Comment

John Theobald and the Media: An Interview with David Berry by UKWatch

(The following interview first appeared at www.ukwatch.net in April 2007)

What do you think John's major contribution to Radical Mass Media Criticism (RMMC) was?

John's major contribution towards understanding and formulating RMMC was fourfold: Firstly, his recognition of the contribution by the Austrian satirist Karl Kraus towards RMMC. John had noted that most academic writing concerning media criticism began with historical accounts of the Frankfurt School. Frederic Jameson had also noted that Kraus had been 'shamelessly ignored' from academic accounts concerning media criticism and John's legacy is to alert us to that point.

Secondly, John was the first person, as far as I am aware, to begin to think in terms of developing an account of the 'intellectual tradition' of RMMC that can be traced back to the turn of the twentieth century to the present and this is what we both termed a 'cultural genealogy'. I think we were in the third year of developing Radical Mass Media Criticism: A Cultural Genealogy when John decided to write, by email I believe, to Robert McChesney about our project. A year later McChesney with Ben Scott produced a book 2004 Our Unfree Press: 100 Years of Radical Media Criticism. John, and I for that matter, were greatly pleased that we had inspired the production of that book, which provides RMMC with a greater understanding of the contributions by American writers. You also have to remember that John was way ahead of the field, after all he had written 'Radical mass media criticism: elements of a history from Kraus to Bourdieu' (from Berry, 2000 Ethics and Media Culture: Practices and Representations) way before anyone else even contemplated such an account of RMMC.

Thirdly, John's work The Media and the Making of History (2004) is the first works to begin to link the intellectual tradition of RMMC in any profound way. John would be the first to admit that it isn't complete but it is the first attempt to unite a critical tradition regardless of nationality and it's extremely thought provoking in the sense that it argues that the media is extremely powerful in the way it manages to shape events into historical fact and it's broadly in this context that John was interested in critics who sought to challenge mainstream media hegemony in that context. Fourthly, was John's contribution to the setting up of Fifth Estate Online, which I comment on more below.

What did John consider to be so valuable in Karl Kraus's work?

John had a wonderful sense of humour and I think what attracted him to Kraus was the fact that he wrote in a very humorous and extremely clever way. Kraus was also a university dropout who was self-taught and I think that John found this very endearing and appealing. In this context I remember informing John that Frank Zappa, whom I greatly admire once said that 'If you want to get laid go to university; if you want to learn something go to a library'. For John, Kraus was very much in that radical mould, always attempting to subvert the established conventions of society. John was fluent in German (and French) so he was able to familiarise himself profoundly with the work of Kraus. I think he found a kindred spirit in Kraus who was capable of using language to articulate a critique of journalism in a most extraordinary fashion. Kraus was exceptional in the sense that he was one of the first writers to put his head above the parapet and critique mainstream journalists for their ingratiating nature towards the existing system in which they operated and also scathing of the abuse of language they invariably used to convey a self-interested discourse. As far as Kraus was concerned for many journalists the 'public' were merely viewed as a mass to which they would feed contaminated information, which in turn fed their own deluded self-interest. Moreover, for John there was a subtle, perhaps more profound difference between the way Kraus perceived how the power of language could seduce its audience as opposed to the Frankfurt School's. To highlight this point allow me to quote a passage from 'Radical mass media criticism: elements of a history from Kraus to Bourdieu':

'We are not, it should be added, dealing with an early advocate of the "hypodermic syringe" theory of media effects, wherein it is assumed that the media can inject a passive public mind with attitudes or ideas; rather, we are looking at a more stealthy process of gradual confusion and erosion of faculties by the press's substitution of the pure water of information with the seductive perfume of the cliché. Once the cliché, or resonant phrase takes over, argued Kraus, then a gap has opened up between language and the communication of unadulterated news; the link between the event and its understanding by the public has been broken. Once this has happened, the lie or the distortion can be presented and accepted as truth, a whole structure of misinformation can be presented and believed, comment, propaganda and titillation can be subtly mixed with fact, values and priorities can be surreptitiously intermingled with description such that, over a period, readers' perceptions are able to be moulded, their views of the past, present and future shaped, through the linguistic hegemony of those maintaining control of the dominant medium. Kraus is clearly not positing here an a priori passive audience, he is asking us to observe the long-term, continuous process of distraction and "passivication" of an audience which could otherwise be active.'

In the closing chapter of Radical Mass Media Criticism: A Cultural Genealogy' John begins by quoting Edward Said: 'There's only one way to anchor oneself, and that is by affiliation with a cause, with a political movement. There has to be identification ... with matters involving justice, principle, truth, conviction.'

What causes did John consider himself affiliated to? What were his broader political values?

John was involved with European Nuclear Disarmament (END) and was vehemently against the existence of nuclear weapons. During a discussion on Iran's nuclear programme a colleague of ours stated that the USA was right to fear the 'imminent' Iranian capability, whilst John reminded him that the only country to ever use nuclear weapons was the USA on Japan in 1945. John was broadly speaking a Socialist, although surprisingly perhaps, John had never read a great amount of Marx, which was a great shame because there is no doubt that he would have related to Marx's ideas, particularly on 'alienation'. In that sense I would say that he was a 'humanist' in the Marxist use of the term. He admired Gandhi and Mandela for fighting against oppressive forces but there wasn't a 'political philosophy' so to speak, but there's no doubt that in conversations I had with John, he had a 'sense' of justice and equality that equated with Socialist thought.

What did John think a good media would be like, in terms of both its structure and its focus?

For John, a 'good media' in the context of an unequal system such as we have today would be one that confronts power and challenges the position of the establishment. In his view it had failed miserably. Ultimately the media would need wresting from commercial structures, be genuinely diverse and serve a plurality of interests on an equal playing field. Monopoly would therefore be something outlawed and quite rightly so.

John was co-founder of Fifth Estate Online, what were his (and your) intentions when setting it up? What were his hopes for it?

John's baby was the book that we both co-edited and he had been cultivating this idea for sometime. When we met we immediately knew we had shared interests so we put it into production. You know the book took six years to produce which is astounding because it's neither empirically based nor a single-authored text. The real reason for the delay was the word 'Radical'! We took this book to Pluto Press which seemed to us the obvious choice given its publication record. One year later, denied. Then we took it to Sage Publications who said they would consider publication only if we removed the word 'Radical' and replaced it with the word 'Critical'. Their reason for this was due to the event of Tuesday, September 11th, that's not Tuesday September 11th 1973 when the American backed Pinochet forces overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, but the destruction of the twin towers in New York 2001. They argued that the word 'Radical' was, well too radical and it may affect market sales. I remember we took it to Zed Books and others before finally Black Rose Books in Montreal, Canada agreed to publish it with great enthusiasm and support I may add. When it finally was published I then proposed to John that we produce a hard copy journal based on Radical Mass Media Criticism before finally suggesting an e-journal, which is Fifth Estate Online. The site was designed and is maintained by my good friend and colleague Mel Bray (webmaster). We both knew that this was a very productive way of continuing the work of RMMC. And this is its purpose.

What kind of a man was John? What was he like to work with?

John was a very kind and gentle man. He was in every sense of the word a 'good' man. He adored his family and valued friendship. Strangely our working relationship worked well, I say that because in many ways, and I speak of personalities here, we were complete opposites, but it seemed to benefit rather than hinder. Of course it's not that often when you can work with someone and see eye-to-eye on most political matters and that's one of the reasons that I will miss him so much because John was very much my kindred spirit.