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Democracy and the New
American Censorship
By Peter Phillips
www.projectcensored.org
Election 2004 was a serious test of democracy in the US. Perhaps we failed the
test. At no other time since the 1930s have we been so dangerously close to
institutionalized totalitarianism. No-fly lists, prison torture, domestic
spying, mega-homeland security agencies, suspension of habeas corpus, global
unilateralism, and military adventurism interlocked with corporate profit
taking are all spurred on by a media-induced citizen paranoia.
Corporate media is in the
entertainment business and fails to cover important news stories voters need
to make election decisions. We need information about our country's leaders.
These are the people making decisions that impact all of our lives. We need to
know who our leaders are and what they are doing. What are their backgrounds,
their motivations? What policies and laws are they enacting? What actions are
they undertaking, with or against our consent? We don't need to like them, but
we do need to know about them.
A participatory democracy needs people to be aware of issues in order to have
active engaged voters.
The real winners on November 2, 2004 were the military industrial complex,
which will continue to feed at the 500 billion-dollar military trough, and the
corporate media, whose coffers were filled with billions of dollars for
campaign ads.
And can we be sure we actually had a fair election among those who did vote?
Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Diebold, and Sequoia are the
companies primarily involved in implementing the new voting stations
throughout the country. All three have strong ties to the Bush Administration.
The largest investors in ES&S, Sequoia, and Diebold are government defense
contractors Northrup-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin, Electronic Data Systems (EDS)
and Accenture. Diebold hired Scientific Applications International Corporation
(SAIC) of San Diego to develop the software security in their voting machines.
A majority of officials on SAIC's board are former members of either the
Pentagon or the CIA including: (Lewellen-Biddle 04)
- Army Gen. Wayne Downing, formerly on the National Security Council
- Bobby Ray Inman; former CIA Director
- Retired Adm. William Owens, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff
- Robert Gates, another former director of the CIA.
Might the 50 million voters who will cast their ballot on an electronic voting
machine be concerned that the major investors in the voting machine companies
are some of the top defense contractors in the US and that the firm that
developed the security software for electronic voting is made up of former CIA
and NSA directors? They will never know unless the mass corporate-media tells
them.
Might many Americans be more willing to vote if they knew that a conservative
right-wing organization has replaced the American Bar Association as the main
vetting group for federal judge appointments? Or would there be concern for
our returning military vets if it were widely known that many are permanently
contaminated with high levels of radioactive depleted uranium (DU). Might this
concern increase among young people if they knew the extent of government
plans to reinstate the military draft in the US?
These news stories and hundreds like them are ignored or dismissed by the
corporate media in the United States. The First Amendment of the US
constitution, guaranteeing freedom of the press, was established to maximize
citizen cognition of critical issues in society. It was understood clearly by
the founders that Democracy could only be maintained through an informed
electorate.
A daily newspaper, along with the three major TV networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, as
well as CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, are the major sources of news and information for
most Americans. News stories and the invidious entertainment segments from
these corporate sources generally have similar themes and common frames of
understanding. This concentration of access to media sources leaves most
Americans with very narrow parameters of news awareness and an almost complete
lack of competing opinions.
Democracy in the United
States is only a shadow in a corporate media cave of deceit, lies and
incomplete information. We stand ignorant of what the powerful are doing in
our name and how the corporate media ignores key issues affecting us all.
Democracy is the people making decisions about the important issues in their
lives. Freedom is the ability to act on these decisions. Without an electoral
choice democracy is non-existent and freedom only means the right to choose
your own brand of toothpaste. Without an active independent media informing on
the powerful, we lack both freedom and democracy.
The corporate media agenda of maximum profits undermines the public purpose of
a free press by creating the fiscal necessity for cutting costs and increasing
the entertainment content. Ratings and audience share translate to higher
advertising value and higher profits. This structural arrangement of corporate
media results in what Robert McChesney calls Rich Media Poor Democracy. (Copy
editor: Put note here:
McChesney, Robert, Rich Media, Poor Democracy, University of Illinois Press,
1999
The US is involved in global empire building at a level which most people in
the country are uninformed. The United States intervene daily in the internal
affairs of other countries around the world and the corporate media seldom
reports on our activities.
On February 29, 2004, Richard Boucher from the U.S. Department of State
released a press report claiming that Jean Bertrand Aristide had resigned as
president of Haiti and that the United State facilitated his safe departure.
Within hours the major broadcast news stations in the United States including
CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS, and NPR were reporting that Aristide had fled Haiti.
An Associated Press release that evening said "Aristide resigns, flees
into exile." The next day headlines in the major newspapers across the
country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, New York Times, and
Atlanta Journal Constitution, all announced "Aristide Flees
Haiti." The Baltimore Sun reported, "Haiti's first
democratically-elected president was forced to flee his country yesterday like
despots before him."
However on Sunday afternoon February 29, Dennis Bernstein with Pacifica News
Network was interviewing reporters live in Port-au-Prince Haiti who were
claiming that Aristide was forced to resign by the US and taken out of the
Presidential palace by armed US marines. On Monday morning Amy Goodman with
Democracy Now! news show interviewed Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Waters
said she had received a phone call from Aristide at 9:00 AM EST March 1, in
which Aristide emphatically denied that he had resigned and said that he had
been kidnapped by US and French forces. Aristide made calls to others,
including TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson, who verified Congresswoman
Waters' report.
With this situation, mainstream corporate media was faced
with a dilemma. Confirmed contradictions to headlines reports were being
openly revealed to hundreds of thousands of Pacifica listeners nationwide. By
Monday afternoon March 1, mainstream corporate media began to respond to
charges. Tom Brokaw on NBC Nightly News voiced, "Haiti in crisis. Armed
rebels sweep into the capital as Aristide claims US troops kidnapped him;
forced him out. The US calls that nonsense." Brit Hume with Fox News
Network reported Colin Powell's comments; "He was not kidnapped. We did
not force him on to the airplane. He went on to the airplane willingly, and
that's the truth. Mort Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call added,
"Aristide, was a thug and a leader of thugs and ran his country into
the ground." The New York Times in a story buried on page 10 reported
that "President Jean-Bertrand Aristide asserted Monday that he had been
driven from power in Haiti by the United States in "a coup," an
allegation dismissed by the White House as "complete nonsense."
Still, mainstream/corporate media had a credibility problem. Their original
story was openly contradicted. The kidnap story could be ignored or back-paged
as was done by many newspapers in the US. Or it could be framed within the
context of a US denial and dismissed. Unfortunately, the corporate media
seemed not at all interested in conducting an investigation into the charges,
seeking witnesses, or verifying contradictions. Nor was the mainstream media
asking or answering the question of why they fully accept the State
Department's version of the coup in the first place. Corporate media certainly
had enough pre-warning to determine that Aristide was not going to willingly
leave the country. Aristide had been saying exactly that for the past month
during the armed attacks in the north of Haiti. When Aristide was interviewed
on CNN February 26, he explained that the terrorists and criminal drug dealers
were former members of the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH),
which had led the coup in 1991, killing 5,000 people. Aristide believed they
would kill even more people if a coup was allowed to happen. It was also well
known in media circles that the US Undersecretary of State for Latin America,
Roger Noriega, had been senior aide to former Senator Jesse Helms, who as
chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs committee was a longtime backer of
Haitian dictator Jean Claude Duvalier and an opponent of Aristide. These facts
alone should have been a red flag regarding the State Department's version of
Aristide's departure. Weeks later most news stories on Haiti published in the
US still claimed that Aristide "fled" Haiti while reporting the
on-going civil unrest in the country.
The corporate media's recent
coverage of Haiti is how the new American censorship works. If news stories
contradict the official sources of news they tend to be downplayed or ignored.
Corporate/mainstream media has become dependent upon the press releases and
inside sources from government and major corporations for their 24 hour news
content and are increasingly unwilling to broadcast or publish news that would
threaten ongoing relationships with official sources.
This means that freedom of information and citizen access to objective news is
fading in the United States. In its place is a complex entertainment-oriented
news system, which protects its own bottom-line by servicing the most powerful
military-industrial complex in the world. Corporate media today is interlocked
and dependent on government sources for news content. Gone are the days of
deep investigative reporting teams challenging the powerful. Media
consolidation has downsized newsrooms to the point where reporters serve more
as stenographers than researchers. (Barsamian1992)
The 24-hour news shows on MSNBC, Fox, and CNN are closely interconnected with
various governmental and corporate sources of news. Maintenance of continuous
news shows requires a constant feed and an ever-entertaining supply of
stimulating events and breaking news bites. Advertisement for mass consumption
drives the system and pre-packaged sources of news are vital within this
global news process. Ratings demand continued cooperation from
multiple-sources for on-going weather reports, war stories, sports scores,
business news, and regional headlines. Print, radio, and TV news also engages
in this constant interchange with news sources.
The preparation for and following of ongoing wars and terrorism fits well into
the visual kaleidoscope of pre-planned news. Government public relations
specialists and media experts from private commercial interests provide
on-going news feeds to the national media distribution systems. The result is
an emerging macro-symbiotic relationship between news dispensers and news
suppliers. Perfect examples of this relationship are the Iraq War press pools
organized by the Pentagon both in the Middle-East and in Washington
D.C., which give pre-scheduled reports on the war to selected groups of news
collectors (journalists) for distribution through their respective corporate
media organizations. The Pentagon's management of the news has become
increasingly sophisticated with restrictions and controls being cumulatively
added to each new military action or invasion in which the US is involved.
(Andersen, 2003)
During the Iraq War, embedded reporters (news collectors) working directly
with military units in the field were required to maintain cooperative working
relationships with unit commanders as they fed breaking news back to the U.S.
public. Cooperative reporting was vital to continued access to government news
sources. In addition, rows of news story reviewers back at corporate media
headquarters were used to rewrite, soften, or spike news stories from the
field that threaten the symbiotics of global news management or might be
perceived by the Pentagon as too critical.
Journalists working outside of this approved mass media system faced
ever-increasing dangers from "accidents" of war and corporate-media
dismissal of their news reports. Massive civilian casualties caused by U.S.
troops, extensive damage to private homes and businesses, and reports that
contradict the official public relations line were downplayed, deleted, or
ignored by corporate media, while content was analyzed by experts (retired
generals and other approved collaborators) from within the symbiotic global
news structure.
Symbiotic global news distribution is a conscious and deliberate attempt by
the powerful to control news and information in society. It is the overt
manifestation of censorship in our society. The Homeland Security Act Title II
Section 201(d)(5) specifically asks the directorate to "develop a
comprehensive plan for securing the key resources and critical infrastructure
of the United States includinginformation technology and telecommunications
systems (including satellites) emergency preparedness communications
systems." Corporate media's cooperation with these directives insures an
on-going transition to inevitably tighter controls over news content in the
United States. From a Homeland Security agency perspective, total information
control would be the ideal state of maximized security for the media systems
in the US.
Corporate media today is perhaps
too vast to enforce complete control over all content 24 hours a day. However,
the government's goal and many multinational corporations' desires are for the
eventual operationalization of a highly controlled news system in the US. The
degree to which corporate media is hastening moves in this direction is
directly related to the high level embeddedness of the media elite within the
corporate power structure in the United States.
This new American censorship is facilitated by the continuing consolidation of
the corporate media. Since the passage of the Telecommunications act of 1996,
a gold rush of media mergers and takeovers has been occurring in the U.S. Over
half of all radio stations have been sold in the past eight years, and the
repeatedly merged AOL-Time-Warner- (CNN) is the largest media organization in
the world. Less then a handful of major media corporations now dominates the
U.S. news and information systems. Clear Channel owns over 1,200 radio
stations. Ninety-eight percent of all cities have only one daily newspaper and
huge chains like Gannett and Knight Ridder increasingly own these. (Bagdikian,
2004)
Media corporations have been under-going a massive merging and buy-out process
that is realigning the sources of information in America. Conglomeration
changes traditional media corporate cultures. Values such as freedom of
information and belief in the responsibility of keeping the public informed
are adjusted to reflect policies created by bottom-line oriented CEOs. These
structural arrangements facilitate the new censorship in America today. It is
not yet deliberate killing of stories by official censors, but a rather subtle
system of information suppression in the name of corporate profit and
self-interest.
The big corporations that now dominate media in America are principally in the
entertainment business. The corporate media is narrowing its content with news
reports often looking very much the same. Between media consolidation, the
primacy of bottom line considerations, and the ignoring of important but
complex political issues, it is now believed that Americans are the
best-entertained, least informed people in the world. (Postman, 1986)
Media owners and managers are economically motivated to please advertisers and
upper middle class readers and viewers. Journalists and editors are not immune
to management influence. Journalists want to see their stories approved for
print or broadcast, and editors come to know the limits of their freedom to
diverge from the bottom line view of owners and managers. The results are an
expansion of entertainment news, infomercials, and synergistic news all aimed
at increased profit taking.
Corporate media are multinational corporations in their own right, with all
the vested interests in free-market capitalism and top down control of
society. In 1997 eleven largest or most influential media corporations in the
United States were General Electric Company (NBC), Viacom Inc. (cable), The
Walt Disney Company (ABC), Time Warner Inc. (CNN), Westinghouse Electric
Corporation (CBS), The News Corporation Ltd. (Fox), Gannett Co. Inc.,
Knight-Ridder Inc., New York Times Co., Washington Post Co., and the Times
Mirror Co. Collectively, these eleven major media corporations had 155
directors in 1996. These 155 directors also held 144 directorships on the
boards of Fortune 1,000 corporations in the United States. These eleven
media organizations have interlocking directorships with each other through 36
other Fortune 1,000 corporations creating a solid network of overlapping
interests and affiliations. All eleven media corporations have direct links
with at least two of the other top media organizations. General Electric,
owner of NBC, has the highest rate of shared affiliations with 17 direct
corporate links to nine of the 10 other media corporations. (Phillips, 1998)
These directors are the media elite of the world. While they may not agree on
abortion and other domestic issues, they do represent the collective vested
interests of a significant portion of corporate America and share a common
commitment to free market capitalism, economic growth, internationally
protected copyrights, and a government dedicated to protecting their
interests.
Given this interlocked media
network, it is more than safe to say that major media in the United States
effectively represents the interests of corporate America, and that the media
elite are the watchdogs of acceptable ideological messages, parameters of news
content, and general use of media resources.
Corporate media promote free market capitalism as the unquestioned American
ideological truth. The decline of communism opened the door for unrestrained
free marketers to boldly espouse market competition as the final solution for
global harmony. Accordingly, corporate media have become the mouthpiece of
free market ideology by uncritically supporting the underlying assumption that
the marketplace will solve all evils, and that we will enjoy economic
expansion, individual freedom, and unlimited bliss by fully deregulating and
privatizing society's socio-economic institutions.
The corporate media have been fully supportive of the US policy of undermining
socialist or nationalist leaning governments and pressuring them into
ideological compliance. The full force of U.S. dominated global institutions -WTO,
World Bank, IMF, and NAFTA-focus on maximizing free market circumstances and
corporate access to every region of the world. Economic safety nets,
environmental regulations, labor unions, and human rights take second place to
the free flow of capital and investments. The corporate media elites are in
the forefront of this global capital movement with an unrelenting propaganda
agenda that gives lip service to democracy while refusing to address the
contradictions and hypocrisies of US global policies.
A closer examination of this American media supported ideology reveals
that "free market" essentially means constant international U.S.
government intervention on behalf of American corporations. This
public-private partnership utilizes U.S. embassies, the CIA, FBI, NSA, U.S.
Military, Department of Commerce, USAID, and every other
U.S government institution to protect, sustain, and directly support our vital
interest-U.S. business.
This ideological mantra affects the U.S. population as well. We are still
riding on the betterments from the first three/quarters of the 20th century
and have not faced the full impacts of the economic bifurcation that has
occurred in the past 30 years. Poverty levels are rising, the numbers of
working poor expanding, and homelessness one pay check away for many. In the
last quarter century economic conditions have declined for the bottom 60
million Americans, and most of the next 100 million have barely held their
own, while the corporate and media elites have socked away fortunes. (Sklar
2002)
In the past few years, corporate media outlets, under pressure from powerful
corporate/government officials, have fired or disciplined journalists for
writing critical stories about the powerful in the United States. These
terminations have sent a chilling message to journalists throughout the U.S. -
If you attack the sacred cows of powerful corporate/governmental institutions
your career is on the line. Journalists who fail to recognize their role as
cooperative news collectors are disciplined in the field or barred from
reporting, as in the Iraq War II celebrity cases of Geraldo Rivera and Peter
Arnett.
In a well known case of pressure by powerful
institutions, Fox TV news reporters Steve Wilson and Jane Akre were fired by
WTVT in Tampa for refusing to change their story on the dangers of Monsanto's
bovine growth hormone (rBGH) in the Florida milk supply. Scientific research
has shown that rBGH when injected into cows to expand milk production results
in the increase of insulin-like growth factor IGF-I in milk. IGF-I has been
linked to breast and prostate cancer. Monsanto claims that the milk is safe,
but new scientific evidence suggests otherwise. Monsanto put pressure on Fox
Television in New York, WTVT's parent company, threatening dire consequences
if the story ran. When Wilson and Akre refused to say the milk was unchanged,
they were fired by the Fox station general manager who was quoted as saying,
"We paid $3 billion for these stations: we'll decide what the news is.
The news is what we tell you it is." (Wilson and Akre, 2000 )
Perhaps the most infamous case of
media willingly succumbing to external pressures by the government is the
retraction by CNN of the story about U.S. Military's use of sarin gas in 1970
in Laos during the Vietnam War. CNN producers April Oliver and Jack Smith,
after an eight-month investigation, reported on CNN June 7, 1998 and later in
Time magazine that sarin gas was used in operation Tailwind in Laos and that
American defectors were targeted. The story was based on eyewitness accounts
and high military command collaboration.
Under tremendous pressure from the Pentagon, Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell,
and Richard Helms, CNN and Time retracted the story saying that, "the
allegations about the use of nerve gas and the killing of defectors are not
supported by the evidence," and fired Oliver and Smith. Columnists and
pundits across the nation attacked Oliver and Smith for their alleged
unprofessional journalism. Newsweek even wrote on July 20, 1998 that the
allegations were "proven wrong". Oliver and Smith have steadfastly
stood by their original story as accurate and substantiated. What is troubling
about this issue is the speed with which CNN/Time withdrew their support for
Oliver and Smith, after having fully approved the release of the story only
weeks before.
Tailwind can perhaps best be understood better in the context of the new
Vietnam War revelations published in the Toledo Blade October 2003 and widely
ignored by the corporate media. The Toledo Blade story discloses the
unrestricted savaging of hundreds of civilians in the Central Highlands by an
elite American Tiger Force during a several month period in 1967. This
free-fire force was given authority to massacre at will anyone found in the
region. Newly available government documents disclose how an Army war crimes
investigation in 1971 encouraged solders to keep quiet and how the case was
closed in 1975.
The eight-month investigation by Michael Sallah, Joe Mahr, and Mitch Weiss for
the Toledo Blade is similar to the investigation of the Tailwind story by CNN
reporters April Oliver and Jack Smith in 1997-98. Both stories reveal deadly
illegal war crimes by US forces in Southeast Asia, both stories were covered
up by higher authorities in the Pentagon, and both stories challenge the
fictionalized storyline of average GI's caught up in a lousy misunderstood
war, who in isolated incidents made low-level field decisions that resulted in
My Lai-type mistakes. The Tailwind and Tiger Force stories reveal much
higher-level policies of a vicious win-at-any-cost war officiated by Pentagon
and high-level government officials. It is the revelation of these policies
that the Pentagon seems strongly motivated to suppress.
For the Tailwind story, April Oliver and Jack Smith conducted an eight-month
investigation into the use of sarin gas in Laos during the Vietnam War. As
Oliver states in Censored 1999, (Oliver 1999), "We stand by the story. We
are not novices at news-gatheringThe Tailwind story was carefully researched
and reported over eight months, with our bosses' [CNN] approval of each
interview request and each line of the story's script. It was based on
multiple sources, [six eyewitnesses] from senior military officials to
firsthand participantsin addition to half a dozen on camera sources more
than a dozen pilots told us of the availability or use of a special "last
resort" gasgb (the military name for sarin), or cbu-15 (a sarin cluster
bomb)."
After the airing of the Tailwind story in June
of 1998, CNN came under a firestorm of pressure from the Pentagon, veteran
groups, and other media to retract the story. CNN president Rick Kaplan told
Oliver and Smith that CNN did not want to end up in congressional hearings
across from Colin Powell and that the story had become a "public
relations problem." A CNN investigation into Oliver and Smith's story by
attorney Floyd Abrams and CNN's vice-president David Kohler resulted in a
recommendation for retraction claiming that the evidence did not support the
use of sarin gas. On July 10, 1998 Ted Turner made a public apology for airing
the Tailwind story before the Television Critics Association. Oliver and Smith
were fired and CNN retracted the story.
Anyone who actually reads CNN's investigative report can see the overwhelming
evidence that supports the original version of the story. (CNN 98) However,
the CNN report uses a new standard of absolute proof by saying that the
ability to stand up in a court of law is the criteria for airing stories. Such
a standard, if enforced, would essentially eliminate investigative journalism
and stories like Watergate would never have been published. It is the
responsibility of media to stand firm on solid evidence and tell the truth
about important social issues, not journalistically feasible to research each
story as if it were to be presented in a court of law. The fact that CNN
failed to uphold a commitment to the First Amendment speaks more about the
symbiotic relationship between corporate media and sources of news than it
does about erroneous reporting.
Oliver eventually won a large settlement from her lawsuit for wrongful
termination. Numerous media critics including Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting, Alexander Cockburn, Project Censored, Democracy Now! and Media
Channel reported her side of the story, including how CNN caved in to pressure
from the Pentagon. (McLaughlin, 1998) CNN officials clearly understood that
they might not be invited to the next war unless a retraction occurred. CNN
faced more than a public relations problem, they faced a bottom-line
profitability problem if they were refused access to military cooperation on
future broadcasts. Kohler and Turner knew full well the necessity of
cooperation with official sources.
Corporate media has also ignored many important questions related to 9-11,
which would offend their sources of news in the government. Corporate news
star Dan Rather in a interview with Matthew Engel for The Guardian
admitted that the surge of patriotism after 9-11 resulted in journalists
failing to ask the tough questions. Rather stated, "It starts with a
feeling of patriotism within oneself. I know the right question, but you know
what? This is not exactly the right time to ask it." (Engel, 2002)
When was the right time to question the levels and intensity of civilian
deaths during and after the bombings of Afghanistan? According to CNN Chairman
Walter Isaacson there was never a good time. In a memo to his CNN
correspondents overseas Isaacson wrote, "We're entering a period in which
there's a lot more reporting and video from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
You must make sure people [Americans] understand that when they see civilian
suffering there, it's in the context of a terrorist attack that caused
enormous suffering in the United States." Isaacson later told the
Washington Post, "it seems perverse to focus too much on the
causalities of hardship in Afghanistan." This is the same Walter
Isaacson, who when assuming the Chairmanship of CNN in August 2001, claimed
that news needed to be re-defined: "There would be a greater focus on
entertainment, technology, health and fitness, he said. "The goal should
be to make the news smart, but also fun and fascinating." (Engel, 2002)
Marc Herold, an economics professor at the University of New Hampshire
compiled a summation of the death toll in Afghanistan-concluding that over
4,000 civilians died from U.S. bombs-more than died at the World Trade Center.
Yet only a handful of newspapers covered his story. Time magazine
reviewed Herold's report but dismissed it stating, "In compiling the
figures, Herold drew mostly on world press reports of questionable
reliability." Time went on to cite the Pentagon's unsubstantiated
claim that civilian casualties in Afghanistan were the lowest in the history
of war. (Herold, 2002)
At times the corporate media starts in on a story and realizes that it may
lead into areas of concern to their sources of news. Numerous papers in the
country including the San Francisco Chronicle on September 29, 2001
reported how millions of dollars were made buying pre-9-11 put-options on
United & American Airlines stocks. Yet by mid-October nothing else was
ever printed on the subject. The Director of the Chicago Office of the FBI,
Tom Kneir, admitted on August 17, 2002 at the American Sociological meetings
that the FBI conducted an investigation into the pre-9-11 stock options, but
he refused to disclose who bought the stock, and the corporate media has never
asked.
At times the hypocrisy of
corporate media news coverage is overwhelming. During the first week of
December, 2003, US corporate media reported that American forensic teams were
working to document some 41 mass graves in Iraq to support future war crime
tribunals in that country. Broadly covered in the media as well, was the
conviction of General Stanislav Galic by a UN tribunal for war crimes
committed by Bosnian Serb troops under his command during the siege of
Sarajevo in 1992-94.
These stories show how corporate media likes to give the impression that the
US government is working diligently to root out evil doers around the world
and to build democracy and freedom. This theme is part of a core ideological
message in support of our recent wars on Panama, Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Governmental spin transmitted by a willing US media establishes simplistic
mythologies of good vs. evil, often leaving out historical context, special
transnational corporate interests, and prior strategic relationships with the
dreaded evil ones. (Solomon, 2003)
The hypocrisy of US policy and corporate media complicity is evident in the
coverage of Donald Rumsfeld's stop over in Mazar-e Sharif Afghanistan December
4, 2003 to meet with regional warlord and mass killer General Abdul Rashid
Dostum and his rival General Ustad Atta Mohammed. Rumsfeld was there to
finalize a deal with the warlords to begin the decommissioning of their
military forces in exchange for millions of dollars in international aid and
increased power in the central Afghan government.
Few people in the US know that General Abdul Rashid Dostum fought
alongside the Russians in the 1980s, commanding a 20,000-man army. He switched
sides in 1992 and joined the Mujahidin when they took power in Kabul. For over
a decade, Dostum was a regional warlord in charge of six northern provinces,
which he ran like a private fiefdom making millions by collecting taxes on
regional trade and international drug sales. Forced into exile in Turkey by
the Taliban in 1998, he came back into power as a military proxy of the US
during the invasion of Afghanistan.
Charged with mass murder of prisoners of war in
the mid-90s by the UN, Dostum is known to use torture and assassinations to
retain power. Described by the Chicago Sun Times (10/21/01) as a "cruel
and cunning warlord," he is reported to use tanks to rip apart political
opponents or crush them to death. Dostum, a seventh grade dropout, likes to
put up huge pictures of himself in the regions he controls, drinks Johnnie
Walker Blue Label, and rides in an armor-plated Cadillac.
A documentary entitled Massacre at Mazar released in 2002 by Scottish
film producer, Jamie Doran, exposes how Dostum, in cooperation with U.S.
special forces, was responsible for the torturing and deaths of approximately
3,000 Taliban prisoners-of-war in November of 2001. In Doran's documentary,
two witnesses report on camera how they were forced to drive into the desert
with hundreds of Taliban prisoners held in sealed cargo containers. Most of
the prisoners suffocated to death in the vans and Dostum's soldiers shot the
few prisoners left alive. One witness told the London Guardian that a US
Special Forces vehicle was parked at the scene as bulldozers buried the dead.
A soldier told Doran that U.S. troops masterminded a cover-up. He said the
Americans ordered Dostum's people to get rid of the bodies before satellite
pictures could be taken.
Dostum admits that a few hundred prisoners died, but asserts that it was a
mistake or that they died from previous wounds. He has kept thousands of
Taliban as prisoners-of-war since 2001 and continues to ransom them to their
families for ten to twenty thousand dollars each.
Doran's documentary was shown widely in Europe, prompting an attempt by the UN
to investigate, but Dostum has prevented any inspection by saying that he
could not guarantee safety for forensic teams in the area.
During the recent meeting with Dostum, Donald Rumsfeld was quoted as saying,
"I spent many weeks in the Pentagon following closely your activities, I
should say your successful activities."(
Washington Post 12/5/03) The Post reported that General Dostum
was instrumental in routing Taliban forces from Northern Afghanistan in the
early weeks of the war two years ago, but said nothing about General Dostum's
brutal past. Nor has US broadcast media aired Doran's documentary.
A number of other questions
remain unasked and unresolved regarding events surrounding 9-11 attacks. Both
the BBC and the Times of India published reports several months
before 9-11 that the U.S. was then planning an invasion of Afghanistan. The
Unocal oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea region was to be built through
Afghanistan and the U.S. needed a cooperative government in power. Agence
France-Press in March 2002 reported that the U.S.-installed interim leader of
Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, had worked with the CIA since the 1980s and was
once a paid consultant for Unocal.
A report from France, still unacknowledged by the US press, informs how the
Bush administration, shortly after assuming office, slowed down FBI
investigations of al-Qaeda and terrorist networks in Afghanistan in order to
deal with the Taliban on oil. The ordered slowdown resulted in the resignation
of FBI Deputy Director John O'Neill, expert in the al-Qaeda network and in
charge of the investigation. O'Neill later took a job as chief of security at
the World Trade Center where he died "helping with rescue efforts."
(Brisard 2002)
A October 31, 2002 report in the French daily Le Figaro disclosed that
Osama bin Laden had met with a top CIA official while in the American Hospital
in the United Arab Emirates to receive treatment for a kidney infection
earlier that summer. CBS news reported one time on January 28, 2002 that Osama
bin Laden was in a Pakistani military hospital on September 10, 2001.
On 9-11, four planes are hijacked and deviate from their flight plans, all the
while on FAA radar. The planes are all hijacked between 7:45 and 8:10 am
Eastern Time. It is a full hour before the first plane hits the World Trade
Center. But it is an hour and 20 minutes later- after the second plane hits -
that the President becomes officially informed. Then, he gives no orders. He
continues to listen to a student talk about her pet goat. It's another 25
minutes until he makes a statement. (Griffin, 2004)
Because of corporate media's failure to investigate questions around 9-11
conspiracy theories abound in America. Corporate media chooses instead to
offer mindless entertainment in place of deeper investigations into important
national questions. The result is that the general public knows more about
Winona Ryder's shop lifting trial and the Peterson murder case then they do
about the history of US involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The First Amendment provides for freedom of the press and was established to
protect our democratic process by guaranteeing an informed electorate. Yet we
hold national elections in which millions of voters refused to participate. We
denigrated and blamed non-voters for being uncaring citizens, yet the
corporate media has failed to address core issues affecting most people in
this country. Voter participation levels are directly related to issues that
the citizenry feels are important. Many people no longer trust the corporate
media to provide the full truth. This opens people's susceptibility to
believing in conspiracies and plots to explain unanswered questions. Cynicism
has deterred voting for many.
How can we free ourselves from this dilemma? We can advocate strongly for
corporate media to invest in democracy by supporting deep investigative
reporting on key national issues. We can advocate for full and clear reporting
on the policies and plans emerging from the public and private policy circles
of the American corporate and governmental elites. Full analysis and
disclosure of the published plans of the Trilateral Commission, The Council on
Foreign Relations, The Hoover Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The Cato
Institute, The World Bank, and the Project for the New American Century, would
go a long way in showing the roadmaps that the policy elites are building for
the world. We don't need macro-conspiracy theories to understand that powerful
people sit in rooms and plan global change with private advantage in mind.
If open debate on socio-political policies were offered nationwide it would
certainly draw wider voter participation. Imagine a Silicon Valley computer
programmer thinking about social policies that would prevent outsourcing of
his job to foreign firms. Imagine his enthusiasm voting for representatives
that would work to protect his livelihood.
Recognition of corporate
media compliance with sources of news is an important step in understanding
our new American censorship. A full media reform movement that challenges
continued corporate media consolidation is underway in the US, and tens of
thousands of people are involved (McChesney 2004)
Knowing the importance of the role of media in the continuation of democracy,
we have a huge task before us. We must mobilize our resources to redevelop our
own news and information systems from the bottom up, while at the same time
attempting reform at the top. We can expand distribution of news via small
independent newspapers; local magazines, independent radio, and cable access
TV. By using the internet we can interconnect with like-minded grassroots news
organizations to share important stories globally.
Emerging in the corporate media news vacuum are hundreds of independent news
sources. Independent newspapers, magazines, websites, radio and TV are
becoming more widely available. Independent media centers (www.Indymedia.org)
have sprung up in over 200 cities in the past five years. Thousands of
alternative news organizations already exist and are listed in Project
Censored's Guide to Independent Media and Activism. (Phillips, 2003)
There is a compelling need to encourage activists and concerned citizens to
avoid the propaganda of corporate news, and to focus instead on news from
independent sources. The more corporate news you watch the less you really
know. (Schechter, 1997)
Imagine "Real News" as media information that contributes to the
lives and socio-political understandings of working people. Such Real News
informs, balances, and awakens the less powerful in society. Real News speaks
truth to power and challenges the hegemonic top-down corporate entertainment
news systems. Real news empowers and keeps key segments of working people in
America tuned in, informed and active. Real News cannot be measured with
Arbitron ratings. It is not there for the selling of materialism, or
capitalist propaganda. It is not there for nationalistic grandioseness. Nor is
it there to provide entertaining stimulation to the alienated suburbs. Real
News can only be measured through its success in building democracy,
stimulating grassroots activism, and motivating resistance to top-down
institutions.
Real News builds movements
for social change. It keeps the 5% radical vanguard aware of our power and our
collective ability to influence positive change. Real News is about
stimulating social activism in our daily lives, and making each act deliberate
and heart centered. Real News reports to the center of self, and helps us find
the collective for shared action. Real News organizes movement towards
betterment, shapes policy for equality, and stands in the faces of the
robber-baron corporate power brokers.
Peter Phillips is Department Chair and Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State
University and Director of Project Censored a media research program.
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Steve Wils |
