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Are corporate media journalists just shills for the elite?
I had been asked to leave my secondary school — although they were kind enough to let me back to sit my ‘O Levels’. It seemed unlikely that I would get into the Sixth Form College, so I applied for a job with the local newspaper.
Journalism felt like the sensible option at 16 for someone who wanted to write but had no clue what I was doing. I’d read Waugh’s Scoop and seen the BBC TV series ‘Looking For Clancy’. I had a sense that journalism was both seedy and glamorous. A pretty strong combination at 16.
As it was, the day of the interview at the local paper was the day I got my exam results and the news that I had got my place at the college. I passed on the interview. It’s one of those moments I look back on with a certain regret.
Then again, I might have ended up working in Fleet Street and sold my soul to the corporate media. (Actually, I did work in Fleet Street for a while but not at a newspaper.)
The ‘mainstream media’ can’t win at the moment. They’re either being accused by the right of propagating ’fake news’ when reporting facts the right disowns — from climate change to corruption to incompetence — or accused by the left of being controlled by the corporate elite when acting as a mouthpiece for austerity or war or neoliberal economics.
