The rise of social media has fragmented traditional audiences and 'the reading public'. Roy Greenslade has predicted the demise of the 'reactionary' tabloid media in the Guardian. What he hasn't dealt with is the decline of 'mainstream' newspapers as a proper source of information on international power politics.
It's not clear what future the 'serious' quality newspaper heritage media has when it fails to make itself relevant by journalistic coverage of the global politics and events that matter, a tradition being continued at present by a diminishing number of real journalists such as Patrick Cockburn of the Independent and his despatches from Iraq.
The fall of Mosul was barely covered in the Guardian compared with the coverage east Aleppo received when it fell to Assad's forces and Russian airpower in December 2016. The 40,000 civilian casualties have not been even registered in public consciousness nor the roughly 5500 believed killed by Western air power.
By any objective criteria, the liberation of the largest ISIS held city in Iraq ought to have been a major news item. But it was mentioned as if the war against ISIS was largely one in a far off land with little connection to Britain or the US, a footnote in a struggle that has long ceased to have much immediate relevance.
The fact the destruction of the IS Caliphate was downplayed so much might have something to do with lack of interest in civilian casualties that could have been caused by Trump's determination to 'bomb the shit out of ISIS' and to 'let the generals off the leash'. This was raised in the US media, but in Britain-silence.
Also not reported anywhere in the Guardian is the decisive shift of the Trump presidency towards a confrontation with Iran. It got a fleeting mention in an Observer editorial with Iran's ballistic missile 'threat' regarded as one Trump simply wasn't 'dealing with' despite his rhetoric. Nowhere has the Iraq style plan for war on Iran been mentioned.
It might be that the pretexts for war are so flimsy now and, as the Iraq War has demonstrated the US and US publics won't be 'played' by the government and media again, that the emphasis is on a media blanket, in simply not putting anywhere near enough emphasis on reporting the facts or informing the public in Britain.
The Guardian featured one article by Trita Parsi a few weeks ago and one by Trevor Timms lambasting Trump for his 'bloodlust' on Iran: the line is that Trump is the problem more than the Washington elites , both Republican and Democrat, who would be prepared to align behind Trump is he decided on confrontation with Iran.
Parsi is one of many international diplomacy experts who have been writing in the last week of July about the Trump administration's determination to subvert the nuclear deal and project responsibility for its aggressive postures on to Iran. The New York Times has covered this and, to an extent, the Washington Post.
Parsi is clear as to the strategy,
'President Donald Trump has made it clear, in no uncertain terms and with no effort to disguise his duplicity, that he will claim that Tehran is cheating on the nuclear deal by October—the facts be damned. In short, the fix is in. Trump will refuse to accept that Iran is in compliance and thereby set the stage for a military confrontation. His advisors have even been kind enough to explain how they will go about this. Rarely has a sinister plan to destroy an arms control agreement and pave the way for war been so openly telegraphed.
The unmasking of Trump’s plans to sabotage the nuclear deal began two weeks ago when he reluctantly had to certify that Iran indeed was in compliance. Both the US intelligence as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency had confirmed Tehran’s fair play. But Trump threw a tantrum in the Oval Office and berated his national security team for not having found a way to claim Iran was cheating. According to Foreign Policy, the adults in the room—Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, and National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster—eventually calmed Trump down but only on the condition that they double down on finding a way for the president to blow up the deal by October.
Recognizing that refusing to certify Iran would isolate the United States, Trump’s advisors gave him another plan. Use the spot-inspections mechanism of the nuclear deal, they suggested, to demand access to a whole set of military sites in Iran. Once Iran balks—which it will since the mechanism is only supposed to be used if tangible evidence exists that those sites are being used for illicit nuclear activities—Trump can claim that Iran is in violation, blowing up the nuclear deal while shifting the blame to Tehran.This decisive shift in the approach of Trump towards Iran was not reported in any British mainstream media outlet, despite the similarities to the build up of the war with Iraq and despite the fact Britain's government regards itself as America's 'first ally' and that any US confrontation with Iran could well drag the UK in.
The Guardian is in danger of becoming a lamer version of the Huffington Post. The international coverage throughout 2017 has been appalling. There is no news coverage of Trump's attempts to shred a deal that could prevent a major war breaking out. Just the mainstreaming information on twitterspats and outrage pieces.
On defence, Richard Norton Taylor seems to have retired and so the shameful concealment of the Saudi role in backing jihadi ideology in Britain simply has not been focused on nor the reasons why the Conservative government is intent on suppressing the 2015 commissioned report into the funding of terrorist activity from the Gulf States.
Those interested in foreign affairs, those wanting quality and balanced, objective reportage simply aren't going to want to pay for Guardian, though they would be if the coverage was better. The Guardian is fine for scanning the headlines, but so is the BBC or any other media platform. It's simply not outstanding on international affairs any more.
The Independent might not be soon. Cockburn is indispensable for understanding the Middle East. But it's disturbing that a large chunk of the shares have been snapped up by a Saudi businessman, Sultan Mohamed Abuljadayel. While it might remain a 'progressive' media outlet, one wonders how long Cockburn might last.
Cockburn has done more than any other journalist in Britain to report the truth and reality of both the war in Iraq and in Syria, that Gulf State funding was a factor in the rise of ISIS and that the 'moderate rebel' propaganda trope recycled in the media was just that: the Free Syria Army had long been hijacked by jihadists.
Moreover, Cockburn is critical about the role of Saudi Arabia in funding global Wahhabi ideology and disseminating jihadi ideology-even in Britain. As he wrote just after the Manchester terrorist attack, the BBC and other media know Saudi Arabia is behind the funding the 'radicalisation' but refuse to report it.
As newspapers go online, British media is actually quite feeble compared to the US. If Trump went to war to Iran this autumn, few in Britain would have any idea that it had been brewing away much of the year or that Trump's administration had shifted towards confrontation or even some form of regime change option.
It's unclear how the US liberal media would react to Trump gearing up for a war on Iran, whether it would swing round to rally opinion behind the President, as it tended to before the Iraq War, or whether it would take a more confrontational and sceptical stance as once it did with Nixon's handling of Vietnam.
At least in the run up to the Iraq War, between 2002 to 2003, people were informed of a British government case for war they could be aware about and question. If war with Iran broke out and Britain predictably aligned 'shoulder to shoulder', it could happen very rapidly and appear as though it came 'from out of nowhere'.
Update Aug 5 2017,
The Guardian has reported more on the potential threat to the editorial freedom of the Independent,
'Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel works for NCB Capital, the investment banking arm of the National Commercial Bank, which is controlled by the Saudi government and is one of the biggest banks in the Middle East'. News of Abuljadayel’s stake emerged last week, sparking concerns that the website’s liberal political stance and hard-hitting coverage of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record and foreign policy could change. Saudi Arabia’s suppression of freedom of speech has been heavily criticised. It is one of several Middle Eastern countries that has demanded the closure of the broadcaster al-Jazeera in return for lifting a blockade of Qatar.
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