https://www.globalresearch.ca/conform-or-be-cast-out-the-new-model-of-journalism-during-a-time-of-war/5795751
Conform or be Cast Out! The New Model of Journalism During a Time of War
“I suggest that US foreign policy can still be defined as “kiss my ass or I’ll kick your head in.” But of course, it doesn’t put it like that. It talks of “low intensity conflict…” What all this adds up to is a disease at the very centre of language, so that language becomes a permanent masquerade, a tapestry of lies.”
– Harold Pinter (1990) [1]
“It is more than a century since Edward Bernays, the father of spin, invented “public relations” as a cover for war propaganda. What is new is the virtual elimination of dissent in the mainstream.”
– John Pilger (February 2022) [2]
In the spirit of the German pastor Martin Niemöller who’s famous “First They Came” quote is now on display in the Permanent Exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, I wonder how many other independent reporting outlets saw similar fates of removal as well after InfoWars got shut off from YouTube, Apple and Facebook in August of 2018. [3]
Indeed, when the world witnessed a “Special Military Operation” being waged against Ukraine in February of this year, we started to see the victims of the independent media round-up really kicking into gear.
Consortiumnews, Mint Press News, The Corbett Report, TheGrayZone, and even Global Research are being targeted for daring – for having the unmitigated GALL – to correct all the assumptions about U.S. Foreign Policy, particularly in Ukraine! And at levels I personally have not seen in my 14 years as a journalist!
Private and public agencies are closing in on these nefarious “truth tellers” on the internet by not only threatening to close access to the major social media channels, but also by smears and threats to de-platform them altogether.
In spite of the public’s appetite for mainstream media being near an all-time low, it will be a major feat for the press propaganda to remain virtually unchallenged, really for the first time since the Second World War! At least! [4]
For journalists seeing their craft dying, we need to know more about the forces at work, and whether or not their own days may be numbered. On that note, we introduce you to a very special episode of the Global Research News Hour focusing on the drive toward making ALL MEDIA vehicles of raw propaganda as we veer toward what may be a terminal moment for the history of humanity.
In our first half hour, we bring on the highly revered journalist and film-maker John Pilger who has been covering wars since Vietnam, has reported for a number of mainstream media outlets and amassed a vast string of awards since 1966. He will give his assessment of how far today’s reporting has fallen from grace, the degree to which news today is contaminated by Propaganda, and to what extent today’s honest reporters will have to go to reverse this bitter journey....
....Transcript of John Pilger. October 5, 2022.
Global Research: The mainstream press has gone from prioritzing the facts needed to propel wars to eliminating the opposition views altogether. Some very established award-winning journalists have also commented and lamented the downward spiral of the news that has been taken in the last decade. John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist and filmmaker based in London. In 2017, the British Library announced a John Pilger Archive of all his written and filmed work. The British Film Institute included his 1979 film Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia among the 10 most important documentaries of the 20th Century. John Pilger has twice won Britain’s highest award for journalism and has been International Reporter of the Year, News reporter of the Year, and Descriptive Writer of the Year. He has made 61 documentary films and has won an Emmy, a BAFTA, and the Royal Television Society Prize. He has contributed to BBC Television Australia, BBC Radio, BBC World Service, London and Broadcasting, as well as The Guardian, The Independent, New Statesman, The New York Times. And of course, he’s also contributed to the independent news sites, including: Information Clearing House, Truthout, CNET, Common Cause, Truthdig, and of course, Global Research.
John Pilger, welcome to the Global Research News Hour.
John Pilger: Thank you, Michael. Interesting, in that biography of me you read, really the newspapers that I used to write for, I no longer write for, —
GR: Uh-huh.
JP: — because they are no– they just – they’re a part of our – I think what we’re going to discuss. They are no longer open to journalists like myself, and my work now is almost exclusively on the Net. And I think that shift really says a great deal about, first of all, the Internet has provided some – itself – some extraordinary opportunities in journalism. But it’s also provided a refuge for those like myself who spent entire careers in the mainstream media and find they are no longer wanted in the mainstream media. That’s really, I think, probably an indication of the seriousness of the closing down of a pluralistic media – a genuinely democratic media, if it ever existed – than anything else. You simply can’t get a say anymore.
GR: I remember some aspects of the Iraq war and the Afghan war. And they were relaying some misleading information, but it’s nothing compared to what we are experiencing today with regard to the NATO-Ukraine-Russia war. You have reported through, what, seven or eight different wars, shooting wars, if I’m not mistaken. I think you commented that the distortion is now worse than ever. Could you give an account of why this reporting has gotten so bad? Is it a product of the government censors figuring out how to change media to their satisfaction, or is it something else going on altogether?
JP: The voices are being silenced, as I was saying. I mean, even as recently as the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the invasion even more recently, the invasion and destruction of Libya in 2011, or even the real beginning of the Ukraine war, which was in 2014, there were journalists in the mainstream, across the mainstream, very few, small minority, but who were questioning the official narrative. The official narrative now rules supreme. There are no more dissenters. Those who put their hand up to dissent are quickly silenced. The most extreme case of this, of course, is Julian Assange. Julian Assange, the impact of Wikileaks and its revelations on the so-called narrative, were so dramatic, so traumatic, it turned it inside-out. That rather trite expression “truth to power,” well there you had truth as a tsunami to power. And of course, the result of that has been the persecution of Julian Assange to the point where he’s now awaiting extradition to the United States where he will be tried on bogus charges. Tried for the crime of journalism, in fact.
GR: We’re hearing that our reporting is devolving essentially to the point of – would you say – maybe 1930’s propaganda in Germany? I thought we had overcome that, but you know, as we had racism and anti-Semitism and sexism in other matters, it seems that we’re sliding back, or perhaps, we’re experiencing a cycle of some sort. I mean, do you think that fear of the public, and I suppose, journalist’s fear, is essentially an accomplice of the state. And if so, what are the key events that helped mould us into this new McCarthyistic paradigm?
JP: Well, I mean, essentially, of course, not a lot has changed. Journalists have always been compliant. Most censorship has been – has come from compliant journalists, those who will go along with the system. Those who don’t go against the grain, those who just don’t do their job, don’t question power, they’ll only question power as long as it’s an official enemy or something that the prevailing order doesn’t like. But it will never look in the mirror. The difference today is, compared with a few years ago, a few years ago there was a scattering of journalists who did have spaces, one of the precarious spaces within the media to question, to do their job as real journalists. Those spaces have closed, they’ve shut down completely. I mean, you mentioned the ‘30s, there was more outspokenness in the ‘30s than there is now. There’s more media now. And I suppose the comparison itself is not completely valid, because we now have this extraordinary phenomenon: the Internet. Which, if you really want to find out something, you can, but you have to know how to navigate through the Internet. But the mainstream media, comparing the two, there were outspoken voices in the 1930s. The newspaper I used to work for in London, The Daily Mirror, had the most extraordinary editorial writers, a popular newspaper, which were blowing whistles on practically everything they wrote. And when the war began, they turned those whistles around on the British High Command and started to blow whistles on incompetent generals. Would we have anything like that today? Most certainly not.
GR: What strikes you as the most significant omission in terms of the Ukraine war or anything else that demonstrates just how bad we’ve become?
JP: I’ll give you an example. Somebody I know with whom I’m quite friendly has sent me an article he’s written, he’s very pleased with it. I don’t think he’ll be listening to this. But I read this article with dismay. It was about the Ukraine war and how it started. And it’s a collection of all the assumptions that have been accepted without any real critical discussion in the West about the Ukraine war. The fact is, it did not start with Vladimir Putin’s invasion in February, it started in 2014, there’s no question about that. And unless we understand the context of why it started, then almost any opinion on it doesn’t hold a great deal of worth. But the media today is awash with these – with much worse than the article I’ve just read, I have to say. Well, like a kind of unfettered, puerile, patriotism straight out of the 19th Century. You can imagine people sitting there in their pith helmet plumes writing it. Just – some of it is laughable. But the anti-Russia sense – which has a very powerful and very interesting and very tragic history itself – but the Russia hating has almost come to a head. And that Russian hating, of course, goes right back to 1917. Talking of invasions, it was the invasion the other way, in 1918, 1919. But the sense of – it’s almost as if the West is reclaiming the history that it’s felt rather insecure about. Now that is, who won the Second World War? The decisive winner of the Second World War was the Red Army. I don’t think there’s any doubt statistically and in every other way. Without the Red Army’s victory over Hitler, the war would not have been won as conclusively. As a pause, that’s not what we’re told in the West. And since 1945, much of the coverage of the wars of Western politicians, especially Anglo-American politicians, has been drawn from this other great ethical invention, that this was the pure war which was won by the United States and won by Britain, and somehow, the real enemy was the Soviet Union, and today is Russia. That Russia hating, which has a racist tone about it, can never be underestimated. And it runs through everything now, to the point where it’s just irrational. Much of the coverage.
GR: The late Robert Parry, while he was alive, was an astounding reporter. But the material he submitted with Consortium News on Ukraine, while accurate, has been the source of a lot of controversy, and the disinformation identifiers out there, the agencies and such, has targeted the work of Consortium News and other independent outlets as being either misinformation or being a propagandist for Vladimir Putin. I mean, this is the degree of control they have now. I mean, dare I ask how much worse this can get? I mean, will we see independent journalists, you know, I mean, possibly even yourself disagreeing with the Western narrative on Ukraine actually being jailed?
JP: Well, I think we’re dealing with one who is jailed at the moment. And getting him out of jail is really where our efforts are. But yes, that’s at the end of the road, whether people like myself and others who simply do our jobs find ourselves threatened like that. Well, we’re threatened at the moment, of course, we’re threatened by silence. It’s very difficult to have work published, and there’s no greater sanction than that. So, you know, Parry told the truth and the people you – you, well, you didn’t quote them but you refer to them – are nobodies. Parry was a very distinguished journalist who was largely responsible for the revelations about Irangate, and founded in the 1990s, Consortium News, which was following his death under its editor, Joe Lauria, has carried on that tradition. And yes, it has been threatened because we have a form of insidious McCarthyism which runs through everything today. Journalists are watched, and unless they obey, unless they put out the so-called narrative, they will probably in the first instant find myselfs out. Or if not, they will be harassed in the way that Consortium News has. It’s a very bad situation, and one that should be taken out of the area of the media. And I think the public needs to understand that it concerns them, because it is about illegitimate power, dark power, power from behind the facade of democracies, reaching out and silencing. History has plenty of precedents about that.
GR: Finally, I mean with everything that – I mean, you have the incarceration of Julian Assange, and he was not publishing anything that Daniel Ellsberg did, isn’t doing anything that Daniel Ellsberg did – didn’t do. He was just publishing leaked information, yet he’s being put through hell. Now I’m wondering, like, how can we turn this around as journalists or how can we recreate a more civil and – a society in which journalism, true journalism, is being practised and not just propaganda?
JP: Well, Robert Parry didn’t – he wasn’t just a side-player, he also interpreted these events. And some of his best work has been an interpretation, explanation, which is the job of a journalist. Not just simply to be the message carrier, but also to explain it. And that’s what Robert Parry did which made him such an excellent journalist. And an answer to your broader question: look, for as long as I’ve been alive, media has been an arm of the prevailing order, of power. When I first went to work as a correspondent in the United States in the 1960s, I was struck by how all the newspapers, which were then descended of television and there was no social media, of course. And they all agreed with each other. And there’s a rather amusing story of a lot of Russians arriving from the Soviet Union, absolutely stunned that they – that in the United States they could pull off this uniformity without shoving people in prison, as they didn’t do in those days. It’s the same thing in this country and Britain, the media has always been an empire of powerful, wealthy interests, corporations. And that’s true today and so is social media. So, in many ways, real journalism is an aberration. It breaks the mould. So, a system was setup already, and it didn’t – it wasn’t a good system that’s gone bad. The system always was as it is today, but it is the gaps in it in which independent journalistic voices could be heard have closed. That’s the point.
GR: Mr. Pilger, we are out of time, but your voice is a rare and pivotal one. I thank you, again, very, very much for sharing your thoughts on this subject with the Global Research News Hour.
JP: You’re very welcome. Bye.
....
https://scheerpost.com/2022/05/06/joe-lauria-no-such-thing-as-dissent-in-the-age-of-big-tech/
No Such Thing as Dissent in the Age of Big Tech
Lifelong journalist Joe Lauria joins Robert Scheer to discuss how companies like PayPal, YouTube and Facebook are quashing non-mainstream reporting and opinions on Ukraine.
....JL: OK, let me tell you about me not being a real journalist. I worked 25 years based at UN headquarters as a correspondent for the Boston Globe. Six years for the Wall Street Journal. I was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London. Worked for the Johannesburg Star, the Montreal Gazette, and many other newspapers. So I come out of the establishment. So does our deputy editor; she was an editor at the Wall Street Journal. One of our columnists, Patrick Lawrence, was the Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune. We have CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou as a columnist.
We come out of the establishment; we saw what was going on inside. We know what we’re talking about for the most part, and we’re here to give a different viewpoint. And we’re being punished for this, and we are being threatened. And as far as Rome—I mean, America has been an empire, in my view, from the very beginning, when they wiped out Native American sovereign territory, and certainly when they reached California where you are, that was the end, so they went on to the Spanish war to take the Philippines and Puerto Rico and attack Cuba.
And it’s never stopped. The U.S. was started with an invasion: the invasion of Europeans, of white people, to wipe out the Native population. It started with an invasion, and has never really been invaded except by the British in 1812. We don’t understand what it’s like to be invaded the way Russia does. Russia has been invaded by the premier power of the 19th century and the 20th century, Napoleon and Hitler. So they saw the expansion of NATO; they saw Ukraine being turned into a de facto NATO state as a threat. We have to understand that even if we don’t agree with the invasion and the move, that perhaps it doesn’t follow Article 51 of the charter. According to the UN charter, the invasion is illegal. I make an argument in one of my articles that if you look at the just war theory of the Catholic Church—which I’m sure Cardinal Francis Spellman wasn’t all that keen on, maybe—but that is maybe an argument for what Russia did. But that doesn’t rule the world now. The UN Security Council does.
So this is where we come from. Yes, we criticize empire; it’s been an empire, it became a global empire after the Second World War, when the whole world was devastated except the U.S., and they found themselves with bases all over the world and they never looked back, and every time they want to attack a new nation to bring it under their control, they name that leader as Hitler, right? Milošević, Noriega, Saddam, Putin—they’re all Hitler, because America keeps reliving World War II, when they were the good guys.
Well, they’re not. The idea of spreading democracy and shining cities on the hill is child’s play, and it’s a shame that any American believes any of that crap. They have to look at the economic and geopolitical interests of America’s foreign policy and their aggressive, violent foreign policy of invading nations. Like Panama, like Iraq, like Afghanistan, and many, many others; Vietnam.
So this is the American history. This is the story of America that we were able to tell, and we’re still telling, but we’re worried that we’re not going to be able to for much longer. We’ve moved into a whole new phase of this empire. And of repression of free speech. And Julian Assange, I’m glad you mentioned him, because he is the symbol of this era—he has been punished the most for revealing those crimes of the empire. That is what you can’t do. Look what they did to him, and now they’re moving in on small players like us, and nothing like what they’re doing to him, but they’re expanding it; they want to stamp out every spark, like I said, of dissent....
....
https://stephenlendman.org/2022/10/13/the-most-perilous-time-in-world-history/
The Most Perilous Time in World History
The risk of escalating a clash of civilizations between hegemon USA and nonthreatening Russia to possible nuclear war reached an unprecedented level after undemocratic Dems usurped power by 2020 election-rigging.
US-dominated NATO’s war on Russia by use of expendable Ukrainian foot soldiers risks the unthinkable by accident or design.
Biden regime dirty hands were behind sabotage to Nord Stream gas pipelines to Germany.
Their dominant hardliners permitted Ukrainian Nazis to damage the Crimean Bridge between the Russian republic and mainland.
Supplying the regime with arms, equipment and intelligence is all about waging perpetual war on Russia to the last Ukrainian.
According to analyst Doug Casey, things are at risk of spinning out of control because of the US 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev, regime aggression on Donbass since that time and hegemon USA-dominated NATO’s longstanding war on Russia.
As for US-installed Zelensky, Casey called him “a corrupt nothing/nobody puppet (reinvented) into a (fantasy) hero,” adding:
“The strutting megalomaniac (was) paid at least half a billion dollars to be an authoritarian, jail opposition leaders, close down (opposition media), and build a secret (Nazi-infested) police force.”
“Ukraine joining NATO at this point would be asking for World War III.”
Whether a war-making alliance member or not, “chances of war between NATO and Russia are extremely high.”
“Instead of talking about getting rid of Putin, the world would be better off (getting) rid of Zelensky” and his Nazi-infested regime.
In stark contrast, Casey called Vladimir Putin “the most cool-headed, the most thoughtful, and most perspective (of) European leaders” by far.
Separately, Russia’s lower house State Duma Speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin, said the following on Thursday:
“Nowhere in the world does anyone negotiate with terrorists.”
“If terrorist attacks by the Kiev regime continue, the response will be even tougher” than so far.
“All organizers and perpetrators of terrorist attacks must be found” and punished.
“Those who resist must be destroyed.”
Separately, Volodin explained that Russian Monday and Tuesday strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure knocked out half of the regime’s ability to generate electricity.
And this straight talk from Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday, saying the following:
Russia’s nuclear doctrine is clear and unequivocal.
“We envisage only response measures designed to prevent the destruction of the Russian Federation by direct nuclear strikes or strikes by other weapons that threaten the very existence of the Russian state.”
Since the US 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev, hegemon USA has been involved in waging war on Russia — by suppling the “neo-Nazi” regime it installed with arms, equipment and intelligence.
There’s “convincing evidence (that shows Biden regime involvement in) recuit(ing) mercenaries” for war on Russia.
Pentagon and CIA elements are directly involved on the ground in Ukraine, orchestrating and directing the regime’s combat operations.
And they forbid puppet Zelensky from engaging in conflict resolution talks with Moscow.
And throughout the US/West, war crimes and atrocities committed by Ukrainian Nazis are swept under the rug and ignored.
The Zelensky regime “killed thousands of people using Western weapons in Donbass,” Lavrov stressed, adding:
There’s “irrefutable evidence of gross violations of international humanitarian law and military crimes when it comes to prisoners of war.”
“They were shot in the head, with their hands tied behind their backs, and pushed into common graves.”
As for Russia’s SMO aims, they’ve been publicly explained, remain unchanged and will be achieved, Lavrov stressed, adding:
“We cannot permit Ukraine to create a permanent threat to the security of Russia.”
“I am referring to its potential accession to NATO and the deployment of weapons on its territory that would create such a threat.”
“The neo-Nazi elements of the current regime, which have taken root in the post-Maidan ground, are an extremely serious problem.”
“It must be dealt with as well.”
“I have no doubt whatsoever that our coexistence on the great European continent will depend on the eradication of Nazism in Ukraine.”
The regime and its US master “don’t care one bit about considerations of decency and honesty with regard to what they perpetrate.”
That’s the hidden meaning of hegemon USA’s diabolical “rules-based international order” — in flagrant breach of international and its own constitutional law.
On the issue of restoring peace to Europe, it won’t happen any time soon, clearly not as long as hegemon USA and its NATO vassals perpetuate war.
But rest assured it’ll happen.
Yet for how long before more conflict erupts is an open question.
Separately according to former Russian military intelligence officer, Yevgeny Krutikov:
“Russian foreign intelligence (explained) that Ukraine (was) transformed into a (Nazi-infested) fascist state…”
Russian Foreign Intelligence head, Sergei Naryshkin, accused “totalitarian” Western regimes of Ukraine’s despotic transformation — obliging Russia to combat it in self-defense.
And this revelation by analyst Batko Milacic:
From November 18 – December 3, 2021, POLARIS 21 military exercises in the Mediterranean Sea involved large-scale numbers of forces from the US, Britain, France and other NATO regimes.
According to NavalNews.com, it was the “largest ever exercise” for French forces, half of its fleet and thousands of its troops involved, adding:
“POLARIS 21 (was) an unprecedented event” to strengthen cooperation among NATO member-states and “test multiple capabilities of” combined alliance air and sea forces with involvement of nuclear-armed vessels.
Milacic explained what the exercise was all about, saying:
Data obtained by journalists revealed information to show that its mission aimed to “prepar(e) NATO (for) armed conflict with the Russian Federation in the event of (its) intervention in Ukraine,” adding:
“(I)n response…NATO (regimes would) send an aircraft carrier strike group led by the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier to the combat area” to fight Russian forces in support of Ukrainian Nazis.
Things didn’t turn out this way so far.
Did the reality of Russia’s military superiority get hegemon USA-dominated NATO regimes to back off — knowing that they have no defense against high-precision Russian Federation hypersonic missiles, ones able to sink hostile vessels involved in striking its forces?
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