Why is the UK media so silent about the mass surveillance programmes revealed in Edward Snowden's NSA Leaks?

When I first heard about the NSA/GCHQ snooping revelations, my initial thought was: "Well duh."

Truth be told, I would have been deeply surprised if our intelligence agencies hadn't been intercepting our online communications on the flimsiest of subtexts. Nevertheless, it's always slightly alarming to have your worst suspicions confirmed.

While the Guardian's revelations seem set to keep on coming - the most recent story revealing that the US has been carrying out a large-scale bugging campaign at the embassies of its European allies - it's noteworthy that many other British media outlets seem surprisingly unwilling to report on the content of Snowden's leaks.

The central story - the creation of a mass surveillance machine by our largely unaccountable intelligence agencies, which is being used to indiscriminately cull personal data - seems to have been entirely bypassed by many publications, who are instead directing their focus on Snowden's globe-trotting attempt to find asylum abroad. I say "surprisingly unwilling", but in many ways the lukewarm response from most of the mainstream media is entirely to be expected.

So, why are the British press largely keeping Snowden's leaks at arm's length? It's impossible to give a comprehensive answer to this question, but here are a few suggestions.

1. Because the intelligence services told them to?
In case you think this sounds like the talk of a swivel-eyed conspiracy theorist, have a read of this story. The day after the NSA's PRISM programme was revealed, the Ministry of Defence issued a DA (Defence Advisory) Notice - often referred to as just a D-Notice - to try and limit the fallout from the Snowden revelations.

The entirely voluntary DA-Notice system is intended, as the official website clearly states:

to prevent inadvertent public disclosure of information that would compromise UK military and intelligence operations and methods, or put at risk the safety of those involved in such operations, or lead to attacks that would damage the critical national infrastructure and/or endanger lives.

Obviously the D-Notice system serves a useful purpose, as no journalist in their right mind would want to pen anything that presents a credible threat to national security or puts lives at risk. However, if you read the notice (as leaked by the blogger Guido Fawkes), it's not hard to see how it could have a chilling effect on journalists and serve to shut down further debate and discussion of the issues raised by the leaks.

2. Because it's not really that big a story?
Speaking on Radio 4's The Media Show last week, Daily Mail columnist Stephen Glover suggested a couple of reasons for the minimal column inches given over to Snowden's revelations. The main thrust of his argument was that the Guardian had "overblown" the importance of these leaks, a point he attempted to make by focusing on their story about British intelligence spying on our allies at the G20.

True, the idea that nation states' intelligence services spy on one another, even on their allies, does not come as a great surprise. However, if the construction of a global dragnet surveillance system is not a big story, I'd dearly love to know what is.

3. Because the media are still unsure about the narrative surrounding these leaks
This was Glover's other claim, and one which I wholeheartedly agree with. Is Edward Snowden a "goodie"  (giving up a $122,000 a year salary and a home in Hawaii to expose mass snooping by our intelligence services) or a "baddie" (recklessly revealing intelligence secrets and endangering innocent lives)?

The press, in particular the tabloids, like black-and-white morality tales, not shades of grey.

4. Because most of the media don't have access to the main source
If there's one thing sure to leave a journalist disgruntled, it's lack of access. If there's one thing guaranteed to send a journalist apoplectic, it's being scooped. While news organisations are normally happy to crib stories from their competitors, the fact that Snowden chose to work almost exclusively with the Guardian and the Washington Post is part of what drives the spite behind stories like the New York Daily News's attempted smear piece on journalist Glenn Greenwald.

5. Because it challenges official sources
Yes, some UK news titles are owned by proprietors or run by editors whose political stance prohibits active questioning of the intelligence services. But, perhaps more depressingly, there's an awful lots of journalists who are deeply impressed by power, despite it being their job to interrogate it.

6. Because it's a complex story, and hence time intensive and less easily digestible
This is a consideration that far too many people overlook. PM, the BBC's flagship evening radio news programme, ran with the Snowden story on Tuesday evening. The item began with a lightning-quick round-up of the programmes Snowden had exposed, before devoting a good 15-20 minutes to Snowden's attempts to negotiate asylum.

The focus on the man is in some ways entirely understandable - it adds a strong human interest angle to what is otherwise a very complex, detail-heavy story - but there's no doubt that it moves the spotlight away from privacy abuses and a real analysis of the implications of Snowden's revelations.

While the lack of coverage can feel maddening at times, there's no doubt that the NSA leaks have encouraged a vast number of people to start taking their online privacy seriously. Take, for example, the huge popularity of the PRISM Break website, which provides web users with a list of companies who are not currently part of the NSA's PRISM program. It's also worth pointing out that media outlets, like political parties, often follow rather than lead on an issue. If concern about online surveillance reaches a tipping point among their readers, you can guarantee there will be a whole lot more articles about it in the future.

The Left needs to stop parroting the terminology of the Right. Talk of "welfare" only fuels the scrounger myth - it's time to go back to "social security"

I've been planning for a few weeks to write about the change in the language used to describe people who claim benefits - a resolve hardened after seeing the much-shared Daily Mail front page pronouncing Mick Philpott, convicted of manslaughter following the death of six of his children, a "vile product of welfare UK".

Once my spluttering rage at the grotesque inappropriateness of equating an extreme criminal act with claiming benefits had subsided and I'd wiped my spittle-flecked monitor clean, I started to pay closer attention to the headline's wording. One word clearly took centre stage: welfare, a term known once upon a time as "social security".

Then, quite by accident, I stumbled across this excellent article by Labour peer Ruth Lister, chairman of the left-wing Compass group. Lister charts brilliantly why this change in language matters. If social security suggests a safety net to stop citizens falling through the cracks, then welfare, used as a noun, is easily associated in the minds of the public with what she calls:

a stigmatised US-style residual form of poor relief. It is all the more stigmatising because of the constant coupling with "dependency", so that in many people's eyes receipt of social security is now equated with a "dependency culture" that research does not in fact substantiate.

With the scrounger myth continuing to exert a strong hold over tabloids and public alike, it's ever-more important that the Left chooses its words carefully. In other words, it's time to stop borrowing the Right's terminology. Let's bid farewell to welfare and "benefits" (the latter carrying a vague suggestion of luxury rather than entitlement) and say hello to good old social security.

Somalia is starving...but what's that on the horizon? Is it a bird? Is it an aid parcel drop? No, it's...the Daily Mail's Liz Jones

The Golden Latrine almost choked on his crunchy nut cornflakes this morning at the news that the Daily Mail is sending Liz Jones to cover the Somalia famines.

For those not in the know: Jones is a former editor of Marie Claire, now in the lucrative employ of the Daily Mail. Her deeply confessional columns about her eating disorders, her failed marriage, her facelift , and lately, the running of an animal sanctuary reveal a woman so self-obsessed that her ego has developed its own gravitational field, sucking everything else into its orbit. So self-parodic are some of her columns that I have often wondered whether if she isn't just some journalistic in-joke.

To try and search for an equivalent, sending Jones to Somalia is like sending Rod Hull to cover the House of Representatives' debate on the US debt-ceiling or, um, Lindsay Lohan to explore child-trafficking in India.

Jones announced her latest assignment in the most obnoxious way possible in a piece for the Mail entitled 'The caring professions? They just don't seem to care at all' (read it here). Starting with the blindingly obvious ("I don't scrape and scrabble at the coal face of the NHS very often" - hardly a surprise for a £200,000-a-year columinist), she rails against the injustice of her local GP refusing to give her the numerous jabs she needs to fly out to the Horn of Africa. Despite the fact she's given them no notice. And she's not registered with them, so they don't have her notes.

If there's one person who could make the Somalia famine about herself, it's Jones. As she tells the GP's receptionist: "'I mean, it's a global crisis. Millions of people are dying and you won't put yourself out to allow me to be seen by a nurse, not even a doctor, for five minutes?'" The correct response, we are told, would have been: "'Sod the protocol – everyone needs to know about this famine, Miss Jones, so I am going to speak to the GP and see what we can do.'"

Throughout the whole piece there's the reek of entitlement and a hysterical sense of self-importance. The cherry on the cake comes when Jones compare the receptionist's shocking rudeness (i.e. completely understandable inabilty to help) to the abuse at the Winterbourne View care home in Bristol, revealed by Panorama in their recent shocking expose. I am a talkative man, but sometimes even I am lost for words. (For those are interested, there's a more extensive, point-by-point demolition of Jones's piece by doctor and Sirens author Brian Kellett here).

While Jones's belief in the importance of her vocation is touching, let's be clear - Liz Jones is not a medical practioneer or an aid worker, she's a journalist. She can write what she sees, raise awareness of Somalia's suffering and, who knows, maybe inspire a few Mail readers. But the suspicion remains that for Jones, this is "misery tourism" - a "cheap holiday in other people's misery," as the Sex Pistols put it. As Ros Cowards says: "I've noticed some journalists and travellers seem to seek out places of extreme suffering almost as a way of trying to quell discomfort about their own personal dissatisfactions and unhappiness. And as we know, Jones is very, very unhappy."

To given Jones her due, she's a talented prose writer and, hell, I'm all for people spreading their journalistic wings. But I'm just not sure she's got the political savvy or the empathy needed to report on Somalia. Read this sympathetic interview with Deborah Ross, and you're left with a portrait of a woman hopelessly lost in self-absorption. In the past Jones has covered Bangladesh, but this famine deserves our best reporters, not our best paid.


Edit: Thanks to @nickrowan27 for pointing me in the direction of the sublime spoof Twitter account @LizJonesSomalia, which offers frequent updates on Jones's progress in Somalia. Sample tweet: "I'm not trying to be crass - I know there's a water shortage, but wetwipes cost about 17p a pack. I'd offer to share mine but I need them."

Mass murderers heart Melanie Phillips

While it’s difficult to find a silver lining to the mass murder of 76 human beings in Norway, it was hard to suppress a smirk at the news that killer Anders Behring Breivik had quoted Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips in his rambling manifesto.

Her initial response to this unnerving fact was to stress that Breivik had only quoted her twice in 1,500 pages - which is, let's face it, still not a great hit-rate.

But let’s be clear, there’s a world of difference between Breivik and Phillips. While her views might be repugnant, I think we can safely say that Melanie Phillips does not condone the mass slaughter of innocent civilians, even if they are card-carrying Labour Party members (now mass detention, that’s another story. No no, I jest.)

In fairness to Phillips, Breivik did also quote such luminaries as Winston Churchill, Edmund Burke, Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, and George Orwell, and an author has no control over who reads their material. Was it J.D. Salinger's fault that the Catcher in the Rye "inspired" a psychotic Mark Chapman to kill John Lennon? Clearly not.

But the episode does serve to underline the danger of Phillips's intemperate words, her intolerance and hyperbole. She believes her tirades exist on some rarefied intellectual plane, and Keith Kahn-Harris may well be right when he says she is "polite company with a ready (if sometimes acidic) wit and a very sharp mind", but if you write incendiary words, there's always a chance they'll come back to bite you on the ass.

Phillips, a former Guardian staffer, seems to get much of the left foaming at the mouth, but the main emotion she evokes in me is sadness. I still remember reading this interview and thinking she sounded like the angriest, loneliest woman in the world.