From Consortium News
Washington Post
(Image by (From Wikimedia) Daniel X. O'Neil from USA, Author: Daniel X. O'Neil from USA) Details Source DMCA
A key distinction between propaganda and journalism is that manipulative propaganda relies on exaggeration and deceit while honest journalism provides context and perspective. But what happens when the major news outlets of the world's superpower become simply conveyor belts for warmongering propaganda?
That is a question that the American people now face as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and virtually the entire mainstream media hype ridiculously minor allegations about Russia's "meddling" in American politics into front-page hysteria.
For instance, on Tuesday, the major news outlets were filled with the latest lurid chapter of Russia-gate, how Google, the Internet's dominant search engine, had detected suspected "Russia-linked" accounts that bought several thousand dollars worth of ads.
The Washington Post ran this item as front-page news entitled "Google finds links to Russian disinformation in its services," with the excited lede paragraph declaring: "Russian operatives bought ads across several of Google's services without the company's knowledge, the latest evidence that their campaign to influence U.S. voters was as sprawling as it was sophisticated in deploying the technology industry's most powerful tools."
Wow! That sounds serious. However, if you read deeply enough into the story, you discover that the facts are a wee bit less dramatic. The Post tells us:
"Google's internal investigation found $4,700 of search ads and display ads that the company believes are Russian-connected, and found $53,000 of ads with political content that were purchased from Russian Internet providers, building addresses or with Russian currency, people familiar with the investigation said. ...
"One Russian-linked account spent $7,000 on ads to promote a documentary called 'You've Been Trumped,' a film about Donald Trump's efforts to build a golf course in Scotland along an environmentally sensitive coastline, these people said. Another spent $30,000 on ads questioning whether President Obama needed to resign. Another bought ads to promote political merchandise for Obama."
A journalist -- rather than a propagandist -- would immediately follow these figures with some context, i.e., that Google's net digital ad sales revenue is about $70 billion annually. In other words, these tiny ad buys -- with some alleged connection to Russia, a nation of 144 million people and not all Vladimir Putin's "operatives" -- are infinitesimal when put into any rational perspective.
A Dangerous Hysteria
But rationality is not what the Post and other U.S. mainstream news outlets are engaged in here. They are acting as propagandists determined to whip up a dangerous hysteria about being at "war" with nuclear-armed Russia and to delegitimize Trump's election last year.
It doesn't seem to matter that the facts don't fit the desired narrative. First of all, none of this content, detected by Google, is "disinformation" as the Post claims, unless you consider a critical documentary about Trump's Scottish golf course to be "disinformation," or for that matter criticism and/or support for President Obama.
And, by the way, how does any of this material reveal a Russian plot to put Trump in the White House and to ensure Hillary Clinton's defeat, which was the original Russia-gate narrative? Now, we're being told that any Internet ads bought by Russians or maybe even by Americans living in Russia are part of some nefarious Kremlin plot even if the content is an anti-Trump documentary or some ads for or against President Obama, but nothing attacking Hillary Clinton.
This surely does not seem like evidence of a "sophisticated" campaign to influence U.S. politics, as the Post tells us; it is either an indication of a totally incoherent campaign or no campaign at all, just some random ads taken out by people in Russia possibly to increase clicks on a Website or to sell some merchandise or to express their own opinions.
And, if you think that this latest Post story is an anomaly -- that maybe some editor was having a bad day and just forgot to include the requisite perspective and balance -- you'd be wrong.
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