Thank you for this thoughtful and resonating piece. The shift from spectacle to system is especially clear and useful.
I’ve been working through a related lens, looking at power as a structured system where political institutions, media, academia, and legal systems are shaped through capture by interdependent blocs such as Israel, the defence industry, financial actors, tech platforms, and energy interests, which reinforce each other through shared incentives and coordinated outcomes. In that sense, media is not outside the system reporting on it, but one of the nodes through which that alignment is reproduced, through ownership concentration, editorial control, and the management of visibility across editorial and platform environments, alongside the enforcement of boundaries through career risk and loss of access.
Reading your piece, I kept coming back to where the newsroom sits within that structure. A lot of what you describe seems to sit at the intersection of editorial practice and institutional incentive, where funding, access, ownership, and career pathways reward certain instincts and discourage others. That suggests the pull towards spectacle is not just something to unlearn, but something produced and reinforced by the same structures that define what can be reported in the first place. I’m curious how you think about applying these shifts when that constraint is present.
I also found myself thinking about how this approach translates in contexts structured as coloniser and colonised or oppressor and oppressed, particularly in Palestine. In those cases, the system is an alignment with Israel’s interests, including military supply, diplomatic protection, legal shielding, and media framing that sustain and normalise its demographic engineering and continued expansion. Even system-level reporting often begins from terms like “conflict”, which flattens power, “self defence”, which legitimises state violence, or “terrorism”, which criminalises resistance, all of which shape what the system appears to be before reporting begins.
I recently tried to work through something similar in a piece on Palestine, by taking questions like “do you condemn Hamas?” or “does Israel have a right to defend itself?” and stripping them back to the assumptions they impose. It made me wonder whether system-led reporting also has to break the frame those questions sit within first, otherwise the system itself is only ever partially visible.
All excellent points . I actually have a few pieces coming out soon about some of the points you’ve articulated so well here in your comment. Specifically one I would love to get your thoughts on re: “do you condemn Hamas” — what I refer to as the old guard/ establishment tactic consistently used by Israel and western media outlets to not only deflect responsibility, but also reinforce centuries old harmful narratives that distort the truth, dehumanize, and manipulate. I explain some of these tactics and use examples of how this has been used systematically in media practice. I’ll try to publish that piece soon. It’s been in my drafts along with a bunch of others . I think you’ll like it. I promise ;)
Would love to pick your brain and discuss what you’ve been working on , maybe share notes . Happy to collaborate on some of this as well. DM me and we can arrange a time to chat.
Thank you for this thoughtful and resonating piece. The shift from spectacle to system is especially clear and useful.
I’ve been working through a related lens, looking at power as a structured system where political institutions, media, academia, and legal systems are shaped through capture by interdependent blocs such as Israel, the defence industry, financial actors, tech platforms, and energy interests, which reinforce each other through shared incentives and coordinated outcomes. In that sense, media is not outside the system reporting on it, but one of the nodes through which that alignment is reproduced, through ownership concentration, editorial control, and the management of visibility across editorial and platform environments, alongside the enforcement of boundaries through career risk and loss of access.
Reading your piece, I kept coming back to where the newsroom sits within that structure. A lot of what you describe seems to sit at the intersection of editorial practice and institutional incentive, where funding, access, ownership, and career pathways reward certain instincts and discourage others. That suggests the pull towards spectacle is not just something to unlearn, but something produced and reinforced by the same structures that define what can be reported in the first place. I’m curious how you think about applying these shifts when that constraint is present.
I also found myself thinking about how this approach translates in contexts structured as coloniser and colonised or oppressor and oppressed, particularly in Palestine. In those cases, the system is an alignment with Israel’s interests, including military supply, diplomatic protection, legal shielding, and media framing that sustain and normalise its demographic engineering and continued expansion. Even system-level reporting often begins from terms like “conflict”, which flattens power, “self defence”, which legitimises state violence, or “terrorism”, which criminalises resistance, all of which shape what the system appears to be before reporting begins.
I recently tried to work through something similar in a piece on Palestine, by taking questions like “do you condemn Hamas?” or “does Israel have a right to defend itself?” and stripping them back to the assumptions they impose. It made me wonder whether system-led reporting also has to break the frame those questions sit within first, otherwise the system itself is only ever partially visible.
All excellent points . I actually have a few pieces coming out soon about some of the points you’ve articulated so well here in your comment. Specifically one I would love to get your thoughts on re: “do you condemn Hamas” — what I refer to as the old guard/ establishment tactic consistently used by Israel and western media outlets to not only deflect responsibility, but also reinforce centuries old harmful narratives that distort the truth, dehumanize, and manipulate. I explain some of these tactics and use examples of how this has been used systematically in media practice. I’ll try to publish that piece soon. It’s been in my drafts along with a bunch of others . I think you’ll like it. I promise ;)
Would love to pick your brain and discuss what you’ve been working on , maybe share notes . Happy to collaborate on some of this as well. DM me and we can arrange a time to chat.