovici. As you've no doubt heard, the film tells of a tomb unearthed in Israel in 1980 containing remains which bear names alarmingly reminiscent of the Christ clan, including Mary Magdalene and a son of the Son.

The article has a necessary, predetermined conclusion -- Jacobovici is wrong, Jesus flew up to heaven, and Newsweek's predominantly Christian readership are not devoting their lives to an ancient, ludicrous hoax. Again, most of the article is a simple rundown of the evidence and the controversy. And again, this time three paragraphs from the end, there is a 180-degree switch in tone, from reasonably objective to downright illogical dismissal. After finally coughing up perhaps the most compelling bit of evidence, that a University of Toronto statistician estimated the likelihood of all of the names in the tomb coming from a different family at 600 to 1, the authors (Lisa Miller and Joan Chen) appear to suffer a dramatic drop in IQ:

"Good sense, and the Bible, still the best existing historical record of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, argue against Jacobovici's claims. All four Gospels say that Jesus was crucified on the eve of the Sabbath; all four say that the tomb was empty when the disciples woke on Sunday morning. ... For Jacobovici's scenario to work, someone would have had to whisk the body away, on the Sabbath, and secretly inter it in a brand-new, paid-for family tomb -- all before dawn on Sunday."

It's unbelievable how often so-called respectable news sources cite the Bible as a historical record when addressing religious issues. It sure is an easy way to support the Biblical narrative, and we saw an awful lot of it when it was deemed necessary to "debunk" The Da Vinci Code, a fictional novel. In reality, however, the Bible is no more a historical record than the Odyssey, or Fight Club for that matter. Beyond that, citing "all four Gospels," as if the fact that they concur with each other constitutes meaningful corroboration, when three of them were entirely based on the first (which was written at least a lifetime after Christ is supposed to have died), is hilariously, deliriously disingenuous.

But the part of this I just love, the thing that I cannot believe even the psyche-blowers at Newsweek found printable, is that, after an astoundingly weak attempt to establish the preposterous premise that stories in the Bible equate to impeccable multiple witness testimony, and so we must accept as fact that this guy Christ's body disappeared from a tomb overnight because four people said so centuries after the fact, these reporters have the gall to argue that the notion, only necessitated by that false premise, that someone might have snuck in and absconded with the body is too improbable to be believed, and it's much more sensible to conclude that a dead person woke up and flew away into the fucking sky.

That's Newsweek's take on the matter. Making sense is obviously less important to them than drawing the conclusions that most Americans simply want to be true, by hook or crook.

I'm not saying the Jesus tomb is the real deal. I'm not even convinced that Jesus Christ the man ever actually existed (the documentary, "The God Who Wasn't There" makes a strong case that he didn't). Either way, it's not nearly the threat to Christianity that I'd like it to be. After all, Christians manage to retain their faith in the Bible in spite of all sorts of hard evidence against it -- that the universe is several billion years old, for example, or that we and all other creatures evolved gradually from single-celled organisms, or that snakes don't talk and people don't fly to heaven. I highly doubt a little thing like Jesus' corpse would have much of an effect on people who think you can fit two of every animal species in the world on a boat. But, regardless of the truth or falsehood of Jacobovici's thesis, it may be enough to pry some away from the religious teat, and that is an objectively good thing in my opinion.

What's thrilling to me is the graceless inevitability of it all. This piece by Miller and Chen carries a palpable sense of the mission at hand: not to illuminate or investigate, simply to diffuse the unpleasantness of difficult facts. What we see here, laid bare, is the fact that, for the people at the very top of the journalistic heap, the proverbial hill that shit rolls down from, there are issues that are just too important to tell the truth about.

Reassuring people that Santa really exists is one thing; deliberately frightening them about foreigners is another. And there's only really one reason to lie about Ahmadinejad, the last person on earth any American journalist who knows what's good for him would want to be seen as defending. Anybody who doesn't think we're going to attack Iran should ask themselves why so much effort is being made to paint its president, not even a very powerful position in Iranian politics, as the new Hitler.

Remember the last new Hitler? That's right; Saddam Hussein. It's hard to say why we're going to attack Iran -- maybe Israel, maybe oil, or an election strategy, or maybe just executive insanity -- but we're clearly planning on it. The "wiped off the map" quote is vital to this process, and has paid off handsomely -- the abysmal Weekly Standard, for example, ran a cover story on Ahmadinejad last month with the headline "Denying the Holocaust, desiring another one." At the same time, the White House is busily concocting an impending nuclear threat and accusing Iran of supplying Sunni insurgents with bombs, which just doesn't make sense. All of this is happening, of course, while the last bullshit-based war rages still, necessitating an even more intensely alarmist PR campaign to overcome the natural suspicions of a recently conned public.

The New York Times played a central role in freaking people out about Iraq, remember. Since then, there has been much hand-wringing on the subject. If they had it to do over ... but now they do. Here they are presented with a second opportunity to get it right, to pull no punches, to treat the Bush administration with the scrutiny and skepticism warranted by the nefarious, lying band of blundering super-criminals that they have proven to be. The Times could be straight with us; they could tell the truth. If The New York Times -- or Newseek, or Time, or The Washington Post, or NBC, or CNN, or any other major corporate news outlet had come out and definitively made the very simple case that the "wiped off the map" quote was simply, objectively wrong, it would have gone a long way toward deflating support for our third and perhaps dumbest invasion since 9/11, and might even have helped foster some healthy public skepticism on the issue. Of course, a lot of people would simply accuse them of treachery, which is one reason for press timidity. But by telling the truth, they could, in fact, have made the world a safer place and perhaps saved thousands of lives.

But that's just not what the press does. What they do is they tell you lies; lies they already know you want to hear. Just as politicians look to polls to determine their policies, letting poorly-informed people lead them on important issues, the press can figure out what its readers or viewers believe, and make a hell of a living pandering to their egos and telling them that they're smart. If they have no rational case, false or otherwise, to support the lies, it doesn't matter much.

All they have to do is say something is true, and it becomes true, especially when it confirms the central tenets of American epistemology: That we already know everything important, that we are always right, and anybody who disagrees is a dangerous threat to our well-being. They lie and tell the audience they are right, and they never have to change your mind about anything. And the audience rewards them, lauding them and paying them money to keep hearing those sweet, self-serving lies. So when the war in Iran is on and they are wondering how the hell it happened, remember: The New York Times and Newsweek are symptoms. Their audience is the disease.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

Video: John Bolton Humbled on BBC by Antiwar Iraqi, Brit

Newspeak is alive and well

A debate about political journalism this week illustrated the endemic failure of Britain's press.

March 23, 2007 10:01 AM

Pete Guest

Bruce Anderson, the former Daily Mail hack, now turned Indy columnist, is sitting furthest from the giant portrait of George Orwell that overlooks the audience with a mocking smile. Not that a greater proximity would deter this ardent controversialist. "Most of his output is unreadable," Anderson blurts, shortly before announcing that Orwell, widely regarded as one of the 20th century's most influential political writers, is "part of the left's ability to elevate its minor figures."

It's pretty clear we're not here for a serious debate on the tabled motion: "There is too much political journalism and not enough politics." We, the rank, file and very rank of the news media, plus a good number of academics and students, have been crammed into Reuters' auditorium in Canary Wharf, London, for the announcement of the shortlists for the Orwell Prizes for Political Writing 2007, followed by a discussion within a panel chaired by Reuters' editor-in-chief, David Schlesinger and consisting of Anderson, Steve Richards, also of the Indy, the BBC's Michael Cockerell, Professor Jean Seaton, chair of the Orwell Prize, and the Daily Mail's Peter Oborne.

Anderson gets the opening cross, launching into what will become the defining theme for the session with a sustained attack on New Labour's ability to "take control of the narrative" in the disclosure of political news. Richards and Oborne exchange snipes about cronyism. Richards, who has been billed as a Blair apologist, asserts that too many journalists and satirists "reinforce the orthodox," which makes their response too easy to manipulate by spin doctors. Oborne counters by accusing his colleagues of too easily accepting of the deceits heaped on them by successive governments. "It seems very odd to me," he says, "that my colleagues report things that are untrue." It is left to Seaton, the only non-journalist on the panel, to assert that maybe, just maybe, the hacks and the flacks are all playing the same game. "The media is the part of the same malign machine," she manages.

Reuters has assembled a group of superb caricatures. Seaton exudes an academic charm and politeness. Anderson is imperious and prescriptive, richly comedic but filled with old-world pomposity. Richards is cagey, Cockerell quiet and placatory, while Oborne sits hunched like a sulking schoolboy, occasionally threatenening to sue members of the audience for libel, or to loudly contest facts and figures. The strength of these personalities, entertaining and engaging as they are, make the debate begin to resemble an exercise in narcissism. Sustained namedropping and veiled personal remarks between the panellists do little to push the debate beyond familiar grounds.

The media as a whole is - often rightly - classified as self-obsessed. There is room for this conceit where it allows a writer to assess his or her own motives and preserve editorial integrity. Just as it is vital to report nuance and context in others' opinions and in the facts as you find them, it is equally important to identify and, where possible, suppress your own bias in order to avoid unwitting distortion of the facts. Unchecked, however, the extension is the development of the media personality, where loud voices backed by dominant egos drown out critical debate.

Tonight's discussion, which seeks to place the blame for the cycles of reaction and perverse anti-reaction, of spin and counter-spin, at the feet of a government so keen to exploit and manipulate the media, is an illustration of the endemic failure of journalism to suppress its inner voices. It fails to identify the role that the obsession of a generation of political writers, editors and publishers to garner influence and shape the political landscape through their personalities has had in exposing the media at large to the current degree of exploitation.

By seeking to define the terms on which political battles are fought and by their desire to play kingmaker in the aftermath, the press is largely responsible for the distillation of debate to what Orwell called dying metaphors, worn-out expressions used to save the effort of finding original language to express an idea. It was the root of 1984's Newspeak - the destruction of creative thought by uprooting the infrastructure of comprehension. If there is no way to express liberty, there can be no discussion of and no demand for liberty.

Today, tabloids and broadsheets alike are able to create political "arguments" composed exclusively of catachreses fabricated from an approved dictionary of newspeak, reducing complex issues to Lego-brick reconstructions of reality. This is the poisoned well which gives rise to the media dog-whistles and the deceitful leaks, the character assassinations and the bad news interments. It makes the headline writer's job an easier one.

The Prime Minister reportedly once complained that the media was a "demented tenant" in his regime. The panel's insistence that, by inviting the tenant in, he relinquishes his right to complain when said lodger pisses on the toilet seat, is spurious in isolation. To firmly kill the allegory, they - we - must cease our tenancy and break the symbiosis created by our own egotism and intellectual onanism. To address the motion - it is not that there isn't enough politics or too much political journalism, simply that there is not enough distance between the two.

Pete Guest is a journalist specialising in the impact of disruptive technologies on business and finance. He is news editor of industry journal Screen Markets.