The default mindset of our age is one fuelled by the grudge of a disconsolate adolescent and the envy and resentment of Marxism. The press, by definition, narrate events. When the narrative, for those too poorly educated to be capable of standing outside their own times and taking a long view, is a Marxist one that means that most of the press become Marxist apologists de facto often without even realising it.
Those in power, with authority or at the top of hierarchies can be viewed in two ways. Although power and position can certainly be abused, generally, such people can be seen as people who aim to guarantee the order we depend on and cannot do without who, therefore, take on a burden of responsibility. Alternatively they can be seen, in a Marxist account, as the wielders of power who uniformly use that power to crush, exploit and oppress. The childish latter account immediately turns everyone into a victimiser and a demon or a victim and weaponises a kind of Nordic gods hero narrative where plenty see themselves as champions of the underdog. It gives people comforting roles and something to be. We all like to feel we are on the side of the angels.
In 1972 a zenith for the press was reached as Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post uncovered the Watergate scandal. Since then every reporter harbours a desire to be a hero outing the villain in that narrative. The lowly brought down the powerful and the simplistic moral equation powerful = evil, lowly = good seemed to be fulfilled and confirmed. From here it was a short step to journalists who see themselves, not only as members of the fourth estate ‘speaking truth to power’ and holding the mighty to account, but in a quasi-judicial role of judge, jury and executioner, effectively replacing the real judiciary which exists for that purpose. In this role they tend to be purely predatory and destructive with little sense of sharing responsibility for our polity with the politicians they maul so gleefully. One has only to watch Channel 4’s Cathy Newman and Krishnan Gurumurthi or the BBC’s Emily Maitlis in action to see this. This behaviour is justified by an inflated, self-aggrandised and self-dramatising idea of who they are. They are not a superior, privileged priesthood and are still citizens participating in our polity like the rest of us and as dependent on it’s good functioning as the rest of us.
Further evidence of this approach is that, even the humblest regional news TV programmes cast nearly every story they broadcast in terms of victim and oppressor with those in positions of authority and responsibility unquestioningly cast in the latter role. If an 18 year-old autistic and epileptic boy drowns in the bath in a care home, rather than being evidence of lachrymae rerum, it is seen as incontestable evidence of the cold-heartedness and cruelty of underpaid NHS care workers, the local authority and, ultimately the government. Those in authority now find their very raison d’etre as whipping boys and scapegoats for everything as if such authority is dispensible.
The role of the press is to record faithfully. If that recording brings down a government, so be it- the government probably deserved it. However its role is not to destroy all authority and hierarchy at any cost in order to appear triumphant. We need some of these institutions and hierarchies to protect us against worse things. The perfect example of this is our Police Force. Cast in the definitive role as figures of authority this now means they are synonymous with tyranny to be resisted, undermined and ridiculed at every turn. As a result they have now either become disaffected or have joined the Marxist battalions in the policies they now seek to impose. The constant attacks on them by the press have effectively disabled them thus destroying the very necessary power of an institution we all depend on. The press seems to have become untethered from our society and not to see itself as sharing in the enterprise any longer as long as a profit is turned and reputations are made.
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