Media Studies is still shit…
I couldn’t resist it. The new Media Studies is Shit 2.o
The last post
I learned recently that my friend Nigel Rogers had died. Readers of this blog (and others) will know him better as ‘Charlie McMenamin’. He contributed to the comments here regularly. In fact nobody has commented more.
I first met Nigel on the old Red Pepper forum where I made my first tentative steps into the world of internet forums and blogs. I liked Nigel immediately. His contributions were sharp, intelligent and good humoured,
He visited Belfast a few years ago and we arranged to meet in Crown Bar for the first time. I remember wondering if the transition from internet acquaintance to face-to-face meeting would make for an awkward encounter. But not at all. We simply picked up where we’d left off on the internet. We talked about politics, a lot; education policy, in particular; but family and football also. Nigel talked with enthusiasm, insight and wit about all these things.
We met up on an number of other occasions in London when we drank liberally and put the world to rights. Nigel was wise and skeptical. I have a tendency to be naive and rash, so I always benefited from Nigel’s good counsel on a range of issues. There are few people whose political judgement I trust like I trusted Nigel’s.
I miss him.
Nigel is given a much more fulsome obituary in the Guardian which gives a sense of his considerable talents and political commitment.
Nigel actually encouraged me to start this blog. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to begin blogging if he hadn’t mentioned it. So in a way it is perhaps fitting that this should be the last post on Media Studies is Shit. I’ve been an infrequent blogger for a while now and its time to move on. I’ll keep an eye on the comments from time to time.
Thanks to everyone who contributed over the years. Take care and best wishes.
Rab/Steve
Reporting the G8: time to change the story
Like a glutton for punishment I’ve been going through the local Northern Irish newspapers looking at their reporting of the G8 and associated events. The coverage is overwhelmingly dedicated to the extraordinary security arrangements. Photographs of paramilitarised police and razor wire are anchored by headlines that speak of tensions, lockdowns and a ‘ring of steel’. Such stories are incongruously juxtaposed with others that talk of the G8 signalling to the world that Northern Ireland is ‘open for business’ and that the summit will identify the region as a desirable resort.
Belfast Telegraph, 14 June 2013
Irish News, 14 June 2013
The emphasis on security stories has two potential effects: the first is that it presents the democratic right to protest as a problem, and the redoubt of troublemakers. Secondly, it puts people off exercising that democratic right, intimidating them with stories of tough security measures and the anticipation of violence. For instance, below is a two page spread in the Belfast Telegraph on the morning of the planned trade union march that portrays Northern Ireland as living in a potentially violent state of emergency.
Belfast Telegraph, 15 June 2013
Now we could gurn and complain about lazy, ignorant and biased journalism (and God knows I have) but it’s worth considering the current state of our newsrooms and journalism more generally. Because I think the problem with the quality of coverage goes deeper than poor professional practice. I wonder how many newspapers are understaffed, cutting back on journalists to make savings in a competitive market?
I spoke to a talented and conscientious young journalist a few months ago and she told me that the newsroom she worked in was so understaffed that journalists simply don’t have the time to reflect upon what they are reporting. It’s apparently easier and quicker (and presumably more cost effective) to respond to events in generic, tried and tested terms. Certainly that seems to be borne out by the Sunday World‘s coverage of the anti-G8 demo in Belfast yesterday (15 June 2013). Starved of anticipated clashes between protesters and police, the paper blew up out of all proportion a brief verbal confrontation between anti-G8 demonstrators and loyalist flag protesters.
Sunday World, 16 June 2013
Maybe politics that is about something other than the interminable doings of unionism, loyalism, nationalism and republicanism confounds some local journalists, whereas sectarianism is a familiar tune that everybody knows. Just play it again and again whatever the circumstances, no matter how ill-suited, until it becomes a one note samba, a predictable beat that everyone is expected to march to.
News is the life blood of any democracy. Unfortunately the condition of journalism in Northern Ireland is bad news for the region and its new politics. What could improve the situation? Adequately staffed newsrooms would be a start. But here’s another radical idea.
Recent coverage of the G8 shows that Northern Ireland’s press excels in its coverage of security. We can boast considerable journalistic expertise in that area given the region’s history. There’s also no shortage of seasoned political correspondents now embedded at Stormont with ‘proper’ politics to cover. And since the peace process came with the promise of a peace dividend, you might detect the rise of the business correspondent, business pages and supplements. But maybe it’s time to reflect a new politics and a new agenda and make room for the Human Rights and Social Justice Correspondent. Damn it, bring back the Labour Correspondent while you’re at it.
The Loyal Orders have faced various criticisms down the years, the most obvious being the accusation that they are a bulwark for bigotry in Ireland. But there have been other more local campaigns that have challenged the Orders’ perceived right to parade through areas where local residents say they cause offence. Of course the Orangemen and loyalists have countered these campaigns with their own arguments and sometimes with force. But more recent Orangemen and their supporters have stood accused of being an economic liability.
The cost of policing contentious parades alone was £7.4m last year and critics are quick to add the negative impact on tourism and potential investment in Northern Ireland to the charge sheet.
There have been attempts at rebranding the loyalist marching season and to configure the Twelfth of July as a more “inclusive day of celebration” but these have done little to take the political heat out of the occasion or persuade critics that the Twelfth might actually be able to provide a potential economic dividend. But now, according to a report compiled for the Department for Social Development by RSM McClure Watters, the economic and social benefits generated by the Loyal Orders and marching bands amounts to almost £54 million per year.
The figure breaks down like this: the Loyal Orders and bands contribute an estimated £38.64 million annually through the provision of facilities, community and volunteer work and fundraising for numerous charities, while the direct economic impact of the sector is approximately £15 million, incorporating expenditure on regalia, uniforms, instruments, bus hire and other services. Tourism revenue – taking into account those who travel to the Province specifically to observe or participate in parades and associated events – is not included in the final figures.
Social Development Minister Nelson McCausland, himself a member of the Orange Order, welcomed the report’s findings saying: “For the first time we now have extensive, robust and independently collected data on the social and economic impact the sector delivers to our society.”
The “sector”? When did parading become a sector? That’s a term that implies economic and/or social value, like business sector, cultural/creative sector, community or voluntary sector. Now there’s a parading sectoring?
It seems that the marching season now comes with economic benefits, which will no doubt alarm the Order’s opponents, once confident in their assertion that the marching season was a waste of money and deterrent to investment. But wait. The report has brought a curious response from nationalism. The SDLP economy spokesman, and chairman of the Enterprise Trade and Investment Committee at Stormont, Patsy McGlone has said there should also be a report into the economic and social benefits of the Gaelic Athletic Association also. Well, that’s a curious turn for the ‘whataboutery’ narrative to take! If they’re getting a report, we want one too.
But why should the Loyal Orders or the GAA care about whether they bring economic benefits to brand NI? More to point what would happen if either organisation were found to be an economic liability? Would they be subject to rigours of the free market and closed down, their membership made redundant? Not likely. So why did the Department for Social Development help the Orange Order pay for a £40,000 report that is little more than an exercise in point-scoring?
I have to confess that I find something disconcerting about watching the Loyal Orders making the economic case for their existence. Imagine if other political, cultural or religious expressions of allegiance needed to account for themselves in terms of their economic impact on their regions? Actually there are probably some that do, but I never thought I’d live to see the relentless logic of capitalism underscore the the Orange Order’s determination to march.
The full report is hosted here on the Orange Order’s website
Where does the money go?
It would flatter me to say that I had a layman’s grasp of economics, so what follows is a genuine inquiry. Where does the money go?
Let me elaborate.
The MTV Europe Music Awards, hosted by Belfast in 2011, are reported to have generated approximately £22m for the region – £25 for every £1 of public money spent on the event. Meanwhile, the filming of Home Box Office’s (HBO) Game of Thrones in Northern Ireland is estimated to have pumped £65m into the local economy, a substantial return on the £6.05m Northern Ireland Screen Fund (supported by Invest NI) paid in grants to HBO to help with the costs of the first two series.
Yesterday we learnt that the G8 summit is estimated to bring £40m into the region’s economy.
Add all that up and you have a total of £130m. Where does it go? Does a large chunk of it end up in the pockets of corporations like the Hastings Hotel Group, which according to its 2012 accounts has more than tripled its profits?
Hastings controls six hotels in Northern Ireland, including the Europa and Culloden. How much of its profits went on local wages? How much of that does Hastings spend on local produce? Is there anyway of knowing?
According to the BBC, Hasting’s shareholders received a dividend in 2012 of £368,000 up from £276,000 in 2011. Are we giving grants to big corporations so that the shareholders of large companies can enjoy a pay day?
I wonder how much of the money actually finds its way to working class areas were work is scarce, wages are low and welfare is being cut?
Given that we know that wealth does not trickle down – a notion categorically discredited by the fact that inequality has grown in recent decades – what is the mechanism by which the dividend being enjoyed by some in Northern Ireland can be distributed to the many, and in particular those in most need? That is a pressing question in Northern Ireland given its recent history of bloody sectarian violence and the potential for conflict to be exacerbated by depravation. As Matt Baggott, Northern Ireland’s Chief Constable, argues in an interview published in today’s Independent: “We need a lot more focused work in those difficult disadvantaged neighbourhoods where paramilitarism has its roots, to try and improve the life particularly of young people, and deal with the angst felt by working class Protestants and republicans. That has yet to happen.”
So where does the money go and how do we find out?
Making a living in the Urban Cultural Industries
If you tend to think of the creative industries as having a homogenising effect on a city, you might want to think again. Angela McRobbie has outlined a set of characteristics that distinguish the urban cultural industries of London, Berlin and Glasgow, and in so doing encourages us to appreciate the specificity of these industries. London, she describes as aggressive, competitive and hierarchical. Berlin as open, vibrant and critically engaged. Glasgow as having a strong working class ethos, political consciousness and, on occasions, anti-commercial in its approach. These of course are generalisations but they got me thinking: what is the potential character of Belfast as a centre for urban cultural industry?
In the lecture (below) McRobbie references Richard Florida’s outline of the the desirable criteria for the development of a successful creative sector – talent, technology and tolerance. Surely Belfast isn’t short of talent, and technology isn’t beyond the city’s reach but can it boast an atmosphere of tolerance? By tolerance, McRobbie points out, Florida is referring to a strong liberal civic culture that provides a context for diverse lifestyles. By any measure Belfast fails the tolerance test. It has shown that it can attract media corporations that want to use Northern Ireland as a location but whether it can appeal to Florida’s ‘creative class’ in the long term and encourage them to settle in such an illiberal part of the world, is a moot point.
Anyway, you can listen to Angela McRobbie’s lecture in full below. Her main theme is to think through the role young creative graduates play in producing employment in this post-industrial era when work is scarce. Highlighting the importance of subcultural entrepreneurs who grew out of the post-punk, DIY culture of the late 1970s and early 1980s, McRobbie argues that this generation developed a homegrown labour market through creative enterprises such as music and fashion as a response to the high unemployment at that time. Despite its vibrancy and talent, the producers of this subcultural economy couldn’t access sufficient capital and their incomes were paltry. As a consequence they were ripe for exploitation by the corporate world. Eventually the specialist talent of these ‘urban cottage industries’ gave way (or transmorgrified into) a second wave of cultural ‘multi-taskers’. McRobbie sees the ‘creatives’ that graduated into this new environment as being required to be mobile and networked, seeking employment in an informalised labour market. This has lead, she argues, to the crystalisation of new forms of exclusion as there is no protection against nepotism and corruption, and this in turn has given rise to a new urban hierarchy, while depoliticising work.
So our homework for this week is to discuss how we might re-politicise work for those chasing positions in the creative industries.
Pride and Prejudice in Ulster
There is nothing that confirms middle class people in all their self-regarding sanctimony than the doings of working class people. As Stephanie Lawler* argues pretty persuasively, middle class identities are forged to a large extent through their disgust at working-class existence and by comparing their own good taste, high morals, work ethic and spending power with the assumed absence of such qualities among the lower orders.
You can see this very clearly in the response of ‘middle Ulster’ to the loyalist flag protests.
They ridicule working class Protestant accents (#flegs). They point to the apparent fecklessness of protesters, complaining about how ‘these people’ are stopping ‘us’ hard-working folk from getting home at night. And then, for me, the pièce de résistance: in an attempt to bolster a flagging economy, a campaign of conspicuous consumption in support of retailers, restauranteurs and pub owners in Belfast city centre affected by the protests.
‘Middle Ulster’ conceives of loyalists as lacking economic literacy (can’t they see what they are doing to the Northern Ireland brand?), political immaturity (can’t they see the harm they’re doing to themselves and their own communities?) and atavism (they’re stuck in the past and backward looking). Conversely, ‘middle Ulster’ self-associates with a hard-headed understanding of the economic realities that face Northern Ireland in tough times, looking boldly to the future with a strategy of… what exactly? Business as usual? Keep calm and carry on?
Loyalism, for its part, seems to have taken on the character of a downtrodden ethnic minority. It demands recognition of its identity. It complains about its lack of cultural and political representation and alleges abuse at the hands of the police. These grievances are not unique to loyalism. They are shared by just about every other marginalised and minority group in society.
But loyalism’s lament is peculiar and perhaps harder for many to sympathise with because it once enjoyed relative power and privilege, and assumed superiority over others. But that has all ebbed away. The British empire is gone. The industries that once integrated Belfast into that empire are idle. The United Kingdom is being reformed and may disappear altogether soon. Everything that gave political and economic substance to loyalism is disintegrated and working class Protestants are left with nothing to do but demonstrate their Britishness in purely symbolic terms.
If you need an illustration of just how much the ground around loyalism has changed then look at the Titanic visitors’ centre in Belfast. Shipbuilding was once the material expression of Ulster Protestant power, confidence and prestige. Today its legacy is claimed by the same post-industrial business class (and their customers) who are currently berating loyalists for injuring the Northern Irish brand.
For me this poses some serious questions for those who have been condemning loyalist protesters and pouring scorn upon them. They might want to consider whether their behaviour and rhetoric simply confirms working class loyalism’s sense of injustice and its alienation from a peace process that seems to have left it behind? They might want to ask themselves why they said so little when the bankers trashed the economy but are now very agitated at loyalism’s disruption of Northern Ireland’s economic life? They might also want to reflect upon the emptiness of their slogan #TakeBackTheCity given the advanced privatisation of public spaces and services in Belfast. In this context, criticising loyalists for public protests, while urging the police to aggressively clear them away sets a dangerous precedent.
Loyalists need to look at themselves also. They should ask whether they would be better served by a politics that demands redistribution rather than simple recognition? What’s the point in making a stand on the issue of identity when austerity, imposed by the rich, is laying waste to your community? After all working class Protestants have grievances that are surely more substantial than the absence of the beloved flags and emblems, but trying to remedy them will require that they reach beyond their own areas to form alliances with working class Catholic communities faced with the same economically grim circumstances.
*Lawler, S. (2005), ‘Disgusted subjects: the making of middle-class identities’, Sociological Review, 53: 3, pp. 429–46.
The flag protests and the propaganda of peace
It is interesting how the flag protests are being framed in the media. So much of the coverage and comment has focused on the dreadful impact of road blocks on retail and the damage being done to the Northern Ireland ‘brand’. It seems that what we are being presented with is a conflict, not between the old foes of unionism and nationalism this time, but one between the apparently incomprehensible, atavistic behaviour of loyalist protestors and the commercial interests of a thoroughly modern Northern Ireland. This is illustrated beautifully on the front-page of today’s Belfast Telegraph (22 December 2012) that carries a story about how shoppers have defied the flag protesters and brought some “Festive cheer at last for retailers’.
This framing of the dispute as being between bad old politics and virtuous consumerism is an example of the ‘propaganda of of peace’.
Two very clever blokes, Greg McLaughlin and Stephen Baker (quite the most charming gentleman of my acquaintance), wrote a book about this a couple of years ago, entitled (not unsurprisingly) The Propaganda of Peace. The book looked at a broad range of media and cultural representations of Northern Ireland during the peace process and argued that just as people sometimes need to be persuaded to go to war, in Northern Ireland the public need to be persuaded that peace is possible. As you might expect, the media played a key role in this, with films, television dramas and comedies, newspapers, museum exhibitions coming behind a message extolling the virtues of peace.
McLaughlin and Baker argue that essentially there are two ‘narratives’ within the propaganda of peace. The first promotes peace and reconciliation (and there’s not much wrong with that) but the second is concerned with Northern Ireland’s interpellation as a constituent of neo-liberal capitalism after years spent relying on subventions from the British exchequer.
The two narratives are crystalised in the picture below of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness seated in the entrance to IKEA on the outskirts of Belfast on its opening day in December 2007. It’s an image of once sworn enemies now united beneath the banner of a global consumer brand, which in effect presents peace and capitalist enterprise as somehow underscoring one another.
The problem with the propaganda of peace is that it can brook no political convictions or allegiances. In global capitalism the only legitimate expression of human identity is through consumption. As Eric Hobsbawm has argued, ‘Free-market theory effectively claims that there is no need for politics because the sovereignty of the consumer should prevail over everything else.’ Similarly, David Harvey, points out that this is ‘a world in which the neo-liberal ethic of intense, possessive individualism, and its political withdrawal from collective forms of action, becomes the template for human socialization.’
This is one reason why loyalism’s politics and fierce sense of community is a problem in the new Northern Ireland, where commercial and consumer interests trump every other form of human organisation. In the neo-liberal world that Northern Ireland sleep-walked into undercover of the peace process, collective cultural identities are fine, as long as they can be configured as ‘lifestyle-choices’ or packaged as examples of heritage for the consumption of tourists. Seen in these terms, why should loyalism be reconciled with the peace process?
Which brings me back to the point I was making in the last post, if the peace process is to succeed in any meaningful sense then we need to start talking about the quality of the peace that is being proposed. Do we want a peace that privileges vacuous consumer identities or one that provides people with meaningful contexts within which to experience and live their lives?
Last Sunday hundreds joined a peace vigil at the Belfast City Hall calling for an end to the violence engineered in response to the city council’s decision to fly the Union flag on designated days only.
Now, I’ve been on a lot of peace demonstrations in my time but I couldn’t be arsed going to this one. These days Northern Ireland politics bores and exasperates me in equal measures, and the row over the Union flag and the response of the peace demonstrators are perfect examples of why this is the case.
The whole flags dispute looks to me to have been manufactured for sectarian advantage. After all, designated flag days have been uncontroversial with regards to other public buildings: why not Belfast?
What would have been wrong with unionists accepting the Alliance Party’s compromise of flying the flags on designated days? They are happy enough with this arrangement elsewhere. Come to think of it, why did nationalists propose taking the Union flag down altogether in the first place?
In truth, flags is the sort of issue that Northern Ireland’s political mafia of the mediocre can confidently apply themselves to, because they’re fuck all use when it comes to the big social and economic issues.
Political correspondents can offer whatever complex, smart-arse analysis of the situation gets them paid by their newspaper or broadcaster, but the simple truth is that sectarian parties, produce sectarian politics, produces sectarian conflict sometime or other. It’s not fucking rocket science.
No doubt the unionist leaflet distributed in Belfast that singled out the Alliance Party for special attention is part of the DUP campaign to regain the east Belfast seat it lost to Naomi Long at the last Westminster election. But events have quickly spiraled out of mainstream unionism’s control, an indication perhaps of just how out of touch the two main parties are with grassroots loyalism.
But I wonder how ‘in-touch’ any of Northern Ireland’s governing coalition are with people on the ground anymore, and in particular their working class constituents. They’ve been asking many of them to survive on optimistic forecasts of a better Northern Ireland to come for a long time now. But the peace dividend that our political class once confidently pointed to as a reward for good behaviour has gone. It evaporated in the face of a capitalist inspired economic calamity. Now communities are confronted with crushing austerity: an issue to which none of the parties speak with any integrity or authority.
Many of the young loyalists on the streets and being arrested won’t remember the ‘troubles’. They don’t know what fire they’re playing with when they engage in violent protest. But equally important is the fact that they belong to a generation emerging into a world of shit jobs, low pay, cuts in education, welfare and health care. True, none of them have ever thrown a stone in anger at the dismantling of Britain’s greatest institution, the NHS, but who has?
In Belfast the politics and language of class is under-used and less understood. But what people do have recourse to in that city is sectarianism as a long-standing way to voice and demonstrate their frustrations and alienation.
If this was London or Manchester or Liverpool, and working class youths were involved in such public disorder, you can be sure that there would be some commentators highlighting issues of joblessness, poverty and the lack of opportunity. Of course, they may have had to struggle to be heard over the predictable chorus of condemnation that is routine when the state is confronted with trouble on the streets. Nevertheless someone in the media would be taking seriously questions about social, political and economic exclusion. But because this is Northern Ireland the debate is confined to one about bigotry. And that in itself just reproduces the centrality of sectarian discourses in Northern Ireland political life.
Bigotry is without question a problem. I’d go as far to say that some of the behaviour has been fascistic. And at one demonstration in Ballyclare, a prominent banner read: ‘Democracy isn’t working’, which suggests that some loyalists protestors are happy to propose an Arab Spring in reverse.
But it is not just loyalist demonstrators that are despairing of democracy. The Belfast Chamber of Trade and Commerce (BCTC) has expressed its disappointment that the vote on the flying of the Union flag was taken so close to Christmas, a time of the year eagerly awaited by retailers. The predictable disruption in the city is eating into profits, they say. Couldn’t the vote on the Union flag been postponed to a more opportune time? Damn that pesky democratic process and the trouble that arises out it. It’s just so commercially inconvenient. At least Greece and Italy have set a fine example of how to deal with democracy when it just isn’t working for the markets – suspend it.
Meanwhile, there are now more Union flags flying in Northern Ireland than at anytime since the Twelfth and unionists want to open a debate up about the flying of the flag over Stormont, an issue that we all thought was settled a decade ago. Mike Nesbitt, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, points out that the Union flag tends to be raised on days associated with royal occasions, such as royal birthdays. And he worries that with the death of a few royals the number of designated days has dropped and so Northern Ireland looks and feels a little less British. Relax, Mike. The hereditary principle means that no matter how many royals expire, there’ll be more coming along behind them. Why, the Duchess of Cornwall is pregnant at the moment and there is speculation that it might be twins. Hurrah, two Union flags flown together above Stormont on at least one new designated day!
Now the main unionist parties are proposing a Unionist forum where loyal Ulster folk can talk about and progress their attachment to immaterial symbols of Britishness. It’s so easy to mock this initiative (I’ll resist the temptation here) but what of nationalists? How are their plans to remove symbols of British influence from Northern Ireland working out?
There are more Union flags, massive disruption, more political controversy over the issue, commerce moaning because its beloved Northern Ireland ‘brand’ has been sullied and unionism has at last found an issue around which it can unite. Well done, lads. Fucking ace strategy.
Which brings me to the peace demonstrators in Belfast on Sunday.
Look, I hate to sound tired and cynical, but they’re just not helping. For a start, what the fuck do they want? Everybody wants peace. Ask the most belligerent bigot and he or she will tell you that they want to live in peace. But peace cannot be founded on the mere absence of physical conflict. That might be a start but it’s not a sustainable end in Northern Ireland. Peace has to have a quality. It has to be a particular type of peace.
The anger and resentment in working class loyalist areas has to be addressed. Their disenfranchisement needs to be taken seriously, no matter how ugly its articulation. And least we forget that republicans have their own dissidents.
In the face of these challenges, calling for peace in the name of ‘business as usual’ is just futile. Worse than that its a dereliction of democratic and political responsibility.
The problems in contemporary Northern Ireland are not new. In 1998 most of us voted for peace but there was never an honest debate about the quality of that peace. And that’s a debate that isn’t just about how we get Prods and Taigs to love each other a little. It’s a debate that has to be about class and redistribution as well as communal recognition. It has to be about gender, race and sexuality. That’s the debate that we need to have now before it’s too late.
Media Studies is Shit 