CHAPTER DISCUSSION: Chapter 25, The Beetle At Bay

[naamagatus]

No: HPFGUIDX 111856

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "elfundeb2" <elfundeb at c...> 
wrote:
<snip>
> 
> 
> > 4.  Rita Skeeter confirms the Daily Prophet is being pressured by 
> > Fudge but also that since no one would want to hear of
> > Voldemort's return, they wouldn't print what Harry says
> > happened, 
> > anyway, because it wouldn't sell.  Do we want to take a guess on
> > how 
> > actively the Prophet is participating in discrediting Harry and 
> > Dumbledore?  How much is actually Ministry coercion?
> 
> In my mind, the Ministry's control of the Prophet is so complete 
that 
> I think it's more likely than not that it is effectively a state-
run 
> newspaper, committed to publishing the party line.  The speed of 
its 
> about-face after the DoM seems to support this, as it would seem to 
> take longer for mere pressure exerted on an independent publication 
> to have its effect.  However, when Big Brother himself calls, the 
> flunkies do what they're told.
>  

To me the Daily Prophet seems like a caricature of main-stream press 
in RL, which have more or less degenerated to The Voice of Concensus. 
Like in the Daily Prophet, the voice of government, the official 
version, is given prominence, with more subversive voices squashed in 
the last paragraph. Think the Iraq war, the WMD debacle - I can't 
remember main-stream press voicing any real doubt as to their (WMD in 
Iraq) existence prior to the war. The Bush-Powell-Blair version was 
presented as (more or less) the common sense truth.

I think that's the way the Daily Prophet works. And, by the way, if 
it was a state run newspaper, there would be no need for Fudge to 
exert pressure on the editors. The very fact that he needs to do that 
implies, IMO, that it is supposed to be free press. After all, there 
is a long history in RL of governemnts in democratic countries trying 
to influence the press.

Naama, cynic