Some propaganda outlets - by @Werteverwalter pic.twitter.com/WdaTgFRAW7
— Mohammad Tomazy (@m_tomazy) May 2, 2015
Showing posts with label Journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Journalism. Show all posts
Sectarianism in the Middle East is regularly inflamed by the Sunni Salafi/Wahhabi groups and countries in the Middle East. It is directed against all other strains of Islam as well as against all other religions.
But as the "western" governments and media favor the Saudi Arabian side and often denigrate the "resistance" side, be it Shia, Sunni or whatever else, they insist that it is the Shia side that is preaching sectarianism. One can often experience this with reports on speeches of Hizbullah leader Nasrallah who is always very careful to not ever use sectarian language. When Nasrallah condemns Takfiri terrorists like AlQaeda and the Islamic State as non-Muslim and calls them the greatest danger to Sunnis, Shia and Christians alike the "western" media like to report that he warns of Sunnis in general and is thus spreading sectarianism.
Many such reports come from "western" reporters who are stationed in Beirut, speak no Arabic and depend on the spokespersons and translators in the offices of the Saudi-Lebanese Sunni leader Hariri. For an ever growing collection of typical examples see the Angry Arab here and here.
The finding of non-existent sectarian language in "resistance" leaders' communications and the emphasizing of it has been internalized by "western" reporters. You can clearly see the process in the exemplary Twitter exchange copied below.
Liz Sly is the Middle East correspondent for the Washington Post in Beirut and does not speak Arabic. Elijah J. Magnier is Chief International Correspondent for the Kuwaiti TV station AL RAI. He speaks Arabic and has covered the war on Iraq and other wars on the ground for decades.
The issue at hand is a defense bill in front of the U.S. Congress which refers to Sunni militia, Kurds and other groups in Iraq as distinguished "countries" which are to be armed separately from the state of Iraq. "Divide and rule" writ large. Many Iraqi politicians including the Prime Minister have spoken out against it. The Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr warned of the consequences should the bill go through which he says would include an unleashing of his troops against U.S. interests.
Notice how Liz Sly insist on a sectarian aspect/intent in Sadr's proclamation even when there clearly is none. She keeps in insisting on it even after she gets pointed to an official denial of any sectarian intent by a Sadr spokesperson. The exchange:
Is this insistence by Liz Sly on sectarian "Shia leader Sadr is against Sunnis" justified by anything but sly, willful exaggeration, and even falsification, of what Sadr wrote? Who is the sectarian here?
Source: Moon of Alabama
But as the "western" governments and media favor the Saudi Arabian side and often denigrate the "resistance" side, be it Shia, Sunni or whatever else, they insist that it is the Shia side that is preaching sectarianism. One can often experience this with reports on speeches of Hizbullah leader Nasrallah who is always very careful to not ever use sectarian language. When Nasrallah condemns Takfiri terrorists like AlQaeda and the Islamic State as non-Muslim and calls them the greatest danger to Sunnis, Shia and Christians alike the "western" media like to report that he warns of Sunnis in general and is thus spreading sectarianism.
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| Liz Sly in Baghdad (archive) |
Many such reports come from "western" reporters who are stationed in Beirut, speak no Arabic and depend on the spokespersons and translators in the offices of the Saudi-Lebanese Sunni leader Hariri. For an ever growing collection of typical examples see the Angry Arab here and here.
The finding of non-existent sectarian language in "resistance" leaders' communications and the emphasizing of it has been internalized by "western" reporters. You can clearly see the process in the exemplary Twitter exchange copied below.
Liz Sly is the Middle East correspondent for the Washington Post in Beirut and does not speak Arabic. Elijah J. Magnier is Chief International Correspondent for the Kuwaiti TV station AL RAI. He speaks Arabic and has covered the war on Iraq and other wars on the ground for decades.
The issue at hand is a defense bill in front of the U.S. Congress which refers to Sunni militia, Kurds and other groups in Iraq as distinguished "countries" which are to be armed separately from the state of Iraq. "Divide and rule" writ large. Many Iraqi politicians including the Prime Minister have spoken out against it. The Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr warned of the consequences should the bill go through which he says would include an unleashing of his troops against U.S. interests.
Notice how Liz Sly insist on a sectarian aspect/intent in Sadr's proclamation even when there clearly is none. She keeps in insisting on it even after she gets pointed to an official denial of any sectarian intent by a Sadr spokesperson. The exchange:
Liz Sly 17h17 hours agoThe last paragraph of Sadr's statement says:
Moqtada Sadr to the US: if you arm Iraq's Sunnis, we will fight Americans in Iraq. https://twitter.com/jihadicas/status/593512749235249152 …Elijah J. Magnier 8h8 hours ago
@LizSly Moqtada didn't say that https://twitter.com/EjmAlrai/status/593324552437903360 …
Liz Sly 6h6 hours ago
@EjmAlrai Didn't mean literally fighting US troops, but to fight against US presence in Iraq. Presumably would hit embassy, personnel etc?
Elijah J. Magnier 6h6 hours ago
@LizSly U r right as Moqtada said he will fight USA in Iraq and abroad but didn't say if Sunni are armed.
Elijah J. Magnier 5h5 hours ago
@LizSly "We shall hit US interest in Iraq & abroad, as possible, ', if US approves supporting each religion independently",
Liz Sly 5h5 hours ago
@EjmAlrai Right, he means if Sunnis are armed directly by the US under that weird bill
Elijah J. Magnier 5h5 hours ago
@LizSly I spoke to S. Ali Seism who said it is not directed to Sunni but 2 all religions (incl Kurds) as there are more than Sunnis in Iraq.
Elijah J. Magnier 5h5 hours ago
@LizSly In fact the communique' doesn't say in any line the word "Sunni" but "all religions".
Liz Sly 5h5 hours ago
@EjmAlrai The bill is aimed at arming Sunnis and my tweet makes it clear Muqtada is against the US arming Sunnis, not against arming them
Elijah J. Magnier 5h5 hours ago
@LizSly Moqtada communique' clearly didn't mention Sunni: "Not arming religions": Fayli, Turkman, Sunni, Shia, Yazidi... Feel free.
Liz Sly 5h5 hours ago
@EjmAlrai Ok, but it's clear he's against a bill whose goal is to permit the US to directly arm Sunnis, not eg Fayli. As are many Iraqis.
American should know that if it wants to exacerbate sectarian sentiment, we would continue to tread on the path of national unity. Let sectarianism fall out of existence! This is the very sectarianism that seeks to create [artificial] borders.The U.S. Congress introduces a law that would exacerbate sectarianism in Iraq. Muqtada al-Sadr responses with a statement explicitly speaking out against sectarianism. Liz Sly insist that it is Sadr who is playing a sectarian card.
Is this insistence by Liz Sly on sectarian "Shia leader Sadr is against Sunnis" justified by anything but sly, willful exaggeration, and even falsification, of what Sadr wrote? Who is the sectarian here?
Source: Moon of Alabama
The French cartoonist Zeon was arrested Tuesday morning by four police officers of the Brigade of Repression of Delinquency People (BRDP).
At 7 am, four police officers woke the cartoonist to take him before the judge to the High Court Instance of Paris. A complaint appears to have been filed by the BNVCA (National Bureau of Vigilance against Anti-Semitism).
The complaint seems to refer to the drawing – for which Zeon had yet been released last year by the 17th chamber – representing a balance and unbalanced weight of several historical crimes, but also for another drawing, which was not retained by the prosecutor at the trial, representing a Palestinian child stabbed by a knife-shaped Israel.
The judge has indicted the designer of incitement to racial, religious hatred, by speech, writing, picture or means of electronic communication. Zeon refused to answer his questions. He was set free in late morning.
Quick reminder on the BNVCA
The National Bureau of Vigilance against Racism and Anti-Semitism was founded by the Commissioner of Police Sammy Ghozlan in March 2002 with Union support Jewish bosses of France and the Word and Light Association (offshoot of the Simon Center Wiesenthal).
According BNVCA site itself, this organization has a unique community privilege to make complaints of “anti-Semitic aggression.”
Source: Non-Aligned Media
At 7 am, four police officers woke the cartoonist to take him before the judge to the High Court Instance of Paris. A complaint appears to have been filed by the BNVCA (National Bureau of Vigilance against Anti-Semitism).
The complaint seems to refer to the drawing – for which Zeon had yet been released last year by the 17th chamber – representing a balance and unbalanced weight of several historical crimes, but also for another drawing, which was not retained by the prosecutor at the trial, representing a Palestinian child stabbed by a knife-shaped Israel.
The judge has indicted the designer of incitement to racial, religious hatred, by speech, writing, picture or means of electronic communication. Zeon refused to answer his questions. He was set free in late morning.
Quick reminder on the BNVCA
The National Bureau of Vigilance against Racism and Anti-Semitism was founded by the Commissioner of Police Sammy Ghozlan in March 2002 with Union support Jewish bosses of France and the Word and Light Association (offshoot of the Simon Center Wiesenthal).
According BNVCA site itself, this organization has a unique community privilege to make complaints of “anti-Semitic aggression.”
Source: Non-Aligned Media
By Sonali Kolhatkar
Diplomatic relations between Venezuela and the U.S. have just taken a big hit, with the government of Nicolas Maduro demanding that the American Embassy in Caracas reduce its staff by 80% and that U.S. visitors apply for visas.
Most symbolically, Venezuela has now barred a number of U.S. officials from visiting, including George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The backdrop to these political moves is a new crisis within Venezuela that has an old script: right-wing leaders plan a coup, with the U.S. deeply implicated; wealthy protesters take to the streets; and the Western media cover both stories with great sympathy while openly mocking the democratically elected government for attempting to defend itself.
The latest crisis began when authorities acting on Maduro’s orders arrested Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma in mid-February. A well-known right-wing opposition figure, Ledezma will face trial for conspiracy against the government in what is now being called the “blue coup.” Among the pieces of evidence the government says it has collected are phone calls made by the mayor to a U.S. phone number, as well as a cache of weapons, including Molotov cocktails, grenade-like explosives and gas masks, found in the office headquarters of the opposition political party.
The U.S. has long been involved in attempts to destabilize Venezuela’s socialist government. Its role in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez is well-documented. Over the years, many organizations, including ones in which right-wing opposition figures are involved, have received funding from the likes of USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), both U.S.-based agencies notorious for fomenting unrest in countries hostile to U.S. interests. For example, Machado headed an organization named Sumate that has received funding from the NED.
U.S. officials have also made no secret about their hostility to Venezuela. Last year the Obama administration imposed sanctions on a number of Venezuelan officials it claims are implicated in human rights abuses and corruption, although it is keeping the list of names secret. In President Obama’s 2015 National Security Strategy, he announced that the U.S. would “stand by the citizens of countries where the full exercise of democracy is at risk, such as Venezuela.”
Despite this documentation of American animosity toward Venezuela, media outlets continue to harbor an inexplicable blind spot on the U.S. role. The New York Timesopined last week in what we can consider Exhibit A in the case against media coverage of Venezuela:
Listening to embattled President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela ramble for hours about an international right-wing conspiracy to oust him, it’s clear that he would use any fabricated pretext to jail opposition leaders and crack down on dissent. In recent days, the government’s claims have become outlandish and its repression of critics even more vicious.
Professor Miguel Tinker Salas, one of the few U.S.-based experts on Venezuela, has written a book that will be released May 4 titled “Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know.” In an interview on “Uprising,” he responded to the editorial, saying, “We know that there was a historical amnesia on the part of the New York Times that celebrated the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez.”
Salas was referring to the paper’s mea culpa at initially celebrating that coup and then retracting its words days later when it was overturned. In its new editorial, the paper failed to raise the historical context of U.S. backing for the 2002 coup or its own contradictory stances dismissing Maduro’s concerns.
Exhibit B is The Economist, which went as far as headlining the current crisis in Venezuela “A slow-motion coup.” If by “coup” the magazine means “coup d’état”—which is generally defined as the illegal takeover of a government—then it is unclear what the writers mean, for the article claims the “regime is lurching from authoritarianism to dictatorship.” (Is Maduro’s government organizing a coup against itself?) The magazine also goes on to assert that “Crackpot economic policies have brought food shortages, soaring inflation and rising poverty.”
Salas explained that the writers are irked by the fact that “[s]ixty percent of the government’s budget actually goes to social programs and [the opposition] would rather it go to infrastructure and oil companies so that they can produce more oil and have a larger supply of oil on the world market, and have it be privately owned.”
Thanks to this type of media coverage, the Venezuelan right-wing opposition has been extremely successful at generating sympathy, especially among the U.S. public, and even among American celebrities. Last year’s right-wing protests inspired a shout-outby actor Jared Leto during his Oscar acceptance speech, a supportive blog post by Kevin Spacey and even a social media post by singer Madonna.
What neither the Times nor The Economist nor the supportive celebrities notice are the troubling double standards of criticizing Venezuela when a close U.S. ally such as Mexico suffers from far worse problems of anti-democratic corruption and violence. Salas pointed out the hypocrisy, saying that 43 people were killed in Venezuela last year on both sides of the divide, and still, “The New York Times blames the government for these deaths, and yet they remain silent about the 43 students that were killed in Mexico.” Additionally, Salas pointed out, although Mexico has “100,000 dead and a real humanitarian crisis,” the Times says “almost nothing, while on Venezuela they ... mock the government.”
A November 2014 editorial by the Times on Mexico’s 43 missing students expressed not nearly as much vitriol for that country’s clearly corrupt and discredited government as the paper reserves for Venezuela’s Maduro, whom it called “authoritarian,” “erratic” and “maniacal.”
Additionally, The Economist’s mocking of Venezuela’s economic crisis is also hypocritical because, according to Salas, in Mexico, “fifty percent of the population lives in poverty” and yet the country “is portrayed as a model for Western development and neo-liberal economics.” And while media outlets make fun of Venezuela’s toilet paper shortage, Salas counters that in Mexico, which is a U.S. ally, huge numbers of “people don’t even have access to basic services and foods.”
Media coverage of Venezuela is so skewed that even the contentious issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to generate fairer coverage these days. Salas attributed the bias to the savvy organizing of right-wing Venezuelan groups, who he says have “learned the lesson very well from Cuban Americans in Miami and South Florida, so they know how to target the media, they know how to create public opinion and they have done that very well.”
But Salas thinks there is another explanation, and that is “the lack of knowledge that existed about Venezuela in the U.S. before Hugo Chavez came to power.” Most of what Americans knew about the country other than that it had abundant oil reserves was the fact that it once won a Miss Universe contest and was home to a few good baseball players. That ignorance has been a perfect blank slate on which the U.S. government, mainstream media and right-wing opposition parties have been able to carve their warped perspectives about Venezuela’s left-wing government.
Source: Truthdig
This recent post from my favorite commentary blog, Moon of Alabama. You can call this an editor's pick-up or uncensored advertisement.
Wither The Media - Part XXXIV
A so called serious paper, The Guardian, has one of its assistant editor's exploring this rather difficult question: How has Bismarck escaped most of the blame for the first world war?
Duh. Really - how could we not blame Bismark for World War I?
Maybe because he was fired as German Reichskanzler in March 1890, twenty-four years before World War I started? Maybe because he died in July 1898, sixteen years before World War I started? Maybe because politics and social development changed in a rapidly industrializing Germany during that time? Maybe because the actual rulers at that time, like a somewhat crazy German Kaiser - held back by Bismarck before he left -, were the main culprits for that war?
Is it any wonder that people like me stopped regularly reading the Guardian? A paper that is now oscillating between blatant "western" propaganda themes and the most silly yellow journalism?
Next in The Guardian: "How Michael Jackson's moonwalk cause the rise of the Nazis and World War II" plus a tearful lament on how "Reader Atrophy Drives Papers' Demise".
Source: Moon of Alabama
A so called serious paper, The Guardian, has one of its assistant editor's exploring this rather difficult question: How has Bismarck escaped most of the blame for the first world war?
Before we leave the centenary year of the outbreak of war in 1914 there’s someone we should talk about. Everyone now knows about the famous Christmas truce and football matches. But this was a war that was meant to have been “over by Christmas” 1914, not dragging on for four blood-soaked years. Plenty share blame for that, but one major culprit who seems to have been conspicuous by his absence in 2014 deserves a name check: Otto von Bismarck.
Duh. Really - how could we not blame Bismark for World War I?
Maybe because he was fired as German Reichskanzler in March 1890, twenty-four years before World War I started? Maybe because he died in July 1898, sixteen years before World War I started? Maybe because politics and social development changed in a rapidly industrializing Germany during that time? Maybe because the actual rulers at that time, like a somewhat crazy German Kaiser - held back by Bismarck before he left -, were the main culprits for that war?
Is it any wonder that people like me stopped regularly reading the Guardian? A paper that is now oscillating between blatant "western" propaganda themes and the most silly yellow journalism?
Next in The Guardian: "How Michael Jackson's moonwalk cause the rise of the Nazis and World War II" plus a tearful lament on how "Reader Atrophy Drives Papers' Demise".
Source: Moon of Alabama
Just few days ago, Wall Street Journal reproduced a new scenario for the assassination of Al-
Assad's brother-in law, Assef Shawkat.
Assef Shawkat was, indeed, one of the strongest regime's men in Syria. And he was among the high-ranked officials who witnessed both Bashar's and his father's eras. Moreover, he was Bashar al-Assad's brother-in-law.
WSJ reported an ill-cited article, which can be considered as one of Hollywood's scenarios. In summary, The report included the following ideas:
(1) Hawks of Syrian regime killed Bashar al-Assad's brother-in law, Assef Shawkat.
(2) The mentioned event was actually the turning point in the Syrian crisis, by which 'the regime's killing machine was accelerated'.
(3) The defected official and al-Assad's old friend, Manaf Tlas was: (a) a witness (b) one of the 'pigeons' by urging al-Assad for conversation with the protesters.
(4) All of the report's sources of information are enemies of Al-Assad:
(a) the former US Ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford.
(b) Manaf Tlas: the mentioned defected Syrian official. He also the son of former defense minister (i.e., Al-Assad's the father companion, and one of the regime's figures)
(c) Lebanese politician, Walid Joumblatt. One of Al-Assad's 'recent' enemies.
Here is another narration (in Arabic), taken from Rai Al-Youm news website [ my edited translation]:
"In March 2012, The Coalition of "Ansar Al-Islam" in Damascus and its countryside, which included "Lewa'a Al-Islam", led by Zahran Aloush and.. "al-Furqan" and "Hamza bin Abdul Muttalib", was watching the security chiefs in order to eliminate them, this was not to happen without cooperation of one of the bodyguards working in the place of the meeting or an employee in the office of a senior officials. They recruited one of them, a bodyguard of Mohammed Saeed Bekheitan, Secretary-General of al-Ba'ath Party and assigned him to poison food leaders gathered in the office of Bakhtian they were: Advisor Bashar al-ssad's military affairs and the leader of the "crisis cell" Hassan Turkmani, and Interior Minister Mohammad ASha'ar, and the head of the National Security Bureau Hisham Bakhtiar, Defense Minister Daoud Rajha, Deputy defense Minister Assef Shawkat, and Director of State Security Ali Mamlouk, and one of the military leaders in Damascus, Major General Salah al-Naimi...
The opposition announced the death of the regime figures -suspiciously- before it was clear to them.
No I thought I heard they were making up the news, but they thought that the process already has been successfully completed, and after the regime's denial, and the appearance of Asha'ar and Turkmani on the official Syrian television, the only explanation is that the client had been duped the "Coalition of Ansar Al-Islam", and did not implement the poison.
They [Syrian opposition] tried again and they hired one of the bodyguards of the President of the National Security Office Hisham Bakhtiar that insinuates an explosive device at the earliest meeting of the "crisis management cell".
In July 2012, Bakhtiar and Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha and his deputy Assef Shawkat and the head of "crisis management cell", Hassan Turkmani were killed, while commander of the fourth division of the Republican Guard, Maher al-Assad and Interior Minister Mohammad ASha'ar and head of the investigation branch of the State Security Hafez Makhlouf and Assistant Regional Secretary and Chief Financial Office Ba'ath Party Mohammed Saeed Bekheitan did not die. One of the four wounded, as was rumored that the former head of the Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, or the commander of the Iranian al-Quds Force of Kassem Suleiman died in the bombing.
The Wall Street Journal's narration that Bashar al-Assad's regime masterminded the assassination of Assef Shawkat is ridiculous, though the President can remove him [Assef Shawkat] from his position "with a stroke of a pen!", as Bashar al-Assad did when sacked the head of military intelligence Hassan Khalil in 2005 and replaced him with Assef Shawkat, then sacked Shawkat later on, while Shawkat did not hold a leadership position, but he was deputy defense minister Daoud Rajha.."
Assad's brother-in law, Assef Shawkat.
Assef Shawkat was, indeed, one of the strongest regime's men in Syria. And he was among the high-ranked officials who witnessed both Bashar's and his father's eras. Moreover, he was Bashar al-Assad's brother-in-law.
WSJ reported an ill-cited article, which can be considered as one of Hollywood's scenarios. In summary, The report included the following ideas:
(1) Hawks of Syrian regime killed Bashar al-Assad's brother-in law, Assef Shawkat.
(2) The mentioned event was actually the turning point in the Syrian crisis, by which 'the regime's killing machine was accelerated'.
(3) The defected official and al-Assad's old friend, Manaf Tlas was: (a) a witness (b) one of the 'pigeons' by urging al-Assad for conversation with the protesters.
(4) All of the report's sources of information are enemies of Al-Assad:
(a) the former US Ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford.
(b) Manaf Tlas: the mentioned defected Syrian official. He also the son of former defense minister (i.e., Al-Assad's the father companion, and one of the regime's figures)
(c) Lebanese politician, Walid Joumblatt. One of Al-Assad's 'recent' enemies.
Here is another narration (in Arabic), taken from Rai Al-Youm news website [ my edited translation]:
"In March 2012, The Coalition of "Ansar Al-Islam" in Damascus and its countryside, which included "Lewa'a Al-Islam", led by Zahran Aloush and.. "al-Furqan" and "Hamza bin Abdul Muttalib", was watching the security chiefs in order to eliminate them, this was not to happen without cooperation of one of the bodyguards working in the place of the meeting or an employee in the office of a senior officials. They recruited one of them, a bodyguard of Mohammed Saeed Bekheitan, Secretary-General of al-Ba'ath Party and assigned him to poison food leaders gathered in the office of Bakhtian they were: Advisor Bashar al-ssad's military affairs and the leader of the "crisis cell" Hassan Turkmani, and Interior Minister Mohammad ASha'ar, and the head of the National Security Bureau Hisham Bakhtiar, Defense Minister Daoud Rajha, Deputy defense Minister Assef Shawkat, and Director of State Security Ali Mamlouk, and one of the military leaders in Damascus, Major General Salah al-Naimi...
The opposition announced the death of the regime figures -suspiciously- before it was clear to them.
No I thought I heard they were making up the news, but they thought that the process already has been successfully completed, and after the regime's denial, and the appearance of Asha'ar and Turkmani on the official Syrian television, the only explanation is that the client had been duped the "Coalition of Ansar Al-Islam", and did not implement the poison.
They [Syrian opposition] tried again and they hired one of the bodyguards of the President of the National Security Office Hisham Bakhtiar that insinuates an explosive device at the earliest meeting of the "crisis management cell".
In July 2012, Bakhtiar and Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha and his deputy Assef Shawkat and the head of "crisis management cell", Hassan Turkmani were killed, while commander of the fourth division of the Republican Guard, Maher al-Assad and Interior Minister Mohammad ASha'ar and head of the investigation branch of the State Security Hafez Makhlouf and Assistant Regional Secretary and Chief Financial Office Ba'ath Party Mohammed Saeed Bekheitan did not die. One of the four wounded, as was rumored that the former head of the Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, or the commander of the Iranian al-Quds Force of Kassem Suleiman died in the bombing.
The Wall Street Journal's narration that Bashar al-Assad's regime masterminded the assassination of Assef Shawkat is ridiculous, though the President can remove him [Assef Shawkat] from his position "with a stroke of a pen!", as Bashar al-Assad did when sacked the head of military intelligence Hassan Khalil in 2005 and replaced him with Assef Shawkat, then sacked Shawkat later on, while Shawkat did not hold a leadership position, but he was deputy defense minister Daoud Rajha.."
Chris Hedges |
There is more truth about American journalism in the film “Kill the Messenger,” which chronicles the mainstream media’s discrediting of the work of the investigative journalist Gary Webb, than there is in the movie “All the President’s Men,” which celebrates the exploits of the reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal.
The mass media blindly support the ideology of corporate capitalism. They laud and promote the myth of American democracy—even as we are stripped of civil liberties and money replaces the vote. They pay deference to the leaders on Wall Street and in Washington, no matter how perfidious their crimes. They slavishly venerate the military and law enforcement in the name of patriotism. They select the specialists and experts, almost always drawn from the centers of power, to interpret reality and explain policy. They usually rely on press releases, written by corporations, for their news. And they fill most of their news holes with celebrity gossip, lifestyle stories, sports and trivia. The role of the mass media is to entertain or to parrot official propaganda to the masses. The corporations, which own the press, hire journalists willing to be courtiers to the elites, and they promote them as celebrities. These journalistic courtiers, who can earn millions of dollars, are invited into the inner circles of power. They are, as John Ralston Saul writes, hedonists of power.
When Webb, writing in a 1996 series in the San Jose Mercury News, exposed the Central Intelligence Agency’s complicity in smuggling tons of cocaine for sale into the United States to fund the CIA-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua, the press turned him into a journalistic leper. And over the generations there is a long list of journalistic lepers, from Ida B. Wells to I.F. Stone to Julian Assange.
The attacks against Webb have been renewed in publications such as The Washington Post since the release of the film earlier this month. These attacks are an act of self-justification. They are an attempt by the mass media to mask the collaboration between themselves and the power elite. The mass media, like the rest of the liberal establishment, seek to wrap themselves in the moral veneer of the fearless pursuit of truth and justice. But to maintain this myth they have to destroy the credibility of journalists such as Webb and Assange who shine a light on the sinister and murderous inner workings of empire, who care more about truth than news.
The country’s major news outlets—including my old employer The New York Times, which wrote that there was “scant proof” of Webb’s contention—functioned as guard dogs for the CIA. Soon after the 1996 exposé appeared, The Washington Post devoted nearly two full pages to attacking Webb’s assertions. The Los Angeles Times ran three separate articles that slammed Webb and his story. It was a seedy, disgusting and shameful chapter in American journalism. But it was hardly unique. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, in the 2004 article “How the Press and the CIA Killed Gary Webb’s Career,” detailed the dynamics of the nationwide smear campaign.
Webb’s newspaper, after printing a mea culpa about the series, cast him out. He was unable to work again as an investigative journalist and, fearful of losing his house, he committed suicide in 2004. We know, in part because of a Senate investigation led by then-Sen. John Kerry, that Webb was right. But truth was never the issue for those who opposed the journalist. Webb exposed the CIA as a bunch of gunrunning, drug-smuggling thugs. He exposed the mass media, which depend on official sources for most of their news and are therefore hostage to those sources, as craven handmaidens of power. He had crossed the line. And he paid for it.
If the CIA was funneling hundreds of millions of dollars in drugs into inner-city neighborhoods to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua, what did that say about the legitimacy of the vast covert organization? What did it tell us about the so-called war on drugs? What did it tell us about the government’s callousness and indifference to the poor, especially poor people of color at the height of the crack epidemic? What did it say about rogue military operations carried out beyond public scrutiny?
These were questions the power elites, and their courtiers in the press, were determined to silence.
The mass media are plagued by the same mediocrity, corporatism and careerism as the academy, labor unions, the arts, the Democratic Party and religious institutions. They cling to the self-serving mantra of impartiality and objectivity to justify their subservience to power. The press writes and speaks—unlike academics that chatter among themselves in arcane jargon like medieval theologians—to be heard and understood by the public. And for this reason the press is more powerful and more closely controlled by the state. It plays an essential role in the dissemination of official propaganda. But to effectively disseminate state propaganda the press must maintain the fiction of independence and integrity. It must hide its true intentions.
The mass media, as C. Wright Mills pointed out, are essential tools for conformity. They impart to readers and viewers their sense of themselves. They tell them who they are. They tell them what their aspirations should be. They promise to help them achieve these aspirations. They offer a variety of techniques, advice and schemes that promise personal and professional success. The mass media, as Wright wrote, exist primarily to help citizens feel they are successful and that they have met their aspirations even if they have not. They use language and images to manipulate and form opinions, not to foster genuine democratic debate and conversation or to open up public space for free political action and public deliberation. We are transformed into passive spectators of power by the mass media, which decide for us what is true and what is untrue, what is legitimate and what is not. Truth is not something we discover. It is decreed by the organs of mass communication.
“The divorce of truth from discourse and action—the instrumentalization of communication—has not merely increased the incidence of propaganda; it has disrupted the very notion of truth, and therefore the sense by which we take our bearings in the world is destroyed,” James W. Carey wrote in “Communication as Culture.”
Bridging the vast gap between the idealized identities—ones that in a commodity culture revolve around the acquisition of status, money, fame and power, or at least the illusion of it—and actual identities is the primary function of the mass media. And catering to these idealized identities, largely implanted by advertisers and the corporate culture, can be very profitable. We are given not what we need but what we want. The mass media allow us to escape into the enticing world of entertainment and spectacle. News is filtered into the mix, but it is not the primary concern of the mass media. No more than 15 percent of the space in any newspaper is devoted to news; the rest is devoted to a futile quest for self-actualization. The ratio is even more lopsided on the airwaves.
“This,” Mills wrote, “is probably the basic psychological formula of the mass media today. But, as a formula, it is not attuned to the development of the human being. It is a formula of a pseudo-world which the media invent and sustain.”
At the core of this pseudo-world is the myth that our national institutions, including those of government, the military and finance, are efficient and virtuous, that we can trust them and that their intentions are good. These institutions can be criticized for excesses and abuses, but they cannot be assailed as being hostile to democracy and the common good. They cannot be exposed as criminal enterprises, at least if one hopes to retain a voice in the mass media.
Those who work in the mass media, as I did for two decades, are acutely aware of the collaboration with power and the cynical manipulation of the public by the power elites. It does not mean there is never good journalism and that the subservience to corporate power within the academy always precludes good scholarship, but the internal pressures, hidden from public view, make great journalism and great scholarship very, very difficult. Such work, especially if it is sustained, is usually a career killer. Scholars like Norman Finkelstein and journalists like Webb and Assange who step outside the acceptable parameters of debate and challenge the mythic narrative of power, who question the motives and virtues of established institutions and who name the crimes of empire are always cast out.
The press will attack groups within the power elite only when one faction within the circle of power goes to war with another. When Richard Nixon, who had used illegal and clandestine methods to harass and shut down the underground press as well as persecute anti-war activists and radical black dissidents, went after the Democratic Party he became fair game for the press. His sin was not the abuse of power. He had abused power for a long time against people and groups that did not matter in the eyes of the Establishment. Nixon’s sin was to abuse power against a faction within the power elite itself.
The Watergate scandal, mythologized as evidence of a fearless and independent press, is illustrative of how circumscribed the mass media is when it comes to investigating centers of power.
“History has been kind enough to contrive for us a ‘controlled experiment’ to determine just what was at stake during the Watergate period, when the confrontational stance of the media reached its peak. The answer is clear and precise: powerful groups are capable of defending themselves, not surprisingly; and by media standards, it is a scandal when their position and rights are threatened,” Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky wrote in “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.” “By contrast, as long as illegalities and violations of democratic substance are confined to marginal groups or dissident victims of U.S. military attack, or result in a diffused cost imposed on the general population, media opposition is muted and absent altogether. This is why Nixon could go so far, lulled into a false sense of security precisely because the watchdog only barked when he began to threaten the privileged.”
The righteous thunder of the abolitionists and civil rights preachers, the investigative journalists who enraged Standard Oil and the owners of the Chicago stockyards, the radical theater productions, such as “The Cradle Will Rock,” that imploded the myths peddled by the ruling class and gave a voice to ordinary people, the labor unions that permitted African-Americans, immigrants and working men and women to find dignity and hope, the great public universities that offered the children of immigrants a chance for a first-class education, the New Deal Democrats who understood that a democracy is not safe if it does not give its citizens an acceptable standard of living and protect the state from being hijacked by private power, are no longer part of the American landscape. It was Webb’s misfortune to work in an era when the freedom of the press was as empty a cliché as democracy itself.
“The Cradle Will Rock,” like much of the popular work that came out of the Federal Theatre Project, addressed the concerns of the working class rather than the power elite. And it excoriated the folly of war, greed, corruption and the complicity of liberal institutions, especially the press, in protecting the power elite and ignoring the abuses of capitalism. Mister Mister in the play runs the town like a private corporation.
“I believe newspapers are great mental shapers,” Mister Mister says. “My steel industry is dependent on them really.”
“Just you call the News,” Editor Daily responds. “And we’ll print all the news. From coast to coast, and from border to border.”
Editor Daily and Mister Mister sing:
“I should like a series on young Larry Foreman,” Mister Mister tells Editor Daily. “Who goes around stormin’ and organizin’ unions.”
“Yes, we’ve heard of him,” Editor Daily tells Mister Mister. “In fact, good word of him. He seems quite popular with workingmen.”
“Find out who he drinks with and talks with and sleeps with. And look up his past till at last you’ve got it on him.”
“But the man is so full of fight, he’s simply dynamite, why it would take an army to tame him,” Editor Daily says.
“Then it shouldn’t be too hard to tame him,” Mister Mister says.
“O the press, the press, the freedom of the press,” the two sing. “You’ve only got to hint whatever’s fit to print; if something’s wrong with it, why then we’ll print to fit. With a he-diddly-dee and aho-nonny-no. For whichever side will pay the best.”
Source: Truthdig
There is more truth about American journalism in the film “Kill the Messenger,” which chronicles the mainstream media’s discrediting of the work of the investigative journalist Gary Webb, than there is in the movie “All the President’s Men,” which celebrates the exploits of the reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal.
The mass media blindly support the ideology of corporate capitalism. They laud and promote the myth of American democracy—even as we are stripped of civil liberties and money replaces the vote. They pay deference to the leaders on Wall Street and in Washington, no matter how perfidious their crimes. They slavishly venerate the military and law enforcement in the name of patriotism. They select the specialists and experts, almost always drawn from the centers of power, to interpret reality and explain policy. They usually rely on press releases, written by corporations, for their news. And they fill most of their news holes with celebrity gossip, lifestyle stories, sports and trivia. The role of the mass media is to entertain or to parrot official propaganda to the masses. The corporations, which own the press, hire journalists willing to be courtiers to the elites, and they promote them as celebrities. These journalistic courtiers, who can earn millions of dollars, are invited into the inner circles of power. They are, as John Ralston Saul writes, hedonists of power.
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| Gary Webb |
The attacks against Webb have been renewed in publications such as The Washington Post since the release of the film earlier this month. These attacks are an act of self-justification. They are an attempt by the mass media to mask the collaboration between themselves and the power elite. The mass media, like the rest of the liberal establishment, seek to wrap themselves in the moral veneer of the fearless pursuit of truth and justice. But to maintain this myth they have to destroy the credibility of journalists such as Webb and Assange who shine a light on the sinister and murderous inner workings of empire, who care more about truth than news.
The country’s major news outlets—including my old employer The New York Times, which wrote that there was “scant proof” of Webb’s contention—functioned as guard dogs for the CIA. Soon after the 1996 exposé appeared, The Washington Post devoted nearly two full pages to attacking Webb’s assertions. The Los Angeles Times ran three separate articles that slammed Webb and his story. It was a seedy, disgusting and shameful chapter in American journalism. But it was hardly unique. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, in the 2004 article “How the Press and the CIA Killed Gary Webb’s Career,” detailed the dynamics of the nationwide smear campaign.
Webb’s newspaper, after printing a mea culpa about the series, cast him out. He was unable to work again as an investigative journalist and, fearful of losing his house, he committed suicide in 2004. We know, in part because of a Senate investigation led by then-Sen. John Kerry, that Webb was right. But truth was never the issue for those who opposed the journalist. Webb exposed the CIA as a bunch of gunrunning, drug-smuggling thugs. He exposed the mass media, which depend on official sources for most of their news and are therefore hostage to those sources, as craven handmaidens of power. He had crossed the line. And he paid for it.
If the CIA was funneling hundreds of millions of dollars in drugs into inner-city neighborhoods to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua, what did that say about the legitimacy of the vast covert organization? What did it tell us about the so-called war on drugs? What did it tell us about the government’s callousness and indifference to the poor, especially poor people of color at the height of the crack epidemic? What did it say about rogue military operations carried out beyond public scrutiny?
These were questions the power elites, and their courtiers in the press, were determined to silence.
The mass media are plagued by the same mediocrity, corporatism and careerism as the academy, labor unions, the arts, the Democratic Party and religious institutions. They cling to the self-serving mantra of impartiality and objectivity to justify their subservience to power. The press writes and speaks—unlike academics that chatter among themselves in arcane jargon like medieval theologians—to be heard and understood by the public. And for this reason the press is more powerful and more closely controlled by the state. It plays an essential role in the dissemination of official propaganda. But to effectively disseminate state propaganda the press must maintain the fiction of independence and integrity. It must hide its true intentions.
The mass media, as C. Wright Mills pointed out, are essential tools for conformity. They impart to readers and viewers their sense of themselves. They tell them who they are. They tell them what their aspirations should be. They promise to help them achieve these aspirations. They offer a variety of techniques, advice and schemes that promise personal and professional success. The mass media, as Wright wrote, exist primarily to help citizens feel they are successful and that they have met their aspirations even if they have not. They use language and images to manipulate and form opinions, not to foster genuine democratic debate and conversation or to open up public space for free political action and public deliberation. We are transformed into passive spectators of power by the mass media, which decide for us what is true and what is untrue, what is legitimate and what is not. Truth is not something we discover. It is decreed by the organs of mass communication.
“The divorce of truth from discourse and action—the instrumentalization of communication—has not merely increased the incidence of propaganda; it has disrupted the very notion of truth, and therefore the sense by which we take our bearings in the world is destroyed,” James W. Carey wrote in “Communication as Culture.”
Bridging the vast gap between the idealized identities—ones that in a commodity culture revolve around the acquisition of status, money, fame and power, or at least the illusion of it—and actual identities is the primary function of the mass media. And catering to these idealized identities, largely implanted by advertisers and the corporate culture, can be very profitable. We are given not what we need but what we want. The mass media allow us to escape into the enticing world of entertainment and spectacle. News is filtered into the mix, but it is not the primary concern of the mass media. No more than 15 percent of the space in any newspaper is devoted to news; the rest is devoted to a futile quest for self-actualization. The ratio is even more lopsided on the airwaves.
“This,” Mills wrote, “is probably the basic psychological formula of the mass media today. But, as a formula, it is not attuned to the development of the human being. It is a formula of a pseudo-world which the media invent and sustain.”
At the core of this pseudo-world is the myth that our national institutions, including those of government, the military and finance, are efficient and virtuous, that we can trust them and that their intentions are good. These institutions can be criticized for excesses and abuses, but they cannot be assailed as being hostile to democracy and the common good. They cannot be exposed as criminal enterprises, at least if one hopes to retain a voice in the mass media.
Those who work in the mass media, as I did for two decades, are acutely aware of the collaboration with power and the cynical manipulation of the public by the power elites. It does not mean there is never good journalism and that the subservience to corporate power within the academy always precludes good scholarship, but the internal pressures, hidden from public view, make great journalism and great scholarship very, very difficult. Such work, especially if it is sustained, is usually a career killer. Scholars like Norman Finkelstein and journalists like Webb and Assange who step outside the acceptable parameters of debate and challenge the mythic narrative of power, who question the motives and virtues of established institutions and who name the crimes of empire are always cast out.
The press will attack groups within the power elite only when one faction within the circle of power goes to war with another. When Richard Nixon, who had used illegal and clandestine methods to harass and shut down the underground press as well as persecute anti-war activists and radical black dissidents, went after the Democratic Party he became fair game for the press. His sin was not the abuse of power. He had abused power for a long time against people and groups that did not matter in the eyes of the Establishment. Nixon’s sin was to abuse power against a faction within the power elite itself.
The Watergate scandal, mythologized as evidence of a fearless and independent press, is illustrative of how circumscribed the mass media is when it comes to investigating centers of power.
“History has been kind enough to contrive for us a ‘controlled experiment’ to determine just what was at stake during the Watergate period, when the confrontational stance of the media reached its peak. The answer is clear and precise: powerful groups are capable of defending themselves, not surprisingly; and by media standards, it is a scandal when their position and rights are threatened,” Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky wrote in “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.” “By contrast, as long as illegalities and violations of democratic substance are confined to marginal groups or dissident victims of U.S. military attack, or result in a diffused cost imposed on the general population, media opposition is muted and absent altogether. This is why Nixon could go so far, lulled into a false sense of security precisely because the watchdog only barked when he began to threaten the privileged.”
The righteous thunder of the abolitionists and civil rights preachers, the investigative journalists who enraged Standard Oil and the owners of the Chicago stockyards, the radical theater productions, such as “The Cradle Will Rock,” that imploded the myths peddled by the ruling class and gave a voice to ordinary people, the labor unions that permitted African-Americans, immigrants and working men and women to find dignity and hope, the great public universities that offered the children of immigrants a chance for a first-class education, the New Deal Democrats who understood that a democracy is not safe if it does not give its citizens an acceptable standard of living and protect the state from being hijacked by private power, are no longer part of the American landscape. It was Webb’s misfortune to work in an era when the freedom of the press was as empty a cliché as democracy itself.
“The Cradle Will Rock,” like much of the popular work that came out of the Federal Theatre Project, addressed the concerns of the working class rather than the power elite. And it excoriated the folly of war, greed, corruption and the complicity of liberal institutions, especially the press, in protecting the power elite and ignoring the abuses of capitalism. Mister Mister in the play runs the town like a private corporation.
“I believe newspapers are great mental shapers,” Mister Mister says. “My steel industry is dependent on them really.”
“Just you call the News,” Editor Daily responds. “And we’ll print all the news. From coast to coast, and from border to border.”
Editor Daily and Mister Mister sing:
O the press, the press, the freedom of the press.
They’ll never take away the freedom of the press.
We must be free to say whatever’s on our chest—
with a hey-diddle-dee and ho-nanny-no
for whichever side will pay the best.
“I should like a series on young Larry Foreman,” Mister Mister tells Editor Daily. “Who goes around stormin’ and organizin’ unions.”
“Yes, we’ve heard of him,” Editor Daily tells Mister Mister. “In fact, good word of him. He seems quite popular with workingmen.”
“Find out who he drinks with and talks with and sleeps with. And look up his past till at last you’ve got it on him.”
“But the man is so full of fight, he’s simply dynamite, why it would take an army to tame him,” Editor Daily says.
“Then it shouldn’t be too hard to tame him,” Mister Mister says.
“O the press, the press, the freedom of the press,” the two sing. “You’ve only got to hint whatever’s fit to print; if something’s wrong with it, why then we’ll print to fit. With a he-diddly-dee and aho-nonny-no. For whichever side will pay the best.”
Source: Truthdig
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