By David Cromwell

The local elections in England earlier this month saw the right-wing UK Independence Party win over 140 council seats, gaining around 25 per cent of the vote where it stood. This led to a deluge of media headlines and stories echoing UKIP leader Nigel Farage's gleeful claim of a 'game changer' in domestic politics. The Conservatives ended up with egg on their face after veteran Tory Ken Clarke had labelled UKIP 'a collection of clowns'.

BBC political editor Nick Robinson declared of the UKIP 'surge':

'It is the day UKIP emerged as a real political force in the land.'

But a BBC estimate of the turnout was a mere 31 per cent – down a whopping 10 points from the last local elections in 2009. The true electoral 'victor' was voter apathy or, more likely, disdain towards the available political options. Perhaps for most of the public - such as the 69 per cent who didn't cast a vote - all too many of the politicians on offer were clowns. After all, who could tell the difference between most of them, or the policies they espouse? There are fine exceptions, but the corporate media routinely ignores, ridicules or vilifies them. So much for 'our' thriving British 'democracy'.

Comedian Frankie Boyle had already put it all in perspective:

'I've never been surprised by low voter turnouts. In fact, I'm surprised anybody ever votes at all. Politicians seem so alien to us, their insincerity taken as a given, behaving inhumanely while they pretend to be human in some symbolic way. If, instead of a nation, we were 500 people living as a tribe, or a bunch of survivors in a lifeboat, would anyone elect Miliband or Cameron as a leader, with their choppy hand gestures, lack of conviction and bizarrely automated range of emotions? In a normal social gathering, most of our leaders would seem to suffer from a hysterical personality disorder.' (Frankie Boyle, 'Work! Consume! Die!', HarperCollins, 2011, p. 319)

There is much more to the degradation of politics, as Boyle recognises, than odd self-regarding personalities and PR-trained, party-approved automatons. But the point is nonetheless very well made.

By David Edwards

Last August, Barack Obama told reporters at the White House:

'We have been very clear to the Assad regime... that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilised.

'That would change my calculus; that would change my equation.'

This was a clear threat to repeat the 2011 Nato assault which resulted in the overthrow and murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

So what is the evidence that Assad recently chose to do the one thing most likely to trigger a Western attack and similar fate?

On April 25, the White House claimed that US intelligence assessed 'with varying degrees of confidence' that 'the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin'.

Having offered this caveated assertion, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel added:

'We cannot confirm the origin of these weapons... but we do believe that any use of chemical weapons in Syria would very likely have originated with the Assad regime.'

He concluded:

'As I've said, this is serious business – we need all the facts.'

A sceptical Alex Thomson, chief correspondent at Channel 4 News, commented:

'WMD, the Middle East, and here we go again... Already a British prime minister is talking about a "war crime" whilst offering the British people no detailed evidence.'

Evidence included video footage said to show victims of chemical weapons foaming at the mouth.

Thomson offered a link to a detailed report of the 1995 sarin attack in Tokyo, noting: 'am advised there's no mention of any prominent bright, white foam at mouths'.

Thomson also asked, reasonably: 'Why doesn't any medic in the film wipe away the white foam on patients' mouths – the basic paramedic fundamental to preserve an airway?'

On GlobalPost, Tracey Shelton and Peter Gelling questioned whether the filmed symptoms matched claims that sarin had been used:

'In recent years, in other countries in the Middle East where security forces used tear gas on protesters, witnesses reported seeing victims foam at the mouth, convulse and twitch — the same symptoms seen in the Syrian victims.

'The tell-tale sign of a sarin gas attack is myosis, or constricting of the pupils, and... tremors. While GlobalPost confirmed that some of the victims in the April 13 attack suffered from tremors, it was unable to confirm any of them had myosis.

'Moreover, experts say an attack by sarin gas would cause virtually anyone who had come into contact with the toxin to immediately feel its effects. Exposure to even a very small amount of sarin could be lethal. While there were casualties in the Aleppo attack, most of the victims survived, which would not likely be the outcome of a sarin attack in a confined environment.'

Crucially, the White House accepted that: 'The chain of custody is not clear.' Middle East analyst Sharmine Narwani commented:

'That is the single most important phrase in this whole exercise. It is the only phrase that journalists need consider – everything else is conjecture of WMDs-in-Iraq proportions.

'I asked a State Department spokesperson the following: "Does it mean you don't know who has had access to the sample before it reached you? Or that the sample has not been contaminated along the way?"

'He responded: "It could mean both."'

Alastair Hay, a toxicologist at the University of Leeds, cautioned:

'To make a legal case - whether it's against the Syrian government or opposition group - you need an ironclad chain of custody.

'You need to be able to have somebody swear, if you like, that the material was in their custody at all times, whoever it is with before it gets to a laboratory.'

Narwani also questioned the claim that only the Syrian government has access to sarin:

'In 2004, an IED roadside bomb – a common insurgent tactic – containing the nerve agent was detonated in Iraq. There are no guarantees whatsoever that chemical munitions have not found their way into the hands of rogue elements – or in fact that they are not producing them in small quantities themselves.'

A report in the Los Angeles Times offered other explanations:

'Releases of poison gas could have occurred when soldiers loyal to the regime, which has been trying to secure and consolidate its dozens of chemical weapons sites, moved part of its stockpile, a U.S. Defense official said. Another possibility is that disloyal Syrian weapons scientists supplied chemicals to rebel fighters.

'"The intel folks are taking a hard look at this, and they're not certain,' the Defense official said, speaking anonymously to discuss intelligence matters. "There's no definite indication this was used against the opposition."'

Alex Thomson asked another sensible question:

'Why did just a few people die – surely a large number of people would have died in a chemical attack, as in Halabja and Iran/Iraq war?'

In fact the quantities of chemicals said to be involved have been described as 'microscopic'.

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, also founder of Arms Control Wonk, a nuclear arms control and non-proliferation blog, wrote:

'[T]he constant references to the "small scale" use becomes more clear — we don't have multiple victims in a single use, as might be expected if the Syrians gassed a military unit or a local community. At most, we have two events in which only one person was exposed.

'For all we know, these two poor souls stumbled into sarin canisters while ransacking a liberated Syrian military sites. I don't say that to be callous, but rather because strange things happen on the battlefield. Remember, in 1991, U.S. troops detonated a pit of munitions at Khamisiyah in Iraq only to discover that the munitions contained sarin.'

Two events in which only one person was exposed! This reminds strongly of the moment when 11 empty artillery shells were found in an Iraqi bunker in January 2003. An ITN expert declared:

'The real smoking gun of course would be if one of those shells was still found to contain a chemical mixture.' (ITV Lunchtime News, January 17, 2003)

The remarkable suggestion, in 2003, was that a massive attack by 200,000 troops would be justified by the discovery of a single 122mm artillery shell with a range of four miles.

Other questions arise. Why would the Syrian government use the one weapon likely to trigger Western intervention when its use of highly destructive conventional weaponry appears to be reversing rebel gains, as indicated here and here? Writing for Foreign Policy in December, Charles Blair commented:

'The regime would risk losing Russian and Chinese support, legitimising foreign military intervention, and, ultimately, hastening its own end. As one Syrian official said, "We would not commit suicide."'

It is easy to appreciate Robert Fisk's view in the Independent that the claims are 'theatre', 'a retold drama riddled with plot-holes'. If the media stage managers appeared to be offering some kind of informed consensus, it was for a reason:

'Walk into a TV studio and they're all reading newspapers. Walk into a newspaper office and they're all watching television. It's osmotic. And the headlines are all the same: Syria uses chemical weapons. That's how the theatre works.'

Fisk added:

'In two Canadian TV studios, I am approached by producers brandishing the same headline. I tell them that on air I shall trash the "evidence" – and suddenly the story is deleted from both programmes. Not because they don't want to use it – they will later – but because they don't want anyone suggesting it might be a load of old cobblers.'

An Appeal For Your Support From Media Lens

In a media alert earlier this year, we described our under-resourced challenges of the corporate media as 'jousting with toothpicks'. Although the analogy was light-hearted, the work of Media Lens is serious and would not be possible without your support.

Our alerts and books are regularly cited and praised by readers, including journalists, academics and activists; but especially by so-called ordinary people who recognise that the corporate news media keeps the public ignorant about much that is important. People instinctively recognise that we are being force-fed a diet of elite-friendly propaganda, and they appreciate it when the 'babbling brook of bullshit' is sampled, tested and rigorously exposed.

The journalist and filmmaker John Pilger refers to us as 'the cyber guardians of honest journalism', adding:

'The creators of Media Lens, David Edwards and David Cromwell, assisted by their webmaster, Olly Maw, have had such an extraordinary influence since they set up the site in 2001 that, without their meticulous and humane analysis, the full gravity of the debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan might have been consigned to bad journalism's first draft of bad history.'

David McQueen, a lecturer in journalism at Bournemouth University, has evaluated the role of BBC News, ten years on from its disgraceful echo-chamber 'reporting' of state propaganda that paved the way to the invasion of Iraq:

'[John] Simpson and other media pundits who gave credence to the government's claims on WMD a decade ago have yet to apologise for their role in building the case for invasion...The analysis by Media Lens, contemptuously dismissed by Simpson and others at the time, proved to be far more accurate than any of the heavily-resourced BBC investigations.' 

He continues:

'Yet dissenting voices that challenged the government's phoney claims were almost entirely marginalised in the mainstream media in the build-up to the invasion. [...] This tendency has been all too apparent in the retrospective reports and investigations on Iraq. News reports marking the anniversary have included respectful interviews with Tony Blair, who was allowed a lengthy defence of his war, while members of the anti-war coalition who brought a million protestors onto the street have, as before the war, found it difficult to access the airwaves.'

Even media we are supposed to applaud as the most critically aware - including Channel 4 News, the Independent and the Guardian - played a crucial role in selling government lies and propaganda. Despite much self-serving rhetoric, they did almost nothing to seriously challenge the US-UK governments' case for war. Amazingly, for example, the widely-available evidence that (pressure cookers aside) Iraq had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction by December 1998 was simply ignored. The reality and seriousness of an obviously non-credible and indeed non-existent 'threat' was taken on trust and endlessly boosted (see our books, Guardians of Power and Newspeak in the 21st Century). There was also virtually nothing about how such propaganda campaigns fit into a long history of manipulating and diverting public opinion to pursue foreign policy that is driven by destructive geostrategic and corporate interests; all under cover of 'us' being the perennial 'good guys' in world affairs.

The tragic outcome of the corporate media's role in the elite power system is that over one million Iraqis now lie dead, with four million refugees having fled their homes, and a nation struggling to cope with a myriad of problems including devastated health care, education, housing, unemployment and crushed hopes for the future.

By David Edwards

The late American historian Howard Zinn wrote:

'The truth is so often the reverse of what has been told us by our culture that we cannot turn our heads far enough around to see it.' (The Zinn Reader - Writings on Disobedience and Democracy, Seven Stories Press, 1997, p.400)

What, for example, is the truth of the apparently intense 'mainstream' political and media dislike of dictators?

On the face of it, the loathing is visceral, absolute – newspapers are crammed with denunciations of the crimes of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and the like. The sensitivity is so acute that dissidents who compare these horrors with the West's own crimes are reflexively accused of apologising for tyranny. Forget actions in support, journalists are outraged even by words that might be interpreted as expressing sympathy or support.

Readers will doubtless recall the media bile that greeted then Labour MP George Galloway after he told Saddam Hussein in 1994:

'Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.'

Galloway claimed his intention had been to salute the 'Iraqi people'.

The press has never forgiven or forgotten these words. Our search of the Lexis media database (April 17, 2013) found 204 UK national newspaper articles containing the terms 'Galloway', 'Saddam' and 'indefatigability'.

Last year, for example, the Independent reminded readers that 'signs that Galloway's views stretched the bounds of public acceptability' had long been evident; for example, 'he was memorably saluting the "indefatigability" of Saddam Hussein, long after the Kuwait invasion'. (Rob Marchant, 'Is anyone in Britain still listening to George Galloway's Respect Party? And should they be?,' The Independent, November 9, 2012)

The Guardian also commented last year:

'Indefatigability was just a word with too many syllables until [Galloway] shamelessly rolled it out for the cameras in 1994. Of course the absurdity of the occasion - obeisance to Saddam Hussein - instantly gave the word itself a new meaning.' (Leading article, 'In praise of... indefatigability,' The Guardian, April 5, 2012)

However foolish, Galloway's comments were just that - comments, words. With this example in mind, it is interesting to compare how political and media commentators have responded to the words and deeds of Margaret Thatcher who died on April 8.

Barack Obama declared Thatcher 'one of the great champions of freedom and liberty'.

George HW Bush described her as 'one of the 20th century's fiercest advocates of freedom', whose 'principles in the end helped shape a better, freer world'.

The Economist agreed, praising Thatcher for 'her willingness to stand up to tyranny'.

The Telegraph's Defence Editor, Con 'Con' Coughlin, opined:

'Mrs Thatcher's uncompromising approach to dealing with the world's dictators, from Argentina's General Galtieri to Iraq's Saddam Hussein, derived from her deep admiration of Churchill.'

According to Charles Powell in the Telegraph, Thatcher was driven by 'a determination to change the world for the better, a quality which she shared with President Reagan, probably the most important strand in their relationship.'

This was admirable indeed, Powell noted, although it 'involved being horrid to foreigners from time to time'. Well, nobody's perfect.

Perhaps inspired by such comments, a letter published in the Birmingham Mail responded to Galloway's ugly 'May she burn in the hellfires' reaction to Thatcher's death:

'That's a bit rich coming from the Cuban cigar-smoking MP (what a sick joke calling his party "Respect") who praised that tyrant Saddam Hussein for his "courage, strength and... indefatigability" and yet dishonours a British Prime Minister in the most disgraceful terms.' (Letters, Birmingham Mail, April 13, 2013)

The letter might itself be deemed 'a bit rich' in light of Thatcher's actual record.

Global Warming, Propaganda-Journalism And The Definition Of Insanity

By David Cromwell

The systematic propaganda of the corporate media - its deep-rooted antipathy towards upholding proper journalistic standards in the public interest - extends to its coverage of human-induced climate change. The Independent recently delivered a masterpiece of headline obfuscation with: 'World cools on global warming as green fatigue sets in.'

The news report said:

'Only 49 per cent of people now consider climate change a very serious issue – far fewer than at the beginning of the worldwide financial crisis in 2009.'

As usual, there was no mention of the role of the corporate media as a leading cause of why 'green fatigue' has supposedly set in. No mention of the media's shameful failure to explore root causes of the climate crisis, not least the elite-serving corporate globalisation that has taken humanity to the brink of disaster. Chris Shaw, a social sciences researcher at the University of Sussex, noted on Twitter that nor was there 'any mention of the work of the merchants of doubt, paid for and acting on the behalf of corporate interests'.

Ironically, science writer Joe Romm of the indispensable Climate Progress blog had exposed the myth of 'green fatigue' in a piece a few days earlier:

'The two greatest myths about global warming communications are 1) constant repetition of doomsday messages has been a major, ongoing strategy and 2) that strategy doesn't work and indeed is actually counterproductive!'

Romm's powerful rebuttal noted that 'blunt, science-based messaging that also makes clear the problem is solvable' has a demonstrable effect in stimulating public concern about climate. His piece listed 8 key points about the mostly poor standard of climate coverage in the media, as well as the incessant pro-business propaganda to which the US public is subjected (likewise in the UK and other 'developed' countries). Some of Romm's key points are:

• 'There is not one single TV show on any network devoted to this subject [climate change], which is, arguably, more consequential than any other preventable issue we face.'
• 'The public is exposed to constant messages promoting business as usual and indeed idolizing conspicuous consumption...'
• 'The major energy companies bombard the airwaves with millions and millions of dollars of repetitious pro-fossil-fuel ads. The environmentalists spend far, far less money.'

Not only is the so-called 'mainstream' media uninterested in addressing the climate catastrophe looming right in front of us, it is simply not equipped to do so. This is obvious when one recalls that the media isn't actually 'mainstream', if by that word we mean representing majority public interests. It's corporate media: owned and operated by elite interests - government, financial, business – that are structurally driven by the 'need' for control, profit and accumulation.

By David Edwards

Ten years ago today, on March 18, 2003, Tony Blair delivered a speech to parliament prior to a vote that resulted in MPs authorising war on Iraq. The war began two days later.

Last month, a Guardian leader recalled Blair's role:

'A decade ago, Tony Blair was lifting his sparkling rhetoric to new heights, whipping up fears of an imminent threat, claiming to hear echoes of Munich, and encouraging dreams of a post-Saddam world where tyranny was in retreat. As the forgotten and fraudulent second dossier was being foisted on journalists, he was perfecting the lines that would soon carry a belligerent majority in the Commons, lamely indulged by Iain Duncan Smith's excuse for an opposition. Most politicians, and too much of the media, swallowed it all wholesale. The public, however, smelled a rat.'

They certainly did. At the time, however, a Guardian leader described Blair's March 18 performance as 'an impassioned and impressive speech by the prime minister which may give future generations some inkling of how, when so many of his own party opposed his policy so vehemently, Tony Blair nevertheless managed to retain their respect and support...'

The editorial added:

'Mr Blair spoke powerfully. He was serious in tone, respectful to backbenchers, and at times he reached levels of oratory that he rarely achieves in the Commons. He seemed to sense that, though the argument has not been won, it is swinging his way.'

About one-fifth of the article, four sentences, offered oblique, minor criticisms of Blair's 'failure to respect the arguments... In particular he remains deaf to the revulsion against the gratuitous actions' of his US ally with its 'disdain for international opinion'.

Remarkably, the rest of the piece, almost half, contained 14 sentences of discussion on constitutional history:

'But the historians will also look at yesterday's debate because it marks a really important moment in constitutional history. Over the centuries, the decision to go to war has rested, first, with kings alone, then with monarchs in the privy council, more recently with the council acting on the advice of the prime minister, sometimes (as in the Falklands war) largely with the cabinet. Yesterday, all this took a fresh twist. Though the formal prerogative power to declare war remains with the Crown, the de facto authority passed yesterday to MPs.'

The change 'gave parliament the power to stop the war before it begins. Parliament did not take its chance, alas.'

This was the extent of the Guardian's outrage and dissent the day after Blair had successfully urged parliament to commit one of the biggest, most brazen war crimes of recent times. In this March 19, 2003 editorial, there were no sarcastic references to Blair's 'sparkling rhetoric', to his 'claiming to hear echoes of Munich', or to the Conservatives' 'excuse for an opposition'. When it mattered, the Guardian took Blair seriously, respectfully, offering not a word of criticism of anything he had actually said.

The Guardian could have joined the millions of people in the UK and across the world excoriating Blair for waging a needless, illegal and immoral war of aggression without even the fig leaf of United Nations support. It could have denounced yet another superpower assault on a country already devastated by war and 12 years of US-UK-led sanctions; a country that represented precisely zero threat to the West.

Like the rest of the corporate media, the Guardian had been unable to declare the 'threat' from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction the fraud it clearly was. The 'WMD issue' was a classic 'necessary illusion' required to justify a war that the United States, with ruthless opportunism, had decided to fight shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks. WMD provided a fictional but functional link to 9/11, allowing US neocons to exploit the suffering of that day to enable this second, very much larger atrocity. As Alan Greenspan, former chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, wrote:

'I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.' (Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence, Penguin, 2007, p.463)

Instead, the Guardian offered a deceptive 'balance':

'[It] is necessary to be as hard on many of the opponents of war as on its proposers, as well as to clear away the misleading idea that evidence that Saddam is concealing weapons of mass destruction is at the centre of the argument. It is at the centre of the manoeuvring, yes, but not of the argument. Among those knowledgeable about Iraq there are few, if any, who believe he is not hiding such weapons. It is a given.' (Martin Woollacott, 'This drive to war is one of the mysteries of our time - We know Saddam is hiding weapons. That isn't the argument,' The Guardian, January 24, 2003)

The truth of the Guardian's muted 'opposition' to Blair and his war was revealed two years later when the lies and catastrophic loss of life were evident to all. Even then, a Guardian leader, 'Once more with feeling,' advised voters in the upcoming general election:

'While 2005 will be remembered as Tony Blair's Iraq election, May 5 is not a referendum on that one decision, however fateful, or on the person who led it, however controversial...' (Leader, 'Once more with feeling,' The Guardian, May 3, 2005)

The editors concluded:

'We believe that Mr Blair should be re-elected to lead Labour into a third term this week.'

Last year, in an article titled 'Return of the king to heal divisions within the Labour tribe,' the Guardian's chief political correspondent, Nicholas Watt, reported that the former prime minister was the 'star guest' at a Labour party fundraiser, which 'provided the perfect opportunity for Blair's return to frontline British politics'.

By David Edwards

Following the death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez on March 5, the BBC reported from the funeral:

'More than 30 world leaders attended the ceremony, including Cuban President Raul Castro, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.

'A message was read out from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.'

A rogues' gallery of the West's 'bad guys', in other words. To the side of the main article, the BBC quietly noted that, in fact, 'Most Latin American and Caribbean Presidents' attended the funeral, not just the Bond villains.

Following the same theme, a BBC article appeared beneath a grim photo montage of Osama bin Laden, Chávez, Kim Jong-il, Muammar Gaddafi, Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein. The report asked: 'Is the era of the anti-American bogeymen at an end?'

Like many independent nationalists, Chávez was not 'anti-American', although he was anti-empire. US foreign policy, on the other hand, was certainly anti-Chávez, 'variously portrayed as a six-times elected champion of the people or a constitution-fiddling demagogue', the BBC piece noted.

Similar 'balance' was offered by the Guardian's Rory Carroll, lead author of the newspaper's Venezuelan coverage between 2006-2012:

'To the millions who revered him – a third of the country, according to some polls – a messiah has fallen, and their grief will be visceral. To the millions who detested him as a thug and charlatan, it will be occasion to bid, vocally or discreetly, good riddance.'

Fair comment, one might think, until we try to imagine a UK journalist writing anything comparable to the second sentence in response to the death of a US president or UK prime minister.

And yet, unlike so many US and UK leaders of recent times, Chávez did not invade nations, overthrow governments, commit mass murder, mass torture, or mass starvation through sanctions. Indeed, in his years as president from 1999-2013 he was not credibly accused of a single political murder.

If it is to be considered fair, condemnation of Chávez should be proportionate to the extent of his alleged crimes and consistent with the level of condemnation directed at US-UK leaders' far worse crimes. If Chávez gets much more for doing far less, we are in the realm of propaganda, not journalism.

To be consistent, then, a senior Guardian journalist should respond to the death of George H.W. or George W. Bush, for example, with something along these lines:

'To the tens or hundreds of millions who detested him as a mass murdering and torturing thug, war criminal and charlatan, it will be occasion to bid, vocally or discreetly, good riddance.'

Fairness also requires that reporters take account of the fact that recent US presidents and UK prime ministers have not had to govern small countries in the face of political, military and economic attacks - including guerrilla warfare, outright invasion, economic strangulation and terrorism - launched, over decades, by a global superpower.

In 1928, Venezuela was the world's leading oil exporter. To achieve its goal of 'economic hegemony in Venezuela', Stephen Rabe noted, the US 'actively supported the vicious and venal regime of Juan Vincente Gómez'. (Rabe, The Road To Opec, University of Texas Press, 1982)

Noam Chomsky supplied further background:

'From World War II, in Venezuela the US followed the standard policy of taking total control of the military "to expand U.S. political and military influence in the Western Hemisphere and perhaps help keep the U.S. arms industry vigorous"...

'The Kennedy Administration increased its assistance to the Venezuelan security forces for "internal security and counterinsurgency operations against the political left"...' (Chomsky, Year 501, Verso, 1993, pp.170-171)

In 1991, Chomsky described the Latin American political context out of which Chávez emerged:

'... any popular effort to overthrow the brutal tyrannies of the oligarchy and the military is met with murderous force, supported or directly organized by the ruler of the hemisphere. Ten years ago, there were signs of hope for an end to the dark ages of terror and misery, with the rise of self-help groups, unions, peasant associations, Christian base communities, and other popular organizations that might have led the way to democracy and social reform. This prospect elicited a stern response by the United States and its clients, generally supported by its European allies, with a campaign of slaughter, torture, and general barbarism that left societies "affected by terror and panic," "collective intimidation and generalized fear" and "internalized acceptance of the terror," in the words of a Church-based Salvadoran human rights organization. Early efforts in Nicaragua to direct resources to the poor majority impelled Washington to economic and ideological warfare, and outright terror, to punish these transgressions by destroying the economy and social life.'

In the Independent, Owen Jones provided a rare, honest glimpse of Venezuelan politics in 1989:

'With gas subsidies removed, petrol prices soared, and impoverished Venezuelans took to the streets. Soldiers mowed protesters down with gunfire. Up to 3,000 died, a horrifying death toll up there with the Tiananmen Square massacre - in a country with a population 43 times smaller.

'It was his abortive coup attempt against Pérez's murderous, rampantly corrupt government in 1992 that launched Chávez to prominence.'

These historical facts are filtered out of corporate media both designed and evolved to sell the state-corporate system as fundamentally benign. Because there is minimal popular awareness of the United States' ruthless subjugation of Latin America, Chávez's involvement in a failed coup can be portrayed as an outrage by Western journalists, as if the attempt had been made under contemporary European political conditions. Owen's is the only example we could find of a UK press article containing the words 'Chávez', 'Pérez' and 'massacre'.

In a BBC video report, 'Life of people's hero and villain,' James Robbins commented over footage showing two injured women and one blood-soaked man all in civilian clothes:

'This is how Hugo Chávez originally burst onto the world stage. In 1992, as an army colonel, he led a military coup, trying and failing to grab power after decades of more or less corrupt rule in Venezuela.'

In total, 14 soldiers were killed and 80 civilians injured. For the BBC, then, the significant violence began with Chávez and his coup - no mention was made of the earlier government massacre of 3,000 people described by Jones.

BBC Newsnight, Iraq And The Export Of Democracy

By David Cromwell

It is a prerequisite for corporate journalists that they respect the ideological conventions of their paymasters and of state power – a vital source of 'news' and 'informed' comment, after all. At the same time, the corporate journalist likes to project a self-serving image as a valiant investigator, a champion of democracy, and a facilitator of fair and balanced debate. All too often, of course, the public can see through the charade.

Huw Edwards, the BBC newsreader, once related an anecdote about being accosted on a train by an 'enraged' man:

'Shortly after my return from Lashkar Gah [a city in southern Afghanistan and the capital of Helmand Province] in 2008, I was confronted by a man on a train heading for London. In a blistering conversation that lasted no more than five minutes, he raised fundamental concerns about the BBC's coverage of Afghanistan. They were all linked in some way to the nature of the British media's relationship with the armed forces.

'He had been enraged by our "twisted" reporting, our status as "prisoners" of the forces during our stay in Helmand, and our seemingly wilful refusal to report "the truth". Ah, yes. The truth.' (Richard Lance Keeble and John Mair, editors, Afghanistan, War and the Media: Deadlines and Frontlines, Arima Publishing, Bury St Edmunds, 2010, p. ix)

The BBC man's airily dismissive response – 'Ah yes. The truth' – may play well on the page, in black and white. But he doesn't tell the reader what he actually said to the challenger in the train, and how their exchange ended. After all, that would involve Edwards revealing his opinion, which BBC journalists are ostensibly not allowed to do!

Instead, he sighs philosophically and tells his readers that 'the truth' is the journalist's 'most elusive aspiration', adding:

'In war reporting, that elusiveness is taken to even more daunting levels.'

Huw Edwards makes accurate reporting sound like some abstruse problem in quantum gravity, something 'elusive' that will perhaps forever be out of reach. But his fellow train passenger was surely right. There are 'fundamental concerns about the BBC's coverage of Afghanistan' - and Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Iran, Syria, poverty, global capitalism, impending climate chaos, and on and on. But Edwards – someone entrusted with reading the News at Ten and commenting on royal pageants, no less - is part of the exclusive inner BBC News circle characterised by institutional groupthink that permits no fundamental concerns about the broadcaster's role.

As sociologist Stuart Hall correctly observes:

'The media define for the majority of the population what significant events are taking place, but, also, they offer powerful interpretations of how to understand these events.'

And in any 'responsible' discussion of events and issues, the boundaries are set within manageable limits that preclude serious challenges to the establishment. As a prime example, historian Mark Curtis cites the BBC programme Question Time - chaired by David Dimbleby, another senior corporation man (and former Bullingdon Club member) entrusted with live commentary of state events - as 'a microcosm of how the media works':

'rarely are critical voices invited. If they are, it is so rare that their views can end up sounding ridiculous in comparison with the "normal" and "balanced" views of the other panellists. It is acceptable for Question Time panellists to criticise each other from within the elite consensus but not for anyone to criticise all of them from outside that consensus.' (Web of Deceit, Vintage, 2003, p. 378)

Curtis continues:

'The evidence is overwhelming that BBC and commercial television news report on Britain's foreign policy in ways that resemble straightforward state propaganda organs. Although by no means directed by the state, their output might as well be; it is not even subtle. BBC, ITV and Channel 5 news simply report nothing seriously critical on British foreign policy; the exception is the odd report on Channel 4 news. Television news – the source of most people's information – provides the most extreme media distortion ... playing an even greater ideological function than the press.' (Ibid., p. 379)

By David Cromwell

A spectacular event captured on film in a new documentary, 'Chasing Ice', depicts the stark impact of global warming on the Arctic. The stunning sequence shows the largest glacier calving event ever filmed. An on-screen graphic emphasises the huge scale of the ice collapse:

'It's as if the entire lower tip of Manhattan broke off, except that the thickness, the height of it, is equivalent to buildings that are two-and-a-half or three times higher than they are.'

Photographer James Balog, who has been documenting changes in the Arctic and elsewhere under the auspices of the Extreme Ice Survey, explains how rapidly the glacier, Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland, has shrunk in recent years:

'It took a hundred years for it to retreat eight miles from 1900 to 2000. From 2000 to 2010 it retreated nine miles. So in ten years it retreated more than it had in the previous one hundred.'

And it's not just in Greenland. At Mendenhall glacier in Alaska, the ice has retreated eleven miles since 1984, as well as getting considerably thinner. Standing at a location overlooking this glacier, Balog points and says:

'You can see what's called the trim line – it's the high water mark of the glacier in 1984. That vertical change [reduction in the glacier height] is the height of the Empire State Building [over 400 m].'

The excellent Skeptical Science website, which rebuts the misleading arguments and insidious disinformation promulgated by climate contrarians, observes:

'The big picture is that most glaciers are shrinking. A small fraction are growing, but for every measured growing glacier there are 9 shrinking ones. 2011 saw the third fastest retreat, and we know that overall glaciers are losing about 150 billion tons of ice a year because of satellite measurements. Stories about growing glaciers are popular on some blogs and newspapers, but they rely on hiding or ignoring 90% of the evidence.'

And:

'Newly released measurements of 100 world glaciers show that 2011 saw the third fastest thinning on record, an average of 80 centimetres (31 inches). This report adds detail to the 500 billion tons a year of ice loss that was seen by the GRACE satellites from 2003-2010, of which 150 billion tons was mountain glacier retreat.'

Just a few days ago, the National Snow and Ice Data Center, based at the University of Colorado in Boulder, announced that 'Greenland's surface melting in 2012 was intense, far in excess of any earlier year in the satellite record since 1979.'

Our future is melting before our very eyes.

By David Edwards

A critic responding to a recent alert, objected to our use of the term 'corporate journalist':

'The problem is it has no clear meaning. Chomsky regularly writes for "corporate media", as does Pilger, Klein, and Michael Moore. Pilger has had his documentaries aired by "corporate media". Klein promotes her books through the "corporate media". I could go on...'

Worse still: 'Not only is this phrase intended as a passive aggressive pejorative, it is meant to dehumanise those it is aimed at, to group them, and then discredit en masse.' (Dom, Media Lens message board, January 24, 2013)

In fact the meaning of 'corporate journalist' could hardly be clearer: it describes someone paid to write for a corporation.

Certainly anyone familiar with our work will not imagine we are using the term as a form of flattery. After all, the key principle of corporate law was established in the 19th century by England's Lord Bowen:

'The law does not say that there are to be no cakes and ale, but there are to be no cakes and ale except such as are required for the benefit of the company... charity has no business to sit at boards of directors qua charity.' (Lord Bowen, cited, Joel Bakan, The Corporation, Constable, 2004, pp.38-39)

This quite literally outlawed authentic corporate compassion. More recently, the American Bar Association observed:

'While allowing directors to give consideration to the interests of others, [the law] compels them to find some reasonable relationship to the long-term interests of shareholders when so doing.' (p.39)

Put more bluntly, the rule that corporations exist solely to maximise returns to their shareholders is 'the law of the land', business journalist Marjorie Kelly comments, 'universally accepted as a kind of divine, unchallengeable truth'. (p.39)

Canadian lawyer Joel Bakan asks us to imagine how we would regard an individual who refused to help the sick and dying unless it made solid financial sense. He argues that such a person would be deemed a psychopath. If readers find the description extreme, they might like to consider the barely believable response of the fossil fuel industry to the catastrophic threat of climate change.

Journalists working for the corporate media are choosing to work for just such an employer guided by the same cold-blooded priorities. So what should our reaction be?

Well how would we have responded to a journalist taking big salaries from Pravda in Stalinist Russia or from Der Stürmer in Nazi Germany during the 1930s? The question might seem outrageous, but is a global psychopathic corporate system more or less destructive than a national Stalinist or fascist system?

Part of the difficulty in considering the question rationally lies in the very nature of the problem being addressed. The corporate media are as skilled at promoting their non-existent virtues as they are at marginalising critics. They also have an astonishing ability to make even the most appalling state crimes ('mistakes') seem somehow trivial, unimportant, 'not that bad'. So the very deceptiveness of the system makes the comparison with totalitarian media seem far more outrageous than it really is.

In fact the question is reasonable. If we look around us today - at the devastating Western wars of aggression, at the mass killings fuelled by corporate militarism, at the truly awesome, perhaps terminal, exploitation of people and planet – we are looking at a world being devastated by psychopathic greed. Former New York Times journalist, Chris Hedges, comments of 'the liberal class', the 'quality' corporate media included:

'The liberal class has become a useless and despised appendage of corporate power... as [it] pollutes and poisons the ecosystem and propels us into a world where there will be only masters and serfs.' (Hedges, Death Of The Liberal Class, Nation Books, 2011, p.12)

Journalists are participants in this system. But mere willingness to cooperate says nothing about the motives of the individuals involved. Some are indeed cynically serving greed and power. But others are sincere, attempting to improve and even reform the system from within. Although we don't agree with their strategy, we accept that it is a reasonable position to take, one that may even offer the best hope of spreading progressive views to a mass audience (we are certainly open to the possibility that we are wrong).

Our real interest and effort has never been to stand in judgement but to highlight what even the best journalists are unable to say about the system that employs them. For example, corporate journalists can almost never answer questions of this kind honestly:

'What impact does your newspaper's dependence on advertising for 75 per cent of its revenues have on the contents of the paper?'

Noam Chomsky can answer the question honestly, as can Edward Herman. Their book, Manufacturing Consent, published 25 years ago this year, is the most rational analysis of structural media bias we have seen. Both authors are still alive, Chomsky is a ground-breaking linguist and one of the world's most-read political analysts. And yet the book has been ignored by the great and the good of corporate journalism. It has been mentioned eight times in the last five years in all national UK newspapers, all of them mentions in passing (one or two sentences) with zero serious analysis of the contents. The words 'Noam Chomsky' and 'propaganda model' (the central theme of the book) have appeared in a total of two national UK press articles over the last 20 years.

In our experience, a corporate journalist is unlikely to respond to the question at all. He or she might make a vague gesture in the direction of truth from the safe confines of a book in the style of the BBC's former political editor Andrew Marr:

'But the biggest question is whether advertising limits and reshapes the news agenda. It does, of course. It's hard to make the sums add up when you are kicking the people who write the cheques.' (Marr, My Trade, Macmillan, 2004, p.112)

But, as in this case, there will be no attempt to explore the implications of what is an obviously crucial problem, no attempt to offer key examples from experience, to discuss alternatives, and absolutely no attempt to call the public to action.

Another question might be posed, perhaps to a journalist at the Independent:

'What impact does the goal of profit-maximisation under its billionaire owner have on your newspaper's capacity to report honestly?'

One really has to be wilfully blind, or perhaps not have worked for a corporation, to fail to understand that criticising the company, the product, the owner - suggesting that the product is harmful and that customers should look elsewhere - is incompatible with the corporate profit drive. It cannot be tolerated because, from the perspective of profit, it is self-destructive and absurd. It is like deciding to play a game of football in which one of the teams tries to score own goals. What would be the point? Why bother at all?

The problem goes much deeper, because the de facto ban on structural self-criticism extends beyond journalists discussing their own media company to the contradictions afflicting the 'corporate free press' generally. Whistle-blowers who speak out honestly become 'radioactive', unemployable and are not welcome anywhere.

By David Cromwell

A crucial element of pro-Israel political lobbying is the reprehensible smearing of justified criticism of the Israeli state as 'antisemitic'. Thus, a recent cartoon by Gerald Scarfe in the Sunday Times provided a convenient target for outrage.

Scarfe had depicted Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, building a wall that encased the bodies of Palestinians depicted in various states of agony. The mortar was blood-red and the caption said: 'Israeli elections: Will cementing peace continue?'

Netanyahu's party had just won the most seats in the recent closely-contested parliamentary elections in Israel. The wall was clearly a reference to the 'separation barrier' which Israel claims is there to protect its citizens from Palestinian attacks, but which is in fact being used in a cynical land grab to expand the borders of Israel.

The cartoon was clearly a strong, even shocking, image. But Scarfe, perhaps best known for his illustrations accompanying Pink Floyd's classic album The Wall, has a long history of acerbic and brutal caricatures, often depicting blood. And he was surely making a valid political point about Israel's brutal treatment of Palestinians and the state's endless colonial expansion, all under the guise of a mythical 'peace process'.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews, which is ardently pro-Israel, linked to Zionist propaganda interests and a supporter of Israeli attacks on Gaza, submitted a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission alleging that the cartoon 'is shockingly reminiscent of the blood-libel imagery more usually found in parts of the virulently antisemitic Arab press.' This is the myth dating back to the Middle Ages that Jews murdered children and used the blood in religious ceremonies.

The Board's 'anger was heightened' by the cartoon being published on Holocaust Memorial Day: 'a day meant to commemorate the communities destroyed by the Nazis and their allies in the mid-20th century.'

Israel's UK ambassador Daniel Taub said:

'The image of Israel's security barrier, which is saving the lives of both Jews and Arabs from suicide bombers, being built from Palestinian blood and bodies is baseless and outrageous.

'The use of vicious motifs echoing those used to demonize Jews in the past is particularly shocking and hurtful on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, but the crude and shallow hatred of this cartoon should render it totally unacceptable on any day of the year.'

Meanwhile the speaker of Israel's parliament, Reuven Rivlin, wrote to his UK counterpart to express 'extreme outrage'.

The essential message beneath the barrage of opprobrium was: Thou shalt not criticise Israel.