Large numbers of Palestinians and Ukrainians were killed in missile strikes days apart, writes Jonathan Cook. The differing coverage of these comparable events is the clue to the media’s true function.
The New York Times building, 2012. (Ermell, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net
When all we have to rely on in understanding our relationship to the news media is the media’s self-proclaimed assessment of its own role, maybe it is no surprise that most of us assume the West’s “free press” is a force for good: the bedrock of democracy, the touchstone of a superior western civilisation.
The more idealistic among us think of the news media as something akin to a public service. The more cynical of us think of it as a competitive marketplace in information and commentary, one in which ugly agendas are often in evidence but truth ultimately prevails.
Both views are fanciful. The reality is far, far darker – and I speak as someone who worked for many years in The Guardian and Observer newsrooms, widely seen as the West’s most progressive newspapers.
As readers, we don’t, as we imagine, “consume” news. Rather, the news consumes us. Or put another way, the media uses the news to groom us, its audience. Properly understood, the relationship is one of abuser and abused.
Sounds like a paranoid conspiracy theory?
In fact, just such an argument was set out many years ago — in more academic fashion — in Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman’s book Manufacturing Consent.
If you have never heard of the book, there may be a reason. The media don’t want you reading it.
When I worked at The Guardian, there was no figure more reviled in the newsroom by senior editors than Noam Chomsky. As young journalists, we were warned off reading him. How might we react were we to start thinking more deeply about the role of the media, or begin testing the limits of what we were allowed to report and say?
Chomsky and Herman’s Propaganda Model explains in detail how Western publics are “brainwashed under freedom” by a media driven by hidden corporate and state interests. Those interests can be concealed only because the media decides what counts as news and frames how we understand events.
Its chief tools are misdirection and omission — and, in extremis, outright deception.
Tribal Camps
Election Day: The Newseum’s Campaign 2016 exhibit in Washington, D.C. (Lorie Shaull, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
The Propaganda Model acknowledges that competition is permitted in the news media. But only of a narrow, superficial kind, meant to divide us more usefully into tribal, ideological camps – defined as the left and the right.
Those camps are there to keep us imagining that we enjoy a plurality of ideas, that we are in charge of our response to events, that we elect governments — just as we enjoy a choice between watching the BBC and Fox News.
But our herding into oppositional camps isn’t really about choice. The camps are there to keep us divided, so we can be more easily manipulated and ruled. They are there to obscure from us the deeper reality that the state-corporate media is the public relations arm of an establishment that needs us weak.
To survive, the Western power establishment has to engineer two related kinds of popular endorsement.
First, we must consent to the idea that the West has an inalienable right to control the Earth’s resources, even at the cost of committing terrible crimes both against the rest of humanity, such as the current genocide in Gaza, and against other species, as we wreck the natural world in our pursuit of impossible, endless economic growth on a finite planet.
And second, we must consent to the idea that the richest and most powerful elites in the West have an inalienable right to cream off most of the profits from this industrialised rape of our only home.
The media rarely identifies this wasteful, greed system, so normalised has it become. But when given a name, it is called capitalism. It emerges from the shadows only when the media need to confront and ridicule a bogeyman caricature of its main ideological rival, socialism.
Immersed in Propaganda
Guardian’s office in London, 2010. (Michael Brunton-Spall, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
The news media have been fantastically successful at making a system of suicidal resource extraction designed to enrich a tiny number of billionaires seem entirely normal to their audiences.
Which is why those same billionaires are as keen to own the news media as they are to own politicians. In fact, gain ownership of the media, and you own the political class too. It is the ultimate two-for-one offer.
No politician can afford to take on key state-corporate interests, or the media that veils those interests — as Jeremy Corbyn soon found out in the U.K. a few years back.
I have spent the past 15 years or more trying to highlight to readers the true nature of our relationship to the media — the groomer and groomed — using the media’s coverage of major news events as a practical peg on which to hang my analysis.
Talking about the abusive relationship purely in the abstract is likely to persuade few, given how deeply we are immersed in propaganda.
Understanding how the media carries out its day-to-day switch and baits, its omissions, deceptions and misdirections, is the key to beginning the process of freeing our minds.
If you look to the state-corporate media for guidance, you are already in its clutches. You are already a victim — a victim of your own suffocating ignorance, of your own self-sabotage, of your own death wish.
I have expended many hundreds of thousands of words on this topic, as have others such as Media Lens. You can read a few recent examples from me here, here and here. Or you can watch this talk I gave on how I freed myself professionally from the clutches of the corporate media and gained my freedom as an independent journalist:
Different Narratives
But rarely do we have examples of propaganda so flagrant from our “free press” that it is hard for readers not to notice them. The state-corporate media just made my job a little easier.
Earlier this month, it reported on two closely comparable events that it framed in entirely different ways. Ways that all too clearly serve state-corporate interests.
The first such event was an Israeli air strike on July 6 on a school in Gaza, where Palestinian civilians, including children, had been sheltering from months of a rampaging Israeli military that has slaughtered many tens of thousands of Palestinians and destroyed most of the enclave’s homes and infrastructure.
The massive scale of death and destruction in Gaza has forced the World Court to put Israel on trial for genocide — not that you would know that from the media coverage. The genocide case against Israel has been largely disappeared down the memory hole.
The second event, on July 8, was a Russian air strike on a hospital in Kyiv. It was part of a wave of attacks on Ukrainian targets that day that killed 36 Ukrainians.
Let us note that on a typical day in Gaza, at least 150 Palestinians are killed by Israel. That has been happening day-after-day for nine months. And the death toll is almost certainly a massive under-estimate. In decimated Gaza, unlike Ukraine, officials long ago lost the ability to count their dead.
Let us note too that, despite huge numbers of Palestinian women and children being killed each day by Israeli missiles, the news media largely stopped covering the carnage in Gaza months ago. The BBC’s main evening news barely reports it.
The fact alone that the killing of 36 Ukrainian civilians attracted so much attention and concern from the Western media, in a war that’s more than two years old, when there is a far larger daily death toll of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, which our governments have been directly aiding, and the slaughter is of more recent origin, is telling in and of itself.
So how did our most trusted and progressive media outlets report these comparable events, in Gaza and Ukraine?
The headlines tell much of the story.
In an all-too-familiar pattern, the BBC shouted from the rooftops: “At least 20 dead after ‘massive’ Russian missile attack on Ukraine cities”. It named Russia as responsible for killing Ukrainians, and did so even when there was still some debate about whether Russian missiles or Ukrainian air-defence missiles had caused the destruction.
Meanwhile, the BBC carefully avoided identifying Israel as the party that killed those in Gaza sheltering from its bombs, even though Israel long ago stopped pretending that feeble Palestinian rockets could cause damage on such a scale. The headline read: “Air strike on Gaza school kills at least 15 people.”
The Guardian’s headlines were even more revealing.
The paper did, at least, identify Israel as responsible for the killing: “Israeli strike on Gaza school kills 16, say Palestinian officials.”
However, the dry, matter-of-fact language about those Palestinian deaths, the suggestion that the deaths were only a claim, and the attribution of that claim to “Palestinian officials” (with the now widely accepted implication that those officials can’t be trusted) was intended to steer the emotional response of readers. They would be left cold and indifferent.
The framing was clear: this was just another, routine day in Gaza. No need to be overly invested in Palestinian suffering.
Contrast that with the entirely different tone The Guardian struck in its headlines on the cover story (below) of the attack on Ukraine: “‘No words for this’: horror over Russian bombing of Kyiv children’s hospital.”
The subhead reads: “Witnesses express shock and revulsion after deadly missile strike on Ukraine’s largest paediatric clinic.” [Human Rights Watch said only child died and 10 were injured compared to the much larger casualties in the Gaza attack.]
The emphasis is on “horror”, “shock”, “revulsion”. “No words”, we are told, can convey the savagery of this atrocity. The headline’s emphasis is on the targeting of “children” with a “deadly missile”.
All of which, of course, could be equally said about the horror of Israel’s targeting of Palestinian children day-in, day-out. But, of course, isn’t.
Swaying Readers
If this isn’t convincing enough, take another example of The Guardian’s treatment (below) of comparable events in Gaza and Ukraine.
Here is how the paper reported Israel destroying Gaza’s largest hospital back in November, when such actions had not yet become routine, as they are now, and when it had killed far larger numbers of civilians at the hospital in Gaza than Russia did in Ukraine.
The headline reads clinically: “IDF says it has entered Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital in ‘targeted’ operation against Hamas.”
The Guardian readily repeats the Israeli military’s terminology, conferring legitimacy on the carnage at al-Shifa hospital as a “targeted operation.”
The fact that patients and medical personnel were the main victims is obscured by The Guardian’s repeating of Israel’s claim that it was simply “targeting Hamas” – just as Israel’s wanton destruction of Gaza has supposedly been about “eliminating Hamas”, even as Hamas grows stronger.
Apparently there is no “horror, “shock” or “revulsion” at The Guardian over the destruction and killing spree at Gaza’s largest hospital. Such sentiments are reserved for Ukraine.
The same differences are illustrated in the U.S. “liberal” media, as Alan MacLeod noted on X.
A day after Russia’s strike on Ukraine, Israel was attacking another school shelter in Gaza. The New York Times made it clear how differently readers were supposed to feel about these similar events.
Headline: “At Least 25 Reported Killed in Strike on School Building in Southern Gaza.”
Note the passive, uncertain treatment – this was, after all, only a report. Note too that the perpetrator, Israel, remains unidentified.
Headline: “Russia Strikes Children’s Hospital in Deadly Barrage Across Ukraine.”
In stark contrast, Russia is clearly identified as the perpetrator, the active voice is used to describe its crime, and once again emotional descriptors — “deadly” — can be readily deployed to sway readers into an emotional response.
Headlines and photos are the part of a story that almost every reader sees. Which is why their role in framing our understanding of events is so important. They are the print media’s main means of propagandising us.
Skewed Priorities
Broadcast media like the BBC work slightly differently in manipulating our responses.
Running orders — the channel’s way to signal its news priorities — are important, as are the emotional reactions of anchors and reporters. Just think of the way Steve Rosenberg, the BBC’s Moscow correspondent, half-stifles a sneer every time he mentions Vladimir Putin by name, or how he struggles to suppress a scoff at any of the Russian president’s statements.
Then try to imagine any BBC reporter being allowed to do the same with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, let alone British leader Sir Keir Starmer.
Another way to make us invested in some events but not others is by concentrating on what are called “human-interest” stories, taking ordinary individuals and making their troubles and suffering the focus of a piece rather than the usual talking heads.
The BBC evening news, for example, has largely stopped reporting on Gaza’s suffering. When it does, reports occur briefly and late in the running order and they usually cover little more than the dry facts. Human-interest stories have been rare.
The BBC broke with that trend twice on Tuesday’s News at Ten – in the midst of Israel twice targeting schools that were supposed to be offering shelter to Palestinians driven from their homes by Israeli bombs.
Did the BBC tell the stories of the victims of those air strikes? No, those attacks received the most minimal coverage.
The first human-interest story concerned a Ukrainian mother, shown desperately searching for her child in the aftermath of the attack on the Kyiv hospital the previous day, as well as their later reunion.
The second human-interest story, this one from Gaza, didn’t concern any of the many victims of the Israeli attacks on school-shelters. It focused instead — and at great length — on a Palestinian man beaten in Gaza for opposing Hamas rule.
In other words, not only did the BBC consider the day-old deaths of Ukrainians far more important news than Israel’s killing that day of 29 Palestinian civilians, but it also considered the beating of a man by Hamas as a bigger news priority too.
When we are encouraged to care about Palestinians, it is only when the odd one is being brutalised by other Palestinians, not when millions of them are being brutalised by their occupier, Israel, in their ghetto-prisons.
The pattern to this skewing of news priorities, the constant distorted framing of events is the clue to how we should decipher what the media is trying to achieve, what it is there to do.
BBC news coverage all too often looks like it is exploiting any opportunity to highlight violence by Russia, in strict accordance with British foreign policy objectives. Equally, it all too often looks like the BBC is engineering pretexts to ignore or downplay violence by Israel, again in strict accordance with British foreign policy objectives.
Ukraine is a key battleground for the West in its battle for global “full-spectrum dominance”, Washington’s central foreign policy strategy in which it positions itself so that no other great power, such as Russia and China, can challenge its control over the planet’s resources. The U.S. and its Western allies are ready to risk an entirely unnecessary nuclear war, it seems, to win that battle.
Israel, meanwhile, a colonial fortress-state implanted by the West into the oil-rich Middle East, is a critically important ally in realising Washington’s dominance in its region. The Palestinians are the fly in the ointment — and like a fly, they can be swatted away with utter indifference and impunity.
With this as our framework, we can understand why the BBC and other media fail so systematically to fulfill their self-professed remits to reporting objectively and disinterestedly, and fail to scrutinise and hold power to account — unless it is the power of an Official Enemy.
The truth is the BBC, The Guardian and the rest are nothing more than conduits of state-corporate propaganda, masquerading as news outlets.
Until we grasp that, they will continue grooming us.
Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years. He returned to the U.K. in 2021. He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict: Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006), Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). If you appreciate his articles, please consider offering your financial support.
This article is from the author’s blog, Jonathan Cook.net.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Thank you. Brilliant explication — a fresh breeze onto the soc. media cloud even a flag-waving innocent could understand and embrace — and ‘groomed’ and ‘groomer’ are, indeed, the appropriate monikers. Long ago, I worked for some years at an “alt. news” radio station, part of te Pacifica radio network. Nominally leftist, but more accurately “comfortably liberal, well-intentioned Democrat” in their political leanings. So, yes, at base, it’s all about the benjamins: funding. Military actions by “Third World” dictators would take a big hit, lots of audio from the streets, interviews with the bereaved, and thrillingly, statements from the rebel leaders. US/Euro ‘engagements’ were more carefully addressed, esp. with Yugoslavia, f.ex. Which is to say the NYT-centric belief system was quite powerful even then — and both the Times and t he voices of radical dissent have decomposed since then. FWIW, upper management and donors have used DEI as a means to remove politically unacceptable voices and to install the carefully nuanced voices of strivers. An amazing percentage of “blacks” and “browns” — African American, Latin, Philippinos — will vote for Trump, btw. The belief of political elites that they have it in the bag for the Democrats with Biden is dead wrong. It’s a far more striated voting public, far far more aggrieved, far more harmed by four decades of austerity than the pollsters comprehend and they will vote against their own interests out of fury and despair.
Simply one of the best articles I’ve read in explaining how propaganda helps major media serve state and corporate interests.
Another big pro-war article in yesterday’s Observer by Simon Tisdall.
Imo, Jonathan’s “Cooked” the British, French, American’s/USG’s “Golden Goose,” MSMedia, TV & Print!!! DESERVEDLY!!! Thank you, Jonathan Cook!!!
……. IMO, The wholly grail, is “The Corporate News Media at Work” (Jonathan Cook) (+) * “The Useful Idiocy of Donald Trump,” (Chris Hedges, Mr. Fish)
AND, the “gig” is up!!! The “ROT” exposed. The stench, unf/bearable. As well, the deception, destruction; AND, the death of the devotion to the truth, is off the f/chart! Those actions “WILLFULLY,” executed by Presidents 40-46. Using, abusing the power “invested” in US Presidents, per their intent to reap a financial return, i.e., It’s “Profit Over People.” Proving, “El Capitalismo es el Viruz.”
Consequently, the Executive’s, 40-46, “Fired-Up. Ready To Go,” locked arms w/the National $ecurity, M.I.C., “Kay eeh Why?” Because, the National Intere$ts, Corporations, are “In the House,” work’n Congress into full-f/blown complicity in a 5+ decades old “Coup de Jour;” on whomever “they,” POTUS/MIC, target. “WILLFULLY” concealing the truth; &, Congress “UNWILLING” to hold anyone/everyone accountable for the deception, destruction, death for anything from piss’n on the Constitution, to executing war crimes & crimes against humanity, past & present.….
“democracy is Dead!” IF, democracy, “Lived,” it had a very, very, very, very short f/life. Imo, ever since “that Cowboy from Texas started his own war in Iraq.”…..
NEVER forget, the V.P.’s, Cheney’s, BFF, the “LEADING” Democrat, fm Delaware, on the $enate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph Biden played a [CENTRAL] role in pushing through the Authorization for the Use of Military Force that provided a congressional rubber stamp for the illegal invasion,” Occupation Iraqi liberation, freedom, Democracy. There’s NOT a war that Joseph “Patriot Act” Biden, the WH, the M.I.C., the Party of War, is NOT inve$ted in!
“Today, July, 2024, “the “LEADING” Democrat, fm Delaware,” is a miserably aged, dementia addled, truth challenged, “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man, w/a poor memory,” rock’n, a sprayed-on, burnt-orange tan, Botox, & Corporate MSMedia, posing as POTUS, masquerading as HUMAN, wish’n & hope’n the MSMedia fish him outta the river of reflection. POTUS is drowning! He can’t find the EXIT! He’s begg’n, yapp’n & yell’n for a lifeline. His mind, his public service, his history is f/f.u.b.a.r. He’s disgraceful! He’s ill-prepared, i.e., “When the brain lacks sufficient oxygen, cognitive and mental ability declines, followed by physical incapacitation, and then unconsciousness or even death.”
“[involvement in this scandal, “f/with a FREE Press to Justify “Wars” & the Biden-Haris presidency “oughta cook anyone’s goose, for sure]”
Basically, POTUS (Biden-Harris) is toa$t! …..Translation: POTUS’ (Biden’s-Harris’) L.A.R.P.I.N.G., “Live Action Role Playing, is nearing its end. “ The current production of & starring roles in 2024’s “The Truman $how,” “PLAYING” NOW, 24/7, is by De$ign, Streamlined for the Main Stream Media (TV & Print). Scripted by the Keyholders’ w/the Stakeholders’ chokehold, “Keep America Dumb!!!”
“Here’s the Deal:” “The oligarchic and military elites have a handmaiden in the Oval Office, and [he/she] won’t be ousted as long as [he/she] serves their interests.”
….. “Trump provides the daily entertainment; the elites handle the business of looting, exploiting and destroying. As long as Trump” [BIDEN-HARRIS] “serves the interests of the elites he will remain president.”
“HELP IS ON The WAY:” * “IF, for some reason,” [he/she] is unable to serve these interests, [he/she] will disappear.”
Imo, the onus is on the Divided $tates of Corporate America’s National $ecurity, M.I.C., to “partner” w/National Intere$ts, Corporations to RESOLVE, the Commander’s-N-Crises, resolve/task/power to “Rule the World.” ….. “He who ties the bell around the tiger, must untie it.”
“Keep It Lit!” TY, CN. Jonathan Cook, et al.
* “The Useful Idiocy of Donald Trump,” (Chris Hedges, Mr. Fish) @ hxxps://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-useful-idiocy-of-donald-trump/
Well said Jonathan! On the money as usual!
My brother in Law visits us regularly, bringing us the ‘TRUTH’ from the British Daily Mail newspaper…..
If we swallow this bogus ‘Journalism’, we are going to Hell in a Handcart!
I recommend Wikipedia for Black Propaganda
hxxps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_propaganda
100%. Millions who live in this western minority world bubble cannot recognise that they are fed propaganda as ludicrous as that of what we are told are totalitarian nations. The citizens of these other nations are better than us..They know and recognise the propaganda they are fed.
A brilliant analysis of media bias and its techniques. Bravo!
TRIBAL CAMPS?! No!!!
I’ve seen this characterization used repeatedly–especially by Euro media analysts, eco-activists, cultural critics, and social scientists. It’s lazy, it’s thoughtless, it reeks of racial superiority. And it’s NOT true!
Look at the historical record as to which people are classified as “tribal.” Sub-Saharan Africans, indigenous Australians, and the First Nations of the Americas. Certainly not Europeans and Euro descendants; they’re “ethnicities.” Tribal evokes images of primitive beings, uncivilized lessers who should feel blessed to be the subjects of colonization and empire.
Actual “tribal” people haven’t carried out the rationalized, inhumane wars that the professional elites of Euro nations have repeatedly. Such dedicated scientific development and efficient use of the weapons of mass death.
Actual “tribal” people understand cooperation and symbiosis; including a deeply experiential, spiritual even, connection to land and all its life in whatever form. In contrast to the colonist tendency to think in abstractions, disconnected from their surroundings. People who live superficially on top of the land with no roots in it, thus no feel for it.
To use “tribal” as a shorthand for the angry oppositions of Euro or Euro-American, etc. political groups is the attempt to distance yourselves from your own shadow. How about becoming responsible for the problems you have because of your faulty assumptions and resulting collective behavior?
Excellent article, thank you
Good article! I 100% agree with the author’s statement regarding the importance of ‘Manufacturing Consent’ and I recall how strongly it resonated with me back in early 90’s when I first read it — it was SO refreshing to read a REALISTIC description of the media here in the U.S. rather than the cliched version of the ‘fourth estate/free-press protecting democracy’ that the MSM perpetuates. One hope that I harbor is that alternative news sources such as this one will make inroads into the ‘respectability’ that the MSM unfairly commands, though it obviously gets harder to entertain that idea when blatant examples of the MSM’s ‘home-team’ bias are repeatedly ignored. Not only the example the author cites, but the disproportionate comparison of Putin being convicted of being a war-criminal’ (reportedly for moving ~200 Russian children from harms way in Ukraine) while Netanyahu KILLS thousands of children!
The grossest example was the Iraq ‘War’ in 2003 where the I recall how virtually all the MSM backed it. Later when it was revealed there were NO WMD’s and the whole thing was essentially a hoax — even by the MSM’s own admissions (a rare event) — the media fired Judith Miller and then moved on, even though ~100K Iraqis died, and they still claim to be reliable, and most of the general public is OK with it…
“Chomsky and Herman’s Propaganda Model explains in detail how Western publics are “brainwashed under freedom” by a media driven by hidden corporate and state interests. Those interests can be concealed only because the media decides what counts as news and frames how we understand events.
Its chief tools are misdirection and omission — and, in extremis, outright deception.
The Propaganda Model acknowledges that competition is permitted in the news media. But only of a narrow, superficial kind, meant to divide us more usefully into tribal, ideological camps – defined as the left and the right.
Those camps are there to keep us imagining that we enjoy a plurality of ideas, that we are in charge of our response to events, that we elect governments — just as we enjoy a choice between watching the BBC and Fox News.
But our herding into oppositional camps isn’t really about choice. The camps are there to keep us divided, so we can be more easily manipulated and ruled. They are there to obscure from us the deeper reality that the state-corporate media is the public relations arm of an establishment that needs us weak.
To survive, the Western power establishment has to engineer two related kinds of popular endorsement.”
I love a lot of Cooks work. But I have issues with Chomsky. Who also has a great understanding of the ins and outs of our governing on all levels. But what Cook is explaining here, Chomsky has played a role in committing himself. One might recall who Chomsky advocated for president in 2020. Like Nader, always, seemingly, attempting to herd us into the democratic party. Knowing they are no different than the republican party. You can’t go both ways exposing the crimes and unethical practices of these parties, and then direct us back to either of them for solving our issues when you know they are the issue.
When I read a good work, I let it stand on it’s own, in the time it was written.
This is an interesting and compelling article, but I am a bit uneasy about how Cook handles the 8 July attack on the children’s hospital in Kiev. He mentions awkwardly that there was some doubt initially about whether the damage was done by a Russian missile or by a Ukrainian defence mechanism, leaving the impression that it must have been done by the Russians. Responsible observers (Scott Ritter and Thomas Röper) are quite convinced Ukraine was responsible for the damage. The fact the the atrocity occurred just before the commencement of the Nato summit when Ukraine was in greater need than usual for world-wide anti-Russian hysteria raises the possibility that it was a deliberate attack by Kiev. I think these aspects of the attack should at least be considered.
I’m reading The Figaro in France and it’s so similar . Russia is demonised with “facts” quoting Ukraine’s president Zelenskiiy but information admitting Russia’s achievements is hidden or sneered at.
“A PROPAGANDA SYSTEM WILL CONSISTENTLY PORTRAY PEOPLE abused in [by] enemy [Russian] states as ‘worthy’ victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients [Israel] will be ‘unworthy'”
-Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
Manufacturing Consent p.37
“Given the U.S. role in originating and sustaining the Guatemalan counterinsurgency state,…”
“We would expect reports on Guatemala…” “…to be downplayed or ignored,…”
“This is a strong test of the [Propaganda] model, as the number of civilians murdered between 1978 and 1985 may have approached 100,000, with a style of killing reminiscent of Pol Pot. As AI [Amnesty International] pointed out in 1981:
‘The bodies of the victims have been found piled up in ravines,
dumped at roadsides or buried in mass graves. Thousands bore the
scars of torture, and death had come to most by strangling with
a garrotte, by being suffocated in rubber hoods or by being shot
in the head.’
The expectations of a propaganda model are fully realized in this case.”
-Ibid p.75
Jonathan Cook’s observations could be extended to Canada’s Globe and Mail, which has been publishing a series of NATO-friendly articles, letters, and at least one editorial. Today’s opinion page has an article by Roland Paris, quoting the ancient Roman maxim which translates “if you want peace, prepare for war.” Maybe Publius Vegetius Renatus had a valid point when barbarian hordes were invading in fifth century Rome. Today’s situation is very different, where NATO, led by the United States, has a record of aggression, against which nuclear-armed Russia has defended itself. If you look at the Ukraine situation from February, 2022 of course you can portray Russia as the aggressor. But if you look at events going back at least to NATO’s bombing of Belgrade, then the post-Maidan management of Ukraine’s political leadership, and Russia’s response, you get a different picture. Confronting Russia with a strengthened NATO, with the hope of Russia admitting defeat, is a losing gambler’s last-ditch attempt to extricate itself from impossible-to-accept-losses.
In the interest of avoiding Armageddon, the world should wake up to the risks.
Instead of “if you want peace, prepare for war,” Josef Rotblat had the more sensible attitude for today’s world, as distinct from Ancient Rome’s. That is: “If you want peace, prepare for peace.” Once again, I recommend the National Film Board of Canada’s excellent documentary, “The Strangest Dream.”
Let’s start calling them the Corporate-Owned-News, with the acronym of CON. That’s what they have been for a very long time. Their selective outrage about the Kiev hospital is just another CON job. Until we can figure out how to destroy their credibility with the public, there will always be CON jobs foisted on the public. The CON are persistent enemies of the people, and until their reign of vicious lies is put to and end, there will never be sufficient push-back by the public over the endless war policies.
Right on, Jonathan!
I wrote my dissertation on these very matters about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 entitled: Structures of ‘News Speak’: U.S Network Television Coverage of the Lebanon War, Summer 1982 (1984) Boston University. I also wrote several articles about how the ‘categories’ that event purveyors use reveal their ideological points of view. La Lutte Continue!
Paul L. Jalbert, Ph.D.
Associate Professor Emeritus
University of Connecticut
paul(dot)jalbert(at)uconn(dot)edu
Regarding the Kiev strike, video has surfaced , that when freeze framed , shows the missile that struck the hospital was highly likely a NASAM surface to air intercept missile. The damage to the hospital is certainly commensurate with a lower damage effect as opposed to the Khinsal missiles being used that day approximately two kilometres away hitting military manufacturing facilities. There is also video of those Khinsal missiles hitting those facilities and the freeze frame shows the distinct difference in shape between the NASAM and the Khinsal.
This is not to say Ukraine deliberately targeted the hospital as a propaganda tool a day before the NATO conference but merely to point out what video evidence seems to indicate a NASAM “ errant” strike.
However, this type of potentially deliberate propaganda targeting by Ukraine is not without precedent.
On 8th.April 2022 the Kramatorsk railway station was hit by a Tochka-U missile killing 63 passengers waiting to flee to the west. The missile booster that detached had.a serial number linked to the Ukrainian arsenal post 1991 and came from the direction of Ukrainian held territory.
Further, an investigation by the NYT discovered it was actually a Ukrainian Buk missile that hit a market in Kostiantynivka a Ukrainian held town , killing at least 17 and not an S300 that Ukraine blamed on Russia. At the time the NYT called it a likely “ errant” anti-missile strike.
Then the “ errant” missile strike onto a Polish farm killing two workers.
And the “ errant” Ukrainian missile attack on a Russian military detention centre killing captured Azov members from the Azovstol plant in Mariupol. I could digress into Bucha but I think you get my point.
The Ukrainians and western media are always very quick to place blame on Russia for any incident they possibly can, even when the evidence doesn’t add up.
We’ve seen this throughout the conflict. All those so-called Russian war crimes are prime examples. Lots of close observers have noticed how careful Russia is to avoid civilian casualties at all times, whereas by contrast, there is overwhelming evidence of Ukraine deliberately going for civilian casualties and then blaming Russia.
Ukraine has shown an extremely nasty disregard for human lives – both military and civilian alike!
Phillip,
I appreciate the detail you have provided about the strike on the Kiev children’s hospital and about other cases in which Russia was blamed for attacks they may not have carried out. (I made a comment on this matter, too, but only in a very general way.) I have a serious question for you: why does Jonathan Cook not engage in these aspects of the issue?
Excellent expose’ of how the NYT works. It also tells its reporters and columnists not to use the words Palestine, West Bank, Gaza, etc. We must be aware that the Times is not the only news organization that does this and what Jonathan Cook has written. Nearly all western media do it. There is so much prejudice and racism in those corporate news outlets. They want to make sure people don’t learn about the truth. Oh yeah, check out the header of the New York Times and what it says about Truth.
Thank you for your very informative article.
They don’t groom me. I’ve been aware for many years of their manipulation with words and headings. The hypocrisy these days, vis-á-vis the reporting narrative of Russian and Israeli aggression is miles apart. Curiosity though, compels me to visit propaganda news sites in order to ascertain what lies they are selling today.
Outstanding piece, and entirely damning of Western news media.
This article is a great primer on detecting media bias. Thank you, Jonathan Cook!
Palestinians: dark skinned – Ukrainians: white skinned
Excellent education in a single article! Hope websites like Common Dreams, etc. will pick it up. Should be read to every grade school student. Start there education off right.