I was watching a Revolution News story on the Albuquirkie anti police fight. It was fascist sting and it got me thinking about how the news works. It served the bourgeoise, not just by being propagandistic (though it certain is) but by exclusion. Exclusion of stories involving popular fight back. Why isn't the take over of city hall in protest of police murder a national story? Why aren't SolNets given focus on national news? Because they don't fit into sound bites.
May 7 2014 11:21
May 7 2014 16:26
Tommy Ascaso wrote:
It's because most of the things done by activists aren't interesting to anybody but other activists.
Sure, but this isn't just about activists. For example, all major media outlets have business correspondents, but how many how labour correspondents.
There seems to be a structural asymmetry in most reporting which lends dominance to the roles of capital and the state, and the working class disappears except as an object to be managed and manipulated by politicians, bosses and the unions.
May 7 2014 17:44
If your IP is non-UK, the BBC has a section just called 'Capital' 
May 7 2014 20:09
Tommy Ascaso wrote:
RedEd wrote:
Tommy Ascaso wrote:
It's because most of the things done by activists aren't interesting to anybody but other activists.Sure, but this isn't just about activists. For example, all major media outlets have business correspondents, but how many how labour correspondents.
There seems to be a structural asymmetry in most reporting which lends dominance to the roles of capital and the state, and the working class disappears except as an object to be managed and manipulated by politicians, bosses and the unions.
I think there are maybe two or three labour correspondents left in the UK. The reason there are so few is not because there's a conspiracy to hide the class struggle away, it's because the level of class struggle has declined so heavily. This has been written about a fair bit, like here and here.
I think you're partly right about that but I think it's a result of the way our society is structured rather than anything unique to journalism. It's also not as if the working class is a cohesive thing that can be asked for its views on something either.
I wasn't trying making a historical point bemoaning the fall of the labour correspondent, who weren't so much that as union correspondents anyway. And I certainly wasn't talking in terms of conspiracy. I was thinking more in terms of the fact that the very structures of the state-capital nexus include, overlap with and/or have evolved to communicate easily with most media, and most media with them.
The forms of agency easily imaginable to these institutions are restricted and tend to exclude working class self activity due to the social forms they take. Hence 'the mob', 'riots', 'outside provocateurs', 'the international jew' and all the other ways of explaining away conscious self activity.
I guess this, to me, is the best achievement of operaismo. To turn bourgeois thinking on its head and examine the role of the working class in the creation and recreation of both capital and itself. I think it's very much the case that that side of things largely disappears in the press. And politics, and social work, and entertainment media, etc. etc.
May 10 2014 18:56
Read Manufacturing Consent
May 11 2014 06:21
Yeah iexist, Manufacturing Consent is killer. An excellent critique of the mainstream media, specifically the American media, and also very revelatory to me when I read it as a history of the Vietnam War and US policy in Central America in the early 80s.
Can comment on articles and discussions
I agree in terms of activism, but I think allot of people would find solidarity networks interesting. Also a takeover of city hall in protest of police murder would interest allot more people.