Is democracy on the slide?

Daniel John is a law student who writes on democracy and society since the 2008 financial crash




In my mind democracy is not so much a system of governance, but rather the result of a system of governance. It appears to me, and many others, that in the past three to four decades the word democracy, despite retaining its dictionary definition, in practice has become something else altogether.

The control of the systems and institutions that have a dramatic effect on all of our lives have been handed over to undemocratic and private institutions, such as the IMF and The World Bank for example; institutions that are something of a mystery to most people.

Since 2007 the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) has published the “Democracy Index”. It aims to provide a snapshot of democracy worldwide and as of 2012, according to the index, democracy is at a standstill. The causes of democratic decline put forward by the EIU are probably not that revelatory; the lack of confidence in political institutions exacerbated by sovereign debt crises and political participation decreasing are no real surprise; but from this a depressing picture of sustained decline emerges, with no sign of abatement.

Some may argue about the kind of metrics used to measure an international decline in democracy, and the conclusions one can draw from the EIU’s research may vary. I say this to highlight what is sometimes referred to as the ‘blind-spot’ of objectivity. In a world of so much information, truth and understanding seem to be more elusive than ever.

It probably wouldn’t take more than an hour or two to find a study from an equally reputable institution that contradicts the study by the EIU. Anyone who spends their time monitoring the ‘digital info-tsunami’ that is the internet would probably concede that a fair description of the internet could be that of millions of people hurling ‘think-tank report’ after ‘independent research’ after ‘sound bite’ at each other in comment boxes all over the web, peppered with ‘ism’s’ and conspiracy theory-driven paranoia.

Repetition

This is probably why most people still rely on traditional media for their information. The reassuring sight of a ‘talking head’ providing insight and comment from experts, MP’s and the public is a much neater and more digestible form of information provision; but this has its own, equally worrying drawbacks.

Despite news coverage being a 24 hour operation, the same stories are repeated throughout the day. You would think, with all the material on the internet, that the conventional news would be able to provide the viewer with a near endless stream of fact-checked, verified stories on a daily basis, instead of the yawningly repetitive ‘voxpop’ news that makes up the better part of the mainstream news.

Some of the reasons for this gap in news coverage are discussed in the book Flat Earth News, a book by the journalist Nick Davies. According to Davies, a large number of news outlets are now a source of “distortion, falsehood and propaganda”. The pressure of deadlines and the cutting back of staff have made it impossible for journalist’s to check facts and chase stories of real public interest. The news nowadays comes directly from PR offices and are published almost without question or review, the public’s obsession with the sex lives of z-list celebrities is used as an excuse to not cover more important issues – the fear being that if they do not pander to the public’s base interests, the readers and the advertising revenue will go elsewhere.

The limits of the mainstream media

The Positive Money campaign is one of the many victims of this shift in journalism and news coverage and the vastness of the internet. Irrespective of whether you agree with Positive Money’s position or not, it comes as a surprise that a legitimate campaign on a subject that is so relevant to the public interest and at the front of people’s mind at the moment, that it receives absolutely no coverage in the mainstream media.

Positive money are but one example but there are many more, such as the successful ’38 Degrees’ campaign to make eight multinational corporations pay the tax owed on profits from the Olympic village in 2012, despite the government giving them this perk in the first place. None of this makes the news, and when it does it is fleeting, despite it being a story fitting into the media’s narrative arc.

If society loses the means to question decisions that affect our lives we have reached a dangerous place. If the public have little or no understanding of the decisions and institutions that govern our lives and we continue to ignore the warning signs, how long before we can no longer say with honesty that we live in a democracy?

Left Foot Forward

If it’s not a bedroom tax then it’s not a spare room subsidy policy either

Reblogged from A Latent Existence

This is a clip from the Six O’Clock News on Radio 4 today. It is about a woman who killed herself and left a note blaming the government cuts to her housing benefit.

Download: 20130512-Radio_4-Spare_Room_Subisdy.mp3

  I suppose I should be grateful that the BBC are reporting this story at all, because most people who get their news from the BBC would hardly know that cuts to welfare are even happening. However, I am furious about this story because of the way they phrased the report. Here’s how they referred to the cuts:

“her benefits were being cut as a result of the coalition’s spare room subsidy policy.

…she was facing financial difficulty because of what critics have called the bedroom tax”

This is repetition of government propaganda. True, the cut is not called the bedroom tax. Nor is it the removal of a spare room subsidy, because there never was any such thing, merely people receiving enough housing benefit to cover their rent in the available social housing. The official name of this cut in the legislation is the under-occupancy penalty. Because that’s what it is – a penalty for having a spare room, even if you had no choice about the number of rooms in the home you were allocated or if you need that room for medical equipment or numerous other reasons. It was never, ever a subsidy in the first place to remove. ”Removal of the spare room subsidy” was a name given to the cut by a panicking government because people were calling it a bedroom tax and that was too close to the truth.

That the BBC repeated the official government line and referred to a spare room subsidy when reporting a suicide is a serious problem. Of course I don’t believe the BBC is unbiased any more; if anything the BBC follow a pro-government line no matter who is in power. But if the BBC won’t call it a bedroom tax then they shouldn’t call it a spare room subsidy either. They should use the official name of under-occupancy penalty, but they won’t because the word penalty is too revealing about this government’s actions when they are still claiming that this is not about money and that they are protecting the most vulnerable.

British protesters condemn BBC’s pro-royals bias

British anti-Monarchy activists demonstrated to demand the state-run broadcaster stops promoting monarchy.

The protesters condemned the pro-royal atmosphere in the BBC carrying placards that read “You’re not the Palace PR Machine”, “Monarchy: a Monstrous Carbuncle on our Democracy” and “Report, Don’t Celebrate!”.

The latter was a reference by the organizers of the rally, the Republic campaign group, which wants the BBC to stop its pro-monarchy campaign after it announced a season to “celebrate” the Queen Elizabeth’s 60th year on the British throne.

Republic chief executive Graham Smith said earlier this month that the BBC has “joined in” with the Queen’s diamond jubilee celebrations over the past months while it is funded by the licence fee payers and should only “report celebration”.

“Over the past several months there have been a dozen negative press stories involving the royals that have been completely ignored by BBC News. Yet they jump at every opportunity to dedicate hours of air time to fawning over William,  Kate, Charles and the Queen,” he added.

Smith also said that the BBC is deliberately trying to “paint the monarchy in a modern light” and pretend supporting the royals is equal to supporting Britain.

The BBC has recently went out of its way to report on petty matters related to the royal family, apparently, to promote them as caring people mingling with the public with stories on Prince Charles’s visit to a Northampton shoe factory, his riding of the London Underground to mark its 150 years, and Charles’s younger brother Prince Andrew’s using of an ipad.

“If the BBC has the time and resources to report that Prince Andrew uses an iPad, then it can report on controversies surrounding the royal finances or Prince Charles’s political meddling,” Smith said.

The BBC has failed to cover major stories run by other British media outlets including tax avoidance accusations against Prince Charles’s Duchy of Cornwall, investigation of the royal finances by the parliamentary public accounts committee and Charles’s using of unclaimed legacies to fund his own lobby groups.

This comes as stories such as Charles’s tax exemptions, revelations about the “royal veto” and the Queen’s £6 million pay rise were only shortly touched on by BBC.

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