Great exposé in The Guardian UK on the role of Establishment Media in sustaining, and advancing, the perpetual war industry.
Documentary-maker John Pilger makes the point: “The public needs to know the truth about wars. So why have journalists colluded with governments to hoodwink us?”
A few clips from the piece:
[p1] In the US Army manual on counterinsurgency, the American commander General David Petraeus describes Afghanistan as a “war of perception … conducted continuously using the news media”. What really matters is not so much the day-to-day battles against the Taliban as the way the adventure is sold in America where “the media directly influence the attitude of key audiences”. Reading this, I was reminded of the Venezuelan general who led a coup against the democratic government in 2002. “We had a secret weapon,” he boasted. “We had the media, especially TV. You got to have the media.”
[p5] In the wake of this “war to end all wars”, Edward Bernays, a confidante of President Woodrow Wilson, coined the term “public relations” as a euphemism for propaganda “which was given a bad name in the war”. In his book, Propaganda (1928), Bernays described PR as “an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country” thanks to “the intelligent manipulation of the masses”. This was achieved by “false realities” and their adoption by the media. (One of Bernays’s early successes was persuading women to smoke in public. By associating smoking with women’s liberation, he achieved headlines that lauded cigarettes as “torches of freedom”.)
[p12] Dan Rather, who was the CBS news anchor for 24 years, was less reticent. “There was a fear in every newsroom in America,” he told me, “a fear of losing your job … the fear of being stuck with some label, unpatriotic or otherwise.” Rather says war has made “stenographers out of us” and that had journalists questioned the deceptions that led to the Iraq war, instead of amplifying them, the invasion would not have happened. This is a view now shared by a number of senior journalists I interviewed in the US.
[p13] In Britain, David Rose, whose Observer articles played a major part in falsely linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida and 9/11, gave me a courageous interview in which he said, “I can make no excuses … What happened [in Iraq] was a crime, a crime on a very large scale …”
“Does that make journalists accomplices?” I asked him.
“Yes … unwitting perhaps, but yes.”
[p15] Cameron could not have imagined a modern phenomenon such as WikiLeaks but he would have surely approved. In the current avalanche of official documents, especially those that describe the secret machinations that lead to war – such as the American mania over Iran – the failure of journalism is rarely noted. And perhaps the reason Julian Assange seems to excite such hostility among journalists serving a variety of “lobbies”, those whom George Bush’s press spokesman once called “complicit enablers”, is that WikiLeaks and its truth-telling shames them…
A simple answer to Pilger’s primary question, at least in the United States is, the major news media (radio & network and cable television) is now more than ever the 4th Branch of Government. It is completely “Establishment”, comprised of wealthy celebrity wannabes on one side who cozy up to — instead of objectively challenge — the powerful in industry and government to increase their own personal value to the media conglomerates that write their paychecks, and ex-politicians and political strategists on the other who are still in their political prime, have political stake in what’s coming out of DC with all their connections, and make it clear that their primary role in media is *convincing* the public to support or reject policies from a purely ideological perspective.
I’m not just picking on Fox News. Turn on any so-called “news” show and this is clear. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann gets paid over $7 million a year, Chris Matthews a little less than $5 million. All are preaching, not reporting. All employ, or deploy, the same establishment cheerleaders.
That’s why news these days is all “commentary”, as if we can’t think for ourselves and need to rely on their “opinions.” They should be reporting “what happened” minus the opinion, and nothing more. Until they do, I have to turn them off.
When you check out Pilger’s piece, don’t limit your mind to war coverage. Allow it to roam to news media coverage of any major issue, be it healthcare or energy, education or Social Security, taxes, etc.
Establishment media doesn’t limit its propaganda to one issue. Corporate powers stand to make too much money off of legislation and provide too much in ad dollars to establishment media, to ever limit their brainwashing to one area.
The lessons here. Follow the money in every political “debate” and it’ll lead you to the “real” truth. And most importantly, look at the ones supposedly “informing” you, just as critically as you do those who wish to “rule” you.
Propaganda by Omission: “Children from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq [images you never see in the Establishment Media]”:
