If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly. Thomas Sowell
Well, there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that Neil will be taking over both branches, and some of you will lose your jobs. Those of you who are kept on will have to relocate to Swindon, if you wanna stay. I know, gutting. On a more positive note, the good news is, I’ve been promoted. So, every cloud ... You’re still thinking about the bad news, aren’t you? The Office: Judgement s1e6, Brent, BBC 2001
Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the first world war, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe. In his book, Propaganda, published in 1928, Bernays wrote that ‘the intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses was an important element in democratic society’ and that the manipulators ‘constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country’. Instead of propaganda, he coined the euphemism ‘public relations’.
The American tobacco industry hired Bernays to convince women they should smoke in public. By associating smoking with women’s liberation, he made cigarettes ‘torches of freedom’. In 1954, he conjured a communist menace in Guatemala as an excuse for overthrowing the democratically-elected government, whose social reforms were threatening the United Fruit company’s monopoly of the banana trade. He called it a ‘liberation’.
Bernays was no rabid right-winger. He was an elitist liberal who believed that ‘engineering public consent’ was for the greater good. This was achieved by the creation of ‘false realities’ which then became ‘news events’. Here are examples of how it is done these days:
False reality: The last US combat troops have left Iraq ‘as promised, on schedule’, according to President Barack Obama. TV screens have filled with cinematic images of the ‘last US soldiers’ silhouetted against the dawn light, crossing the border into Kuwait.
Fact: They are still there. At least 50,000 troops will continue to operate from 94 bases. American air assaults are unchanged, as are special forces’ assassinations. The number of ‘military contractors’ is currently 100,000 and rising. Most Iraqi oil is now under direct foreign control.
False reality: BBC presenters and reporters have described the departing US troops as a ‘sort of victorious army’ that has achieved ‘a remarkable change in [Iraq’s] fortunes’. Their commander, General David Petraeus, is a ‘celebrity’, ‘charming’, ‘savvy’ and ‘remarkable’.
Fact: There is no victory of any sort. There is a catastrophic disaster; and attempts to present it as otherwise are a model of Bernays’ campaign to ‘re-brand’ the slaughter of the first world war as ‘necessary’ and ‘noble’. In 1980, Ronald Reagan, running for president, re-branded the invasion of Vietnam, in which up to three million people died, as a ‘noble cause’, a theme taken up enthusiastically by Hollywood. Today’s Iraq war movies have a similar purging theme: the invader as both idealist and victim.
False reality: It is not known how many Iraqis have died. They are ‘countless’ or maybe ‘in the tens of thousands’.
Fact: As a direct consequence of the Anglo-American led invasion, a million Iraqis have died. This figure from Opinion Research Business is based on peer-reviewed research led by Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC, whose methods were secretly affirmed as ‘best practice’ and ‘robust’ by the Blair government’s chief scientific adviser, as revealed in a Freedom of Information search. This figure is rarely reported or presented to ‘charming’ and ‘savvy’ American generals. Neither is the dispossession of four million Iraqis, the malnourishment of most Iraqi children, the epidemic of mental illness and the poisoning of the environment.
False reality: The British economy has a deficit of billions which must be reduced with cuts in public services and regressive taxation, in a spirit of ‘we’re all in this together’.
Fact: We are not in this together. What is remarkable about this public relations triumph is that only 18 months ago the diametric opposite filled TV screens and front pages. Then, in a state of shock, truth was unavoidable, if briefly. The Wall Street and City of London financiers’ trough was on full view for the first time, along with the venality of once celebrated snouts. Billions in public money went to inept and crooked organisations known as banks, which were spared debt liability by their Labour government sponsors.
Within a year, record profits and personal bonuses were posted, and state and media propaganda had recovered its equilibrium. Suddenly, the ‘black hole’ was no longer the responsibility of the banks, whose debt is to be paid by those not in any way responsible: the public. The received media wisdom of this ‘necessity’ is now a chorus, from the BBC to the Sun. A masterstroke, Bernays would surely say.
False reality: The former government minister Ed Miliband offers a ‘genuine alternative’ as leader of the British Labour Party.
Fact: Miliband, like his brother David, the former foreign secretary, and almost all those standing for the Labour leadership, is immersed in the effluent of New Labour. As a New Labour MP and minister, he did not refuse to serve under Blair or speak out against Labour’s persistent warmongering. He now calls the invasion of Iraq a ‘profound mistake’. Calling it a mistake insults the memory and the dead. It was a crime, of which the evidence is voluminous. He has nothing new to say about the other colonial wars, none of them mistakes. Neither has he demanded basic social justice: that those who caused the recession clear up the mess and that Britain’s fabulously rich corporate minority be seriously taxed, starting with Rupert Murdoch.
Of course, the good news is that false realities often fail when the public trusts its own critical intelligence, not the media. Two classified documents recently released by Wikileaks express the CIA’s concern that the populations of European countries, which oppose their governments’ war policies, are not succumbing to the usual propaganda spun through the media. For the rulers of the world, this is a conundrum, because their unaccountable power rests on the false reality that no popular resistance works. And it does. John Pilger, article September 2010, ‘Flying the Flag, Faking the News’
We’re allowed to see the approved news but not the unapproved news. It’s usually the unapproved version is the evidence. John Pilger, Going Underground, RT 662 October 2018
It seems that what we have now is a media echo-chamber that gives out broadly speaking the same news, the same opinions, the same message, while those who own and control the media are becoming fewer and their power greater all over the world. John Pilger, Breaking the Mirror: The Murdoch Effect
As media giants like Murdoch get bigger and bigger, the way we see our own world is distorted, often without many of us realising. For example, when the Disney Corporation recently merged with ABC in America, it marked a further breakdown of the borders between news and entertainment. John Pilger, lecture July 1996, ‘The Hidden Power of the Media’
Beware false objectivity: the kind that promotes an establishment agenda ... Beware all news from official sources ... Beware the pack; never follow the fashion in news ... Beware all background briefings especially from politicians ... Beware celebrating technology until you find who controls it ... Have nothing to do with what is known as D-Notices ... All journalism should be investigative ... Take pride in the knowledge that media barons can’t stand the sight of us journalists. ibid.
This was the slaughter known as the First World War. Sixteen million died and twenty-one million wounded. At the height of the carnage the prime minister of Great Britain, David Lloyd George, had a private chat with the editor of the Guardian, C P Scott. If people really knew the truth, said the Prime Minister, the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don’t know and they can’t know. John Pilger, The War You Don’t See, 2010
The soundbites never stop, and the wars never stop. ibid.
What is the role of the media in rapacious wars like Iraq and Afghanistan? Why do many journalists beat the drums of war regardless of the lies of governments? And how are the crimes of war reported and justified when they are our crimes? ibid.
The resulting TV pictures gave no sense of the bloody conquest of Iraq. ibid.
As a result of the invasion of Iraq: 740 women are widows, 4.5 million people forced from their homes. ibid.
The respectable media has played a critical part in promoting war. ibid.
I don’t want to know what country the pope is in, but show me a burning hospital with people on crutches jumping off the roof and I’m a happy guy. George Carlin, Napalm & Silly Putty
These day there is another problem with watching the news: night after night we are shown pictures of terrible things which we feel we can do nothing about. Images of civil wars, massacres and starving children which leave us feeling helpless and depressed, and to which the only response is Oh Dear. There is a name for this: it’s called Oh Dearism. Adam Curtis, Oh Dearism, short film 2009
The money they raised [Live Aid] may have had its own corrupting and destructive effects in Africa. ibid.
As many deaths as were actually saved by the aid. But this wasn’t reported because it was too complicated. And it wouldn’t have made us feel good about ourselves. ibid.
But this simple battle between Good and Evil couldn’t last … There was now no way to understand why these terrible events were happening. ibid.
All of us have become Richard Nixon. Just like him we have all become paranoid weirdoes. It’s the story of how television and newspapers did this to us and how it has paralysed the ability of politics to transform the world for the better. Adam Curtis, Paranoia and Moral Panics, short film 2010
They [journalists] found corruption in the heart of the elites who ran their country … There really were hidden conspiracies in the heart of the establishment … Secretly they were running things in their own interests. ibid.
The news and television programmes have ended up taking serious threats to society and exaggerating and distorting them. By doing this they have created a widespread mood of fear in society. ibid.
So much of the news this year has been hopeless and depressing and above all confusing, to which the only response is Oh Dear. Adam Curtis, Oh Dearism II, short film 2014
That defeatest response has become a central part of a new system of political control. ibid.
A constant state of destabilised perception. ibid.
Quantitative Easing: the equivalent of £24,000 for every family in Britain … The biggest transfer of wealth to the rich in recent documented history. ibid.
Nothing really makes any coherent sense. ibid.