There are other words for it, of course. Narrative Control. Message Management. PR. Framing. Spin. Disinformation. Media Bias. Hasbara. Corporate Communications. Mainstream Journalism. Propaganda.
But plainly put, it’s Lies, Lies, and more Lies. Lies are the lifeblood of the world we live in. The American-dominated international order is rooted in violence and exploitation, but lies are its language, its public face, and its spiritual essence.
The American novelist Mary McCarthy once said, [of someone who supported Stalin’s show trials] “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”
She might well have been speaking of today’s mainstream media, both its corporate-owned and state-funded varieties. What McCarthy was saying was not, of course, that literally every word was a lie in and of itself, but that even factual statements become part of a lie when they are included in a story whose main premise a flagrant lie. Spelling a prisoner’s name correctly, and getting the date of their execution right, is irrelevant when the story falsely says that they were guilty of a crime they didn’t commit. Faux-accuracy around minor details merely adds an aura of credibility to the lies being peddled as truth.
The most effective purveyors of lies are precisely the ‘quality’ media, like the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Globe and Mail, Associated Press, the BBC, CNN, and the CBC, which are at pains to foster the illusion that they are committed upholding the highest journalistic standards. When it comes to covering stories in which the interests of the Empire are not at stake, they can indeed often be relied on to present a relatively accurate version of the facts. If the Toronto Star or the CBC tell you that a truck full of cabbages overturned and spilled its contents, you can assume, with a high degree of probability, that there were in fact cabbages rolling on the highway.
If they tell you that the U.S. is bombing some country to enforce the ‘rules-based international order,’ you can take it as a certainty that they are lying. Not lying about the bombing – the U.S. bombs some country or other pretty much every day of the year; what would be really newsworthy would be a day on which they didn’t bomb anybody – but lying about the reason for the bombing.
The very phrase ‘rules-based international order’ is an example of a lie concocted to mislead the public. It was invented as an alternative to ‘international law’ to draw attention away from the inconvenient fact that the U.S. and its NATO allies constantly violate international law. The purely ideological and content-less concept of ‘rules-based international order’ was invented to sound good while disguising the fact that there are no rules except those imposed by the United States. The essence of the ‘rules-based international order’ can be stated in three words: ‘Obey or Die.’
In fact, the true meaning of all the empty phrases about ‘democratic values’ and ‘human rights’ and ‘freedom’ and the ‘rule of law’ can now be summarized in one word: Gaza.
In Gaza, the world watches as day after day, the Israeli Defence Force, the army that even now obscenely proclaims itself ‘the most moral army in the world,’ commits genocide. And Israel’s allies – more accurately, its accomplices in mass murder – ship weapons and money to Israel, and block attempts in the United Nations to stop the killing.
Among the accomplices in this genocide are the ‘mainstream’ media who continue to spin lies and defend the indefensible. Still, it is important to point out that there are journalists who are working, at great personal risk, to report what is really going on. Many have paid with their lives, because Israel, as it has always done, deliberately targets journalists for killing. CNN’s pro-Israel, pro-genocide coverage has been so horrible that CNN journalists are posting anonymous reports on social media to refute CNN’s lies and distortions. The mainstream media are very bad, but not everyone who works there is bad.
Still, the bottom line is that the mainstream media are purveyors of poison. There is a case to be made for avoiding them as much as possible, and getting one’s news from alternative media websites and trusted individual commentators. They are out there. Some are listed in this newsletter, others can be find via the Alternative Media List on the Connexions website - https://www.connexions.org/CxLibrary/Docs/CxAlternativeMediaList.htm
Bookmark the sites you find valuable in your browser. Sign up for their mailing lists; they’ll send you an email when they publish something new.
Spring is coming. If you are still consuming unhealthy quantities of the mainstream media’s toxic offerings, perhaps it’s time to turn over a new leaf.
Ulli Diemer
