WHO YOU GONNA BELIEVE?

Most of us don’t need to be reminded that mainstream media coverage of international conflicts where the US government has an interest is thoroughly unreliable.  We all remember the relentless war boosterism in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, which even our press now (after the fact) acknowledges as misleading, if not full of conscious lies.  We were not fooled then. We recognized that the issue was not a matter of defending the bloody regime of Saddam Hussein, but averting an illegal war that would have catastrophic results. 

 

Now that new wars are being promoted in Syria, Ukraine and against Iran, we have to continuously remind ourselves that reporting in the corporate press is entirely biased and should be met with the utmost skepticism.  It’s not that mainstream reporting is necessarily false, only that it is almost useless as a basis for understanding the reality behind US foreign policy aims.  Sometimes the press reports outright lies; sometimes it omits important context by design or ignorant trust in “reliable sources” in government; sometimes it just routinely uses US-establishment framing.  (For example, Ukrainian rebels are invariably labeled as “Russian-supported;” Hezbollah is always “Iran-backed.“  When was the last time you read in the press “US-supported Ukraine,” or US-supported Israel”? Even when the MSM reports the truth, it is buried in an avalanche of conventional wisdom -- or simply ignored by the ongoing official narrative.

 

As before, it can be confusing when the purported enemies of the US are themselves unsavory.  It goes without saying that in opposing US (or other) interventions, we are not automatically supporting the regimes or movements targeted by the US propaganda machine.

 

Our focus needs to be on opposing our own government’s militarized and lawless policy, which is not about promoting democracy anywhere, except occasionally by accident. The photo here shows members of the US-backed Ukrainian government Azov Battalion with some of their favorite symbols.  This is supposed to be “our side.”

 

NYT Whites Out Ukraine’s Brown Shirts