Manipulating the media

It would be easy to dismiss the EU commission as a bunch of blundering Eurocrats, who do not know what they are doing. That would be a mistake. There are some extremely smart cookies in Brussels and it is very dangerous to underestimate the enemy.

And that enemy has been active in analysing the state and structure of the media – how it works, what motivates it and how it reports on EU affairs. The report on the British media has just come to the attention of this Blog and although it was actually published in May 2004, its information is fresh and relevant and makes fascinating reading.

Available from "Europub" (and therefore not on the regular Europa site), the study goes under the leaden title of "The Transformation of Political Mobilisation and Communication in European Public Spheres" which probably explains why no one has picked it up.

Funded by the commission under the 5th Framework programme (the so-called research budget) it is a classic example of how research funding is used by the EU for political purposes as there is only one use for the information as far as the commission is concerned. That is to help in the manipulation of the media to convey better and more favourable the “pro-Europe” message.

We will do a full review of this publication, which will probably take a series of articles but, in the interim, we would commend it to our readers (76 pages in Word format) as being well worth the study.