John Pilger The U.S. Army training manual, the American commander, Gen. David Petraeus, decrive in Afghanistan as a "war of perception ... conducted continuously using the mass media. " What's really important not so much the daily battles against the Taliban, as the way in which this adventure is sold in America, where "the media directly influence key audiences."
reading this, I am reminded of the Venezuelan general who led the coup against the democratic government in 2002. "We have a secret weapon," he boasted. "We have the media, especially TV. The media must have them! "
Never before has so much energy was used to make special that journalists collude with the architects of rapacious wars, they say the generals in tune with the media, have become" permanent. " Echoing one of the warlords more verbose the West, such as former U.S. President Dick Cheney, fans of "waterboarding", which preached "50 years of war," they are planning a state of permanent conflict, will depend entirely from being able to hold off an enemy that they are afraid to name: the public. A
Chicksands in Bedfordshire, the headquarters of the psychological warfare of the Ministry of Defence (Psyops), the masters of the media are dedicated to this task, immersed in their language of "information dominance", "asymmetric threats" and "cyberthreats. They share the building with those who taught those interrogation methods which led to a public inquiry on torture perpetrated by British soldiers in Iraq. Disinformation and the barbarity of colonial war have much in common.
course, only the jargon is new. In the opening scene of my film, The War do not see, there is a reference to a private conversation, pre-Wikileaks of December 1917 between David Lloyd George, the British prime minister during much of World War I, and CP Scott, editor Manchester Guardian. "If people really knew the truth," said the prime minister, "war would stop tomorrow. But of course they do not know and can not know. "
aftermath of this war to end all wars, "Edward Bernays, confidant of President Woodrow Wilson coined the term" public relations "as a euphemism for propaganda," which had been given a negative connotation during the war. " In his book Propaganda (1928), Bernays described the PR as "an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country" thanks to "clever manipulation of the masses." This was obtained through "false reality" and their adoption in the media (one of the first successes of Bernays was to persuade women to smoke in public. Associating smoking with women's liberation, could be published titles praising the cigarettes as "torches of freedom").
I began to understand all this when I was a young reporter during the war in Vietnam. In the first place where I was sent, I saw the results of the bombardment of two villages and the use of Napalm B, which continues to burn under the skin, many of the victims were children, the trees were decorated with human offal. The lament that "these are the inevitable tragedies that happen during a war" did not explain why virtually the entire population of South Vietnam were at risk of attack by their stated "ally" the United States. PR terms as "pacification" and "collateral damage" became our currency. Almost no reporter used the word "invasion". "Involvement," and then "swamp" became the cornerstones of the vocabulary of the news, acknowledged that the killing of civilians just as the tragic mistakes and rarely questioned the good intentions of the invaders.
On the walls of the offices of major American news agencies were often hung in Saigon horrific photographs that were never published and which are rarely addressed because it was said that they would "sensationalized" the war shocking readers and viewers and thus were not "objective." The My Lai massacre of 1968 was not reported by Vietnam, though a good number of journalists had been aware (as of other, similar atrocities), but by a freelance in the U.S., Seymour Hersh. The cover of Newsweek magazine called it an "American tragedy", wishing to indicate that the invaders were the victims: a cathartic theme taken up enthusiastically by Hollywood in films like The Deer Hunter and Platoon. The war was tragic and wrong, but the cause was essentially noble. Plus it was "lost" because of the irresponsibility of the media hostile and without censorship.
Despite being the opposite of the truth, the false reality became the "lessons" learned by architects of the wars of today and most of the media. In return, Vietnam, the use of embedded journalists became the central practice of war on both sides of the Atlantic. With distinguished exceptions, this was a success, especially in the U.S.. In March 2003, about 700 embedded reporters and cameramen accompanied the invasion forces in Iraq. Look at their emotional services, and it seems to be back to the liberation of Europe. The Iraqis are distant, ephemeral and irrelevant pieces: John Wayne is back.
The apogee was the winning entry in Baghdad, and television images of jubilant crowds around the killing of the statue of Saddam Hussein. Behind this facade, a U.S. Psyops team had successfully managed to manipulate what a neglected service of the U.S. military describes as a "media circus [with] how many Iraqi journalists." Rageh Omaar, who was there on behalf of the BBC, reported these words on the main evening news program: "People came here to give welcome [the Americans], making the sign of V for victory. These images are repeated throughout the Iraqi capital. "In reality, those that were not reported, and that they were taking place all over Iraq, were the bloody conquest and the destruction of a society, which gradually took the foot.
War I do not see , Omaar speaks with admirable frankness. "I had done my job well," says, "I raised my hands and I was told that they could not touch the keys more painful." Describes how the propaganda of the British army was able to successfully manipulate the news of the fall of Basra, which News 24, BBC reported having fallen "17 times". This report, he says, was like being in "a huge soundproofed studio."
There was no place in the news for the immensity of the suffering of Iraqis in this massacre. Standing in front of 10 Downing Street, Andrew Marr, former BBC political editor, said: "[Tony Blair] said he would be able to take Baghdad without bloodshed and in the end Iraqis have celebrated, and on both these points is because he had quite right. " I requested an interview with Marr, but got no answer. In studies conducted by the University of Wales, Cardiff by the Media Tenor on television [Iraq], it was concluded that the BBC report reflected the enormous government line, while services to the suffering of civilians were relegated. As for taking the time to talk about the opposition to the war, Media Tenor has developed in last place among the Western media, the BBC and CBS. "I am perfectly open to the charge that we were deceived," said Jeremy Paxman, speaking of the non-existent weapons of mass destruction ground in Iraq to a group of students last year. "Obviously, we have been." From a professional speaker, paid handsomely, he forgot to explain why he was deceived.
Dan Rather, who was the announcer at the CBS news program for 24 years, was less reticent. "There was a fear in every editorial in America," he said, "a fear of losing their jobs, of being labeled as unpatriotic, or something like that." Rther says the war "has made us all stenographers" and that if journalists had questioned the deception that led to war in Iraq, rather than amplify, the invasion would not have taken place. This is a review ormai condivisa da parecchi veterani del giornalismo che ho intervistato negli USA.
In Gran Bretagna, David Rose, i cui articoli sull'Observer avevano giocato un ruolo importante nel collegare falsamente Saddam Hussain con al-Qaida e l'undici settembre, mi ha concesso una coraggiosa intervista, in cui ha detto: “Non ho scuse... Quello che è successo [in Iraq] è un crimine, un crimine su larga scala...”
“Significa questo che i giornalisti furono complici?” gli ho chiesto.
“Sì... inconsapevoli forse, ma sì”.
A che cosa servono dei giornalisti che si comportano in questo modo? La risposta ci è fornita dal grande reporter James Cameron, il cui coraggioso e illuminante reports on the bombing of North Vietnam, made with Malcolm Aird, was censured by the BBC. "If we do, we should be those whose job is to find out what they're bastards, if we do not report what we find, if not break the silence," he said, "those who fail to prevent recurrence of this bloody affair again? ".
Cameron could not you imagine a modern phenomenon as Wikileaks, but would surely have approved. In the avalanche of official documents, especially those that describe the secret machinations that lead to war - as the American obsession with Iran - the failure of journalism rarely appears. And perhaps the reason Julian Assange seems that unleash such hostility between the journalists who serve a variety of lobbying, who was once a press secretary to George Bush called "complicit enablers", is that Wikileaks and its dissemination of the truth, make them ashamed of themselves. Because the general public had to wait until there was Wikileaks to know how the great power? As revealed by a document of 2000 pages of the Ministry of Defence, journalists are considered the most effective centers of power, not as embedded, or suitable to be part of the club, but are seen as a threat. This is the threat of real democracy, whose "currency" as Thomas Jefferson said, is "the free flow of information."
In my film, I was asked to Assange like Wikileaks have led to draconian laws against the secrecy that is famous in Britain. 'Well, "she said" when we look up documents bearing the seal of the Official Secret Act, we keep in mind that it is a crime to store the information and it is a crime to destroy it, so that the only possible solution is to publish the 'information'.
These are extraordinary times.
The original article appeared on December 10, 2010:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/10/war-media-propaganda-iraq-lies
• The War You Do not See be released in theaters and on DVD Dec. 13 and will be broadcast on ITV on December 14 at 22:35
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