nuclear-news

TODAY . Why we get distorted, unreliable, news about Ukraine and Israel

Israel

It’s got particularly important right now. Most of us are probably still believing  in the Hamas massacre story of, “bodies of babies with their heads cut off” – despite not one shred of evidence of this. With the whole Middle East now a tinderbox, the media is still pushing the Israel storyline that goes like this: 

The Israelis suffered the brutal massacre of 1200 citizens on October 7, 2023. That justifies the massacre of 27,365 Palestinians in Gaza. In the continuing massacre of Palestinians, the Israelis are the victims. To allow humanitarian aid to the desperate , hungry, Gazan survivors is to support terrorism.

Chris McGeal explains the long, complicated, and disgraceful background of media succumbing to pressure – “the CNN network repeatedly aired inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda from Israeli officials and American supporters, often without challenge in interviews.”

He also notes the restrictions on journalists, with the Israeli block on foreign journalists, and with all CNN’s copy on the Israel-Palestine situation having be first approved by the Jerusalem bureau. 

And it’s not new – this subservience - it was the same thing with the coverage of the post 9/11 time, and the unbalanced and ultra-negative coverage of the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and the killing of Afghan civilians by US forces.

Caitlin Johnstone, the not-so-mainstream, and intrepid, excavator of the truth, has also dug up the troubling realities on the biased news that we are fed.

She aims her blowtorch on the careers of media executives moving through corporate media – New York Times – BBC – CNN – “ The corporate media are owned and controlled by plutocrats who have a vested interest in preserving the status quo power structure upon which their kingdoms are built, and state broadcasters like the BBC have the same interest for the same reason. They decide who the executives of those outlets will be, and those executives make policy and hiring decisions which cause the outlet to function in a way that is indistinguishable from state propaganda.”

UKRAINE

She points out not only the advantages to American weapons companies of continuing the Ukraine war indefinitely, but the way in which the media report this – with approval!   “western officials are now going out of their way to communicate to the public that this war will stretch on for many more years to come.”

She quotes the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and CNN - all positively gushing over how good this war is for America - jobs, share prices, company profits - all good!

When it comes to coverage of the actual war and its battles - well, we hear a lot about the dedicated President Zelensky. We hear about the Ukrainian counter-offensive (though it did not seem to work). We get genuinely sad stories about victims of Russian strikes, and rather more dubious stories about Russian atrocities. On the whole, we really don’t hear much about the actual progress of the war, and get a stunning silence about the Ukrainian troop casualties. And there’s little attempt to explain the background to this war. As with the Gaza story, it’s as though the hostilities were new and unprovoked, and the grievances are solely on the side that the USA supports

Mostly the Ukraine coverage is about how world democracy requires more weapons to be bought (by Western tax-payers) and given to Ukraine.

The media – journalists hanging on to their jobs, companies hanging on to their advertisers, and their profits – dance to the corporate line. Are we all dancing along with them, to World War 3 ?

February 7, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's notes