Corporate Media – shame on you!
I lived in communist Russia for a year (1970-1971). Talking politics to Russian colleagues after mutual trust was established, they told me that they knew that as far as they were concerned what they read in their approved newspapers, for example Pravda (truth), or what they listened to on their television and radio, was propaganda and not a word was believed. The tragedy in the West is that people believe they have free corporate media, and tend to believe far more than they should, especially when the news concerns wars in faraway places with people of different cultures and religion, the "other".
Replacing state control by powerful ultra rich media moguls and powerful corporations does not make the media free. Journalists will follow their masters' voices to simply select events, news and stories to reinforce the prejudices of those powerful owners, enhance their profits and advance the interests of their corporations. The propaganda of western media is more subtle, which makes it more effective, but it is propaganda nevertheless.
John Pilger, in the New Statesman, urges people to develop a healthy cynicism towards the media thus:
This acute scepticism, this skill of reading between the lines, is urgently needed in supposedly free societies today. Take the reporting of state-sponsored war. The oldest cliché is that truth is the first casualty of war. I disagree. Journalism is the first casualty. Not only that: it has become a weapon of war, a virulent censorship that goes unrecognised in the United States, Britain and other democracies; censorship by omission, whose power is such that, in war, it can mean the difference between life and death for people in faraway countries, such as Iraq.
In his excellent film "The War You Don't See", he powerfully demonstrates the complicity of the media in the deception of the public to justify endless wars.
It is a tragedy and a fact of life that it is easy to demonise a country or a minority particularly if the country has a different culture and religion. An example is the demonising of Iraq prior to the war by, among other things, simply replacing the country of 27 million people with the name of one man “Saddam Hussein”. The awesome power unleashed by governments, corporate media, and interested groups to convince the population in Britain and America of why a war on Iraq should be waged, using distortion of intelligence, lies and half truths, was breathtaking. It reached a point where many of my close friends actually believed that if something was not done about Iraq quickly, bombs and missiles would be raining down on London and New York. An atmosphere was created where honest journalists and commentators felt afraid of saying anything to counter these lies for fear of being branded unpatriotic. George Bush’s statement after 9/11 “you are either with us or with the terrorists” terrified people from speaking out.
The military-industrial-security complex has enormous influence which it can and will bring to bear on governments, the broadcasting and the print media, to shape the news agenda and the parameters in which debate is conducted, so that it can serve the interests of corporations and powerful individuals to whom wars present an opportunity to make money. Most people make up their minds from reading headlines and listening to short snappy news items. They have neither the time nor the inclination to delve into issues by reading several sources, cross referencing and checking what they are being fed, particularly if the news concerns a foreign country.
I weep at present day Iraq that I left about 48 years ago as a 17 year old on a scholarship to study in Britain. It is now a broken country plagued by terrorism and sectarianism unleashed by an illegal war. The attendant chaos and lack of basic services have made life hell for its people, and for the foreseeable future they are condemned to a fearful and insecure existence. President Obama called the Iraq war “a dumb war”; Ed Miliband, the new leader of the labour party, apologised for the Iraq war thus:
.....wrong because that war was not a last resort, because we did not build sufficient alliances and because we undermined the United Nations.
This is a good start, and long overdue, but where are the apologies to the four million displaced, and to the hundreds of thousands of war widows and orphans? Where are the apologies for the children born and yet to be born with birth defects as a result of the use of depleted uranium ammunition? Yet ministers who took this country into war reacted to this limited apology with anger and annoyance. Why? Surely saying sorry for an illegal war that has blighted the lives of millions is the very least of what is required, and totally inadequate.
If journalists, commentators and lawyers had been braver and more diligent in challenging the politicians and the war lobby, in ways that resonated with the average citizen, we might have prevented the suffering of millions of Iraqis and thousands of Americans and British, and up to a trillion dollars in cost to American and British taxpayers.
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Dr Adnan Al-Daini took early retirement in 2005 as a principal lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at a British University. His PhD in Mechanical Engineering is from Birmingham University, UK. He has published numerous applied scientific research papers covering heat transfer, fluid flow and energy utilization in many industrial applications. He is a British citizen born in Iraq. Since retirement he has devoted his time and energy to building bridges and understanding between minority communities, particularly the Muslim community and the wider community in the South West of England. He was Chair of Devon Racial Equality Council between 2007/8. Adnan is a contributing writer for the Huffington Post.
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URL: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2011/07/04/corporate-media-shame-on-you
