WHY
HAS SO MUCH JOURNALISM SUCCUMBED TO PROPAGANDA?
Journalism should
monitor, deconstructs and counters propaganda and teaches the young to be
agents of people, not power
Written by John Pilger
Why
are censorship and distortion standard practice? Why is the BBC so often a
mouthpiece of rapacious power? Why do the NEW YORK TIMES and the WASHINGTON
POST deceive their readers?
Why are young journalists
not taught to understand media agendas and to challenge the high claims and low
purpose of fake objectivity? And why are they not taught that the essence of so
much of what's called the mainstream media is not information, but power?
These are urgent
questions. The world is facing the prospect of major war, perhaps nuclear war -
with the UNITED STATES clearly determined to isolate and provoke RUSSIA and
eventually CHINA. This truth is being turned upside down and inside out by
journalists, including those who promoted the lies that led to the bloodbath in
IRAQ in 2003.
The times we live in are
so dangerous and so distorted in public perception that propaganda is no
longer, as EDWARD BERNAYS called it, an "invisible government". It is
the government. It rules directly without fear of contradiction and its
principal aim is the conquest of us: our sense of the world, our ability to
separate truth from lies.
Background
Information:
THE
PROPAGANDIST
BBC
PROPAGANDA: PHOTO USED TO DOCUMENT THE MASSACRE IN HOULA SYRIA WAS TAKEN IN
2003 IN IRAQ
THE
INFORMATION AGE IS ACTUALLY A MEDIA AGE.
We
have war by media; censorship by media; demonology by media; retribution by
media; diversion by media - a surreal assembly line of obedient clichés and
false assumptions.
This power to create a
new "reality" has building for a long time. Forty-five years ago, a
book entitled THE GREENING OF AMERICA caused a sensation. On the cover were
these words: "There is a revolution coming. It will not be like
revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual."
I was a correspondent in
the UNITED STATES at the time and recall the overnight elevation to guru status
of the author, a young Yale academic, CHARLES REICH. His message was that
truth-telling and political action had failed and only "culture" and
introspection could change the world.
Within a few years,
driven by the forces of profit, the cult of "me-ism" had all but
overwhelmed our sense of acting together, our sense of social justice and
internationalism. Class, gender and race were separated. The personal was the
political, and the media was the message.
In
the wake of the cold war, the fabrication of new "threats" completed
the political disorientation of those who, 20 years earlier, would have formed
a vehement opposition.
IF
WE JOURNALISTS HAD DONE OUR JOB "THERE IS A VERY, VERY GOOD CHANCE WE
WOULD HAVE NOT GONE TO WAR IN IRAQ
In 2003, I filmed an
interview in WASHINGTON with CHARLES LEWIS, the distinguished AMERICAN
investigative journalist. We discussed the invasion of IRAQ a few months
earlier. I asked him, "What if the freest media in the world had seriously
challenged GEORGE BUSH and DONALD RUMSFELD and investigated their claims,
instead of channeling what turned out to be crude propaganda?"
He replied that if we
journalists had done our job "there is a very, very good chance we would
have not gone to war in IRAQ."
That's a shocking
statement, and one supported by other famous journalists to whom I put the same
question. DAN RATHER, formerly of CBS, gave me the same answer. DAVID ROSE of the Observer and senior journalists
and producers in the BBC, who wished to remain anonymous, gave me the same
answer.
In other words, had
journalists done their job, had they questioned and investigated the propaganda
instead of amplifying it, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children
might be alive today; and millions might not have fled their homes; the
sectarian war between SUNNI and SHIA might not have ignited, and the infamous
ISLAMIC STATE might not now exist.
THE
ANGLO SAXON EQUATION
Even now, despite the
millions who took to the streets in protest, most of the public in western
countries have little idea of the sheer scale of the crime committed by our
governments in IRAQ. Even fewer are aware that, in the 12 years before the
invasion, the US and BRITISH governments set in motion a holocaust by denying
the civilian population of IRAQ a means to live.
Those are the words of
the senior BRITISH official responsible for sanctions on IRAQ in the 1990s - a
medieval siege that caused the deaths of half a million children under the age
of five, reported UNICEF. The official's name is CARNE ROSS. In the Foreign
Office in LONDON, he was known as "Mr. IRAQ".
GOVERNMENTS
DECEIVE AND JOURNALISTS WILLINGLY SPREAD THE DECEPTION
Today, he is a
truth-teller of how governments deceive and how journalists willingly spread
the deception. "We would feed journalists factoids of sanitized
intelligence," he told me, "or we'd freeze them out."
The main whistleblower
during this terrible, silent period was DENIS HALLIDAY. Then Assistant
Secretary General of the UNITED NATIONS and the senior UN official in IRAQ,
HALLIDAY resigned rather than implement policies he described as
genocidal. He estimates that sanctions
killed more than a million IRAQIS.
What then happened to HALLIDAY
was instructive. He was airbrushed. Or he was vilified. On the BBC's Newsnight program,
the presenter JEREMY PAXMAN shouted at him: "Aren't you just an apologist
for SADDAM HUSSEIN?" THE GUARDIAN recently described this as one of PAXMAN'S
"memorable moments". Recently, PAXMAN signed a £1 million book deal.
The handmaidens of
suppression have done their job well. Consider the effects. In 2013, a COMRES
poll found that a majority of the BRITISH public believed the casualty toll in IRAQ
was less than 10,000 - a tiny fraction of the truth. A trail of blood that goes
from IRAQ to LONDON has been scrubbed almost clean.
RUPERT
MURDOCH “THE GODFATHER OF THE MEDIA MOB”
RUPERT
MURDOCH is said to be the godfather of the media mob, and no one should doubt
the augmented power of his newspapers - all 127 of them, with a combined
circulation of 40 million, and his Fox network. But the influence of MURDOCH'S
empire is no greater than its reflection of the wider media.
The most effective
propaganda is found not in THE SUN or on FOX NEWS - but beneath a liberal halo.
When the NEW YORK TIMES published claims that SADDAM HUSSEIN had weapons of
mass destruction, its fake evidence was believed, because it wasn't FOX NEWS;
it was the NEW YORK TIMES.
WASHINGTON
POST AND THE GUARDIAN - CONDITIONING THEIR READERS
The same is true of the WASHINGTON
POST and THE GUARDIAN, both of which have played a critical role in
conditioning their readers to accept a new and dangerous cold war. All three
liberal newspapers have misrepresented events in UKRAINE as a malign act by RUSSIA
- when, in fact, the fascist led coup in UKRAINE was the work of the UNITED
STATES, aided by GERMANY and NATO.
This inversion of reality
is so pervasive that WASHINGTON'S military encirclement and intimidation of RUSSIA
is not contentious. It's not even news, but suppressed behind a smear and scare
campaign of the kind I grew up with during the first cold war.
Once again, the evil
empire is coming to get us, led by another STALIN or, perversely, a new HITLER.
Name your demon and let rip.
DELIBERATE
WESTERN MAINSTREAM MEDIA DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN, WHEN IT COMES TO THE UKRAINE
CONFLICT
The suppression of the
truth about UKRAINE is one of the most complete news blackouts I can remember.
The biggest WESTERN military build-up in the CAUCASUS and EASTERN EUROPE since
world war two is blacked out. WASHINGTON'S secret aid to KIEV and its neo-Nazi
brigades responsible for war crimes against the population of eastern UKRAINE
is blacked out. Evidence that contradicts propaganda that RUSSIA was
responsible for the shooting down of a MALAYSIAN airliner is blacked out.
And again, supposedly
liberal media are the censors. Citing no facts, no evidence, one journalist
identified a pro-RUSSIAN leader in UKRAINE as the man who shot down the
airliner. This man, he wrote, was known as The Demon. He was a scary man who
frightened the journalist. That was the evidence.
Many
in the western media haves worked hard to present the ethnic RUSSIAN population
of UKRAINE as outsiders in their own country, almost never as UKRAINIANS
seeking a federation within UKRAINE and as UKRAINIAN citizens resisting a
foreign-orchestrated coup against their elected government.
THE
GENERAL BREEDLOVE EXAGGERATION SYNDROME
What the RUSSIAN
president has to say is of no consequence; he is a pantomime villain who can be
abused with impunity. An AMERICAN general who heads NATO and is straight out of
Dr. STRANGELOVE - one General BREEDLOVE - routinely claims RUSSIAN invasions
without a shred of visual evidence. His impersonation of STANLEY KUBRICK'S General
JACK D. RIPPER is pitch perfect.
Background
Information:
DIE ARROGANZ DER ENTWERTETEN
GERMANY:
LAME JOURNALISM, OR DELIBERATE DISINFORMATION ON SYRIA?
DER-SPIEGEL
"Der-Hass-der-Bescheidwisser"
Forty thousand RUSKIES were
massing on the border, according to BREEDLOVE. That was good enough for the NEW
YORK TIMES, the WASHINGTON POST and THE OBSERVER - the latter having previously
distinguished itself with lies and fabrications that backed BLAIR'S invasion of
IRAQ, as its former reporter, DAVID ROSE, revealed.
There is almost the joi
d'esprit of a class reunion. The drum-beaters of the WASHINGTON POST are the
very same editorial writers who declared the existence of SADDAM'S weapons of
mass destruction to be "hard facts".
"If you
wonder," wrote ROBERT PARRY, "how the world could stumble into world
war three - much as it did into world war one a century ago - all you need to
do is look at the madness that has enveloped virtually the entire US
political/media structure over UKRAINE where a false narrative of white hats
versus black hats took hold early and has proved impervious to facts or
reason."
PARRY, the journalist who
revealed IRAN-CONTRA, is one of the few who investigated the central role of
the media in this "game of chicken", as the RUSSIAN foreign minister
called it. But is it a game? As I write this, the US Congress votes on
Resolution 758 which, in a nutshell, says: "Let's get ready for war with RUSSIA."
SECULAR
LIBERALISM - "THE FINAL RELIGION, THOUGH IT’S CHURCH IS NOT OF THE OTHER
WORLD BUT OF THIS"
In the 19th century, the
writer ALEXANDER HERZEN described secular liberalism as "the final
religion, though its church is not of the other world but of this". Today,
this divine right is far more violent and dangerous than anything the Muslim
world throws up, though perhaps its greatest triumph is the illusion of free
and open information.
In the news, whole
countries are made to disappear. SAUDI ARABIA, the source of extremism and
western-backed terror, is not a story, except when it drives down the price of
oil. YEMEN has endured twelve years of AMERICAN drone attacks. Who knows? Who
cares?
In
2009, the University of the West of ENGLAND published the results of a ten-year
study of the BBC's coverage of VENEZUELA. Of 304 broadcast reports, only three
mentioned any of the positive policies introduced by the government of HUGO
CHAVEZ. The greatest literacy program in human history received barely a
passing reference.
In EUROPE and the UNITED
STATES, millions of readers and viewers know next to nothing about the
remarkable, life-giving changes implemented in LATIN AMERICA, many of them
inspired by CHAVEZ. Like the BBC, the reports of the NEW YORK TIMES, the WASHINGTON
POST, THE GUARDIAN and the rest of the respectable western media were
notoriously in bad faith. CHAVEZ was mocked even on his deathbed. How is this
explained, I wonder, in schools of journalism?
IS
COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT CALLED “AUSTERITY” NECESSARY IN BRITAIN
Why are millions of
people in BRITAIN persuaded that a collective punishment called
"austerity" is necessary?
Following
the economic crash in 2008, a rotten system was exposed. For a split second the
banks were lined up as crooks with obligations to the public they had betrayed.
But
within a few months - apart from a few stones lobbed over excessive corporate
"bonuses" - the message changed. The mugshots of guilty bankers
vanished from the tabloids and something called "austerity" became
the burden of millions of ordinary people. Was there ever a sleight of hand as
brazen?
CROOKED
BANKS ARE GIVEN AN ANNUAL SUBSIDY OF £100BN IN FREE INSURANCE AND GUARANTEES
Today, many of the
premises of civilized life in BRITAIN are being dismantled in order to pay back
a fraudulent debt - the debt of crooks. The "austerity" cuts are said
to be £83 billion. That's almost exactly the amount of tax avoided by the same
banks and by corporations like AMAZON and MURDOCH'S NEWS UK. Moreover, the
crooked banks are given an annual subsidy of £100bn in free insurance and
guarantees - a figure that would fund the entire NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE.
THE
ECONOMIC CRISIS IS PURE PROPAGANDA.
Extreme policies now rule
BRITAIN, the UNITED STATES, much of EUROPE, CANADA and AUSTRALIA. Who is
standing up for the majority? Who is telling their story? Who's keeping record
straight? Isn't that what journalists are meant to do?
In 1977, CARL BERNSTEIN,
of WATERGATE fame, revealed that more than 400 journalists and news executives
worked for the CIA. They included journalists from the NEW YORK TIMES, TIME and
the TV networks. In 1991, RICHARD NORTON TAYLOR of THE GUARDIAN revealed
something similar in this the UK.
None of this is necessary
today. I doubt that anyone paid the WASHINGTON POST and many other media
outlets to accuse EDWARD SNOWDEN of aiding terrorism. I doubt that anyone pays
those who routinely smear JULIAN ASSANGE - though other rewards can be
plentiful.
It's clear to me that the
main reason ASSANGE has attracted such venom, spite and jealously is that
WikiLeaks tore down the facade of a corrupt political elite held aloft by
journalists. In heralding an extraordinary era of disclosure, ASSANGE made
enemies by illuminating and shaming the media's gatekeepers, not least on the
newspaper that published and appropriated his great scoop. He became not only a
target, but a golden goose.
Lucrative book and
Hollywood movie deals were struck and media careers launched or kick-started on
the back of WikiLeaks and its founder. People have made big money, while
WikiLeaks has struggled to survive.
WHISTLE-BLOWERS – "THE UNPEOPLE"
None
of this was mentioned in STOCKHOLM on 1 December when the editor of THE
GUARDIAN, ALAN RUSBRIDGER, shared with EDWARD SNOWDEN the RIGHT LIVELIHOOD
AWARD, known as the alternative NOBEL PEACE PRIZE. What was shocking about this
event was that ASSANGE and WikiLeaks were airbrushed. They didn't exist. They
were unpeople. No one spoke up for the man who pioneered digital whistleblowing
and handed THE GUARDIAN one of the greatest scoops in history. Moreover, it was
ASSANGE and his WikiLeaks team who effectively - and brilliantly - rescued EDWARD
SNOWDEN in HONG KONG and sped him to safety. Not a word.
 |
| Photo: Transparency International |
What made this censorship
by omission so ironic and poignant and disgraceful was that the ceremony was
held in the SWEDISH parliament - whose craven silence on the ASSANGE case has
colluded with a grotesque miscarriage of justice in STOCKHOLM.
"When the truth is
replaced by silence," said the SOVIET dissident YEVTUSHENKO, "the
silence is a lie."
It's this kind of silence
we journalists need to break. We need to look in the mirror. We need to call to
account an unaccountable media that services power and a psychosis that
threatens world war.
In the 18th century, EDMUND
BURKE described the role of the press as a Fourth Estate checking the powerful.
Was that ever true? It certainly doesn't wash any more. What we need is a Fifth
Estate: a journalism that monitors, deconstructs and counters propaganda and
teaches the young to be agents of people, not power. We need what the RUSSIANS called
perestroika - an insurrection of subjugated knowledge. I would call it real
journalism.
Its 100 years since the
First World War. Reporters then were rewarded and knighted for their silence
and collusion. At the height of the slaughter, BRITISH Prime Minister DAVID
LLOYD GEORGE confided in C.P. SCOTT, editor of the MANCHESTER GUARDIAN: "If people really knew [the truth] the war
would be stopped tomorrow, but of course they don't know and can't know."
It's time they knew.
