JANUARY 2008

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"Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to the totalitarian state." Noam Chomsky

December 2007: European leaders yesterday agreed to send up to 1,800 police, judges, and administrators to Kosovo in its biggest foreign policy gamble, aimed at nurturing the breakaway Balkan province towards full statehood. Guardian Ian Traynor in Brussels

"The Kosovans and the Serbs no longer want to live
together," said Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president."Our goal is that Europe does not explode."
despite the fact that they are not Kosovan(Serbian) citizens but legally refugees or land-grabbers - they are in fact Albanians -

another use of words : "want to entice" the Serbs........ Well, men dear, do they "want to entice" you too in Ireland, with visits from the Queen of England, Prime Ministers Merkel and Sarkozy, to join their future Empire to be ruled by bankers and their yes-men ?; where Laws against privacy are daily tightening and following a Stalinized model? If you vote "Yes" well fools you are, your sons to the army and your women to the roads.Also why not a thousand wolves and bears here too, that they are re-installing in Europe to prevent people taking pleasure in Nature's wild woods and moors and mountains, or enjoying camping self-resources beyond the hotel networks!!Civilisation! Civilisation! "Western" "Civilisation"!

IRELAND!! : Are you prepared to vote for a constitutional treaty that "gambles" with our nation states and declares as "breakaway" a province that has been stolen by Tito primarily, then NATO and the UN,USA and the EU to satisfy their political perspectives (unrevealed to the general public). Serbia is a country, a nation state that was part of Tito's Yugoslavia. The Muslim Albanians already have a country and in addition to pushing in thousands of people into Kosovo since 1945 they are also pushing into Macedonia, enraged that they can no longer pay a bribe to a border post guard for a visa. These Albanians have already had eight years to work with a government authority in Kosovo but have proved themselves unable to run a civil society. Only three years ago they were beheading Serbs and Montenegrins on their corrupt rampages comparative to Wahabi behaviour in Bosnia(The arrested 15 members of a Wahhabi terror group have been charged by the Serbian authorities for planning terror attacks on various locations in the capital Belgrade that were to include bombings of the US Embassy in Serbia - having detailed maps with specific markings for potential targets.December 6, 2007 www.serbianna.com )and Iraq. Those men brought in by USA to fight Milosevic and the Serbs, are now being ordered out of Bosnia and back to the Middle-East or Albania. Otherwise the Kosovo region has been regarded during that time as a drug-trading, Orthodox church razeing , and girl and women trafficking mafia state.The IRA can thank their lucky daisies that the Peace Process has now given them civil rights throughout Ireland, and that on a date only just prior to the present intransigent stance of Sarkozy (the new Blair-bully of Europe) and the members of the European Commission .

NEITHER CYPRUS OR ROMANIA ARE PREPARED TO RECOGNISE KOSOVO ALSO THE CZECHS ARE RELUCTANT TO AGREE TO THIS PRECEDENT OF EU LAND THIEVING OR FURTHER STRESS IN THE BALKANS WHICH PRIOR TO GERMANY BANK ROLLING SLOVENIA OUT OF THE YUGOSLAV FEDERATION WAS A WELL ORGANISED SOCIALIST FEDERATION. Now Slovenia has been given "Presidency" of the EU to sort the problem, the "yugoslav" problem.(European
Commission Vice-President Margot Wallstroem said on Tuesday,8th Jan. : The commission "fully supports Slovenia's presidency priorities" during its term at the helm of the 27-nation bloc in the first half of the year. )
........TITO'S YUGOSLAVIA : IT WAS A TOUGH REGIME BUT THE BALKAN TRIBES ARE THE STRONGHOLD OF THE ANCIENT SURVIVORS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF INTEMPERATE RAIDS, INVASIONS AND WEATHER HAZARDS.

Dr.Srdja Trifkovic:" Because the mainstream media follow a form of editorial straight jacket that is highly reminiscent of the agitprop in the old Soviet block. Whatever does not fit into a preconceived framework is simply ignored. If the editorial policy of a major newspaper or a broadcast network is that there is no alternative to Kosovo independence, that in the long term the Serbs will budge and Russians will cave in, they do not want to disturb their “reality” with inconvenient facts. They do not want to be burdened with the complexities of this multifaceted issue that would undermine their nicely packaged, simplistic view of Kosovo as a budding member of the “international community,” capable of respecting minority rights and following democratic principles and neo-liberal principles of the Western world. That, of course, will never happen and cannot happen for structural reasons, for cultural reasons, for historic reasons.  As we have seen with many other issues concerning the former Yugoslavia – or, for that matter, with the challenge of Islam to the Western world – the mainstream media is following a strictly ideological approach that is not amenable to rational argument."Dr. Srdja Trifkovic of The Lord Byron Foundation

ZNet Commentary
Exposing The Guardians Of Power December 01, 2007
By John Pilger

What has changed in the way we see the world? For as long as I can remember, the relationship of journalists with power has been hidden behind a bogus objectivity and notions of an "apathetic public" that justify a mantra of "giving the public what they want". What has changed is the public's perception and knowledge. No longer trusting what they read and see and hear, people in western democracies are questioning as never before, particularly via the internet. Why, they ask, is the great majority of news sourced to authority and its vested interests? Why are many journalists the agents of power, not people?

Much of this bracing new thinking can be traced to a remarkable UK website, www.medialens.org. The creators of Media Lens, David Edwards and David Cromwell, assisted by their webmaster, Olly Maw, have had such an extraordinary influence since they set up the site in 2001 that, without their meticulous and humane analysis, the full gravity of the debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan might have been consigned to bad journalism's first draft of bad history. Peter Wilby put it well in his review of Guardians of Power: the Myth of the Liberal Media, a drawing-together of Media Lens essays published by Pluto Press, which he described as "mercifully free of academic or political jargon and awesomely well researched. All journalists should read it, because the Davids make a case that demands to be answered."

That appeared in the New Statesman. Not a single major newspaper reviewed the most important book about journalism I can remember. Take the latest Media Lens essay, "Invasion - a Comparison of Soviet and Western Media Performance". Written with Nikolai Lanine, who served in the Soviet army during its 1979-89 occupation of Afghanistan, it draws on Soviet-era newspaper archives, comparing the propaganda of that time with current western media performance. They are revealed as almost identical.

Like the reported "success" of the US "surge" in Iraq, the Soviet equivalent allowed "poor peasants [to work] the land peacefully". Like the Americans and British in Iraq and Afghanistan, Soviet troops were liberators who became peacekeepers and always acted in "self-defence". The BBC's Mark Urban's revelation of the "first real evidence that President Bush's grand design of toppling a dictator and forcing a democracy into the heart of the Middle East could work" (Newsnight, 12 April 2005) is almost word for word that of Soviet commentators claiming benign and noble intent behind Moscow's actions in Afghanistan. The BBC's Paul Wood, in thrall to the 101st Airborne, reported that the Americans "must win here if they are to leave Iraq . . . There is much still to do." That precisely was the Soviet line.

The tone of Media Lens's questions to journalists is so respectful that personal honesty is never questioned. Perhaps that explains a reaction that can be both outraged and comic. The BBC presenter Gavin Esler, champion of Princess Diana and Ronald Reagan, ranted at Media Lens emailers as "fascistic" and "beyond redemption". Roger Alton, editor of the London Observer and champion of the invasion of Iraq, replied to one ultra-polite member of the public: "Have you been told to write in by those cunts at Media Lens?" When questioned about her environmental reporting, Fiona Harvey, of the Financial Times, replied: "You're pathetic . . . Who are you?"

The message is: how dare you challenge us in such a way that might expose us? How dare you do the job of true journalism and keep the record straight? Peter Barron, the editor of the BBC's Newsnight, took a different approach. "I rather like them. David Edwards and David Cromwell are unfailingly polite, their points are well argued and sometimes they're plain right."

David Edwards believes that "reason and honesty are enhanced by compassion and compromised by greed and hatred. A journalist who is sincerely motivated by concern for the suffering of others is more likely to report honestly . . ." Some might call this an exotic view. I don't. Neither does the Gandhi Foundation, which on 2 December will present Media Lens with the prestigious Gandhi International Peace Award. I salute them.


What is Media Lens?
www.medialens.org

MediaLens is a response based on our conviction that mainstream newspapers and broadcasters provide a profoundly distorted picture of our world. We are convinced that the increasingly centralised, corporate nature of the media means that it acts as a de facto propaganda system for corporate and other establishment interests. The costs incurred as a result of this propaganda, in terms of human suffering and environmental degradation, are incalculable.

In seeking to understand the basis and operation of this systematic distortion, we flatly reject all conspiracy theories and point instead to the inevitably corrupting effects of free market forces operating on and through media corporations seeking profit in a society dominated by corporate power. We reject the idea that journalists are generally guilty of self-censorship and conscious lying; we believe that the all-too-human tendency to self-deception accounts for their conviction that they are honest purveyors of uncompromised truth. We all have a tendency to believe what best suits our purpose - highly paid, highly privileged editors and journalists are no exception.

MediaLens has grown out of our frustration with the unwillingness, or inability, of the mainstream media to tell the truth about the real causes and extent of many of the problems facing us, such as human rights abuses, poverty, pollution and climate change. Because much modern suffering is rooted in the unlimited greed of corporate profit-maximising - in the subordination of people and planet to profit - it seems to us to be a genuine tragedy that society has for so long been forced to rely on the corporate media for 'accurate' information. It seems clear to us that quite obvious conflicts of interest mean it is all but impossible for the media to provide this information. We did not expect the Soviet Communist Party's newspaper Pravda to tell the truth about the Communist Party, why should we expect the corporate press to tell the truth about corporate power?

We believe that media 'neutrality' is a deception that often serves to hide systematic pro-corporate bias. 'Neutrality' most often involves 'impartially' reporting dominant establishment views, while ignoring all non-establishment views. In reality it is not possible for journalists to be neutral - regardless of whether we do or do not overtly give our personal opinion, that opinion is always reflected in the facts we choose to highlight or ignore. While we seek to correct corporate distortions as honestly as possible, our concern is not to affect some spurious 'objectivity' but to engage with the world to do whatever we can to reduce suffering and to resist the forces that seek to subordinate human well-being to profit. We do not believe that passively observing human misery without attempting to intervene constitutes 'neutrality'. We do not believe that 'neutrality' can ever be deemed more important than doing all in our power to help others.

We accept the Buddhist assertion that while greed and hatred distort reason, compassion empowers it. Our aim is to increase rational awareness, critical thought and compassion, and to decrease greed, hatred and ignorance. Our goal is not at all to attack, insult or anger individual editors or journalists but to highlight significant examples of the systemic distortion that is facilitating appalling crimes against humanity: the failure to communicate the truth of exactly who is responsible for the slaughter of 500,000 Iraqi children under five; the silence surrounding the motives and devastating consequences of corporate obstruction of action on climate change; the true nature, motives and consequences of 'globalisation'; the corporate degradation and distortion of democratic society and culture. Our hope is that by so doing we can help all of us to free ourselves from delusions. In the age of global warming and globalised exploitation these delusions threaten an extraordinary, and perhaps terminal, disaster - they should not be allowed to go unchallenged.

We have to acknowledge the debt we owe to Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, and in particular to their brilliant (and largely ignored) text, 'Manufacturing Consent - The Political Economy of the Mass Media'. (Pantheon, 1988) We recommend Herman and Chomsky's "propaganda model of media control" as a basis for understanding the manner in which truth is filtered from, rather than consciously obstructed by, the modern media system.

We hope that this website will help to turn bystanders into compassionate actors. As historian Howard Zinn has written:

"Society has varying and conflicting interests; what is called objectivity is the disguise of one of these interests - that of neutrality. But neutrality is a fiction in an unneutral world. There are victims, there are executioners, and there are bystanders... and the 'objectivity' of the bystander calls for inaction while other heads fall."

"I recommend a new website edited by... [writers David Edwards and David Cromwell], whose factual, inquiring analysis of the reporting of Iraq, Afghanistan and other issues has already drawn the kind of defensive spleen that shows how unused to challenge and accountability much of journalism, especially that calling itself liberal, has become. The address is www.MediaLens.org." John Pilger, New Statesman, March 22, 2002)

Some questions to Media Lens answered on their website:

What authority do you have to speak out on media issues, given that you’re not even working journalists yourselves?

Everyone should have the right to speak out on issues they feel are important. Why should only media professionals be allowed to cast judgement, if at all, on their own profession? That’s elitism and we reject it totally. In any case, we've been active within the media for ten years, with all kinds of experience, encounters, interviews, friends, contacts and so on. We've also been analysing the media quite intensely for years - that should perhaps count for something. Chomsky and Herman aren't media professionals (this nonsensical argument has been used against them too, by the way). It's an irrational argument, intended to marginalise the public.

Who/what inspired you to set up Media Lens ?

There are many writers, activists, groups and individuals that have inspired us, and continue to inspire us. We owe a particular debt to Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, especially their classic book, 'Manufacturing Consent - The Political Economy of the Mass Media' (Pantheon, 1988). We recommend Herman and Chomsky's "propaganda model of media control" as a basis for understanding the manner in which truth is filtered from, rather than consciously obstructed by, the modern media system.

Also, we both respect and admire the work of Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR, a media watchdog based in the United States: see www.fair.org ). We both felt that such an operation, or something like it, should be active in the UK (and elsewhere).

We point to the inevitably corrupting effects of ‘market forces’ operating on, and through, media corporations seeking profit in a society dominated by corporate power. We reject the idea that mainstream journalists are generally guilty of self-censorship and conscious lying; we believe that the all-too-human tendency to self-deception accounts for their conviction that they are honest purveyors of uncompromised truth. We all have a tendency to believe what best suits our purpose; highly paid, highly privileged editors and journalists are no exception. In any case, professionals whose attitudes and opinions most closely serve the needs of corporate power, whether in media institutions or elsewhere, are more likely to be filtered through to positions of authority within such institutions.

Media Lens has grown out of our perception of the unwillingness, indeed inability, of the mainstream media to tell the truth about the real causes and extent of many of the problems facing humanity, such as poverty, human rights abuses, war, pollution and climate change. Because much modern suffering is rooted in the unlimited greed of corporate profit-maximising - in the subordination of people and planet to profit - it seems to us to be a genuine tragedy that society has for so long been forced to rely on the corporate media for 'accurate' information. Obvious conflicts of interest mean it is all but impossible for the media to provide this information. We did not expect the Soviet Communist Party's newspaper Pravda to tell the truth about the Communist Party, why should we expect the corporate press to tell the truth about corporate power?