Surely This Cannot Be True

[liadnan]

Via Nosemonkey, as seems to be increasingly the case:

"The Propaganda We Pass Off As News Around The World": Media Guardian

A succession of scandals in the US has revealed widespread government funding of PR agencies to produce "fake news". Actors take the place of journalists and the "news" is broadcast as if it were genuine. The same practice has been adopted in Iraq, where newspapers have been paid to insert copy. These stories have raised the usual eyebrows in the UK about the pitiful quality of US democracy. Things are better here, we imply. We have a prime minister who claimed in 2004 that "the values that drive our actions abroad are the same values of progress and justice that drive us at home". Yet in 2002 the government launched a littleknown television propaganda service that seems to mimic the US government's deceptive approach to fake news.

[...]

World Television produces the fake news, but its efforts are entirely funded by the Foreign Office, which spent £340m on propaganda activities in the UK alone in 2001. A comprehensive post- 9/11 overhaul means that this figure has probably markedly increased since then.

[...]

The diet of "news" received by viewers of the service includes an endless pageant of government ministers and other official spokespeople. Recent headlines on Iraq refer to happy news such as "Prime minister in surprise visit to Iraq" (December 22 2005) or "Iraqi ambassador upbeat on elections" (December 14 2005). Often Chatham House provides the venue for policy discussions, as in: "The psychology of terror - experts meet" (December 23 2005).

Questioning the occupation is out of the question, but some criticism of US policy is possible. In an extraordinary apologia for the British occupation of Iraq in 1920, the "suggested intro" reads: "This year is not the first time an outside power has sought to construct a modern, democratic, liberal state in Iraq. Britain tried to do the same in the 1920s". The benevolence of the US and the UK is simply assumed: "Today's USled coalition, like the imperial occupiers of 80 years ago, are trying to free Iraq's government and security services from corruption and abuse."

I despair, really I do. As Brad has been known to fulminate about the US administration, "I'll stop calling this crew Orwellian when they stop using 1984 as an operations manual".

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

re: fake news. Recommend reading Toxic Sludge Is Good For You (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567510604/qid=1140049703/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl/202-0065851-4681443) - mostly about US-based multi-nationals and US Cold War propaganda, but still relevant...