OK, I’ll admit it. It was pretty damn funny, and it’s hard to deny that Rupert Murdoch should be somewhere near the top of anyone’s list of ‘people who richly deserve a righteous plate of shaving foam in the face’. Equally, though, it has to be said there’s something which grates about the long-awaited calling to account by our elected representatives of one of the most malign influences on our public life being disrupted by a childish prank.

Image: Alan Denney/flickr

Direct action can be an extremely effective tactic, even (or perhaps especially) when the action in question is something funny, eye-catching and/or a bit outrageous. But that’s primarily true when the cause or issue motivating the action is something which needs public and media attention – think Greenpeace activists dressing as polar bears to occupy the HQ of an oil company which wants to drill in the Arctic, or UKUncut (whose actions Murdoch assailant Jonnie Marbles previously participated in) turning banks into créches and comedy clubs.

The trouble is, Hackgate has already been literally headline news for weeks. The Select Committee hearing which Murdochs Senior and Junior appeared before today was probably the most-watched in Parliamentary history. The usual argument for direct actions of this type simply doesn’t apply here. In fact, there’s a fairly obvious danger of this action backfiring, since it could well divert attention away from the actual substantive issues which the scandal has brought to light. You know, the endemic disregard for the law at the biggest-selling paper in the country, the incestuously cosy relationship between that paper’s parent company, the biggest police force in the country and the office of the Prime Minister, and the deafening lack of criticism of same by anyone in a position of power or influence until very recently, despite the fact it’s been going on for years, if not decades? Yeah, those little details. (And yes, this post could easily be argued to be part of the problem. All I can say in my defence is that I wasn’t able to watch the Select Committee hearing due to being at work, so I felt I wouldn’t have much to add on that front – it’s not as if this post is taking the place of one focused on something more substantive.) It’s also worth bearing in mind that Rupert Murdoch has now been gifted with as good an excuse as he could wish for not to appear at another Parliamentary hearing, which is unlikely to do a whole lot to improve corporate and media accountability.

It may not happen like this (although currently the pie attack is being given more prominence than anything else which happened in Parliament today by the websites of pretty much every tabloid in the country, even if the BBC and the quality papers are being more restrained, so it looks unlikely). It’s possible that this time tomorrow the pie incident will be forgotten and everyone will be back to being outraged at the stuff which actually matters. But here’s the thing. That’s the best-case scenario from the point of view of those of us who want Hackgate to be the beginning of the end for Rupert Murdoch’s hold on British public life (and frankly anyone on the left no matter how radical or moderate should want that if they have any sense). There’s pretty much no way – that I can think of, at least – that Jonnie Marbles’ actions today could achieve anything more positive and meaningful than a cheap laugh. And welcome though that laugh was, I’m not sure it was worth it.

Yes, I know – George who? I hadn’t heard his name either until today, but until very recently he was a spin doctor for the Archbishop of Canterbury (who says the C of E doesn’t move with the times?). The Guardian suggests his departure may have something to do with Rowan Williams’ searingly anti-government New Statesman editorial about a month back in which he…er…expressed moderate concerns about Coalition policies and the state of British politics in a generally nuanced and thoughtful tone. Despite the distinct lack of either firebrand socialist rhetoric or venomous ad hominem attacks on ministers, this apparently upset some in the Conservative Party, and assorted Tory politicians are reported to have strongly ‘berated’ him for writing the piece.

Image@ Steve Punter/flickr

The Guardian’s presumably suggesting, then, that Pitcher’s departure happened because he failed to anticipate and avert or mitigate the likely consequences of Williams’ editorial being published (ie the frightful ‘berating’ he received), and as such it was decided he wasn’t up to the job. But if this is genuinely what happened, it’s either evidence of staggering endemic ineptitude within Lambeth Palace or a craven surrender to rightwing pressure and confected scandal of BBCesque proportions.

If the negative reaction from the Tories to Williams’ editorial really did come as a surprise to senior Anglican Church officials, then it’s not only Pitcher who was asleep on the job. ‘Politicians attack public figure who criticised their party’s policies’ is a news story up there with ‘dog bites man’ for mind-numbing predictability – was there really absolutely no one in the entirety of Lambeth Palace who anticipated that it might happen this time?

Whether or the Tory reaction to the editorial came as a surprise, though, if Pitcher’s parting really is linked to it then those responsible for his ousting should be ashamed of themselves. It’s not the job of either the Anglican Church nor Rowan Williams to hold or express opinions which don’t upset the government, and I somehow doubt Pitcher had a veto on Williams’ public pronouncements in any case. It looks a lot like Pitcher is being made a scapegoat to placate angry Tories, which, to put it bluntly, seems kind of unfair.

It’s perfectly possible, of course, that Pitcher’s leaving is unrelated to the New Statesman affair. I hope so. If not, then the Church of England – an institution which, despite being a godless heathen, I have a fair amount of respect for – is either spineless, incompetent, or both.

Aid staff and famine-stricken Somalian refugees expressed their shock today at the News of the World phone-hacking revelations.

Françoise Chevalier, 35, a nurse with Médecins Sans Frontières, whose clinics and feeding centres in Kenya and Somalia have been completely overwhelmed by the effects of the devastating drought told our correspondent she was appalled. “Steve Coogan, that poor man – how must he be feeling right now, to know that some grubby private investigator was listening to his voicemails?” she demanded, taking a break from handing out desperately-needed packs of rehydration salts to newly-arrived refugees, many of them children who walked for days without food or water to reach the Dadaab camp in Kenya. “And then for the police not to take the allegations seriously as well, it’s just so awful.”

“It’s absolutely outrageous; I can’t believe a paper owned by Rupert Murdoch would ever stoop so low,” added Omar Muhammad, a 43-year-old farm labourer, from the field hospital where he is undergoing treatment for acute malnutrition.

He expressed concern too for the fate of the journalists employed at the now-defunct News of the World. “How are they going to cope? Not only to lose your job, but to know you might never again have the chance to scoop the Sunday People on who Cheryl Cole’s been seen talking to this week – that’s got to be a hard thing to come to terms with.” He then tried unsuccessfuly to lift a bottle of water to his parched lips, before collapsing back onto his rickety camp bed, exhausted.

There has even been talk of setting up some kind of fundraising appeal to help those affected by the affair, but there are some who are doubtful it will be successful. “The trouble is that there are so many scandals like this in Europe and the US that people get cynical” explained 17-year-old Fatima Al-Ahmed from the tarpaulin-and-timber shelter she shares with half a dozen other teenagers. “You just find yourself thinking, ‘It’s all so corrupt. When are these people going to learn to govern themselves properly?’”

In the middle of any media broo-haha there is the possibility that new unanticipated stars can be born. This time we have been blessed with an especially fabulous new z list celeb in the form of hack’s hack, hapless Paul McMullan, who – with his wonky tie, unbuttoned shirt, and impossibly crumpled, maybe slept in, creamy suit – has haunted almost every BBC news broadcast on television and radio for the past week.

Described by Will Self as ‘marvelously fulfilling the rat-like feral persona of the gutter press’ only a few short minutes after Steve Coogan had lambasted him as a ‘PR disaster… you come across as a sort of risible individual who is symptomatic of everything that is wrong with the tabloids … you are morally bankrupt … you’ve been on all week because no one else can be bothered’ – his appearance on last night’s Newsnight was among the most joyously inept performances I’ve ever seen – one which reached its zenith when the vitriol subsided long enough for Emily Maitlis to inject a note unanticipated pity. ‘You keep coming on,’ she said concernedly, -’ but you seem like a tortured soul’. Alas Paul – perhaps the last cockroach left shivering as the News of the World smacked into its long overdue apocalypse – didn’t take the opportunity to sing the story of his crooked heart.

Even had he though, it would never have matched the eloquence of Gordon Burn’s wonderful novel ‘fullalove’ – narrated by a middle-aged tabloid hack suffering a sort of unending spiritual collapse as his job poisons his soul. This, Burn’s suggests is the way cultures die:

“…A local stringer for the Star has drawn the short straw and been nominated our man on the spot, running back hot-foot with the details should anything go off.

Meanwhile we sit here getting crocked and giving it that about who we’ve pulled, got alongside, bought up, boxed off. Money talk. Trade gossip.

‘…Now he is an A-1 example of somebody failing up’

‘…He’s only started to fuckin’ refer to the rag as Qualipop’

‘…there are only three big Gets out there at the minute – Di, Whacko Jacko and Lucan’

‘…Can I check I’ve got what the plod said’

‘…Everything’s a one-shot deal. You get it or you don’t’

‘…”Ethics” is his classic. “That’s that place to the east of London where they all wear white socks” ‘

‘…Through the wall he hears him say to her, “here’s five shillings. Go ‘an buy yourself a new hut” ‘

‘…All the fiddles in the warehouse, the machine room, the process department’.

Heath Hawkins upset a hackette who thinks nobody knows she had a bunk-up with him the night before last by producing his favourite picture of a child mauled by a Rottweiler. ‘Have you ever thought about counselling? I think you’re sick.’

‘What would you know about sick. If you want sick, I’ll show you sick, you smelly shitbag fucking bastard bitch.’

Two older hacks are competing with each other doing one-arm push-ups on the floor.

‘I was told in all seriousness by a sniper in Sarajevo, “I am happy to kill a child when he is with his mother, because there is something fantastic on the face of the mother”. They only pussied out of using it’

One night in a forest in I saw a Khmer Rouge hoist the smallest boy in a family by his ankles and in front of his family this was – swing him so that his head struck the trunk of a palm tree.’

A non-resident asks if he can pay his bill with plastic.

‘These days we take anything. I’d accept a note from your mother.’

‘There’s only one job advertised on the noticeboard at the Job Centre in town here – “Security work. Furness area. One pound fifty an hour. Bring your own dog.” ‘

‘Did you get that stuff about the Bonelli guy, the father, having his ears pierced a few years by a friend with an icecube and a carpet tack?’

Tuning out and in.

‘…One thing you can say about Carson. If bullshit was music, he’d be a brass band.’

‘….buying in spiders to keep the greenfly and blackfly down in the atrium.’

Still framing and re-framing intros. I don’t know why. As far as intros go, I am surplus to requirements… I’m here in the role of legman, errand-runner, fatter of his puny paragraphs.

The police helicopter strobes our faces as it clatters over the hotel. ‘We got ten minutes to get the last fuckin’ chopper out of here, man.’ Heath says.

The bar staff in their grease-rimmed, ill-fitting shirts, waiting to go home.

Farewell Paul McMullan goodnight, to sleep, goodbye, goodnightand Murdoch too goodbye, farewell, goodbye, goodbye, lie down in your crinkled halls of mustard newsprint, with your blood red banners furled, your final press, the final fish and chip paper slough of deceit across your eyes. Farewell goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. You’re done. But Paul, as you’re the last cockroach left, would you turn out the lights?

Hari has now told us that people can sometimes express themselves unclearly in interview – hence the apparently rather frequent need to bend the truth about what was said.

One would think, however, that such considerations would be irrelevant to the task of writing a political biography of Che Guevara – after all Johann clearly did not interview Che. So I was interested to come across the following passage in Hari’s piece on Che, who by the time he came into government:

“Had hardened into a deranged fanatic, impervious to any arguments against him. The friend who had travelled with him on the famous motorcycle journeys, David Mitrani, was shocked when they met up in Havana, and repulsed when Che said they needed to cultivate “relentless hatred of the enemy that [should] impel us over and beyond the natural limitations of man and transform us into effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machines. This fanaticism reached its peak in October 1963….”

These words struck me as familiar. In fact they were never uttered in conversation, let alone to Dr David Mitrani. They were part of Che’s “message to the tricontinental” written by Che while he was fighting in Bolivia.

When it comes to political biography dates can matter. This veneration of hatred was expressed while Che was crippled with asthma and losing a hopeless Guerilla war in the Bolivian jungle. Che Guevara was, without doubt, a ruthless Stalinist. But falsifying conversations, and utterly changing the context in which things were said, is hardly good history.

Hari’s piece has a tragic and romantic ring to it. David Mitrani, the man who had travelled around Latin America on a motorcycle – with all of that youthful idealism – was now despondent to see what he had become. Except, Dr David Mitrani never was Che’s motorcycle companion. That was Alberto Granado, who was still alive when Hari’s piece came out, who lived out his life in Cuba for decades after the revolution and who might not have appreciated being implicitly roped in to Hari’s polemic. David Mitrani, meanwhile, was a doctor who Che had met while working at the General Hospital in mexico.

This happens to have been an article dealing with a subject where I had some expertise. As somebody who frequently enjoys Hari’s writings, I dread to think what else I have taken on faith.

To contact Reuben email reuben@thethirdestate.net

So, superinjunctions. Everyone’s talking about them, right? Well, they were on Monday. Not so much now admittedly, our collective attention span being as hummingbird-like as it is. The papers are still full of them, of course, but they’re acting more out of sheer bloody-minded determination to finally publish what they’ve been blocked from printing for so long than as the result of a married man having sex with a single woman actually being remotely earth-shattering. Anyone who wanted to know the identity of the elusive CTB will have found it from a quick googling weeks ago; the only people to whom Giggs’ unmasking will actually have been news when they picked up their paper yesterday morning will be those who couldn’t care less anyway. Not that pig-headed contrarianism is the exclusive preserve of the press, mind you. The only reason the Twitterverse got interested in where Ryan Giggs’ genitals had been in the first place was because he tried to stop people finding out, and forgot that people on the internet don’t like being told they’re not allowed to know something. Never mind that there’s precisely zero public interest in us knowing this particular gobbet of non-news; anyone, anywhere trying to Suppress Free Speech must be stood up to, no matter how dull or trivial the information that’s being concealed. And no, it’s not enough to argue that free speech is worth standing up for in and of itself, either. Of course it’s a principle worth defending, but, as Reuben (and more recently Polly Toynbee) point out, so is the right to a private life. As I’ve argued before, there are always going to be cases where the principles we value will come into conflict with one another, and when that happens one has to win out over the other. In this instance, privacy should have come first.

Equally, though, we shouldn’t be too relaxed about the wider implications. The fact that Schillings (Giggs’ lawyers) tried to get Twitter to hand over the account details of users who named Giggs before John Hemmings did so in Parliament is pretty damn worrying. And, as has been pointed out, judges getting too injunction-happy is a real concern too. It’s almost certainly true, as Chicken Yoghurt suggests, that during the Trafigura scandal people focused far too much on freedom of the press and far too little on the whole ‘people in Ivory Coast getting poisoned’ thing, myself included, but it would be perverse to argue that therefore we shouldn’t worry about the judiciary being overzealous in muzzling the press and/or users of social media.

Ultimately, though, hand-wringing over the moral niceties of stuff like this is pretty futile (snide remarks at this juncture about how this compares in the pointlessness stakes to political blogging in general are most definitely not welcome). While we can set out why the Streisand Effect was a bad thing in the case of Ryan Giggs but a good thing with Trafigura, ultimately it’s as amoral a phenomenon as the weather. People are nosy, and the internet makes it possible to satisfy that nosiness, irrespective of subject matter. Look at Wikipedia’s list of examples for the Streisand Effect; they range from attempts to stop the publication of a story about Tunisian political prisoners to some storm-in-a-teacup moral panic over a naked picture on an album cover. As long as there’s an internet there’ll be stories like this, for good or ill. All we’ll be able to do most of the time is stand back and watch the fireworks.

Some experienced activist-media folks have put together this excellent guide on putting together a media team. It’s intended to give a quick guide of how to coordinate media work for community/student/activist groups taking political action, particularly direct action and civil disobedience.

The information is broadly applicable to any number of campaigns, but it was written in the context of fighting against the cuts, marketisation of education and public services and infringement on the right to protest. This guide goes beyond “how to give an interview and write a press release” – it takes a more holistic approach incorporating social media, doing media for actions and representing your group to the public.

It’s a small PDF, and you can download it here:

10 Step Guide to a Hard-Hitting Action Media Team

The guide is copyleft for creative commons – so feel free to share, distribute and update as long as you are using it for grassroots agitation for social justice.

Anybody interested in the revolution in Egypt should take the time to read this interview by Parvez Sharma with an Egyptian protester: http://www.al-bab.com/blog/2011/blog1102c.htm.

Being interviewed is the man previously referred to as ‘Yousry’ to protect his identity, but who now insists on having his real name – Omar – published openly (demonstrating the new sense of confidence among the protesters). We learn that more and more women are demonstrating in the streets, that fear of looting is no longer so widespread and that, from what we can tell, all classes in the country are united against the regime.

But what interested me the most was Omar’s rather dismissive take on the very idea of ‘social media’ having a significant role in any of this:

M[e]: Hey Omar…you know that there [are] many tweets coming in saying he is going to shut down everything tonight…whatever little internet was left and mobiles and landlines even?

O[mar]: Fuck the internet! I have not seen it since Thursday and I am not missing it. I don’t need it. No one in Tahrir Square needs it. No one in Suez needs it or in Alex…Go tell Mubarak that the peoples revolution does not need his damn internet!

Westerners see great significance in the Mubarak regime shutting down the internet, but most Egyptians (70%, according to Sharma) are not regular internet users. Here we see here just how little anyone in Egypt actually cares about this stuff; at one point Omar complains about trying to “[get] on the fucking internet which is not working and try and do these damn tweets you keep on telling me about.”

It simply doesn’t matter. As Anne Applebaum put it in Slate recently: “For all the guff being spoken about Twitter and social media, the revolution in Cairo appears to be a very old-fashioned, almost 19^th-century revolution: People see other people going out on the streets, and they join them.”

During the revolt in Iran, the use of Twitter by protesters was often reported as the main story. (People still talk about Iran’s ‘Twitter revolution’, conveniently forgetting that the Mullahs are still in power.) The idea that collective action – the only way any progress has been made anywhere – was more important than this new medium just wasn’t satisfying. Democratic change has never – and will never – come about through technological change alone. But the idea that it will is now accepted and championed by modern media. Televsion news pieces will often end with ’And you can get on twitter and tell us what you think…” Yes, send us your videos and stories and we’ll report your news; ‘like’ us on Facebook. ‘Get involved’. This is anti-political nonsense. Some years ago, the expectation was that the internet, by unleashing a deluge of information, would transform society and the way democracy works. I’m still waiting for this revolution in social relations.

Today, Google and Twitter offered Egyptians a way to bypass the sudden lack of internet connection: Egyptians can leave a voicemail on an international phone number on Google’s blog, which will then be tweeted, allowing Egyptians to ‘stay connected’. (You can see it here: http://twitter.com/speak2tweet).

This is a lovely gesture, but we can’t forget that this is a revolution involving the entire country. As Omar puts it: “40 % of this country is living below the poverty line and a large chunk above that is barely surviving…I can tell you that the majority of Egyptians have no idea what Facebook is or what Twitter is!” The strife in Egypt will continue in the ordinary way, whatever Google or twitter decide to do.

This might sound a bit strange, but I’m prepared to bet that Jeremy Hunt really wishes Vince Cable had kept his mouth shut when he met those undercover Telegraph reporters. It’s because of that little indiscretion, of course, that Hunt has the responsibility for deciding whether Murdoch can acquire a controlling stake in BSkyB, and frankly what he’s doing at the moment looks a lot like stalling. If you think about it, this really isn’t surprising; as things stand there’s just no way this can go well for him or the Conservatives: if he gives it the OK, no one will believe he was being impartial; the links between News International and the Tories are just too great. It’s not just the general pro-Conservative leanings of the Murdoch press, or the fact that no. 10′s now-disgraced ex-communications chief used to edit the News of the World – now it turns out Cameron even went to dinner at James Murdoch’s house over Christmas. There’s simply no way Hunt can let the sale go ahead without it looking, if not corrupt, then at least distinctly dubious. And that’s without even considering the damage it’ll do to the Tories’ relationship with the normally reliably pro-Conservative Telegraph and Daily Mail, both of whom strongly oppose the deal.

If, on the other hand, Hunt rules against Murdoch, that’s pretty unlikely to bode well for the Tories’ prospects at the next election. They’re already behind in the polls; how much further are they likely to slip if the Sun and the Times desert them again, as they did during the Blair years?

Life would be much easier for Hunt and the Conservatives if it was Cable was making this decision; since the minister responsible has act in a ‘quasi-judicial’ capacity and not consult with any of their colleagues, leaving it in the hands of a Lib Dem gave the Tories plausible deniability; if it was Cable who blocked the deal, he’d get the flak for it from Murdoch’s lackeys, not anyone else in the government. And if he let it go through, well, it’s not like any News International paper ever backed the Lib Dems, is it?

Putting the BSkyB decision in the hands of a Lib Dem probably wasn’t deliberate, unlike a lot of the manoeuvring the Tories have been doing to ensure their junior coalition partners get blamed for unpopular government policies such as the tuition fees hike. But it would probably have worked out well for them – this is a decision the Conservatives really don’t want to have to make themselves. My hunch is that the deal will be allowed to go through, but the Tories could well take some serious damage as a result.

It seems a constant of British political life that the public is shocked by ongoing revelations regarding the machinations of the rich and powerful. It sometimes seems as if the campaigning journalist is the radical’s best friend, whether passing on papers of diplomatic intrigues, or showing the ‘moral stance’ of the current government to be hypocritical to the point of parody.

But time and time again, the scandals, strange as it seems, don’t bring down the government. In fact, scandals rarely do – and certainly never on their own. We can easily cast our eyes to the current developments in Italy or Haiti to see that, however foul the stench, the aroma of bad behaviour fails to translate into action.

Much of the press coverage that is gained by these revelations is, of course, extremely beneficial to the profit margins of news corporations. In this way, the secrets of one body become another’s, and the capital revenue changes hand as well. Police spies bring in success-linked-salaries for ACPO, but now bolster the profits of the Daily Mail. The Wikileaks project, however interesting and complex its intentions and intellectual heritage, has become a booming point of capital for news agencies rabidly following every sexy turn. Bradley Manning, it would seem, brings in less profit than publicising and dissecting rape allegations.

Bradley Manning - not worth as much as Julian Assange

Of course, the cult of celebrity plays its part here. Mark Kennedy and Julian Assange, in their own ways, become embodiments of the stories they are involved in, acting as manifest parts of a narrative which involves around such tantalizing intangibles as covert emails and secret information. So the story has a face, and the face is commodified.

But I don’t want to suggest that we can understand these stories through a vulgar economics of ‘money = motivation.’ Rather, I think we need to look at the layers and layers of psychological narratives that different parts of society enter into.

First, we get the narrative of the rich and powerful individuals themselves. Politician, police chiefs, diplomats: all say that their record is whiter than white, that they would never hurt anyone, and only have the best intentions for everyone, everywhere, all the time. Second, we have the rest of the dominant classes. Taking in the stories of their immediate superiors, the professionals and wealthy are shocked by the revelations that their friends and colleagues are actually hypocritical and deceitful. Then there’s the bourgeois controlled media, which echoes the shock of the dominant classes through society. The ‘public’ it seems, are horrified as well.

But are the people who are really feeling the brunt of society’s damage so shocked and horrified? Do the working class kids having their EMA taken away from them – many of whom have no idea this is happening – really share the astonishment that governments cheat and abuse their privilege?

And for most, we’re only all too aware of how the state treats its ‘citizens.’ The details of police intervention may come as news, but the fact of undercover, deeply embedded operatives is something very much of common knowledge to protest movements.

Mark Kenndy - manifested, bought & sold

Revealing lies is not the same as exposing contradictions. Pointing out those moments when the reality on the ground and the media headlines don’t match up isn’t the same as spotting those points when the ‘reality on the ground’ doesn’t match up with itself. Our society is full of indicators of such contradictions. (An example, as Mark Fisher explains, is the threat of climate change. Our society has to produce more and more stuff in order to function the way it does: but this way of doing things, based on cheap oil, is also destroying the eco-system on which our society relies. Our society is literally contradicting itself.)

In the end, the ruling class only surprises itself. I certainly don’t believe that the Tunisian revolts were started by Wikileaks: if you’re going to self-immolate, I think you have stronger reasons that a leaked diplomatic cable. The long-standing distrust that the unprivileged have for the dominant parts of society is far deeper and more naturalised than the short shocks of re-appraisal fed to us by the press.