Media: an episode of candour
Thursday 18 July 2013
Here is pure magic from a journalist who actually gets it, a master of her craft who is honest enough to write the truth:
The fact is that if Britain leaves the EU it will have far more influence on international trading policies set by organisations such as UNECE than it does as a member of the EU. Britain will not be "isolated", it will be empowered, freed from memos from the Foreign Office reminding the British negotiating team of EU "positions".Mary Ellen is good enough to acknowledge the blog on this. Alongside Dellers and, of course, Booker, that means we are getting some exposure. And we know that other journalists read our posts, but never, ever quote them, much less link to them.
But of course not one in a thousand of you has heard of UNECE. The Brussels propaganda is that the trading regulations spring from EU decisions, so by being a member of the EU, countries have a seat at the top table.
Except they don't: the EU is not the top table. Trading regulations spring from such organisations as the World Trade Organisation, regional bodies such as UNECE (the UN Economic Commission for Europe, which has 56 members including Russia and the US but not the EU) and global bodies such as OIE (the World Organisation for Animal Health, with 178 members but not the EU).
There are hundreds of such organisations: and, okay, if you want to explore the jungles of the CODEX Alimentarius Commission, created in 1963 by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Health Organisation to develop food standards, go right ahead. You will eventually find the EU in it, but lost in the crowd of 186 other members.
The negotiations on trade regulation go on in such intergovernmental organisations, then the new regulations are sent to the eurocrats in Brussels. We, most of us, only hear about them after the commission dresses up the new agreements as EU directives and regulations.
In Mary Ellen's case, she also brings some additional and valuable comments to the table, focusing on the latest developments on the Icelandic response to the latest EU threats on mackerel. They make her tale a powerful story that would be at home on the pages of any serious newspaper. But none of the British media cover it, even though we have a dog in the fight.
Intelligent and comprehensive analysis of this issue would show the bully-boy EU to be wrong and the Icelanders and the Faroese in the right. As importantly, the issue demonstrates the power ofbeing independent.
Any of this is open to any journalist. But only Mary Ellen has the honesty and integrity to tell this particular story, and then only for the Irish Mail. Her lucidity and candour tells its own tale, and puts her colleagues to shame.
The worst of it, though, is that the silence of the British media can't be accidental. There is an agenda at work here, in an industry where publishing objective news seems to be the last and least of its objectives - especially when it comes to the EU. They are worthy of contempt, and should get it in good measure.
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Richard North 18/07/2013
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