In the short history of this website, we haven’t taken aim, really, at the media. Thanks to the Daily Mail on Saturday, however, that’s about to change. You see, the Daily Mail offered a corker of an example of how the media ignore all common sense, logic and reason and draw on pre-established narratives to appeal to their readers. Like all good dealers of addictive schlock, they keep hitting the same buttons they know will send a thrill through their audience to keep them coming back for more.

As I’m sure you all know, it would strongly appear as though Daily Mail hates the BBC. That’s their narrative and the Daily Mail’s ‘middle England’ readers lap it up. So it came as no surprise, then, when I came across a story on their site called “The price of beauty: BBC to spend £100,000 of licence fee payer’s money on make-up artists for news presenters”. Now, let’s keep in mind the fact that BBC News has 24 hour coverage, 7 days a week featuring no less than 30 people, anchors, journalists and contributors, (and probably tens more) which appear in the studio and need make up. Let’s keep in mind the fact, then, that for £100,000 the BBC is employing make-up people 24 hours a day, 7 days a week which could easily be the salaries of four people. Let’s also remember the fact that neither you nor I wish to see a melting George Alagiah or a Fiona Bruce with a forehead not too dissimilar to Niagara falls. And let’s remember that TV news programmes, be it ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 or Sky, all use makeup on their talent and contributors and that, due to studio lights, it’s nice when people’s faces don’t reflect every stage light into camera.

The Daily Mail have, however, ignored all that in Rebecca Twomey’s article, favouring instead emotive phrases like “the staggering amount of licence fee payer’s money”, “pricey measures” and “an expensive affair”. Knowledge is what allows us to hold bodies and politicians to account. Why, then, is this naked ideological agenda permitted and tolerated? This type of propaganda only serves the purposes of newspaper and its owners. Knowledge is vital to a healthy democracy and has a profound effect on the electorate.

On the same day, serial BBC hater Liz Thomas wrote an article called “A glass act: Fiona Bruce wears specs and no make-up to read the news after catching eye infection”. In this article, Thomas uses three Tweets (I kid you not) to show how her glasses sparked a “flurry of debate” about her glasses. So, after hammering the BBC for spending money on makeup artists and, ultimately, vanity, the Mail is now hammering one of the BBC’s newsreaders for not having makeup on and wearing glasses. Hypocrisy aside, it’s obvious the Mail uses articles like this to rile people up and drive traffic to their site. In the links here, however, you won’t be giving them any traffic. Win-win.

It’s a real illustration, however, of the role the media plays in the dumbification of the public. If it’s written in the papers, it has some legitimacy in it. That’s the perception. This is exactly why bullshit like homeopathy, psychics and the like float unchecked into the public’s consciousness, and how religion dictates, directly or otherwise, public policy. It might not seem like it matters, but homeopaths have been travelling to disaster zones handing out their glorified Skittles to people in need of real medication. Why do we accept this kind of stuff? Because it’s true, of course. I read it in the papers.

This is the second in a series of weekly opinion pieces by various members of the Belfast Skeptics. If you have an opinion to share or just want to rant about something, email us and we’ll have a chat.

Certain things are easy to be skeptical about – bogus health claims, UFO’s, psychics etc. But when it comes to personal politics, we are all under the impression that our own views are the most rational and reasoned approach to any given topic. After a brief flirtation with the Liberal Democrats in my late teens, I went to university and became your typical lefty student involved with the Anti Nazi League, Anti Poll Tax, Animal Rights and Environmental movements. I’m still broadly left wing but hope that my beliefs are more driven by reason than hippy idealism. To look at me as a student, the word “hippy” wouldn’t have been far from your lips but I’ve never really liked the hippy label.

I think it really only applies to a specific time at the end of the 60’s and start of the 70’s when people were really motivated by radical social upheaval – the backdrop of Vietnam and the emergence of a distinctly new type of youth culture providing the impetus for genuine change. But as the hippies grew up and went on to create multi-national ice cream companies, they left behind this legacy of a vague group of wishy washy individuals trying to meld some deeply held revolutionary convictions with a pick and mix eastern mysticism. Maybe I’m being too harsh, as they have also left us a legacy of sexual liberation and a wider acceptance of alternative lifestyles which many of us benefit from today.

But it’s the emphasis on “spirituality” in the environmental movement that I want to focus on here, and I’m afraid the hippies must take some of the blame. The environmental movement has some important messages to get across and I don’t think it does itself any favours by aligning itself with the shamans and mystics. Don’t get me wrong; there are a lot of clear-thinking rational people in the environmental movement -particularly working in the area of climate science but this seems to me slightly at odds with the “Mother Earth” approach.

A couple of years ago The Guardian ran an article bemoaning the decline of spirituality in the environmental movement. Here are a couple of quotes:

The hippies were fond of speaking of Gaia, Mother Earth, as a living organism. But as the environmental debate eventually reached the ears of politicians and scientists, it moved away from talk of spirituality and began to concentrate solely on a rational, scientific analysis of the effects of climate change.

“Look at what realists have done for us. They have led us to war and climate change, poverty on an unimaginable scale, and wholesale ecological destruction. Half of humanity goes to bed hungry because of all the realistic leaders in the world. I tell people who call me ‘unrealistic’ to show me what their realism has done. Realism is an outdated, overplayed and wholly exaggerated concept.”

- Satish Kumar

“Realists” seems to be a very broad category of people to blame for all the worlds ills. Anyway, this was my response:

The implication here seems to be that if you aren’t “spiritual” then you don’t truly understand the needs of the planet.

I’m more of a rationalist, and at the same time as understanding the need for respecting the planet and moving towards a less consumer based society, I would also be sceptical of this wishy washy spiritualism that supposedly gives certain “enlightened” people a direct line to the earth’s “energies”.

Your spirituality may give you a sense of personal fulfilment and motivate you as a steward for the planet, but that doesn’t mean that the non-spiritual are any less capable.

I acknowledge that some spiritual leaders have some wise things to say about the planet, but I don’t get this reverence for spiritual wisdom above reason and evidence.

Some writers such as Alastair Mcintosh make important points about the relationship between small communities and large corporations but then go and spoil it with references to pagan Christianity. But maybe I’m wrong, maybe these are the kinds of ideas that people feel they can invest in. Maybe the “Mother Earth” idea is a necessary narrative device to get people to take an interest in the planet and it’s survival. But in my experience it’s the preachy “mother earth” types that put people off environmentalism. I still get portrayed as a bit of an “eco-warrior” at work, just because I cycle in and do the recycling.

If I started to tell my colleagues that they needed to be at one with the planet I’d be laughed out of the office, but start talking about the top speed and range of the new generation of electric cars and their ears prick up. In reality change is only going to come with innovation and development in eco technology combined with a move away from an oil based economy which will be driven by cheaper alternatives becoming more readily available. Even though I am convinced by the ethical arguments for reducing our carbon foot print now – most people are only going to change their habits when it saves them money.

One final word on Climate “skeptics”. They have taken our word and soiled it. We need to take it back, and the only way we can do that is by proving the validity of our claims and by re-imagining the earth mother narrative in a secular context.