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UK media fails to disclose defence sector links in nearly 60% of cases
- sourcegrift 5mo agoNo wonder they are so pro russia (but pretend otherwise ), they want the war to go on and on, have people die on both sides.
- cwillu 5mo ago“This research does not suggest that any individual cited in this report deliberately concealed their commercial affiliations from journalists. Rather, it highlights a recurring failure by news organisations to disclose potentially relevant industry interests when presenting former senior military figures as independent expert commentators on defence, conflict, and national security issues.” “Of course, holding private-sector roles after military service is both lawful and commonplace. This is not the point of this report. Rather, the concern highlighted here is about the UK’s media.” “The findings presented here do not argue that the individuals identified are acting improperly, nor that their analyses lack merit, however we assert that the public has a right to full and relevant information when evaluating expert commentary, particularly where it involves lives, public expenditure, and international security.” “It is important to note that this report does not allege wrongdoing on the part of the individuals identified, nor on the part of the publications presented within the pages of this report.” Practically every third paragraph reiterates this.
- daveshistory 5mo agoThey are anticipating a flood of complaints from various well-connected groups and individuals that it's an unfair hit piece. They want to be able to point to all the "Hey, we didn't say this ACTUALLY MATTERED" disclaimers they front-loaded it with.
- br121 5mo agoExcept they said that it actually matter. The reason they didn't said that all those people with a potential conflict of interest lied is that it's not necessarily true. After all the article didn't reveal some secret conspiracy, it higlited the use of not disclosing some public, easily accessible informations by some media outlets, which are the ones to blame
- flumpcakes 5mo agoSource? The UK has been extremely vocal about defending Ukraine's sovereign rights and has spent a lot of money supplying it with defensive equipment. Russia despises the UK. The UK does have a few right wing pro Russia people, just like the US does. Just like most of Europe does. It is the fringe view and not reflected in state policy.
- sourcegrift 5mo ago[flagged]
- SuddsMcDuff 5mo ago> The UK does have a few right wing pro Russia people "Right wing" people like George Galloway? Put your obvious bias aside for a moment and just say "a few pro Russia people".
- flumpcakes 5mo agoYou are of course correct. I completely forgot about him. Jeremy Corbyn could probably be lumped in as an elected official. There is a pretty virulent form of left wing in the UK who argue that Russia is good because it's imperialism is somehow justified (I think it boils down to anti-NATO sentiment.) > obvious bias The rise of a few right parties with sympathy to Russia was on my mind. Although that talk has seemed to have quieted with more national issues taking up breath.
- SuddsMcDuff 5mo agoI admit my post was slightly inflammatory & you could have responded very differently. I commend you for taking the high road.
- einpoklum 5mo ago1. Calling it the "defense sector" is already quite biased. Almost all of that sector's activity involves offensive activity. Or just call it the "arms industry" etc. If we were less charitable, we could well call it the "war industry". 2. Reading the article we note there's quite some overlap between arms industry links and links to Israel's fundraising and lobbying circles. I wonder whether UK media discloses those links.
- tempfile 5mo ago"war industry" is still very charitable! If you have any standards that distinguish a war from indiscriminate killing, they probably violate those standards in a large proportion of their business.
- philipallstar 5mo agoWhat informs your "probably"?
- constantius 5mo ago[flagged]
- tempfile 5mo agoWhen I said "If you have standards" I did not specify what those standards are. So I said "probably", because I have to guess you have similar standards to me. If you do, then you can drop the "probably". As the other commenter correctly guesses, you only have to open the news to find examples. Iran, Palestine, Iraq (way back when). Most "wars" are not really wars these days, they're just exercises in western aggression.
- philipallstar 5mo agoOkay - I see. I thought it was a qualifier of "in a large proportion of their business". In that case - why do you think it's "in a large proportion of their business"?
- alansaber 5mo ago"Ex UK military members discover the private sector pays 10-20x more" underlines the title, but yes, media should disclose it. But even if they were "just" retired ex-military, their bias would be the same (being a member of the UK military).
- defrost 5mo agoMedia in general is poor on declaring any and all bias of their various interviewed "experts". Quack doctors spruiking amazing new treatments (that they hold shares in). Automotive experts promoting car brands (that they receive advertising and influencer dollars for). etc.
- buran77 5mo ago> Quack doctors spruiking amazing new treatments (that they hold shares in). Doctors commonly have kickback arrangements to prescribe specific medication. Sometimes it's the correct course of action they just always go for the particular brand, other times it's the wrong course of action but they prescribe it anyway for the kickback (the OxyContin scandal comes to mind).
- defrost 5mo agoPharma reps "bribing" doctors prescribing habits is a thing, for sure, and varies in degree by country. This is a separate issue for media reporting on (say) new tanning treatments that are endorsed on screen during traditional "news hours" in undeclared infomercial segments that feature "independant" medical experts gushing over benefits of perineum UV treatments. Frequently both the company that paid for the faux news segment and the guest experts that also benefit fail to have fiscal interests disclosed.
- buran77 5mo agoOh, I just meant it's not just "quack doctors" doing it. it's a fairly common practice.
- Lapsa 5mo ago[dead]
- helsinkiandrew 5mo ago> These individuals had also been quoted, featured, or otherwise used as commentators in UK media coverage of defence, conflict, or national security issues. If they are promoting defence spending or plugging their employers products that's bad, but using their experience to comment on the Iran war or Ukraine, or Russian/Chinese Spy networks doesn't seem that bad?
- JdeBP 5mo agoIn 17 of the 19 detailed instances, it is stated that they are promoting increases in budgets and spending. The two others are reported as speaking with different conflicts of interest.
- dgroshev 5mo ago"People who have seen the state of the military first hand are saying that we need to fund the military" is not really shocking or sinister.
- defrost 5mo agoIt's not the message spoken that is at issue here, it is the lack of disclosure of the connection of "the expert" to those that benefit (or suffer) from the message.
- dgroshev 5mo agoDo you expect the same standard to be applied to the NHS? "The expert claiming that cancer is bad was employed by the NHS five years ago"
- defrost 5mo agoI expect this: > "The expert claiming that cancer is bad was employed by the NHS five years ago" from any media outlet quoting that "expert", yes. I'd also like the circumstances of their departure to be mentioned, should that be relevant to the claims. I expect it as such things are also expected by the press council of the country I'm in, even though it can be an uphill battle getting such compliance.
- Pay08 5mo ago[flagged]
- shevy-java 5mo agoIn other words: institutionalized corruption. It's also a problem because who controls those media? So the taxpayers are at the least two times at a disadvantage here, private interests funding private media, to then set the agenda of reporting very selectively - or not at all in certain areas.
- Npovview 5mo agoThe problem isn't good honest journalism can't be done. Think from the point of view a good critical news story, if that news story is gonna disadvantage a powerful entity, that entity will do everything in its power to discredit and stop that news story from publishing. This is also the reason why I like social media, Game Nexus does so much impactful reporting on hardware.
- echelon_musk 5mo ago> How the UK Security Services neutralised ‘The Guardian’ newspaper (2019) (dailymaverick.co.za) > 3 points by indigodaddy on June 2, 2023 | past | 1 comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36170406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36170406 https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-09-11-how-the-uk-security-services-neutralised-the-countrys-leading-liberal-newspaper/ https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-09-11-how-the-u...
- cryo32 5mo agoI'm not sure that the Grauniad has a particularly good global reputation for independent and critical journalism. It publishes the same mix of disguised opinion pieces and rather biased junk articles as the other side of the political spectrum. There isn't a single news source that you can trust as such. You have to compile a lot of them, remove the unverified information and see what is left. Usually not a lot.
- daveshistory 5mo agoI sort of disagree with this. I bet if you asked liberals and progressives in a country like America for a foreign newspaper they read -- if they do read one -- in most cases it is probably the Guardian. So it may be only the best of a bad bunch but it does have that reputation.
- cryo32 5mo agoNever thought of it from that perspective. They should read multiple sources too. BBC as well, which once the articles have settled, are quite good. (just ignore the breaking stuff which is dubious sometimes)
- SanjayMehta 5mo agoThe bbc never reported on the pedophiles in their midst and they are the good ones.
- porkyhalal 5mo ago[flagged]
- JdeBP 5mo agoIt is interesting to look at the details and see who the (news) 'media' are in this case. Going through the details, I find 1 instance (under Kemp) of the BBC, and everyone else is the 'usual suspects', the Telegraph, the Mail, GB News, the Sun, the Times, and so forth. The Guardian is only mentioned in context of exposing these conflicts of interests; and whilst I am surprised to find LBC and Nation Cymru as not being transparent about their experts and commentariat, I don't see The National mentioned at all, nor The Herald, The Scotsman, the Metro, the Financial Times, and The i. This may tell us that these experts only appear in the 'usual suspect' news media. Or it may tell us that this report didn't look at a wide range of U.K. news media. The latter seems unlikely given the inclusion of some niche publications (I've never even heard of London Loves Business until today.) and things like Nation Cymru, so I am more inclined to suppose the former.
- jrrv 5mo agoLBC certainly falls within the "usual suspects"
- pjc50 5mo ago> the Telegraph, the Mail, GB News, the Sun, the Times Indeed. These are pay-to-play propaganda and should not be accorded the dignity of "newspaper". Peter Oborne's resignation from the Telegraph is still worth reading: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31510152 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31510152
- gib444 5mo agoAnd The Times and The Sun aren't even British. They're owned by News Corp which is American And The Telegraph is about to become German GB News is quite likely Russian ultimately lol
- SanjayMehta 5mo agoWhy Russian? They're broke. Why not Chinese?
- squeegmeister 5mo agoManufacturing Consent continues being relevant
- itopaloglu83 5mo agoFor the unfamiliar. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
- dredmorbius 5mo agoAnd based on the earlier concept by Walter Lippmann, first expressed in his 1922 book Public Opinion, which arguably birthed 20th century putatively impartial professional journalism. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Opinion_(book)#Manufacture_of_consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Opinion_(book)#Manufact...>
- meta_gunslinger 5mo ago[flagged]
- chadgpt3 5mo agoWhat racism is enshrined in law?
- thesamethrowawa 5mo agometa_gunsligner is just going back through Elons X posts to find us some examples.
- meta_gunslinger 5mo agoWhich section of the population is allowed to be armed by law and which is not?
- meta_gunslinger 5mo agoI see downvotes but not rebuttals. I guess facts just trigger some ideologically captured users.
- chadgpt3 4mo agoYou haven't said any facts. You've just asked stupid elusive non-questions.
- chadgpt3 4mo agoOnes with gun licenses?
- meta_gunslinger 4mo agoTry harder.
- chadgpt3 4mo ago
- genewitch 5mo agohow can anyone trust any media report? Even if it is reported from multiple outlets? In the US the sum is around 39 billion dollars for pharma advertising, nevermind our military-industrial complex, as well. How can any media that has underwriting or advertisers actually do genuine reporting? Ask yourself this! The only way to really report on the "news" is to not be supported by advertisers or underwriting. I've known this since Dr. Naji Dahi's class in 2002, with upkeep by Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak, as well as having worked for ABC and a KKR Joint that's all up in "media".
- coliveira 5mo agoThis is the biggest illusion of the media. They portray themselves as informing in an independent way. But any quick analysis will show that they can only report what their clients let them. And in the West their loyalty is to wealthy families and big corporations in the US and Europe.
- genewitch 5mo agoi used to have a great way to sum this all up but i stopped arguing with people via that medium so i have since forgotten my spiel. It's not that the media will lie, necessarily - although let's not pretend they're above lying - it's the editorial staff get to choose what runs and what doesn't. If there's a new study saying acetaminophen or whatever is actually more dangerous than we thought, it won't get air on normal media for a long time. Hard to get earnest reporting on wars when defense contractors are a major underwriter, hard to report on businesses when most of them are at least partially owned by the same companies that own the media outlets and/or are major advertisers. I really need to sit down and think for a while to remember how i used to explain this, because it nearly always got a "oh... that kinda makes sense... dang"
- gyanchawdhary 5mo ago[flagged]
- NVHacker 5mo ago[flagged]
- br121 5mo ago"our country isn't ready for war" is more difficult to disproof than "solar panels only last for 15 years", so while I agree that disclosures should go for every conflict on interest, it makes sense that the research focused only on this portion of them
- gyanchawdhary 5mo agoi dont buy it ..if the concren is undisclosed affiliations, then study all undisclosed affiliations .. instead we get a defence only study, because "defence industry ties" are assumed to be inherently suspect .. Regardless, when the topic is national security, defence- ector experience is often exactly the expertise you want... not some acadmic or commie whod rather we not
- thesamethrowawa 5mo agoIt is interesting that any US-centric article causing political flame wars immediately sinks here, but anything generating similar "debate" on UK issues is allowed to sit on the front page, accumulating hundreds of comments. I don't think the conversation here is evolving in way that HN tries to foster, so hopefully this one is shadow-flagged (or however the internal mod tools work) soon.
- thesamethrowawa 5mo agoStill up here a few hours later huh, despite clear propaganda that is nothing to do with TFA.
- roysting 5mo agoI wish we had a requirement for every corporation (non-profit, for profit, or politician) to disclose any and all “links”. The fact that there is so much resistance to that notion should tell people all they need to know about how toxic the people’s relationship is to these entities.
- austinallegro 5mo agoTL;DR Military Experts Named: Nick Carter Chris Deverell James Everard Nick Houghton Mark Carleton-Smith Rupert Jones Richard Kemp Stuart Peach David Richards Patrick Sanders Richard Shirreff Sir Peter Wall Ben Wallace Alan West Penny Mordaunt Greg Bagwell Richard Barrons Tim Collins Richard Dannatt Media Outlets Named: The Telegraph Daily Mail Express The Independent iPaper The Sun LBC Sky News Times Radio Channel 4 News
- flumpcakes 5mo agoSurely all experts are employed in some form in their field? Should we have their entire CV read out before their expertise is given on a subject matter? Unless there is a clear conflict of interest, such as an "expert" urging a particular course of action which aligns to benefit their employers, then the audience should probably just engage their critical thinking a bit more. The majority of UK experts will probably have opinions that align with UK ethics/morality/society and urge options that benefit the UK state and it's allies. I would assume that would be an absolute given too. When I watch Chinese citizens give their expertise on matters, I know that it will probably align with the Chinese state and benefit them (as opposed to strictly the UK state). Have people lost all of their critical thinking skills?
- epolanski 5mo agoIf somebody is discussing about defense in the media the viewers/readers should know that the person works for the defense industry in a commercial role. Presenting them merely as experts because they are "former X" creates a false impression of impartiality.
- Ntrails 5mo agoFor talking heads/opinion you have, I would say, two choices: - Retired people with historic experience. The longer since they were actively involved in the sector, the less useful they will be of course. There is also going to be something of a demographics bias here. - Currently employed people, and given their primary skillset is "Defense industry expertise" I'm going to posit that they always have a commercial role in the defense industry. Maybe there's some subset with a non-commercial role or a purely political role... but both of those have their own implications too
- epolanski 5mo agoThe problem isn't that they work in the defense industry, but that the information is not disclosed. If somebody who has a commercial role in not one, but _two_ different defense companies, arguing for increase in defense spending is merely presented as a "retired officer" there is a huge information that is being omitted. It's like having somebody arguing about banking regulations and presenting them as "award winning economist" or "former ministry of finances" and omitting the fact that he works in the banking sector now.
- nephihaha 5mo agoTip of the iceberg. The Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office, among others, determine the direction of BBC news.
- bell-cot 5mo agoWhile I'm neither a Brit, nor a professional historian, my understanding is that corruption - meaning everything from foot-dragging delivery to inferior & defective goods to exorbitant prices to outright theft - is an ageless problem in the UK military equipment & supplies business. And it was an ageless problem before the Acts of Union (1707, England & Scotland) had even created the UK. And it has rather often been a problem at such scale as to have serious strategic consequences. (Not that the UK's gov't actually required outside corruption to ruinously squander military budgets. Try asking a naval historian about Britain's post-WWII aircraft carrier construction & refit fiasco.) My point: News sources failing to flag defense sector conflicts of interest is a minor & downstream fuss over mediocre journalism. The real problem, from the PoV of someone who really cares about the UK and its future, is that Britain both wastes vast resources and punches far below its weight, due to its massive defense sector corruption & incompetence.
- Sam6late 5mo agoIt seems the same goes for international media to some extent.This example passed as nothing although it should have been everywhere: The general reportedly stated that the UK Ministry of Defence could stage a "mutiny potentially up to a coup d'état,if Jeremy Corbyn -as a potential Prime Minister) attempted to Leave NATO. https://monthlyreview.org/articles/anatomy-of-a-propaganda-campaign-jeremy-corbyns-political-assassination/ https://monthlyreview.org/articles/anatomy-of-a-propaganda-c...
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]