25 August 2015 — Media Lens
The BBC’s Nick Robinson has made a career out of telling the public what leading politicians say and do; sometimes even what they ‘think’. This stenography plays a key role in ‘the mainstream media’, given that a vital part of statecraft is to keep the public suitably cowed and fearful of threats from which governments must protect us. The ‘free press’ requires compliant journalists willing to disseminate elite-friendly messages about global ‘peace’, ‘security’ and ‘prosperity’, uphold Western ideology that ‘we are the good guys’, and not question power deeply, if at all.