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REVIEWS: THE MEDIA OF THE REPUBLIC REVIEWS
THE JOURNALISTIC MIND
by John Young
News weekly, February 1999
The author contends that a corrupt media hounded the Princess of Wales to her death, and that the media has an underlying philosophy which he calls theoretic republicanism. Chapter two explains this philosophy and related matters; the rest of the book is devoted primarily to the analysis of media accounts in the week following Diana’s death. Background material is given concerning the media’s treatment of the Princess in the years before.
Gerard Charles claims: ‘…no marriage could endure the scrutiny that Charles and Diana’s had to endure. To be constantly the object of attention, to have one’s words and actions constantly analysed, to have one’s image constantly relayed around the world, is a burden that nobody has ever had to endure and nobody could endure. But then to have the added foul and unscrupulous behaviour of the paparazzi, directed by the media bosses, this amounts to a new type of public execution where the observed pain is far more exquisite than any guillotine or slashing Islamic sword could deliver’ (p. 41).
It is impossible, the author argues, to understand what the modern media is about unless one sees the philosophy which is being consciously or unconsciously followed. It is a philosophy grounded on ideas propagated in the period wrongly called the Enlightenment, but reaching back to the nominalism of William of Ockham in the fourteenth century.
It is a philosophy owing much to David Hume (1711-1776), considered by Gerard Charles to be ‘the most destructive and most influential of modern philosophers’ (p.259). It is a philosophy which maintains that we can know only individuals, not common natures. We can know particular characteristics of this or that man, but not an essence which every human being possesses. The result is that no universal order independent of human decisions can be admitted. There is no natural moral law, there are no unchanging social principles which must be followed if society is to be healthy. Any moral order and any social order has to be created by man, and is therefore subject to man, which means subject to radically free individuals who choose to follow these man-made rules.
This outlook has no place for God, for religion, for spiritual realities transcending the material world. Power determines who is ruler and who is ruled. And power is exercised particularly through the media, which strives to control people’s thinking by propaganda which masquerades as objective reporting, but which in fact distorts the truth and incessantly promotes the theoretic-republican agenda.
Mr Charles sees the basic reason for attacks on the royal family as the hostility felt by this outlook for tradition. Whatever the personal failings of members of royalty, the royal family does stand for tradition, for permanence, for a hierarchical order, for a vision that goes beyond the material.
The book examines in detail the events of the weeks following the death of Diana, analysing the newspaper reports and trying to get inside the minds of the journalists. Much attention is given to media efforts, implicit and explicit, to justify the constant hounding of Diana and Charles, and to excuse the behaviour of the paparazzi—especially their behaviour on the last fatal night. The author builds a case for holding that paparazzi vehicles, in the frenzied efforts to get photographs, directly caused the accident.
Written in a direct, clear and vigorous style, with a refreshing independence of thought, this book highlights a merciless media in pursuit of sensational news. But at a deeper level, it lays bare the fundamental mind-set of the general media.
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