As the West’s assault on Ukraine gets ever bloodier, the “news” on National Public Radio (NPR) is teeming with anti-Russian propaganda, interspersed with the usual pieces declaiming on one’s senior prom and other matters of equal import. All in all it is a pretty dismal substitute for news and analysis.
There are always convenient news-hooks on which corporate journalists can hang their power-friendly prejudices about the West being ‘the good guys’ in world affairs. Channel 4 News is not immune from this chauvinism. For example, Matt Frei introduced a report about last month’s elections in Iraq with this propaganda bullet:
Now, America once invaded Iraq so that, in large part, Iraqis could do what they did today – go to the polls. (Channel 4 News, April 30, 2014)
battle-weary soldiers get a mixed welcome back to the Inland Northwest
Reading the words of Felicity Arbuthnot and the culture of murder by decree, by political affirmation, through the international bodies of the dead, the UN, the leaders who eat babies at birth, with the flick of a pen, and with the stealth of billion-dollar bombers, or the guided propaganda or hand-to-hand instruction of the School of Murder, Inc., and she puts it right in the bullseye of a warped world of sick awards and accolades.
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
— Voltaire, 1694-1778
A number of years ago I read portions of a book entitled The First Casualty: From the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth Maker by Phillip Knightley.
Western corporate media and the White House have dissimulated Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s boast of a $5 Billion contribution to the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government, blaming Russian aggression rather than Western duplicity and illegality. However, correspondence has come to light which demonstrates that the US Administration was aware to the last detail exactly what the ramifications of their actions would be in Ukraine.
