The Difficulty of Being an Informed
American
by Paul Craig Roberts
www.informationclearinghouse.info/,
January 8, 2009
The American print and TV media has never
been very good. These days it is horrible. If a person intends
to be informed, he must turn to foreign news broadcasts, to Internet
sites, to foreign newspapers available on the Internet, or to
alternative newspapers that are springing up in various cities.
A person who sits in front of Murdoch's Fox "News" or
CNN or who reads the New York Times is simply being brainwashed
with propaganda.
Before conservatives nod their heads in
agreement, I'm not referring to "the liberal media."
I mean the propaganda that issues from the US government and the
Israel Lobby.
It was neoconservative Bush regime propaganda
fed to America through Judith Miller and the New York Times and
through Murdoch's Fox "News" that convinced Americans
that they were in danger from a small secular Arab country half
way around the globe called Iraq. It was the American media that
convinced Americans that getting rid of dangerous "weapons
of mass destruction," weapons that did not exist in Iraq,
would be a cakewalk paid for by Iraqi oil revenues.
It is the same propagandistic American
print and TV media that has rationalized Bush's illegal invasion
of Iraq and Afghanistan based on seven years of lies and deception.
It is the same media that today provides
only Israeli propaganda as "coverage" of the Israeli
war crimes in Gaza.
It was the New York Times that spiked
for one year the leaked information from the National Security
Agency that the Bush regime, in violation of US law, was illegally
spying on Americans without warrants. The "liberal"
New York Times agreed to suppress the story so that Bush would
not face reelection under the cloud of his outlaw behavior.
Conservatives think the Washington Post
is "liberal media" despite the fact that the editorial
and commentary pages are controlled by neocons and their sympathizers.
During the run up to wars and during wars,
the American media has always been a propagandist for the government.
The only exceptions occurred during the Vietnam war and the Contra-Sandinista
conflict in Central America. Karen de Young and some others tried
to honestly cover the Contras and Sandinistas and were demonized
by "patriots" taken in by the government's lies.
Conservatives still blame the "liberal"
media for losing the Vietnam war, when in fact all the media did
was to provide some truthful reports that opened some American
eyes.
When the truth cuts against the position
of the US government, conservatives see it as "liberal."
When propaganda supports the government's
lies, conservatives see it as "patriotic."
However, any resemblance to independent
reporting disappeared from the American media when the Democratic
regime of President Clinton allowed Murdoch and a small handful
of moguls to concentrate the American media in a few corporate
hands. That was the end of American reporting.
Journalists disappeared from media management
and were replaced by corporate advertising executives with an
eye not to offend any source of advertising revenue, and certainly
not to offend the government, which controls the broadcast licenses
that comprise the value of the mega-companies.
Today reporters write the stories that
their masters want to hear, or they are out. The function of editors
is to make certain that no uncomfortable information reaches the
public.
The public is slowly catching on, and
the print media is slowly dying. The New York Times, Chicago Tribune,
and Los Angeles Times are all on the ropes to one extent or the
other.
Americans are still subjected to Fox "News"
and CNN propaganda piped into airport waiting rooms, doctors'
offices, and exercise centers. It is very much the situation that
George Orwell describes in 1984.
People ask me where they can get reliable
information. I tell them that their goal cannot be reached without
their commitment of time.
People who have access to television services
that provide English language foreign broadcasts, such as Iran's
Press TV, Russia Today, or Al Jazeera, can get get news and insights
from those parts of the world demonized by the US media.
The BBC World Service still reports facts
while covering itself by providing the views of the US, UK, and
Israeli governments.
Both the Asia Times and Israeli newspapers,
such as Haaretz can be read online in English. There are other
such newspapers, and all of them provide information that Americans
will never see in their own media. Any American newspaper that
was as truthful about the Israeli government as Haaretz would
be closed down.
The only US print media with which I am
familiar in which some honest reporting can be found on a regular
basis is the McClatchy papers.
Americans addicted to print media must
turn to alternative newspapers, which tend to be weekly or bi-weekly.
However, the news and commentary provided are often superb.
I have made no study of alternative newspapers
and know very few. The Rock Creek Free Press (www.RockCreekFreePress.com
) is terrific. After reading one issue, you will waste no more
time on the "mainstream media." The Rock Creek Free
Press is likely to rescue even the dullest mind from its brainwashed
state.
Other alternative newspapers, such as
The Liberty Voice ( www.TheLibertyVoice.com ),lift your spirit
as well as inform.
Alternative newspapers are often the children
of people motivated by a sense of justice and the love of truth.
Such people have become an endangered species in the American
"mainstream media." The free press Americans have today
is online and in the alternative media.
The function of the "mainstream media"
is to sell products and to brainwash the audience for the government
and interest groups. By subscribing to it, Americans support their
own brainwashing.
Paul Craig Roberts was associate editor
and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business
Week, and columnist for the Scripps Howard Newspapers.
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