If you're a journalist or media professional, come and join me, @elsieroderiques.bsky.social and others in your field to talk about the media's cultural values footprint this Thursday! www.tickettailor.com/events/commo...

Exhausted and grateful.

It’s been a mad mad day. exhausted and busy, I was regretting agreeing (many many months ago) to speaking at @commoncause.bsky.social’s Values in Media event. But just minutes into @elsieroderiques.bsky.social’s welcome and I already feel good to be here to share and learn from others.

There's less than 48 hours before Values in the Media 2024. If you're interested in exploring the role the mainstream media has to play in shaping our cultural values, please join us: www.tickettailor.com/events/commo...

"Mainstream news has always been shaped by dominant cultural values & the reverse is also true: the media helps shape cultural values. It’s time for the sector to acknowledge the inevitability of this&take responsibility for its “cultural values footprint.” New blog from @elsieroderiques.bsky.social

Free Palestine

Hi. We're @elsieroderiques.bsky.social, @ruthtaylor.bsky.social and Tom Crompton and we make up Common Cause Foundation, a UK-based not-for-profit that works at the level of values and culture change. Here's a short animation about what we do and why it's important:

King Charles charges this RNLI lifeboat station to launch its boat because he owns the beach. And they’re not the only charity he’s rinsing (Location: Sennen Cove, Cornwall) youtu.be/pocnThE3nHc

We've started to put together a list of folks and organisation on here that are working towards profound and systemic culture change and/or working at the level of values. Please feel free to suggest additions. We hope it's helpful. go.bsky.app/NrbTs99

Join us on 11/28 to explore how the media shapes UK cultural values. Hear from @elizatalks.bsky.social, Jeremy Mathieu #itv, @hardeepmatharu.bsky.social and @nafeez.bsky.social Free event 1-5pm at St Ethelburga's, London. Register now: tickettailor.com/events/commo... #VIM24 #newsmedia #culture

15. In the meantime, here's the dicussion we had about capitalism and other topics at @TheAusInstitute. Discussing stuff you just don't hear on the BBC. www.youtube.com/watch?si=JMs...

14. I would love to see the BBC commission a series of debates about capitalism, which seek to define it, explain it and contest it. But I believe it is now institutionally incapable of such a thing. If any BBC editors are reading this, please prove me wrong.

13. In other words, the manifest failure of the BBC, in common with most other outlets, directly assists the far right and enables its resurgence.

12. What the far right offers is simple but wrong explanations of issues that almost no one is explaining properly: it’s the fault of immigrants / Muslims / Jews / Black people / women / trans people. If there are no competing explanations that make sense, the door is wide open.

11. Because this is common to almost all media, people hear no effective explanations of the traps in which they find themselves, or the perennial social dysfunction that resists changes in government. This makes them highly susceptible to the siren voices of the far right.

9. BBC news and current affairs expend great effort on what they call “analysis”. But the analysis never digs below a certain level. In fact, you could expand the initial question: when did you last hear a critique of power structures on the BBC?

8. There’s a famous saying, attributed to about 20 different people: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Of course it is, if you haven’t defined capitalism. If we haven’t decided what it is, how can we imagine what its end would look like?

7. Much of the time, I can’t help wondering whether they know what it is.

6. How do capitalism’s defenders define it? Most of them don’t. In fact, one of the most extraordinary aspects of the very rare and feeble excuses for “debates” about capitalism, is that, in most cases, neither pro- nor anti-capitalists seek to define it.

5b. ".... use their laws, backed by the threat of violence, to turn shared resources into exclusive property, and to transform natural wealth, labour and money into commodities that can be accumulated.”

5a. In our book The Invisible Doctrine, Peter Hutchison and I propose the following definition of capitalism: “Capitalism is an economic system founded on colonial looting. It operates on a constantly shifting and self-consuming frontier, on which both state and powerful private interests ....

4. Capitalism is a specific and particular economic system, which can be dated to around 1450. It is far from the only means by which commerce can proceed. In fact, it’s among the worst of all possible models.

3. I suspect that if you asked BBC journalists to define capitalism, most would mumble something along the lines of “buying and selling things”. This is how people often understand it. But that’s not capitalism, that’s commerce, which has been happening for thousands of years.

2. This is the system that dominates every aspect of our lives. Yet it seems to be off-limits at the BBC, and almost all other media. It is seldom mentioned, never investigated, never criticised and never even properly explained. The same goes for our dominant ideology: neoliberalism.

1. I’m sorry to return to this question, but I think it hints at everything that's wrong with our media and public conversations. *When did you last hear a critique of capitalism on the BBC?* A thread/