The First and Only Power
Jabier Salutregi Mentxaka
(EGIN's Editor in Chief )
Featured in the EZPALA publication., No.10, 1999.
It escapes no one's notice in the current political lay of the land, the significant role of the mass communications media in the completion of the Power's designs. One could furthermore assert, with no fear of a faux pas, that the Mass Communications Media (MCM) behave as an appendage of the power –not precisely the weakest– through which the latter consummates its manifold political ends. Neither would it be groundless to state that the political power would never have been such, had it not counted on the mainstream media on its side of the line, or getting ahead of our dissertation, had the MCM themselves not constituted the first and only power with a lead and a say.
In this regard, it is highly enlightening that the existence of a single alternative medium with a critical standpoint should prove enough to so greatly unnerve the Power - with overall sway over the State –for it to appear wary, vulnerable and at stake. Insight that invariably leads the powerful – ceaselessly in chase of the adversary - to make a number of decisions which depending on their magnitude and repercussions, will pinpoint the insides of the kind of regime we are faced with. The most recent instance of this veracity is the barbarous actions taken against EGIN throughout its twenty-year-long existence, in a minutely arranged operation staged by the multiform instruments of the power, to thwart the independent journalistic project of the daily journal I have directed for nearly 7 years. An extremely distressing and debasing contravention in any democracy, it reveals the immense, specific influence of the communications media over the entire society, where the MCMs unfold as the best defence or attack weapon on which a government or state can count to secure its own perpetuation.
The closure of EGIN Radio & Journal and the ensuing incarceration of the whole staff, including myself, seats one of the most sombre episodes in the late police-ruled Spanish democracy and the history of Euskal Herria (Basque Country), and it is unequivocally one that crystal-clearly denotes, above all, where the key to the REAL POWER is: expression.
That is probably the reason why, the moment I fully grasped I was actually under arrest, was not the instant I was served an arrest warrant by judge Garzon's secretary – he would not deign do it himself -, nor when I felt myself tightly handcuffed, not even the moment I crossed the doorway to the barred walls of Alcalá-Meco (State penitentiary in Madrid ) to find myself dumbfounded in that filthy prison yard. It was definitely when the prison warden invited me to underwrite a document whereby I voluntarily agreed to receiving my mail just twice a week, to making a single phone call in that very term, and to consent to all my communications be tapped... As a Basque free-speech-activist political prisoner fully aware of my condition, as the sole editor in chief of a public journal jailed in Europe, I could but flatly refuse to allow such an outrage. Of course, it made no difference at all.
Expression, warfare ammunition
However, expression - that very expression pertinent to draw war or peace, happens to be the very feed-staff of the mind, the drive to make the globe sway one way or the other, hence - as it happens with the everlasting-youth formula - the Power wants the copyright.
Throughout its history, the press has proved to be a primary concern for the combatants. We are well acquainted with the fact that no sooner does a war break out, than a curfew is set up and the press, radio and television outlets become the immediate targets of downright censure. After all, the hazard in every contention allegedly stems from those free thinkers and information outlets that cater for the public's own discernment of facts through accuracy.
In this respect, we cannot but underscore the leading role played by those who, in every contention, appear overeager to engage in "counter-information" activities - in its manifold expressions -, since this information / counter-information approach bears on the information as a convertible commodity as persuasive and lethal as any conventional weapon might be. Who cannot recall those "leaflets" made of cyclostyle, those radio stations sited in unknown spots - Radio Paris, Farabundo Martí, Radio Venceremos...? Who has not retained the lesson that a well-suited coup d'etat will invariably commence with the seizure of radio, television and newspaper outlets...?
The combatant is well aware of the fact that tanks must be superseded by expression insofar as this and nothing but this, is the true ammunition with which to pre-empt, move, conquer and dominate, or all the contrary: challenge submission and elude subjugation.
No one doubts today that history is formulated by those who own the information resources; by those with sufficient control over the complex to submit one or another version of history, by those, who are to dissect the information and draw the line between the accuracy or the mendacity of facts.
A job that has, as a matter of course, been ordained by the power think tanks but which proves nonetheless reversible, for in retrospect, one cannot but look upon those publications, daily news bulletins and NO-DO (Franco's official and social life newsreel systematically broadcast in the cinema and on TV throughout the right-wing dictator's regime) briefings which for four decades moulded the public opinion to support so ignominious a regime [Franco's] as absolute "indoctrination". A call on any newspaper and periodicals or radio and video libraries will suffice to corroborate this fact.
Yet, however needless the mention may seem, the influence of the media, that very media that upheld the power (Franco's regime), have shiftily lived out to their own perpetuation. Thus, those who at the time manufactured and promulgated downright pamphlets and demagogic harangue with a view to the future, today continue shaping the public opinion, from a future perspective. In fact only the future seems likely to have some kind of threat in store for the power – prospect to which it pays short shrift notwithstanding, for IT, The almighty Power, is ever omnipresent.
Today, on the wake of the vicissitudes transpired in the late history of the mass media throughout this century, the advancement in information technologies along with the widespread public access to them have come to configure a rather indefinite new stage. Yet, although the means are provided to spread out messages (on the Internet) pretty easily and at a reasonably low cost, it is only the economy think tanks (the Power) who can actually pull the essential strings to effectively break through to the public with its miscellaneous messages and have a real impact in every social strata. As usual, and today even more so, information happens to be in the hands of the four hundred think tanks who provide for the power, because, in effect, THEY are the power; hence, it is reserved to them to formulate, word and record the History. The erstwhile notion that attributed the status of the Fourth Power to the Media has completely lost its import given the fact that, as we claim from the very headline of this writing, the media today is the one and only power that governs all the public instruments in our society.
Yet, not all in the mass communications business seems to be as apparent and diaphanous as to categorically state that the press and the power are but the same thing. As a matter of fact, for the mass media to become the Power, it needs to mask both its sources and intentions and hide behind a marketing facade, because that is the only garb in which it will be able to introduce itself to the citizenry.
Two messages for a conflict
It is absolutely amazing to see the newsy mainstream media bent on shelving the party organs of expression. Today, an independent daily journal bound to get labelled after ideological abbreviations, stands absolutely no chance of success, be it in sales or in terms of having any social impact on the citizenry, in spite of the hard fact that the old informative journalism has proved to be, and still is, healthier, worthier and wiser.
It is just in Euskal Herria that this remarkable phenomenon of journalism transpires, where an independent daily journal which – regardless of its particular tenet –reflects the national minds and hearts of the majority of the Basque citizenry, along with their widespread demands for freedom of expression, has in addition to strive on a day to day basis against institutional systematic vilification. And it has to do so by simply properly doing the job: X-ray and communicate the bare reality as it occurs on the spot, from the Basque professional angle. Sure thing, we are talking about EGIN.
Because EGIN, one of the media that most accurately can relay information regarding the Basque – Spanish State conflict, to date, meets with a sharp expression of the conflict in the very communications arena, where the information-counter-information challenge of the every day existence shapes up. In short and to put it plainly, in the newstands, where the Spanish and Basque nationalist press versions come face to face, on a daily basis, to communicate and reflect the minutes of the Basque dissent.
In this chapter, in which, of course, there is a number of nuances which matters of space prevent us from addressing here, we would like to underline that as far as the information contest is concerned, the Spanish nationalism is leading the game. It is in fact winning it overwhelmingly, due mainly (among the aforementioned economic, institutional, power control...) to the lack of what could be termed an specific Basque media sphere.
Today the "news menus" on offer in the press, be it Basque or Spanish, do not perceptibly differ. It is very unlikely that in terms of information, the press, the radio and the television stations may catch the public by surprise - except for some great exclusive or smart trend in the way the "information" may be presented - because every media outlet, newspaper, radio and television stations put out exactly the same news product, circumstance that no doubt entails one of the considerations of the very existence of the conflict.
When it comes to telling them apart, since this is it all about, few are the media in the Basque scene which make even the slightest effort to present a Basque national expression in the product they provide to the newsagents. They all move within those perimeters set up by the Spanish news entourage, radiating a Spanish-national mint on the whole news-package aimed at the Basque citizenry.
There is something however that not a single medium can elude hence it remains forged in the very existence of the conflict, and that is the "regional" frank taken up by the mainstream media. A flag they have been obliged to assume as the natural aftermath of the fierce competition in progress within the Spanish media, most significantly, in the Spanish communications market. Namely, "regionalisation", brand that, as might well have been anticipated, does not involve a closer or fairer approach to the Basque public demands, but a headstrong attempt to prevent us from gaining an inch of rope in the news market space, that might win us over the attention of the peninsular stretch.
Opinion, «experts»
On the other hand, make no mistake about it, the conflict has brought along major changes in the modus operandi of the mainstream media at the time of handling and moulding the public opinion. As we earlier remarked, the information menus are identical, and as regards the officious line, the bustling political life of Euskal Herria is the main source in the mainstream news bulletins, radio and television broadcasting news agendas. Yet, given the fact that the information is available to all the media, including those which overtly voice their dissent, the "news" does no longer happen to be of conclusive import when it comes to putting it to use.
With its heterogeneity, the manipulative force of the information per se begins to fade away. Besides, bare information, allows the reader, the listener and the audiences a small leeway to their own personal reading of facts. It is for this simple yet significant circumstance that, back in the PSOE office interval, a massive opinion discourse rush took over the mainstream media. Press columnist and well-known radio "conductors" would reach their peak, thus turning an elementary and wholesome intellectual practice into a new vocation: that of the expert "commentator". The new Spanish democracy now draws a dreadful lesson: it is a must that the information be conveniently garbed and wrapped to serve the interests of the Power.
In parallel with these events, the mass media would coin a new conception of the "investigative" journalism, field in which a growing number of "authorities" with a sure grasp of the logics of the ETA, the nationalist left and the Basque National liberation Movement come onto the stage. They would obtain leaked "material" reeking of police records and law enforcement agency scents, and there is a boom in the number of editors devoted to dispatching reports provided by the Civil Guard along with secret legal documents opportunely dropped by well-disposed judges, so that the "specialist" commentator of the moment could in its turn photocopy them in the very same premises. Thus, while the news material (the public opinion) is shaped into a warfare device, the Mass Media think tanks take over the power. We are in fact in an era in which the information has become a battering ram of THE POWER. A shattering force perceived and endured even more so severely when it applies to the Basque national demands.
Some milestones in the contemporary political history of Euskal Herria prove but highly revealing inasmuch as they disclose the growing arrogance developed in the Mass Media which has, on the other hand, betrayed them once and again. Bygone is the thunderous protest of the Spanish mass media, when public pressure lead to the Lemoiz nuke plant to-be to a final halt, and more recently, their unrestrained anger at the agreement reached upon the final diversion of the controversial route of the Leizaran motorway. Just two examples that lay open the extent of the unmitigated frustration of the media at the power's absolute defeat.
More recently, we find two political events in Euskal Herria which the historians will hereafter inevitably link to the history of the mass media. Episodes which, though do merit a more minute examination, we however briefly, cannot fail to mention.
Even when the Ajuria Enea Pact was certainly conceived by some prominent figures of the vanished Euskadiko Ezkerra, it is none the less true that the sustenance of its today withering remnants, has been purveyed all along by the self-willed determination of the Spanish mass media (obedience trained by the PSOE and PP think tanks), as well as by the ill-natured critique coming from an array of "commentators" to the Government of Gasteiz (Basque Goverment), every time President Ardanza failed to live up to their expectations as to the urgency for a general meeting.
The same impetus and vehemence can be found in the sweeping coverage given by the MCMs to the "spontaneous public reaction" ensuing the death of the PP town councillor, Miguel Angel Blanco, when as a matter of fact, the so-called "spontaneity" was prompted, shaped, stirred, put to use, and built by the mass media, unequivocally confirming what we argue all along: they superseded the Government with extraordinary adroitness. Soon later they would bring forth and coin the dim "spirit of Ermua", in full paroxysm to crown their jaunt with the notorious "spirit of Las Ventas".
Likewise, it was the mainstream media who, with a embittered spirit, absolutely ignored the "Ardanza Peace Plan", as the mainstream commentators who, after the Northern Ireland peace agreement was signed, expeditiously got down to the task of stating the ill-defined fact that there are no parallelisms among the Irish Nation and Euskal Herria or between the latter and Quebec. Likewise, it was the mainstream expert "commentators", columnists and radio big-mouths who, when the contrary proved convenient, would not hesitate to underscore the similarities between the ETA and the IRA, or those most daring ones who, on hearing of the Canadian Constitutional Court decision, rushed to underline the similarities between the Basques and the Quebecois.
Anyway, there is in deed a great deal of documentation available for those who still give credence to in the independence of the mass media and for those who maintain that its role has not been central to the perpetuation of this conflict.
As a final illustration, it is worthwhile recalling a most extraordinary coincidence: the ETA truce caught the Spanish mass media with the wrong foot ... the Spanish Government as well. Well, this can solely occur in a country where the media and the government are, in the fundamentals, the very same thing, after the principles of that movement conceived and by the Generalisimo (Appellation by which Franco was addressed).
(Articles)
