Tuesday, 23 January 2024
The Armchair Campaigner
From an armchair in the office of his Tarrytown estate he directed against the enormous hypothetical enemy, unrighteousness, a campaign which went on through fifteen years, during which he displayed himself a rabid monomaniac, an unqualified nuisance, and an intolerable bore.
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Beautiful and Damned (1922)
It applies to some more than others, but there is much to be said for the idea that our news media are campaigning businesses ranged against the same enormous hypothetical enemy, unrighteousness. We have modern versions of the campaign Fitzgerald invokes - media businesses with broad campaigns to guide editorial policy and encircle the audience with authoritative righteousness.
It is not news, veracity and unbiased opinion that big media provide. Nobody offers advertising revenue, political influence or social status in return for veracity. Veracity is cheap anyway.
Instead, big media offer their audiences a veracity alternative - a comforting sense of being on the right side of something never quite specified exactly. Not the political right, but the right causes, movements, charities, celebrities, opinions, fashions and lashings of moral indignation. Big media roll it all up into an airy sense of being the active, supportive, very slightly superior audience for a broad campaign of armchair righteousness.
We could call it many things, but perhaps campaign farming is one. There are many others.
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3 comments:
I'd suggest 'gang colours'. Most newspapers and many other broadcasters have a particular 'brand' for a particular audience. As you say they are selling collective righteousness to their 'gang'.
I imagine the Grauniad colours as artisan linen with green open toed sandals.
The Times as a pin-striped suit.
The BBC as evening dinner party wear (with the odd daring sequin)
The Morning Star as grey dungarees, with red head bands.
News and veracity just a happy coincidence, or course.
It's that "never quite specified exactly" which intrigues me. I've mentioned it here before, but I was struck by this at the Eden Project in Cornwall - those big geodesic domes. Everywhere there are vague signs about global warming, indigenous peoples, allotments, air miles, heat pumps, diversity, endangered species, etc., etc. A cornucopia of lefty middle-class concerns that is always in soft focus, never actually committing to anything. The National Trust are really into it, and I suspect the RSPB.
DJ - good idea, it could be made into a marketing opportunity for Gang Wear and Gang Accessories, maybe even Gang Wines and a Gang Recipe Book.
Sam - yes there are a number of places like that now. Certainly the National Trust and probably the RSPB as you say, but also places such as Severn Trent Water visitor centres and anything connected with wildlife or outdoor pursuits.
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