The Freedom of Irrelevance
Iain Murray once again provides some useful perspective on the British press and the reaction to the Camp X-Ray situation. As he points out, editorials in the Telegraph and the Times have "calmly and capably refuted the hysterical allegations of their downmarket competitors" like the Guardian. And he points to this excellent article in today's Telegraph as yet another example.
I believe I've read that the Guardian has something like a 20% market share amongst British newspapers. Yet this 20% does seem to have an inordinate influence on the general media "flow" in Britain, which duly reaches us in America. On the BBC, on ITV News, on Channel 4 News, on Radio 4-- the Telegraph's point of view on America and foreign affairs is rarely represented. As an institution that receives mandatory, involuntary public funding, the BBC must be maddening to the overwhelming majority who apparently disagree with most of the Guardian's points of view. Still, there is far more in the way of actual content in the British news media in all of its forms than there is in the US. Next to Radio 4, NPR sounds like something broadcast over a high school intercom system. Presumably that's why people listen. That's why I do.
I've occasionally speculated that the more extreme loopiness that regularly crops up in the Guardian and the Independent may well be the result of the under-appreciated Freedom of Irrelevance: knowing that there's not the slimmest chance of your being listened to in any serious way, you can go to town with as much hyperbolic rhetoric as you like, safe in the knowledge that it will do no harm. (When you're an "artist," like me, this sort of freedom of irrelevance can really kick in in a big way, if you're so far below the financially viable surface that there's no incentive to follow the market: and that is freedom, however perverse.)
I believe the readership among ordinary people, perhaps only subconsciously, tend to take it in the same spirit. Most of the people I know in England are Guardian readers. Hell, I'm one; which is why I know about the various slop-eds that they regularly publish. When I complain, no one takes the complaints very seriously; they seem to regard it primarily as entertainment, just what you expect from those rascally Guardian columnists. Irascible, eh? Relax. Have another pint, mate.
Anyway, Murray is no doubt also correct about this:
I believe that tough action against the Axis will be greeted warmly by the British people as a whole. Minorities -- Guardian readers, isolationist Tories, Muslim immigrants -- may object, but the rest will see this as just deserts. North Korea may be a sticking point as public ignorance about the dear leader's satrapy is widespread, but Brits know the truth about Iran (remember the Embassy seige in London?) and Iraq just as much as Americans. You don't have to worry about us.