.....

The control of the mass media by a few major multinational corporations plays into the hands of governmental secrecy and propaganda. To some extent media propaganda supports militarism because of a community of interest between the media executives and the government. This seems to have been the case to a great extent in the extraordinary support given by the American mass media to the war in Iraq during its initial years. This support has been documented by the journalist Bill Moyers, as in the following excerpt from interviews he did with other journalists for his television program, "Buying the War" which was broadcast on PBS April 25, 2007: 

 

"Four years ago this spring the Bush administration took leave of reality and plunged our country into a war so poorly planned it soon turned into a disaster. The story of how high officials misled the country has been told. But they couldn't have done it on their own; they needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on . . As the war rages into its fifth year, we look back at those months leading up to the invasion, when our press largely surrendered its independence and skepticism to join with our government in marching to war."

 

" . . BILL MOYERS: What did you think? What does that say to you? That dissent is unpatriotic?

 

PHIL DONOHUE: Well, not only unpatriotic, but it's not good for business . . "

 

"NORM SOLOMAN: I think these executives were terrified of being called soft on terrorism. They absolutely knew that the winds were blowing at hurricane force politically and socially in the United States. And rather than stand up for journalism, they just blew with the wind . . "

 

"DAN RATHER: Fear is in every newsroom in the country. And fear of what? Well, it's the fear it's a combination of: if you don't go along to get along, you're going to get the reputation of being a troublemaker. There's also the fear that, you know, particularly in networks, they've become huge, international conglomerates. They have big needs, legislative needs, repertory needs in Washington. Nobody has to send you a memo to tell you that that's the case . . You know. And that puts a seed in your mind; of well, if you stick your neck out, if you take the risk of going against the grain with your reporting, is anybody going to back you up?"

In a companion broadcast Bill Moyers recalls the role of American media propaganda in earlier wars:

 

"The Spanish-American War is often seen as a conflict almost initiated and fed by propaganda. Publisher of THE NEW YORK JOURNAL Randolph Hearst is commonly believed to have told a reporter in Cuba, "You furnish the pictures, I'll provide the war." Regardless of the veracity of that tale, Hearst's claim in the press that Spanish mines had sunk the Maine, pushed the nation toward war. His paper's notorious and ugly characterization of the Spanish and generous helpings of melodrama and sentiment became known as 'Yellow Journalism.'

 

World War I marked the American government's first official foray into creating propaganda. In order to jumpstart enlistment and sell war bonds to a somewhat isolationist public, President Wilson formed the Committee of Public Information. The CPI produced posters, films and other material that equated the American cause with democracy, hearth and home. American propaganda took its tone from British and French efforts which stressed the brutality of "The Hun" and the "rape" of neutral Belgium. Worries about immigration and European revolutions became prominent in government propaganda in the post-war Red Scare."

 

To some extent media propaganda is directed by secret government infiltration of the media. Only once has the U.S. Congress held substantial hearings into government infiltration and manipulation of the media. This was the 1975 hearings of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the Church Committee after its chairman, Senator Frank Church. Few people would know about the Church Committee hearings were it not for an article by the reporter Carl Bernstein, although Bernstein's report was not accepted for publication by "main-line" media and he was only able to publish it in the alternative press, the Rolling Stone Magazine (see Bernstein 1977). The Bernstein article reveals that the Church Committee found extensive secret CIA infiltration of the mass media, including the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc. The data revealed by Bernstein and the Church Committee were only the tip of the iceberg, however. As Bernstein says, the Committee was blocked from going further with its investigation:

 

"Despite the evidence of widespread CIA use of journalists, the Senate Intelligence Committee and its staff decided against questioning any of the reporters, editors, publishers or broadcast executives whose relationships with the Agency are detailed in CIA files.

 

According to sources in the Senate and the Agency, the use of journalists was one of two areas of inquiry which the CIA went to extraordinary lengths to curtail. The other was the Agency's continuing and extensive use of academics for recruitment and information gathering purposes.

 

In both instances, the sources said, former directors Colby and Bush and CIA special counsel Mitchell Rogovin were able to convince key members of the committee that full inquiry or even limited public disclosure of the dimensions of the activities would do irreparable damage to the nation's intelligence gathering apparatus, as well as to the reputations of hundreds of individuals."

 

The mass media, in recent times, has been increasingly used as an important weapon of choice in what is called "psychological warfare." A particularly detailed description is provided by the article CIA Psychological Warfare Operations: Case Studies in Chile, Jamaica, and Nicaragua published by the psychologist Fred Landis in Science for the People Magazine, January/February 1982. Unfortunately, the article is not available on the Internet. It is rich in detail, and the following quotation gives only an overview:

 

"In the last decade, four American nations have chosen a socialist road to development. -- Chile, Jamaica, Nicaragua, and Grenada. In the first three cases the CIA responded, among other actions by virtually taking over the major newspaper in that country and using it as an instrument of destabilization . . "

 

"The appropriation of newspapers by the CIA proceeds through certain discrete, identifiable stages. These include: using an international press association, firing many of the staff, modernizing the physical plant, changing the format of the front page, using subliminal propaganda, assassinating the character of government ministers, promoting a counter-elite to replace the socialist government, spreading disinformation, using divisive propaganda to create artificial conflicts within the society, dusting off stock CIA stories and themes, coordinating the propaganda effort with an economic, diplomatic, and paramilitary offensive, and generally following the blueprint for psychological warfare as outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual of Psychological Operations."

 

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Landis article are the illustrations from the front pages of newspapers after they are taken over for psychological warfare. They headline stories of atrocities and violence that can only strike fear into the viewer. What is so remarkable is the extent to which these types of themes may be now be found the front pages of major "tabloid" newspapers and the screens of right wing television networks, not only in countries under attack, but in the countries of the North including North America and Europe. In these cases the media has become an agent of psychological warfare that instills a climate of fear in the average citizen, and as it has been said, "fear is the language of empire."

One particular way that the mass media supports the culture of war is to perpetuate the myth that warfare is inevitable because it is part of human nature. For some detail on this, see Adams (1989).

 

9. Identification of an "enemy"

Enemy images have been promoted throughout history. After World War II, the main enemy images were those of the Cold War: the enemy of "godless communism" in the West, and the enemy of "capitalist imperialists" in the East. Those of us who opposed the Cold War found ourselves in opposition to an enormously complex propaganda machine that needed an enemy in order to justify national policies.

There was a remarkable moment at the end of the Cold War when, at a summit meeting, the Soviet premier Gorbachev told the American President Reagan that "I am going to deprive you of your enemy." At that point it became urgent for the West that a new enemy had to be found in order to justify the war machine.

The new enemy was found: the Islamic world. In an influential article in the journal Foreign Affairs, the Harvard professor Samuel Huntington came up with the phrase "clash of civilizations" that had been developed in his association with CIA think-tanks. And, after a few years, the new enemy image was reinforced by the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. 

Under the umbrella of these two sets of over-arching enemy images, there are dozens of other sets of enemy images related to local wars and histories of wars, ranging from Tutsi versus Hutu to Cuba versus the United States. 

Enemy images are propagated by the mass media and educational systems, as described in other sections of this book, and they are so pervasive that we come to take them for granted, forgetting how they may have changed from one generation to another and how yesterdays' enemy has become today's ally.

https://www.culture-of-peace.info/books/history/information.html

 

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Moscow reacts to arrest of German couple for ‘illegal’ RT broadcasts
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted the arrest coincided with the International Day for Universal Access to Information (IDUA to I)

 

Berlin has apparently opted to celebrate the International Day for Universal Access to Information with arrests, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said, after a couple in Germany was taken into custody on suspicion of broadcasting RT and other Russian TV channels via the internet.

Almost all Russian media organizations were banned in the EU in March 2022 after the conflict between Moscow and Kiev broke out.

The couple was arrested last week on the eve of the International Day for Universal Access to Information, marked annually on September 28. Speaking during a press conference at the UN on Saturday, Lavrov suggested the arrest was a questionable way to celebrate the occasion.

“I would like to speak of how this day is celebrated in Germany. It has been reported that a married couple has been arrested in Germany, they are suspected of organizing the broadcast of several Russian television channels on the internet,” Russia’s top diplomat stated.

According to German authorities, the couple has been offering “several sanctioned Russian TV channels to their customers via an IP-TV service since at least the beginning of 2022.” Police in the city of Karlsruhe raided the couple’s apartment, seizing “extensive technical equipment, written evidence and 40,000 euros ($44,686) in cash.”

READ MORE: Germany arrests couple for ‘illegal’ RT broadcasts

A district court has also issued an asset seizure order against the couple for some €120,000 ($134,000) in “illegal income” from the alleged activity. The two are now facing at least one year in prison, should they be found guilty of violating the Foreign Trade Act. The investigation is still ongoing and additional charges could potentially be brought against them.

https://www.rt.com/news/604967-lavrov-germany-arrest-rt/

 

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Western Media Urges Public: Believe Our Lies, Not Your Own Eyes   BY Brian Berletic

 

 

In a recent London Telegraph article titled, “The British travel bloggers ‘sugarcoating’ China’s Uyghur problem to the delight of Beijing,” readers are told that “more than one million Uyghurs are believed to be detained in re-education camps,” in Xinjiang and that Western tourists traveling to the region and seeing no evidence at all of this or other claims made by the Western media for years, are simply toeing the line of the Chinese government for clicks and cash.

The article claims that the Chinese government has “given them a helping hand” by providing visas enabling easier access to China, including the western region of Xinjiang, trying to make efforts by Beijing to counter baseless Western propaganda with transparency appear sinister.

To refute what tourists have seen with their own eyes and relayed through their travel vlogs, the Telegraph quotes Daria Impiombato, “a cyber analyst” at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) who claimed, “vloggers with large platforms had a responsibility to inform themselves and to be sceptical.”

By “inform themselves,” the ASPI analyst almost certainly means toeing the line of the US government ASPI itself helps define because unlike the tourists the Telegraph obliquely smears throughout its article but ultimately admits, “there is no suggestion any of the vloggers are acting at the behest of the Chinese government or receiving its money,” ASPI receives the bulk of its funds (PDF) from the US government, other Western governments, and Western arms manufacturers (PDF) like Lockheed Martin, Thales, Saab, and Boeing.

The US government has used claims of “genocide” and “forced labor” as a pretext to level sanctions against China

China Responded to Very Real, Very Extensive Terrorism… 

For years, the US government, mainstream Western media outlets, and a large network of US government-funded organizations – including ASPI – have attempted to perpetuate the myth of a “Uyghur genocide” taking place in China’s western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. This followed years of US government-sponsored separatism and terrorism that shook the region, spread across both China and the rest of Asia, before spanning half the globe and reaching battlefields in Syria.

In 2014, the BBC would report on the vicious terrorism plaguing China:

In June 2012, six Uighurs reportedly tried to hijack a plane from Hotan to Urumqi before they were overpowered by passengers and crew. 

There was bloodshed in April 2013 and in June that year, 27 people died in Shanshan county after police opened fire on what state media described as a mob armed with knives attacking local government buildings.

At least 31 people were killed and more than 90 suffered injuries in May 2014 when two cars crashed through an Urumqi market and explosives were tossed into the crowd. China called it a “violent terrorist incident”. 

It followed a bomb and knife attack at Urumqi’s south railway station in April, which killed three and injured 79 others. 

In July, authorities reported an attack on government offices in Yarkant, leaving 96 dead. The imam of China’s largest mosque, Jume Tahir, was stabbed to death days later. 

In September, about 50 died in blasts in Luntai county outside police stations, a market and a shop. Details of both incidents are unclear, and activists have contested some accounts of incidents in state media.

Some violence has also spilled out of Xinjiang. A March stabbing spree in Kunming in Yunnan province that killed 29 people was blamed on Xinjiang separatists, as was an October 2013 incident where a car ploughed into a crowd and burst into flames in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

The BBC also noted:

China has often blamed ETIM – the East Turkestan Islamic Movement – or people inspired by ETIM for violent incidents both in Xinjiang and beyond the region’s borders.  

ETIM is said to want to establish an independent East Turkestan in China. The US State Department in 2006 said ETIM is “the most militant of the ethnic Uighur separatist groups”.

“East Turkestan” (sometimes spelled East Turkistan) refers to a proposed independent region separatists seek to carve Xinjiang off from China to create.

The US government, through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funds a multitude of organizations who officially pursue independence, referring to Xinjiang as “East Turkistan” and as being “occupied” by the Chinese government. This includes the World Uyghur Congress, the Uyghur Human Rights Project, the Campaign for Uyghurs, and the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database Project.

The World Uyghur Congress on its website, for example, claims it declares an “opposition movement against Chinese occupation of East Turkistan.” Despite openly pursuing separatism in China, it is listed as a grantee of US NED money.

In response to US-sponsored separatism and the brutal terrorism used to achieve it, China initiated sweeping security measures, infrastructure projects, education and training initiatives, and job placement programs to root out extremism and the poverty in the remote region that made many among the population susceptible to extremism to begin with.

In turn, the US government has used claims of “genocide” and “forced labor” as a pretext to level sanctions against China and in particular businesses across China hiring Uyghurs from Xinjiang. In addition to hurting China’s economy overall, the objective is to reintroduce the socio-economic conditions across Xinjiang amid which extremism, terrorism, and instability can once again flourish.

Two Different Approaches to Terrorism 

Despite the Western media having openly and eagerly reported on rampant violence consuming Xinjiang a decade ago, it now attempts to depict any mention of terrorism and the need to address it as Chinese propaganda. The Telegraph article at one point questions claims by British tourists traveling in Xinjiang who concluded security measures were for everyone’s safety by claiming it, “rams home the government line that enhanced security in Xinjiang “is not an overreaction” due to the threat of terrorism from religious extremists and ethnic separatists.” 

Just one terrorist attack was all it took before the US embarked on its “Global War on Terrorism,” including the invasion and occupation of both Afghanistan and Iraq, despite neither nation playing a role in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Half a million Iraqi children alone would die from US sanctions in the lead up to the 2003 invasion, another 1 million Iraqis would perish in the war and occupation that followed.
And even as the US lectures China on its far more constructive response to terrorism within its own borders, the US itself had bombed the very terror groups hiding in Afghanistan China was trying to reform and put to work on the other side of the border.

As recently as 2018 NBC News in its article, “U.S. targets Chinese Uighur militants as well as Taliban fighters in Afghanistan,” would report:

The U.S. military says it carried out a series of punishing bombings last weekend of Taliban militant camps that also support a separatist Chinese terror group. 

A bombing raid Sunday on a region bordering China and Tajikistan set a record for the number of precision-guided munitions launched at one time from a B-52 bomber, according to Air Force Maj. Gen. James Hecker, who spoke to reporters at the Pentagon.

While the US accuses China of having detained “more than one million Uyghurs,” the US in its response to terrorism tortured, displaced, and killed millions around the globe. The areas ravaged by America’s global war remain to this day mired in violence and ruination, while China’s Xinjiang region thrives.

Believe US Lies, Not Your Own Eyes…

Associated Press in its 2021 article, “Terror & tourism: Xinjiang eases its grip, but fear remains,” admitted finding no evidence of mass concentration camps, torture, or mass murder, or even “cultural genocide” and instead found training programs to give locals viable employment, scholarships for young prospective imams to travel abroad to learn more about their faith, and mosques where AP photographed Muslims answering the call to prayer.

The article begins by admitting:

The razor wire that once ringed public buildings in China’s far northwestern Xinjiang region is nearly all gone. 

Gone, too, are the middle school uniforms in military camouflage and the armored personnel carriers rumbling around the homeland of the Uyghurs. Gone are many of the surveillance cameras that once glared down like birds from overhead poles, and the eerie eternal wail of sirens in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar.

If AP visited Xinjiang in 2021 and admittedly found no evidence of “genocide” or “abuses” in its still heavily biased reporting, why does the Telegraph find it difficult to believe Western tourists traveling through Xinjiang find the situation has only further improved since then?

In essence, the Telegraph and the special interests its narratives serve seek to convince the public not to trust their own eyes and experience, but instead defer to narratives they themselves present, often with little or no evidence.

Unironically, the Telegraph’s article concludes by complaining that China has “seized and is controlling the narrative.” China did this by opening up Xinjiang for the world to see for themselves the truth and enabling people to compare and contrast what their own eyes see versus what the Western media and the US government have claimed.

What the public is concluding is that the same US government that has lied its way into the various wars that constituted its “Global War on Terror,” is also lying about China, admittedly a nation the US seeks to undermine, threaten, and if possible, divide and destroy as it has done to nations like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya.  While the Telegraph seeks to reassert Western control over “the narrative,” it is quite clear that through a combination of waning credibility in the West and growing transparency in China, that will be difficult, if not impossible to currently do.

Just as is the case with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, the West’s inability to sell its version of reality to the global public has resulted in waves of increasingly tightened censorship across Western-controlled social media platforms. As the US government directs platforms like Meta and YouTube to purge accounts challenging US propaganda regarding Ukraine and Russia, it is only a matter of time before those challenging US propaganda regarding China are likewise silenced.

This applies not only to geopolitical commentators, but even apolitical travel vloggers.

There is an imperative now more than ever for the multipolar world to develop alternatives to platforms like YouTube and Meta (banned in Russia) and even X, where the global public can share information, grow their audiences, sustain their work, all out of the reach of growing Western censorship.

Smear pieces like that in the Telegraph are merely the first shots across the bow of what will certainly be an increasingly bigger and more desperate information war. It is important that governments and individuals alike across the multipolar world prepare for the many more shots to follow

 

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

https://journal-neo.su/2024/10/02/western-media-urges-public-believe-our-lies-not-your-own-eyes/

 

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