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.

David Cameron is wrong - Britain isn't broken, just slightly chipped

The Golden Latrine is old enough to remember those glorious days, way back when, when life was all rosy-cheeked children playing football in the street and fry-ups and chatting to Nora from the lauderette down the labour exchange.

But how different life is now compared to that golden past - at least according to PM David Cameron, who is adamant that the nation is in the grips of a full-blown moral crisis.

In case you missed it, Tony Blair recently penned a piece on the UK riots in The Observer, in which he argued that the riots were down to a relatively small number of highly dysfunctional, asocial households which are atypical of Britain as a whole. As Blair put it:

The left says they're victims of social deprivation, the right says they need to take personal responsibility for their actions; both just miss the point. A conventional social programme won't help them; neither – on its own – will tougher penalties. The key is to understand that they aren't symptomatic of society at large.

This seems to me an eminently sensible analysis. Study after study has shown that prison doesn't work, but neither does sending in a single social worker once a week. Wholesale 'family intervention' is required. And to be fair to Cameron, he seems to agree, vowing to turn round the lives of 120,000 troubled families by 2015.

But there was a very definite disagreement about what the riots meant. Blair concluded his Observer piece:

Elevate this into a highfalutin wail about a Britain that has lost its way morally and we will depress ourselves unnecessarily, trash our own reputation abroad, and worst of all, miss the chance to deal with the problem in the only way that will work.[my emphasis]

However, David Cameron remained unconvinced. Responding to Blair in an interview on the Today programme, Cameron insisted that Blair was wrong, and that the moral malaise was far more widespread:

In the riots there was clearly a hardcore of people who were just breaking the law and had no sense of right and wrong or moral boundaries. But, tragically, we also saw people who were drawn into it, who passed the broken shop window and popped in and nicked a telly.

And that is a sign of actual moral collapse, of failing to recognise the difference between right and wrong. So I don't think you can simply say this is just a criminal underclass and no other problem at all. I think it does go broader than that.

The mistake Cameron makes, it seems to me, is in treating rioting and looting as the same thing. While the hardcore rioters may well have been the troubled families Blair (and Cameron, for that matter) believes we need to target - aided and abetted by the odd bored student - plenty of people helped themselves to a free t-shirt or widescreen television. Evidence of a far-reaching moral malaise? Or just a reminder of a basic article of human nature: if we can get something for free, we will?

Remember the cases of the cash machines malfunctioning and giving out free money? There's been numerous cases of queues of well-balanced, middle-class people queuing round the block with their children for their handout.

In many ways Cameron's Today interview was just a reprisal of this speech made in August, in which he talked about the coalition tackling "the slow-motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations". Buying into the myth of moral decline seems to be an occupational hazard for Tory PMs - Thatcher frequently pined for "Victorian values", seemingly oblivious to the fact her allegiance to free market economics was dissolving those very community values.

So whenever we feel tempted to start seeing the riots as omens of the forthcoming apocalypse, let's just remember: none of this is new. 2000 people helping themselves to some free trainers is not the end days. The fear of feral youths and teenage gangs is a phenomenon that is centuries old. Let's try and keep some perspective, yes?

The UK riots: a reaction to ingrained poverty? The work of "mindless" thugs? Or just an over-enthusiastic shopping spree?

Britain, first an apology.

Like our blessed Prime Minister, The Golden Latrine watched the UK riots unfold from a shadowy lair in the sunny Tuscan hills, a glass of flat prosecco in one hand and smartphone in the other. As England smouldered and its anxious citizens cried out for a State of the Nation blog, I lay sweating in paradise, perversely wishing I was there.

After getting past the initial "What, in the name of David Dimbleby, is going on?", the question I, like everyone else, wanted answering most was simple: Why is this happening? As the initial suggestion that this was a political protest over the shooting of Mark Duggan faded, a large section of the population (and the media) quickly reached a consensus that the rioting was "mindless" - an atavistic outpouring of rage from an animalistic underclass incapable of higher thought.

Such was the hysteria surrounding the riots and looting, that the suggestion was that even looking for causes was wrong. As Owen Jones said in a Newsnight interview with an inflammatory David Starkey: "there's a dangerous climate at the moment, I think, to even begin to understand the underlying social and economic causes is seen as justifying mindless thuggery" (and in this context Labour leader Ed Miliband deserved a great deal of credit for not giving in to the temptation to sensationalise, telling a crowd in Manchester: "We have got to look into the causes, why people are going around doing this. And I think there are a complex number of causes").

There were, though, commentators who did try and delve into the rioters' motives. The idea of the rioters' "mindlessness" was challenged by Dan Hind in his piece for Al Jazeera and Russell Brand, while in The Guardian Zoe Williams  produced a brilliant piece on the psychology on the rioters and looters.

Williams set out the three common positions on the riots: the authoritarian response (riots as glorified mugging, carried out by a generation with a colossal sense of entitlement, and enabled by a limp-wristed, mealy-mouthed criminal justice system); (the liberal response (as exemplified by youth worker Camila Batmanghelidjh's piece in the Independent); and a more pragmatic response (summed up perfectly by blogger Sarah Carr:

"the media coverage makes them look like cunts. And perhaps many of them are. But even cunts can have legitimate grievances. Maybe they’re destroying stuff because they have no other channel to express their sense of hopelessness and rage at their situation. Or maybe they and their friends just like the thrill of a ruckus with the added bonus of free gear."

The best example of the authoritarian response unquestionnably came from Golden Latrine favourite Melanie Phillips, who, in a truly batshit crazy piece in the Mail blamed Labour, lone parents, "ultra-feminists", the welfare state, 'victim culture' and multiculturalism for the rioting.

What was really interesting in Williams' piece, though, was her discussion of whether the riot was nihilistic ("everything is shit and pointless") or consumeristic ("I want a new pair of trainers"). She persuasively argued that the two were not necessarily contradictory, quoting marketing and consumer expert Alex Hiller:

If you look at Baudrillard and other people writing in sociology about consumption, it's a falsification of social life. Adverts promote a fantasy land. Consumerism relies upon people feeling disconnected from the world.

And personally I think that's bang on the money. The UK riots saw young people turning that advertising fantasy world into a reality, which is why the whole thing looked so unreal, like a computer game. And the sense of rioting and looting as a great adventure cannot be overlooked - just read Kevin Sampson's piece on his part as a youngster in the Toxteth riots:

In all the hours and pages of reportage since rioting returned to our cities last weekend, not one commentator seems to have touched upon the sole unifying factor that fuels and drives such unrest – excitement, fun, teenage kicks. In 1981 I could have cited unemployment (check), low-income, single-parent family (check), experience of police brutality (check) as factors in my participation, but none of the above even remotely came into my thinking then and I doubt it is stoking today's unrest, either.

I went along in 1981 because I was swept away by the mind-blowing buzz of mob mayhem. There's no justifying that – in the crudest terms such behaviour is quite simply wrong – but try telling that to a 15-year-old on a mountain bike. To him or her, it's like a Wii game come to life – a hyper-real version of GTA. You taunt the police until they chase you, then you leg it and regroup. Some of the more radical kids will throw rocks and set cars and wheelie bins alight to get them going, but sooner or later the "bizzies" (police) will charge.

It makes you think, eh?