Such media-fueled lies have been manifold. That Israel urged the Palestinians it expelled in 1948 to return home. That Saddam Hussein's troops ripped babies from incubators in Kuwait, and that the Iraqi leader colluded with his arch-enemy, al-Qaeda, in the 9/11 attacks. That Muammar Gadaffi's soldiers in Libya took Viagra to rape civilians in Benghazi. That Russia paid bounties to the Taliban to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan.
These deceptions and fabrications grabbed headlines when they were useful as propaganda, only to be quietly withdrawn much later on.
In the case of Ukraine, a similar pattern appears to be emerging. There were widespread, inciteful and entirely fictitious reports in the western media of Russian troops butchering a contingent of 13 Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island, in the Black Sea. A fake audio tape was released of the Ukrainians supposedly cursing the Russian invaders. Ukraine's government promised each of them a Hero of Ukraine award.
But in fact, it was Russian media reports that were true. There were 82 Ukrainian soldiers and they had surrendered. All were alive and well. In another example, a clip from a video game was widely promoted as a heroic lone Ukrainian fighter pilot - dubbed the Ghost of Kyiv - shooting down Russian planes and helicopters.
Misinformation has been shared even more aggressively on western social media accounts, and most of it is designed to evoke sympathy for Ukraine and hostility to Russia.
Softening-Up OperationsBut what we are seeing is more than just an appetite in the media for evidence-free stories and falsehoods so long as they are directed against Russia. And it is about more than the media's sympathy for Ukrainian "resistance" denied other groups battling their oppressors, when those oppressors are the West and its allies.
The media is chock full of commentators far more rabidly tribal than even western governments and military generals. The media chorus for "more war" seems to be serving as an ideological softening-up operation, clearing the path for governments as they prepare for more extreme propaganda and undemocratic measures.
Along with many others, Mail on Sunday commentator Dan Hodges has been calling for a no-fly zone over Ukraine that even Boris Johnson has rejected for very obvious reasons. It would lead Europe into a direct confrontation with the Russian air force and risk confrontation with a nuclear power.
Nonetheless, Hodges has described any rejection of this idea as "an act of appeasement no different to our appeasement of Hitler in 1938". Russia's invasion came after nearly a decade of goading by the US using Nato as cover to forge ever tighter military relations with its neighbour.
Rightly or wrongly, Moscow interpreted Nato's behaviour as an aggressive move by the US and its allies into its "sphere of influence". The idea that no concession could, and can, be made to Russia - that the only "moral choice", as Hodges calls it, is risking a potential nuclear war - should be understood as the belligerent provocation it clearly is.
NBC News' chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, tweeted out what he saw as a "risk calculation" and "moral dilemma": should the West bomb a convoy of Russian tanks on their way towards Kyiv? Apparently concerned by current inaction, he asked: "Does the West watch in silence as it rolls?"
Uter HypocrisyCondeleeza Rice, an architect of the criminal invasion of Iraq, has not been challenged by the media over her utter hypocrisy in agreeing that "When you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime." If that is the case - and international law says it is - then Rice herself should be on trial at the Hague.
Or what about the media's horror this week at the shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city, where "dozens" were reported killed? Compare that to the media's breathless excitement over the "Shock and Awe" bombing campaign that likely killed thousands in the opening hours of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
What about the media's mostly complicit silence over many years of Saudi bombing - using British planes and bombs - of civilians in Yemen, leading to a barely imaginable humanitarian catastrophe there? Those in Yemen who resist the Saudi horror show are not heroes to our media, they are simply dismissed as puppets of Iran?
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
