{"id":206704,"date":"2022-03-14T12:01:39","date_gmt":"2022-03-14T12:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=206704"},"modified":"2022-03-10T06:30:53","modified_gmt":"2022-03-10T06:30:53","slug":"russia-ukraine-western-media-are-acting-as-cheerleaders-for-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/03\/russia-ukraine-western-media-are-acting-as-cheerleaders-for-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia-Ukraine: Western Media Are Acting as Cheerleaders for War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Journalists are cheering on the arming of militias and civilians making improvised explosives \u2013 acts they usually treat as terrorism<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

4 Mar 2022 – <\/em>It is simply astonishing how many<\/a> western journalists, including normally cautious BBC reporters<\/a>, are shamelessly fawning over<\/a> young women building Molotov cocktails on the streets of Ukrainian cities like Kyiv.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s suddenly sexy to make improvised explosives \u2013 at least, if the media consider you white, European and \u201ccivilised<\/a>\u201c.<\/p>\n

That might surprise other, more established resistance movements, especially in the Middle East. They have invariably found themselves tarred as terrorists for doing much the same.<\/p>\n

Western journalists\u2019 difficulty containing their identification with, and support for, Ukraine\u2019s civilian \u201cresistance\u201d\u00a0must be maddening to Palestinians in tiny Gaza, for example, who have been locked into a metal cage by an Israeli military<\/a>occupier for decades.<\/p>\n

Palestinians in Gaza make their own Molotov cocktails. But because they can\u2019t get close to the Israeli army, they have to pack them into balloons<\/a> that drift over the steel barrier surrounding Gaza and into Israel, sometimes setting fire to fields.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/OrlaGuerin\/status\/1498935801501175812?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1498935801501175812%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jonathan-cook.net%2F2022-03-04%2Frussia-ukraine-western-media-cheerleaders-war%2F<\/p>\n

No one from the BBC has celebrated these \u201cincendiary balloons<\/a>\u201d as a small act of resistance. They are reflexively blamed on Gaza\u2019s governing group Hamas, the political wing of which was recently designated a terror organisation<\/a> by the British government.<\/p>\n

Double standards<\/h3>\n

Palestinians in Gaza have also suffered a trade blockade by Israel for the past 15 years<\/a>, one designed to put them on a\u00a0\u201cstarvation diet\u201d.<\/a> Protesters, including women, children and people in wheelchairs, have regularly turned out to throw a stone in the direction of distant Israeli snipers, hidden behind fortifications, as a symbolic way to demand their freedom. These protesters have often been shot by the Israeli army<\/a> in response.<\/p>\n

The western media offer<\/a>occasional anguish at the lives lost or the legs amputated of those targeted by the snipers. But none of them cheerlead this Palestinian \u201cresistance\u201d\u00a0as they do the Ukrainian one. More usually, the protesters are treated<\/a> as dupes or provocateurs of Hamas.<\/p>\n

Gaza, unlike Ukraine, does not have an army, and its fighters, unlike Ukraine\u2019<\/a>s, are not being armed by the West.<\/p>\n

The Guardian newspaper even censored <\/a>its cartoonist Steve Bell when he sought to depict one of the victims of Israel\u2019s snipers, a nurse, Razan al-Najjar<\/a>, who had been trying to help the wounded. The paper implied that the cartoon<\/a> \u2013 of Britain\u2019s then prime minister, Theresa May, welcoming her Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, to London,\u00a0with al-Najjar a sacrificial victim behind them in the fireplace\u00a0\u2013 was antisemitic.<\/p>\n

Assuming the media has in the past been reluctant to encourage ordinary people to confront well-armed soldiers \u2013 so as to avoid civilian casualties \u2013 then why has that policy suddenly been ditched in Ukraine?<\/p>\n

The double standards are glaring and everywhere. It is impossible to claim that the journalists doing this are ignorant of reporting conventions elsewhere. They are mostly veterans of Middle East war zones, well used to covering Gaza, Baghdad, Nablus, Aleppo and Tripoli.<\/p>\n

Fuelling the fire<\/h3>\n

Britain and other European states have chosen to fuel the fires of resistance in Ukraine by sending it weapons<\/a> that can only lead to greater loss of life, especially of civilians caught in the crossfire.\u00a0One might have expected the British media to examine the ethical implications of such a policy, and the hypocrisy. But not a bit of it.<\/p>\n

In fact, much of the media have not only been acting as lobbyists<\/a> for more weapons to be sent to the Ukrainian army,\u00a0they have whipped up <\/a>support for civilians in the UK to get more involved<\/a> in the fighting.<\/p>\n

That has been the case even after No 10 distanced<\/a> itself from\u00a0comments by\u00a0Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, that Britons should be encouraged to volunteer for Ukraine\u2019s so-called \u201cinternational legions\u201d<\/a>, supposedly to defend Europe.<\/p>\n

Her position was in conflict with usual government practice, which has treated those heading off to fight in war zones in the Middle East as terrorists. Shamima Begum,<\/a> who went to Syria aged 15, has been stripped of her British citizenship and denied the right to return for doing what Truss has proposed in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, that did not dissuade the BBC from travelling to Essex to meet \u201cWozza<\/a>\u201c, a supplier of surplus British army kit he has been selling cheaply to Ukrainians in Britain so they can head off to the battlefront. Wozza was shown tearing off Union Jack insignia from uniforms so Ukrainian militiamen could use them.<\/p>\n

Compare that with the treatment of an entirely peaceful form of resistance by westerners in solidarity with the Palestinians, the international Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) movement. It has been treated<\/a> as barely better than terrorism, with bans on support for BDS<\/a> across Europe<\/a> and the US.<\/p>\n

Compromised \u2018impartiality\u2019<\/h3>\n

It is hard to remember in all the media agitation over Ukraine that this sympathetic coverage flies in the face of its reporting conventions. It is inconceivable, of course, that Britain would ever send arms to help, for example, Gaza liberate itself.<\/p>\n

For that reason, the media will never have the opportunity to exercise their vocal chords in outrage at such a development.<\/p>\n

In fact, the western media more typically echo western government<\/a> opposition to any support for Gaza, even construction materials like cement to rebuild the enclave after one of Israel\u2019s intermittent wrecking sprees.\u00a0That is because reporters treat uncritically Israeli claims <\/a>that humanitarian aid will be repurposed by Hamas and bolster \u201cterrorism\u201d.<\/p>\n

Back in 2010, for example, a BBC Panorama programme failed<\/a> to mention that an Israeli naval attack on a humanitarian aid convoy to besieged Gaza was conducted illegally in international waters.\u00a0Nine activists trying to deliver aid items like medicine to Gaza aboard the Mavi Marmara ship were killed by Israeli commandoes, but the interviews with these masked men were largely uncritical<\/a>.\u00a0There was very little sympathy from the BBC for that act of resistance against a brutal occupier.<\/p>\n

A year earlier, the BBC\u00a0broke with tradition and refused<\/a> to broadcast a long-established aid appeal because on this occasion it was to provide food and shelter to Gaza, following an Israeli assault that destroyed swaths of the enclave.\u00a0The BBC justified<\/a> the decision on the grounds that it would compromise its \u201cimpartiality\u201d \u2013 something it seems entirely unconcerned about in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The BBC had not responded to questions about these inconsistencies by the time of publication.<\/p>\n

Fog of war<\/h3>\n

The battlefield is well known for becoming quickly enveloped in the fog of war. That is one reason why inexperienced journalists are cautioned by their editors to wait for evidence and to be alert to propaganda.\u00a0In practice, however, one can assess where the media\u2019s sympathies lie \u2013 concealed behind flimsy claims of objectivity \u2013 by noting when and for whose benefit these caution rules are abandoned, and which side\u2019s narratives are accepted quickly and uncritically.<\/p>\n

In the Middle East, it is clear that US, European and Israeli claims are all too readily amplified, even when their veracity is in doubt.<\/p>\n

Such media-fuelled lies have been manifold. That Israel urged the Palestinians it expelled<\/a> in 1948 to return home. That Saddam Hussein\u2019s troops ripped babies<\/a>from incubators in Kuwait,\u00a0and that the Iraqi leader colluded<\/a> with his arch-enemy, al-Qaeda, in the 9\/11 attacks. That Muammar Gadaffi\u2019s soldiers in Libya took Viagra<\/a> to rape civilians in Benghazi. That Russia paid bounties<\/a> to the Taliban to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

These deceptions and fabrications grabbed headlines when they were useful as propaganda, only to be quietly withdrawn much later on.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s government promised<\/a> each of them a Hero of Ukraine award.<\/p>\n

But in fact, it was Russian media reports that were true<\/a>. There were 82 Ukrainian soldiers and they had surrendered. All were alive and well.\u00a0In another example, a clip from a video game<\/a> was widely promoted as a heroic<\/a> lone Ukrainian fighter pilot \u2013 dubbed the Ghost of Kyiv \u2013 shooting down Russian planes and helicopters.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Softening-up operation<\/h3>\n

But 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\u2019s sympathy for Ukrainian \u201cresistance\u201d denied other groups battling their oppressors, when those oppressors are the West and its allies.<\/p>\n

The media is chock full of commentators far more rabidly tribal than even western governments and military generals. The media chorus for \u201cmore war\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Along with many others, Mail on Sunday commentator Dan Hodges has beencalling for a no-fly zone<\/a> over Ukraine that even Boris Johnson has rejected<\/a> for very obvious reasons. It would lead Europe into a direct confrontation with the Russian airforce and risk confrontation with a nuclear power.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Hodges has described<\/a> any rejection of this idea as \u201can act of appeasement no different to our appeasement of Hitler in 1938\u201d. Russia\u2019s invasion came after nearly a decade of goading by the US using Nato as cover to forge ever tighter military relations with its neighbour.<\/p>\n

Rightly or wrongly, Moscow interpreted<\/a> Nato\u2019s behaviour as an aggressive move by the US and its allies into its \u201csphere of influence\u201d. The idea that no concession could, and can, be made to Russia \u2013 that the only \u201cmoral choice\u201d, as Hodges calls it, is risking a potential nuclear war \u2013 should be understood as the belligerent provocation it clearly is.<\/p>\n

NBC News\u2019 chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, tweeted<\/a> out what he saw as a \u201crisk calculation\u201d and \u201cmoral dilemma\u201d: should the West bomb a convoy of Russian tanks on their way towards Kyiv? Apparently concerned by current inaction, he asked: \u201cDoes the West watch in silence as it rolls?\u201d<\/p>\n

Utter hypocrisy<\/h3>\n

Condeleeza Rice, an architect of the criminal invasion of Iraq, has not been challenged by the media over her utter hypocrisy<\/a> in agreeing that \u201cWhen you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime.\u201d If that is the case \u2013 and international law says it is \u2013 then Rice herself should be on trial at the Hague.<\/p>\n

\n

Russia's intervention in Ukraine has gotten much more coverage, and condemnation, in just 24 hours than the US-Saudi war on Yemen has gotten since it started nearly 7 years ago<\/p>\n

377,000 Yemenis have died. US-backed Saudi bombing now is the worst since 2018 https:\/\/t.co\/LKyeW0LsNB<\/a><\/p>\n

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 25, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n