One of the world's most powerful media owners, Lord Conrad Black, has launched a scathing attack on the European media, accusing them of endlessly disparaging the United States and "mindlessly pandering to the emotion of envy".
Lord Black's speech caused mixed reactions among the audience at the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference, with some leaving the session early, while others cheered his contribution.
Lord Black is a controversial figure in publishing and journalistic circles, having once described journalists as "lazy, ignorant and inadequately supervised". His company Hollinger Inc owns a range of newspapers around the world, including the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, the Chicago Sun Times and the Jerusalem Post. He also owns the Spectator magazine.
Lord Black said "useful idiots" in the European and particularly British intelligentia constantly sought to criticise the US, but they could not deny its success in "race relations and in wealth creation". He said journalists working in Britain and elsewhere in Europe "should stop being lackeys" and present a more balanced picture.
Lord Black said European journalists did not write about real Americans, but caricatures. He said the descriptions that emerged from European media were ridiculous. "Americans are presented as lumpen proletariat, firearm fanatics, with addictions to violent films and unhealthy food," he said.
Mr Black explained to the audience that he originally wanted to devote all his speech to media distortions of the United States, but the organisers prevailed upon him to also talk about newspapers in the new economy. He said he was reluctant to do this because "I know of few subjects so infused with cant and charlatanism as the future of the media."
In relation to the war in Iraq, Lord Black said papers like the Guardian, broadcasters like the BBC and, in particular, the Daily Mirror had often behaved disgracefully. He said a front-page illustration by the Mirror of British Prime Minister Mr Blair with bloodied hands was an appalling piece of journalism.
Asked by an audience member about media coverage of Iraq and how it had been unfair, he replied: "To run all that stuff by Pilger and Fisk and their bunk was awful, not to mention the endless carping.
"There seems to be a broad consensus that the US or the current administration is objectively bad," he said. He cited a recent story run on the BBC which suggested that if American troops had reached a certain area in time, mass killings of civilians by Saddam Hussein's troops could have been prevented.
"This was perverse, propagandist treatment of the news and we have a right to expect better from the BBC," he said. He added that the British media were now obsessed with the issue of weapons of mass destruction when it was "an irrelevant chicken game".
"The international media should stop denigrating the one country of fact and purpose in the world," he said. There had never been a time like now when American military and economic power was dominant around the globe. Clever countries, or as he called them the "co-operators of the world" sought to build alliances with the US, knowing it was essentially a benign country.
He said Britain was leading this group, although the French and to a lesser extent the Germans sought to undermine these moves.
He said the American media had by and large handled the war well in what was a difficult situation, although he picked up a copy of a paper in Palm Beach, one of the wealthiest areas per head of population in the world, and found the paper to be "entirely hostile" to the war and President Bush. "It was just amazing," he said.
Among the audience was the Irish secretary of the National Union of Journalists, Mr Seamus Dooley, who said journalists should neither be cheerleaders for or against the Americans. He said the journalist's job was to investigate and report independently.
Lord Black said improving the product and getting better writing out of journalists was the best way for a newspaper to grow.