Friday, September 28, 2007

The GOEBBELS GAMBIT: Embeds -- how modern military censorship works

"Don't tell them ... then it will not exist ..." --Chief Nazi "Information Officer" Joseph Paul Goebbels (in Goebbels, From Economics to Publicity, ed. 1955, Alles die Zeitungen collection, Dr. Herzbold Neher)
Last May, David Edwards and David Cromwell of MediaLens.org posted a revealing correspondence with Helen Boaden, the BBC's director of news. They had asked her why the BBC had remained silent on known atrocities committed by the Americans in Fallujah. She replied, "Our correspondent in Fallujah at the time [of the U.S. attack], Paul Wood, did not report any of these things because he did not see any of these things." It is a statement to savor. Wood was "embedded" with the Americans. He interviewed none of the victims of American atrocities nor unembedded journalists. He not only missed the Americans' use of white phosphorus, which they now admit, he reported nothing of the use of another banned weapon, napalm. Thus, BBC viewers were unaware of the fine words of Col. James Alles, commander of the U.S. Marine Air Group II. "We napalmed both those bridge approaches," he said. "Unfortunately, there were people there … you could see them in the cockpit video. … It's no great way to die. The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect." --John Pilger, A News Revolution Has Begun, antiwar.com, November 25, 2005

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Saturday, September 22, 2007

MOCKINGBIRD: Pilger & Rather

The Indian writer Vandana Shiva has called for an "insurrection of subjugated knowledge." The insurrection is well under way. In trying to make sense of a dangerous world, millions of people are turning away from the traditional sources of news and information and to the World Wide Web, convinced that mainstream journalism is the voice of rampant power. The great scandal of Iraq has accelerated this. In the UnitedStates, several senior broadcasters have confessed that had they challenged and exposed the lies told about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, instead of amplifying and justifying them, the invasion might not have happened. --John Pilger, A News Revolution Has Begun, November 25, 2005

NEW YORK (AP) - Dan Rather said Thursday that the undue influence of the government and large corporations over newsrooms spurred his decision to file a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company.

"Somebody, sometime has got to take a stand and say democracy cannot survive, much less thrive with the level of big corporate and big government interference and intimidation in news," he said on CNN's "Larry King Live. --SAMANTHA GROSS, Rather: Government Influencing Newsrooms, Sep 21, 12:39 AM (ET)