Tony Klinger

I produced a film about the Who rock group called The Kids Are Alright. The reason for my mentioning this fact is the way it was financed. Although there were many companies competing to fund the film the Who decided to fund it themselves. Their reason, which I disputed, was to enable management to control every aspect of the resulting film. Although I like to think we still made a pretty good film it was against a background in which objectivity took a back seat to their vanity and control freakery.

When the Georgians countered the South Ossetians and were then flattened by the Russians it was, at first, hard to find news that clarified this complex situation. I was searching for answers in all the usual places but information was hard to find. No one had the facts. This is not an accident. One of the factors of all modern war, since the Second World War, has been the control of information and its use as propaganda.

I stumbled on a television news station via my satellite service called Russia Today. Russia Today TV, also known as Russia Today, is a globally broadcast English-language news channel from Russia, and the first all-digital Russian TV channel, This channel apparently began broadcasting in, 2005 with nearly 100 English-speaking journalists reporting for it worldwide, and is available around the world via satellite. It looks just like any other international rolling TV news service. Everyone is attractive, seems objective and smiles when necessary.
The Russian government funded Russia Today to present the Russian point of view on events in Russia and its ‘near abroad’ and give the viewers an opportunity to get acquainted with “official” Russian views on world and domestic events. Margarita Simonyan, Russia Today’s editor-in-chief, says the station was born out of the desire to present an unbiased portrait of Russia. The truth is the opposite, the view of things Russian is totally biased in favor of the Russian government’s official view.
Like Al Jazeera English, France 24, Iranian Press TV and Germany’s DW World, the channel can be seen as an attempt to provide an alternative to the point of view on international news, dominated by CNN International and BBC World.

But the difference between BBC World, CNN and Russia Today is one that totally seems to escape the Russians. Although the BBC and CNN reflect the culture and national identities of their host countries they are not, ever , mouthpieces for their respective governments. Russia Today is a very sophisticated propaganda tool of its motherland.
Similarly, and in its own way, just as disturbing was the advent of television stations like ManU TV. This is the official television station of the best football club in the world, Manchester United, current English and European Champions. A few years ago they set up this television station to capitalize on their brand and enhance their marketing muscle. All well and good in the capitalist world we all inhabit.

However much I slavishly follow Man U over the years even I had to put the brakes on when I found myself paying to watch the Under 18 team play a friendly match on some foreign field. Actually, if that were the limit of my gripe it wouldn’t be more difficult than my simply stopping my subscription, which I long since did. No, the danger is that the club now control censor and seek to totally control all information about themselves. That shouldn’t be its agenda. The success of this station has bred many other club stations and promises ever more, and they all appear to be operating on the same subjective basis. It doesn’t matter if its true or accurate, it only matters that the information being pumped out serves our purpose.

The halo effect of the increasing proportion of such control of media  by its subjects is hugely  dangerous to liberty and democracy.

When the line between facts being objectively reported and self serving television becomes sufficiently blurred it becomes progressively easier to control how the population thinks and reacts. We are already reaching this stage and we need to make everyone aware of this.