http://pilger.carlton.com/print/133443
In
his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes how
state
propaganda has penetrated the respectable media so that the 'Law
of
Opposites' and the 'Law of Silence' now applies to the reporting of
major
news events. : Pilger :07 Apr 2005
BRINGING YOU THE NEWS - COURTESY OF THE LAW OF
OPPOSITES AND THE LAW OF
SILENCE
Can you imagine the BBC and other
major broadcasters apologising to a rogue
regime which practises racism and
ethnic cleansing; which has "effectively
legalised the use of torture"
(Amnesty); which holds international law in
contempt, having defied hundreds
of UN resolutions and built an apartheid
wall in defiance of the
International Court of Justice; which has
demolished thousands of people's
homes and given its soldiers the right to
assassinate; and whose leader was
judged "personally responsible" for the
massacre of more than 2,000
people?
Can you imagine the BBC saying sorry to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or
other
official demons, for broadcasting an uncensored interview with a
courageous
dissident of that country, a man who spent 19 years in prison,
mostly in
solitary confinement? Of course not.
Yet, last month, the
BBC apologised "confidentially" to a regime with such
a record, so that its
correspondent would be allowed back, having promised
to abide by a system of
censorship that continues to gag the dissident. The
regime is Ariel Sharon's
in Israel, whose war crimes, appalling human
rights record and enduring
lawlessness continue to be granted a certificate
of exemption not only by the
US-dominated west but by respectable
journalism. The Blair government's
collusion with the Sharon gang is
reflected in the BBC's "balanced" coverage
of a repression described by
Nelson Mandela as "the greatest moral issue of
the age". Simon Wilson, the
correspondent made to apologise for a proper,
important and long overdue
interview with Mordechai Vanunu, will know better
in future.
That is hardly new. Pressure applied to the BBC and other
broadcasters by
the Israel "lobby" has been so successful that, as a Glasgow
University
study revealed, many viewers of television news in Britain believe
the
Jewish "settlers" whose illegal and often violent squatting on
Palestinian
land has undermined hopes of real peace, are actually
Palestinians. What is
new is the extent to which insidious state propaganda
has penetrated
sections of the media whose independence has been, until
recently, accepted
by much of the public.
To appreciate this, one
applies the Law of Opposites and the Law of
Silence. The Law of Opposites can
be applied to almost any news broadcast
these days. The long-awaited death of
the Pope is a case in point. By
reversing the river of drivel about the Pope
- "the people's Pope" (almost
universal), "the man who changed history"
(Bush) "a towering figure revered
across all faiths and none" (Blair) - you
have the truth. This deeply
reactionary man held back history and destroyed
lives all over the world
with his fanatical opposition to basic decencies,
such as birth control. He
called this "abominable", spitting the word out,
and so condemned millions,
from starving infants to babies born with Aids. In
Latin America, he
publicly humiliated courageous priests whose "preference
for the poor"
dared to cross the medieval hierarchy he upheld. The claim that
he "brought
down communism" is also the opposite of the truth. As I learned
when I
reported his papal return to his native Poland in 1979, the church in
that
country, whose conservatism he embodied, was a scheming bedfellow of
the
Stalinist regime until the wind changed.
The Law of Opposites can
be applied to the current western government/media
fashion for saving Africa,
known as the Year of Africa. The BBC has hosted
a special conference about
this, just as Blair will host the G8 summit in
July with "eradicating
Africa's poverty" as its theme. This is "Britain's
big chance", wrote Polly
Toynbee in the Guardian, "to engage the rich with
debt relief, aid, fair
trade, carbon emissions and Aids-crippled Africa."
She added, "On debt and
trade, Labour has done well."
The opposite is true. Like the rest of the
impoverished world, African
countries qualify for the vogue enlightenment
only if they agree to impose
on their people the deadly strictures of the
World Trade Organisation, the
IMF and the World Bank - such as the
destruction of tariffs protecting
sustainable economies and the privatising
of natural resources such as
water. At the same time, they are "encouraged"
to buy weapons from British
arms companies, especially if they have a civil
war under way or there is a
tension with a neighbour.
The Law of
Silence is applied to crimes committed not by official demons -
Saddam,
Milosevic et al - but by western governments. An Australian
Broadcasting
Corporation correspondent, Eric Campbell, in recently
promoting a book of his
adventures, described the broadcast "coverage" of
the war in Iraq. "Live
satellite is a travesty," he said. "Basically, if
[the reporters] are on
satellite, they haven?t seen anything. The
correspondent is read the stories
from the wire and told that is what they
have to say on air - that's in the
majority of cases."
That may help to explain why the horror of the
American attack on Fallujah
has yet to be reported by the other major
broadcasters. By contrast,
independent journalists such as Dahr Jamail have
reported doctors
describing the slaughter of civilians carrying white flags
by US marines.
This was videotaped, including the killing of most of a family
of 12. One
witness described how his mother was shot in the head and his
father
through the heart, and how a six year old boy standing over his
dead
parents, crying, was shot dead. None of this has appeared on
British
television. When asked, a BBC spokesperson said, "The conduct of
coalition
forces has been examined at length by BBC programmes." That is
demonstrably
untrue.
Similarly, the Law of Silence applies to the
likely American attack on
Iran. Scott Ritter, the UN weapons inspector who in
1999 disclosed that
Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and was
thereafter
virtually blackballed, has recently revealed that, according to a
Pentagon
official, Iran will be attacked in June. Again, he has been ignored
by most
of the media. As Bush's and Blair's "democracy is on the march in
the
Middle East" propaganda is reported uncritically, the Law of
Silence
applies to the Bush regime's campaign to subvert and overthrow Hugo
Chavez
in Venezuela, arguably the most democratically elected leader in
Latin
America, if not the world (nine elections) whose own "preference for
the
poor" has diverted the proceeds of the world's fourth biggest oil
supplies
to the majority of Venezuelans.
Last year, I did a long
interview with Jeremy Bowen, a BBC reporter I
admire, for a programme about
war correspondents. Although I guessed that
what was really wanted was my
tales of journalistic derring-do on the
frontline, I set about describing how
journalists often produced veiled
propaganda for western power - by accepting
"our" version or by omitting
the unpalatable, such as the atrocities of
western state terrorism: a major
taboo. I emphasised that this censorship was
not conspiratorial, but often
unconscious, even subliminal: such was our
training and grooming. My
contribution did not appear.
First published
in the New Statesman - www.newstatseman.co.uk
John
Pilger's film, Stealing a Nation, about the expulsion of the people of
Diego
Garcia, has won the Royal Television Society's award for the best
documentary
on British television in 2004-5
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