In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger reports an unprecedented study by three UK universities which found that, contrary to myth, 80 per cent of the media followed “the government line” on Iraq and only 12 per cent challenged it. He analyses the subtleties and insidious nature of censorship in free societies and asks why this is neglected by many media colleges.
The British Army rebels against propoganda
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger quotes from a letter received from a British army officer serving in Iraq and sent to the BBC. The officer calls the war unwinnable and wrong, and appeals to the media not to swallow “the office/White House line”. For the first time, journalists are now being scrutinised by the soldiers whose war they report.
No tears, no remorse for the fallen of Iraq
In the New Statesman, John Pilger looks back on Remembrance Day – Veterans Day in the US – and describes the presence of hypocrisy as the bowed heads of the establishment mourned none of the million dead of Iraq and the destruction of their society.
ISRAEL AND THE MEDIA
If you got your news only from the television, you would have no idea of the roots of the Middle East conflict, or that the Palestinians are victims of an illegal military occupation.
DENYING THE ISRAELI PAST
Ethnic cleansing attended the birth of Israel but, more than 50 years later, the country is still in denial about its bloody past. Those who speak out risk their jobs.
Blair’s meeting with Arafat served to disguise his support for Sharon and the Zionist project
Tony Blair’s heroic peacemaking is not as it seems. Take the Middle East. When Blair welcomed Yasser Arafat to Downing Street following 11 September, it was widely reported that Britain was backing justice for the Palestinians.
The West has its reasons for validating Israel’s violence; human rights are not an issue
Richard Falk, professor of international relations at Cornell, once wrote that western foreign policy was formulated “through a self-righteous, one-way moral/legal screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted political violence”.
The tragedy of an epic injustice that is at the root of Bush’s and Blair’s threats of war
Last October, in the early hours of the morning, a young expectant mother called Fatima Abed-Rabo awoke with intense labour pains; and she and her husband Nasser set out in a friend’s car for the hospital in Bethlehem, in Israeli occupied Palestine.
The fanatics who threaten murder
The Palestinians are no longer alone; Israel, despite the craven intimidation of some of its supporters, has ceased to be immune from truthful media criticism.
The source of terror in Palestine
No front pages in the west mourn victims of the enduring bloodbath in occupied Palestine, the equivalent of the Madrid horror week after week, month after month.
