Why is there a bias in the media?
There are very many different filters that lie between the facts of a situation as it occurs and the final version of events in our living rooms. Some of these filters are well-intentioned; many are unconsciously affecting the story and other filters are quite deliberately there to manipulate the public to a specific point of view.
Among some of the well-intentioned filters are a) those meant to protect the innocent people in the story from harm; b) those meant to protect the public from the more distressing and horrific aspects of the story and c) those filters that are meant to ensure we get the news we want and need by weeding out those that we have no interest in. These filters themselves are problematic enough. Protecting innocent victims sometimes has a side effect of allowing a repetition of the atrocities to occur through lack of awareness; keeping news free from the more horrific effects of modern warfare can allow it to go on for many years before sufficient public outrage is created to change government policy; the decision about what is considered interesting is problematical, too, in a country that seems to care more about the latest evictee from Big Brother than in the painful effects of UK politics on a few million people in some faraway place.
Unconscious filters to our news output come about largely due to our culture and upbringing. Those who grow up in a society that believes they are culturally superior to certain other races will more readily accept the UK and US claims that they must bomb Arab countries to bring them freedom and democracy. They will see ‘terrorism’ in the attempts of these besieged countries to free themselves from their tormentors but heroism in the acts of war committed by their own forces. Even though logic would show that our own Governments have waged war on countries miles from our own, that offer no threat to us and which have absolutely no defense against our armed forces. The psychological effect of fighting in these empire building wars is increasingly evident in the suicides and breakdowns among US personnel returning from America’s wars abroad.
Mass media also imposes its own filters in that it is a commercial enterprise seeking profit and ratings success. There is a subtle filter at work that ensures the predominance of stories that fit in with general opinion. Frequently the real story, supported by plenty factual evidence is scrapped or relegated to a small slot on page 14 while minor news that fits in with the public’s current perceptions will be emblazoned across the headlines of every news outlet. More subtly, but nevertheless worth keeping an eye on in these days of huge corporations in the media, if you want to keep a well paid job in any media market, it is usually wise to keep in mind your owner’s personal viewpoint and agenda.
Finally the most insidious and malevolent filters are those imposed on our news stories by the people in power. Examples of these are well known in Britain but most people associate them with dictatorships like Communist Russia or China. People seem to be more blinkered about their own government’s shortcomings in this area. A very successful method of monitoring the Iraq war was that of insisting that all journalists from the West worked lived and moved with the troops. Any one outside these parameters was considered inimical to the safety and success of the war effort. These embedded journalists of the Gulf war quickly succumbed to the brothers-in-arms whitewashing of news from the frontline in the war on Iraq. Briefings became less about feeding unfortunate news to inquisitive journalists disguised with the preferred spin, and more about coming together to ensure that support for the war would be nurtured by the stories released to the general public. Back home, the readiness to send government briefings straight to the printing press or News studio without verification continued the unbalanced shaping of the news.
At the same time, many lies were published from the ‘undisclosed sources’. Later when the lies were shown up for what they were ie deliberate, unabashed propaganda, there was no one to point the finger at and accuse of lying. Blair and his cohorts have proved adept at passing the buck in his way at subsequent investigations.
‘I took it in good faith…..’ ‘I had no reason to question the facts before me..’
Most sinister of all are the questionable deaths of those who would attempt to bring the truth to the people. This includes the deliberate murder of ‘unilateral’ journalists during the war on Iraq. The attack and vilification of dissenting journalists and the bombing of Al Jazeera’s residential compound by two US missiles in the same war.
Wednesday 5 September 2012
Mass Media Bias part 1
Thoughts on Media
In the World I grew up in, Russian people were the ones being lied to by their media. Chinese people, too, were brain-washed and only allowed access to ‘approved’ films and literature. Today it is frightening to realize that those tactics are now extensively at work right here in the West. On the free Sky channels, today, you will find the same news morning noon and night in most of the available channels. Not only is the populations of the West fed the same News items, more alarmingly, they are all fed the same slant on these news items.
The more trusting of you may well say ‘We have great news coverage of the World. As long as we have the facts we can put our own slant on it.’
Firstly, I am afraid it is not true that we have great coverage of World events. We see only the events our Government and media barons want us to see. For example, there has been a great deal of coverage about deaths caused by the Syrian Government troops during recent months. At the same time, absolutely no coverage is given of the violence and deaths caused by those who want to destroy the Assad regime. On the same topic, a great deal of misinformation from Syria was aired as the ‘truth’ although it was blatant propaganda. Now that those films have been proven to be fabricated you would expect a free media to be outraged at having the wool pulled over their eyes. You might expect discussion programmes long into the night about where the truth really lies. You would expect these things, if the media you watch actually aired the findings of those who have uncovered the lies within those ‘amateur videos’.
Secondly as is obvious from the first points, the facts read out before us day in day out on almost every media channel and newspaper are not really facts at all. What seems to be happening is that the Western Governments are being coerced by lobbyists with a very great deal of money. Some of the cash goes into individual pockets as in the case of the Blairs. (Usually the rewards come in after the faithful service is over.) In many cases the cash goes to the lackey’s political party allowing it to enjoy many more years in power than it deserves. Unfortunately, it takes little effort to buy a politician who is already well endowed with the prejudices and blinkers of years of elitist education.
These leading politicians will be entrusted to choose certain countries or fall guys for their most prejudiced attention. The end result may be many years away but that doesn’t really matter to the super rich. Eventually the money from that country’s pillaged resources will come rolling in and it will be payback time for the media moguls and government lackeys who oiled the machines of war.
By war, I do not only refer to actual guns and bombs. A great deal of warfare today is going on with economic sanctions and the introduction of crippling debt. These weapons bring countries to their knees just as assuredly as weapons of mass destruction. The third form of warfare prevalent today is the information war. Propaganda, lies and distortion coming from the media,
Thanks to a collaborative media, the general public cheer for and even demand the acts of aggressive illegal violence against target nations.
How can our Western Governments be in the wrong when they are fighting these evil foreigners who do unspeakable stuff to their own people.
The experts trotted out daily for sound bites are hand-picked to provide the desired slant on the situation which of course will be aired on every channel in the Western hemisphere throughout the day. Ergo this form of warfare must be just and right. We are so much better than those evil Russians Iranians Islamists Chinese and anybody else currently annoying the Banking elite by refusing to enter into their massive debt ridden currencies or refusing to do what the American Government asks it to do or stubbornly hanging on to their precious resources which the West thinks it has a right to.
People who would deny that this is how World politics is being conducted, may have problems with their long term memories. Only a few years back, Saddam Hussein had those nasty weapons of mass destruction being carted about Iraq on trucks. Didn’t he? The media churned out lie after lie, day in day out, to a gullible public. Dodgy deaths, resignations and bullying took care of anyone daring to criticize these reports. However, millions of people went on marches to let the Government know we had not been fooled. Eventually, after a strong country was decimated and left lying in the gutter, the truth surfaced.
There were no weapons of mass destruction. Tony Blair and Bush knew there were no WMD’s. They discussed motives for war together and chose this one as the most likely to be believed. They knew when they reported Saddam’s ‘45 minutes to destroying London’, that this was an outright lie. They consciously worked to create the illusion that Saddam Hussein’s Government was working with terrorists, knowing that the complete opposite was the case. Hand in hand with their media buddies, these criminals of the highest order proceeded to carry out their psyops on people, not just in the West but all over the World, and they succeeded.
Even those spineless rebels who would quietly mutter their doubts about the veracity of these allegations, fell eagerly into line as soon as project ‘Shock and Awe’ began. While millions of innocent Iraqis died they did the ‘honourable’ thing and supported the troops.
Nobody has yet been imprisoned nobody even charged with this crime of the century. The only hope for justice is that there are many places that Bush, Blair and his associates can no longer wander because their crimes are known and they would be arrested under International laws.
What do the wonderful British press have to say now. The mainstream media does not even appear to care.
By the way, who has the real Weapons of Mass Destruction? Who is not only a real danger to the World but is actually known to use them on innocent men women and children? Only the most warlike, empire building, greedy country that ever inhabited this World. The US of A.
You will never hear of America’s empire building on our media. When the USA attacks a country it is always liberating it from a ruthless dictator. There are no voices of dissent, whatever atrocities committed by America or its faithful cohorts.
The New York Times spoke of its role in the propaganda in a spotlighted me culpa on May 26 2004.
Much of the media accepted the Administrations labels without challenge as they accepted the very reason for going to war without challenge….
We published information that was controversial then and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged.
Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged or failed to emerge.’
Dan Rather of CBS said
Look I am an American, When my country goes to war I want my country to win. I can’t and don’t argue that that is coverage without prejudice. About that I am prejudiced.
A lot of people wonder where are the young of today when it comes to these issues? Although I have no idea why anyone would want to leave their conscientious objection to their countries atrocities to its teenagers, there are very compelling reasons for the absence of young protestors.
For a start, the banks have managed to get them into the web of debt previously reserved for the more mature of us.
Secondly the media deliberately avoids the kind of coverage that got my generation up off their bums and out on the streets. You see very few civilian casualties, hardly any blood and gore and absolutely no discussion of the ethics of the war in civilized debates. While civilian deaths at the hands of Western forces are counted in the millions, the media have deemed them hardly worth a mention. In stark contrast the death of a British soldier fills every news slot when it comes through. Abdul Henderson, a deserter from the Iraqi war said,
You used to see the atrocities, the real horror. The media has done a really good job in suppressing our stress.
Today I prefer Russian TV to the BBC because it will at least examine important issues from different points of view. I can barely watch or listen to the BBC, on the other hand, because it follows Government propaganda to the letter. ITV can hardly be called independent when it always follows suit. Sad to say that the most remarkable thing about the few gems issuing forth from Channel Four is their rarity. When not spouting jingoistic rhetoric against the most recent designated fall guys, the best you can say about the standards of information on these channels is that they are utterly banal. In a less benign frame of mind, I find them to be criminally negligent.
In the World I grew up in, Russian people were the ones being lied to by their media. Chinese people, too, were brain-washed and only allowed access to ‘approved’ films and literature. Today it is frightening to realize that those tactics are now extensively at work right here in the West. On the free Sky channels, today, you will find the same news morning noon and night in most of the available channels. Not only is the populations of the West fed the same News items, more alarmingly, they are all fed the same slant on these news items.
The more trusting of you may well say ‘We have great news coverage of the World. As long as we have the facts we can put our own slant on it.’
Firstly, I am afraid it is not true that we have great coverage of World events. We see only the events our Government and media barons want us to see. For example, there has been a great deal of coverage about deaths caused by the Syrian Government troops during recent months. At the same time, absolutely no coverage is given of the violence and deaths caused by those who want to destroy the Assad regime. On the same topic, a great deal of misinformation from Syria was aired as the ‘truth’ although it was blatant propaganda. Now that those films have been proven to be fabricated you would expect a free media to be outraged at having the wool pulled over their eyes. You might expect discussion programmes long into the night about where the truth really lies. You would expect these things, if the media you watch actually aired the findings of those who have uncovered the lies within those ‘amateur videos’.
Secondly as is obvious from the first points, the facts read out before us day in day out on almost every media channel and newspaper are not really facts at all. What seems to be happening is that the Western Governments are being coerced by lobbyists with a very great deal of money. Some of the cash goes into individual pockets as in the case of the Blairs. (Usually the rewards come in after the faithful service is over.) In many cases the cash goes to the lackey’s political party allowing it to enjoy many more years in power than it deserves. Unfortunately, it takes little effort to buy a politician who is already well endowed with the prejudices and blinkers of years of elitist education.
These leading politicians will be entrusted to choose certain countries or fall guys for their most prejudiced attention. The end result may be many years away but that doesn’t really matter to the super rich. Eventually the money from that country’s pillaged resources will come rolling in and it will be payback time for the media moguls and government lackeys who oiled the machines of war.
By war, I do not only refer to actual guns and bombs. A great deal of warfare today is going on with economic sanctions and the introduction of crippling debt. These weapons bring countries to their knees just as assuredly as weapons of mass destruction. The third form of warfare prevalent today is the information war. Propaganda, lies and distortion coming from the media,
Thanks to a collaborative media, the general public cheer for and even demand the acts of aggressive illegal violence against target nations.
How can our Western Governments be in the wrong when they are fighting these evil foreigners who do unspeakable stuff to their own people.
The experts trotted out daily for sound bites are hand-picked to provide the desired slant on the situation which of course will be aired on every channel in the Western hemisphere throughout the day. Ergo this form of warfare must be just and right. We are so much better than those evil Russians Iranians Islamists Chinese and anybody else currently annoying the Banking elite by refusing to enter into their massive debt ridden currencies or refusing to do what the American Government asks it to do or stubbornly hanging on to their precious resources which the West thinks it has a right to.
People who would deny that this is how World politics is being conducted, may have problems with their long term memories. Only a few years back, Saddam Hussein had those nasty weapons of mass destruction being carted about Iraq on trucks. Didn’t he? The media churned out lie after lie, day in day out, to a gullible public. Dodgy deaths, resignations and bullying took care of anyone daring to criticize these reports. However, millions of people went on marches to let the Government know we had not been fooled. Eventually, after a strong country was decimated and left lying in the gutter, the truth surfaced.
There were no weapons of mass destruction. Tony Blair and Bush knew there were no WMD’s. They discussed motives for war together and chose this one as the most likely to be believed. They knew when they reported Saddam’s ‘45 minutes to destroying London’, that this was an outright lie. They consciously worked to create the illusion that Saddam Hussein’s Government was working with terrorists, knowing that the complete opposite was the case. Hand in hand with their media buddies, these criminals of the highest order proceeded to carry out their psyops on people, not just in the West but all over the World, and they succeeded.
Even those spineless rebels who would quietly mutter their doubts about the veracity of these allegations, fell eagerly into line as soon as project ‘Shock and Awe’ began. While millions of innocent Iraqis died they did the ‘honourable’ thing and supported the troops.
Nobody has yet been imprisoned nobody even charged with this crime of the century. The only hope for justice is that there are many places that Bush, Blair and his associates can no longer wander because their crimes are known and they would be arrested under International laws.
What do the wonderful British press have to say now. The mainstream media does not even appear to care.
By the way, who has the real Weapons of Mass Destruction? Who is not only a real danger to the World but is actually known to use them on innocent men women and children? Only the most warlike, empire building, greedy country that ever inhabited this World. The US of A.
You will never hear of America’s empire building on our media. When the USA attacks a country it is always liberating it from a ruthless dictator. There are no voices of dissent, whatever atrocities committed by America or its faithful cohorts.
The New York Times spoke of its role in the propaganda in a spotlighted me culpa on May 26 2004.
Much of the media accepted the Administrations labels without challenge as they accepted the very reason for going to war without challenge….
We published information that was controversial then and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged.
Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged or failed to emerge.’
Dan Rather of CBS said
Look I am an American, When my country goes to war I want my country to win. I can’t and don’t argue that that is coverage without prejudice. About that I am prejudiced.
A lot of people wonder where are the young of today when it comes to these issues? Although I have no idea why anyone would want to leave their conscientious objection to their countries atrocities to its teenagers, there are very compelling reasons for the absence of young protestors.
For a start, the banks have managed to get them into the web of debt previously reserved for the more mature of us.
Secondly the media deliberately avoids the kind of coverage that got my generation up off their bums and out on the streets. You see very few civilian casualties, hardly any blood and gore and absolutely no discussion of the ethics of the war in civilized debates. While civilian deaths at the hands of Western forces are counted in the millions, the media have deemed them hardly worth a mention. In stark contrast the death of a British soldier fills every news slot when it comes through. Abdul Henderson, a deserter from the Iraqi war said,
You used to see the atrocities, the real horror. The media has done a really good job in suppressing our stress.
Today I prefer Russian TV to the BBC because it will at least examine important issues from different points of view. I can barely watch or listen to the BBC, on the other hand, because it follows Government propaganda to the letter. ITV can hardly be called independent when it always follows suit. Sad to say that the most remarkable thing about the few gems issuing forth from Channel Four is their rarity. When not spouting jingoistic rhetoric against the most recent designated fall guys, the best you can say about the standards of information on these channels is that they are utterly banal. In a less benign frame of mind, I find them to be criminally negligent.
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