Coverage of Elizabeth's death is not journalism and it is not meant to be

It is institutional power protecting itself

Queen Elizabeth II Mural at London Gatwick Airport 1

Time to pause and take breath and consider again the significance of the way in which the media (and other institutions) are reacting to the death of Queen Elizabeth II. We owe it to ourselves to wonder aloud about what we are seeing because this is one of those rare moments where the nervous system and skeletal structure of state power exposes itself for inspection.

It should be clear that what is being enacted on our television screens, radios, phones and laptops, is not simply a journalistic enterprise—the straightforward reporting of a significant event—but an exercise of power in the name of a particular sort of order and governance of which the Crown remains the organising touchstone.

As I said on Twitter, we have moved well past any warranted expressions of grief, respect, and recognition of an historic moment, into a bald display of a public culture in thrall to particular sources of power, paying obeisance to them at the expen…