{"id":220541,"date":"2022-10-03T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2022-10-03T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=220541"},"modified":"2022-10-01T05:53:08","modified_gmt":"2022-10-01T04:53:08","slug":"over-the-rainbow-disneyfied-news-and-the-unprovoked-invasion-of-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/10\/over-the-rainbow-disneyfied-news-and-the-unprovoked-invasion-of-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Over the Rainbow–Disneyfied News and the \u2018Unprovoked\u2019 Invasion of Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Rainbow<\/p><\/div>\n

30 Sep 2022 – <\/em>Last February, Emily Maitlis left her role as presenter of the BBC\u2019s Newsnight programme to join rival media group Global. In a recent speech, Maitlis made a surprising reference to Theresa May\u2019s former communications director Sir Robbie Gibb:<\/p>\n

\u2018Put this in the context of the BBC board, where another active agent of the Conservative Party \u2013 former Downing Street spin doctor and former adviser to BBC rival GB News \u2013 now sits, acting as the arbiter of BBC impartiality.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Outraged by this whistleblowing, someone at the BBC activated<\/a> the corporation\u2019s ageing Complaint Response Autobot:<\/p>\n

\u2018The BBC places the highest value on due impartiality and accuracy and we apply these principles to our reporting on all issues.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The standard, \u2018Just the facts, Ma\u2019am\u2019, claim for \u2018impartial\u2019 journalism, in other words, as Matt Taibbi described<\/a> it in Rolling Stone magazine.<\/p>\n

Maitlis\u2019s criticism of bias at the BBC was ironic indeed given her own record. In August 2008, Maitlis opened BBC\u2019s Newsnight programme with an almost Chomskyan comment on the conflict between Russia and Georgia:<\/p>\n

\u2018Hello, good evening. The Russians are calling it \u201cpeace enforcement operation\u201d. It\u2019s the kind of Newspeak that would make George Orwell proud.\u2019 (BBC2, August 11, 2008, 10:30pm)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was unclear why Orwell would have been made \u2018proud\u2019 by examples of \u2018Newspeak\u2019. But anyway, imagine Maitlis, or any BBC presenter, referring to comparable Western propaganda on Afghanistan (\u2018Operation Enduring Freedom\u2019), Iraq (\u2018Operation Iraqi Freedom\u2019), Syria, or Ukraine, as \u2018the kind of Newspeak that would make George Orwell proud\u2019.<\/p>\n

On 1 April 2020, Maitlis retweeted a thread<\/a> on Twitter from someone called Dave Rich smearing Jeremy Corbyn. This was the first tweet in the thread:<\/p>\n

\u2018Goodbye Jeremy Corbyn. They said you don\u2019t have an antisemitic bone in your body. That may be true, but your brain is full of it. Can we remember all the examples? Probably not but I\u2019ll have a go \/1\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maitlis, who is from a Jewish family, retweeted this and similar comments to her quarter of a million followers.<\/p>\n

\u2018Remarkable\u2019 Rainbows<\/strong><\/p>\n

The truth of the BBC\u2019s reflexive claim that it \u2018places the highest value on due impartiality and accuracy\u2019 was, of course, tested to destruction by its coverage<\/a> of the death and funeral of the Queen. A BBC news journalist observed<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018As crowds wait to see the Queen\u2019s lying-in-state for the final evening, many were touched to see the evening sky light up with a rainbow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2018Remarkably, a rainbow was also spotted at Windsor Castle on the same day the Queen died on 8 September.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2018The BBC\u2019s Sophie Raworth caught the reaction of people who spotted the rainbow as she noted on Sunday: \u201cAs the sun set over Westminster tonight\u2026 the crowd gasped.\u201d\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This was the BBC, in the 21st<\/sup> century, clearly suggesting that supernatural forces may have been honouring the Queen. Otherwise, it was not \u2018remarkable\u2019 for rainbows to appear as part of the UK\u2019s mixed September weather; nor would a high-profile reporter feel the need to note that a number of overwrought mourners \u2018gasped\u2019 at the sight of a rainbow.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on the BBC, the former Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, spoke of how the Queen had performed an act of spontaneous spiritual healing. Sentamu recalled<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018I went with a huge burden of matters that maybe one day will be revealed.<\/p>\n

\u2018I knelt down, and I said \u201cYour Majesty, please pray for me.\u201d So I put my hands together and she put hers outside mine, and we were silent for three minutes. At the end she said \u201cAmen\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018When I got up, the burden had lifted.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Also on the BBC, we learned <\/a>that \u2018Emma, the Queen\u2019s fell pony, greeted the procession\u2019. Separately, the BBC devoted<\/a> an entire news piece to the pony and the Queen\u2019s two remaining corgis, Muick and Sandy, who were pictured looking sad and wistful. Apparently drawing inspiration from the Richard Gere film, \u2018Hachi: A Dog\u2019s Tale\u2019, about a heartbroken dog waiting for his deceased master\u2019s return, the BBC reported:<\/p>\n

\u2018The Queen\u2019s last two corgis have appeared during her coffin\u2019s procession to Windsor Castle, as if out waiting for their mistress\u2019s return.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Any Guardian readers hoping to escape this Disneyfied version of analysis were disappointed. In probably the first and last opinion piece of its kind, Anna Whitelock, professor of the history of monarchy at City, University of London, opined<\/a> of the Queen:<\/p>\n

\u2018Certainly, a monarch reigning for more than 70 years, but also a monarch who in a modern media age of populism and celebrity retained an echo of the mystical, age-old, divine right of kings.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whitelock clarified the assertion, noting that Elizabeth had been \u2018cast by accident of birth into a role unearned and then anointed as God\u2019s chosen one\u2019.<\/p>\n

To her credit, Whitelock was candid about the personal crisis that lay behind this analysis:<\/p>\n

\u2018For me, the moment when the imperial crown, representing the sovereignty of the nation, and the orb and sceptre, representing spiritual and temporal power, were removed from the coffin, and so from Elizabeth for the last time, was the moment when my expertise abandoned me. In that instance, I became not a professor of the history of modern monarchy, but a disoriented fortysomething who, at least in that moment, witnessed the breaking of the spell: the shattering of the magic of monarchy that I have often described but had always assumed I was quite immune to.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The day after the funeral, high-profile Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff breathed<\/a> a sigh of relief:<\/p>\n

\u2018GOOD MORNING to the day the news is allowed back in the room\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We asked<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018Well, who stopped the news? Who has that right? And why did you allow it to happen?\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Other journalists also expressed limited dissent. Long-time Guardian and Observer contributor, Dan Hancox, commented<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018I think if I worked for BBC News in any capacity I would absolutely mortified after the last fortnight. \u201cPublic service\u201d, \u201cBBC balance\u201d and purported pluralism revealed for what it truly is \u2013 an inflexible arm of the state and the elites that control it. Truly an embarrassment\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Michael Crick, former political editor of the BBC\u2019s Newsnight programme, went further<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018The past days, with a few honourable exceptions, have been a shameful period for British journalism, in which scrutiny, challenge, perspective, balance and common sense have been ditched in favour of fawning\u00a0 banalities.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We asked <\/a>Hancox about the newspapers that publish his work:<\/p>\n

\u2018And how did the Guardian and Observer fare, Dan?\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Donnachadh McCarthy, aggrieved climate columnist at the Independent, responded <\/a>first:<\/p>\n

\u2018Seemed like they replaced the newspaper with 30 page royal souvenir promotion brochures, for 11 days solid!!\u00a0\u00a0 Arghhh<\/p>\n

\u2018I was a captured subscriber.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

McCarthy added<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018Utterly failed on balanced reporting, just like they did with 1200 articles trashing Corbyn, to ensure Johnson got elected.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Clearly peeved, Hancox responded <\/a>to our tweet:<\/p>\n

\u2018This would maybe be a scathing gotcha if 1) I was editor of these newspapers, rather than a freelance writer, and 2) our monolithic licence-fee-funded PS broadcaster was the same thing as a privately-owned newspaper. For media critics, you could use a bit of media literacy\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

McCarthy responded <\/a>to Hancox again:<\/p>\n

\u2018Seems like you did not read the 11 royal souvenir brochures, which replaced Guardian Observer for 11 days!!<\/p>\n

\u2018Now that is what was really shameful\u2026\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We replied<\/a> to Hancox\u2019s tweet referring to our attempted \u2018gotcha\u2019:<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m genuinely asking: as a Guardian and Observer contributor, how mortified have you been by their performance?\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hancox responded<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018You sad little men, shouting at a freelancer via QTs [quote tweets]. As usual showing your nuanced understanding of where power is located in the media\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As other tweeters pointed out, Hancox had himself been \u2018shouting\u2019 at people who worked at the BBC \u2018in any capacity\u2019 \u2013 presumably including \u2018sad little\u2019 freelancers. We replied<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018For 21 years now, journos have responded with rage and insults when we\u2019ve asked them to comment on media publishing their work. It\u2019s a way of avoiding the question. In essence: \u201cYou\u2019re so nasty and vicious, and I\u2019m so angry, that I won\u2019t respond.\u201d We haven\u2019t been shouting at all.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Being described as \u2018sad little men\u2019 reminded us of the time filmmaker and BBC producer Adam Curtis commented to us two decades ago:<\/p>\n

\u2018I don\u2019t know whether it occurred to you that I might have been away \u2013 instead of stamping your little feet and trying to whip up an attack of the clones.\u2019 (Email to Media Lens, 18 June 2002)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To the painfully swollen egos of the Guardian and BBC, we are annoying \u2018little men\u2019 with \u2018little feet\u2019 barely worthy of consideration. After all, who are we? How dare we<\/em> challenge them<\/em>? As Peter Beaumont, the Observer\u2019s foreign affairs editor, noted <\/a>in a rare \u2018mainstream\u2019 mention (unthinkable now), we are \u2018self-appointed media watchdogs\u2019. (Beaumont, \u2018Microscope on Medialens [sic]\u2019, the Observer, 18 June 2006)<\/p>\n

It was a telling comment. We <\/em>are not appointed by authority of any kind and are therefore \u2018little men\u2019 to commentators afflicted by what Erich Fromm called \u2018the authoritarian character structure\u2019 \u2013 people who look to hierarchy, status and power for guidance, rather than to their own capacity for critical thought.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Unprovoked\u2019 Invasion<\/strong><\/p>\n

We received a further telling response from high-profile reporter Wyre Davies of BBC News & Current Affairs. For reasons unknown, Davies likes to occasionally vent his spleen in our direction. This time, he responded to our retweet<\/a> of a deeply disturbing prediction about the war in Ukraine by political commentator and former chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter:<\/p>\n

\u2018The mobilization of 300,000 men, as well as the announced goal of bringing all other units up to the standards of the Russian army, will not happen overnight. Russia will be forming new units, and this takes time.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ritter\u2019s grim conclusion:<\/p>\n

\u2018I believe we will see a strategic pause\u2026 But once Russia consolidates the new territory politically, and accrues the necessary military capacity, I believe we are looking at the physical destruction of the Ukrainian nation as the endgame for this conflict.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ritter has been banned by Twitter, so Davies responded <\/a>to us:<\/p>\n

\u2018Indeed; one precipitated by Russia\u2019s illegal, unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Like anyone who has looked at the facts, we agree that the invasion is illegal and brutal, but reject the claim that it was unprovoked. As John Pilger commented <\/a>recently:<\/p>\n

\u2018The news from the war in Ukraine is mostly not news, but a one-sided litany of jingoism, distortion, omission.\u00a0 I have reported a number of wars and have never known such blanket propaganda.<\/p>\n

\u2018In February, Russia invaded Ukraine as a response to almost eight years of killing and criminal destruction in the Russian-speaking region of Donbass on their border.<\/p>\n

\u2018In 2014, the United States had sponsored a coup in Kiev that got rid of Ukraine\u2019s democratically elected, Russian-friendly president and installed a successor whom the Americans made clear was their man.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pilger continued:<\/p>\n

\u2018Last December, Russia proposed a far-reaching security plan for Europe. This was dismissed, derided or suppressed in the Western media. Who read its step-by-step proposals? On Feb. 24, President Volodymyr Zelensky threatened to develop nuclear weapons unless America armed and protected Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u2018On the same day, Russia invaded \u2013 an unprovoked act of congenital infamy, according to the Western media. The history, the lies, the peace proposals, the solemn agreements on Donbass at Minsk counted for nothing.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pilger added:<\/p>\n

\u2018Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine is wanton and inexcusable. It is a crime to invade a sovereign country. There are no \u201cbuts\u201d \u2013 except one.<\/p>\n

\u2018When did the present war in Ukraine begin and who started it? According to the United Nations, between 2014 and this year, some 14,000 people have been killed in the Kiev regime\u2019s civil war on the Donbass. Many of the attacks were carried out by neo-Nazis.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018The encirclement of Russia by Nato was not a one-off error. Western meddling in the coup and support for a nationalist Ukrainian army increasingly hostile to Russia were not one-offs either. Nato\u2019s decision to flood Ukraine with weapons rather than concentrate on diplomacy is no aberration. Nor is the decision to impose economic sanctions on ordinary Russians.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2018These are all of a piece, a pattern of pathological behaviour by the West towards Russia \u2013 and any other resource-rich state that does not utterly submit to western control.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Noam Chomsky commented <\/a>recently:<\/p>\n

\u2018In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, the major establishment journal, Fiona Hill and Angela Stent \u2013 highly regarded policy analysts with close government connections \u2013 report that:<\/p>\n

\u2018\u201cAccording to multiple former senior US officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement. The terms of that settlement would have been for Russia to withdraw to the positions it held before launching the invasion on February 24. In exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Aaron Mat\u00e9 of The Grayzone website added<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018In confirming that US officials were aware of this tentative agreement, Hill bolsters previous news that Washington\u2019s junior partner in London was enlisted to thwart it. As Ukrainian media reported, citing sources close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Kiev in April and relayed the message that Russia \u201cshould be pressured, not negotiated with.\u201d Johnson also informed Zelensky that \u201ceven if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on [security] guarantees with Putin,\u201d his Western patrons \u201care not.\u201d The talks promptly collapsed.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chomsky notes that it is not known if similar peace initiatives continue to be made:<\/p>\n

\u2018If they do, they would not lack popular support, not only in the Global South but even in Europe, where \u201c77 percent of Germans believe that the West should initiate negotiations to end the Ukraine war\u201d.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Craig Murray, who was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004, offered <\/a>this shocking observation:<\/p>\n

\u2018There really are \u2013 and remember I worked over twenty years in British Foreign Office, six of them in the senior management structure \u2013 people in NATO, and in all western governments, who have no problem with the notion of hundreds of thousands of dead people, particularly as they are nearly all Eastern Europeans or Central Asians. They are not even particularly perturbed by the risk the conflict could turn nuclear. They are delighted that the Russian armed forces are being degraded and vast sums pumped into western military budgets. That is worth any number of dead Ukrainians to them.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Typically for \u2018mainstream\u2019 journalism, Wyre Davies was forthright in his condemnation of Russia\u2019s invasion \u2013 nobody ever harmed their career by criticising Official Enemies. As with Hancox, we thought it would be interesting to test <\/a>his honesty closer to home:<\/p>\n

\u2018Wyre, in your opinion, was the 2003, US-UK invasion of Iraq illegal, unprovoked and brutal?\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Davies responded<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018Jeez \u2026 \u201clook over there!\u201d I thought for a minute this was all about Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine?\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which is how \u2018mainstream\u2019 journalists like it \u2013 it should be \u2018all\u2019<\/em> about Russia\u2019s crimes. After working on Media Lens for two decades, it is still unclear to us whether journalists like Davies understand the consequences of damning the crimes of Official Enemies while refusing even to comment<\/em> on the crimes of our own government. Do they understand that this one-eyed moral condemnation forever portrays the West as compassionate crusaders responding to the despicable illegality and violence of the \u2018Bad Guys\u2019? And do they understand that the results are catastrophic? The public simply doesn\u2019t know<\/em> that the West destroyed Iraq, Libya and Syria on packs of lies at vast human cost, fighting completely avoidable wars, while Western oil companies, like BP and Exxon in Iraq and Libya, reap the spoils<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is because all crimes are equal for journalists like Davies, but some crimes are more equal than others, that the public can\u2019t conceive the utterly ruthless nature of Nato\u2019s actions in Ukraine. To the public, it really does seem like the West is spending tens of billions of dollars to defend Ukrainian freedom. Even after the human catastrophes of Western \u2018intervention\u2019 in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, the public can still <\/em>be made to believe that the chief Western concern in Iran is women\u2019s rights, rather than the oil for which \u2018we\u2019, unprovoked, illegally and brutally overthrew <\/a>the democratically elected Iranian government in 1953.<\/p>\n

It is only the awesome, brainwashing power of our state-corporate media that makes it possible for anyone to imagine that this is how Great Powers behave in the real world. If foreign policy really worked that way, planet Earth would long since have been transformed into a paradise of peace, equality and justice. We need only look around us to see how close we are to achieving that aim.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. In 2007,<\/em> Media Lens was awarded the Gandhi Foundation International Peace Prize<\/a>.\u00a0We have written three co-authored books<\/em>:\u00a0Guardians of Power-The Myth of the Liberal Media <\/a>(Pluto Press, 2006),<\/em> Newspeak-In the 21st Century<\/a> (Pluto Press, 2009), and<\/em> Propaganda Blitz<\/a> (Pluto Press, 2018)<\/em>. Contacts: David Edwards: editor@medialens.org<\/a> – David Cromwell: editor@medialens.org<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 medialens.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

30 Sep 2022 – It was unclear why Orwell would have been made \u2018proud\u2019 by examples of \u2018Newspeak\u2019. But anyway, imagine Maitlis, or any BBC presenter, referring to comparable Western propaganda on Afghanistan (\u2018Operation Enduring Freedom\u2019), Iraq (\u2018Operation Iraqi Freedom\u2019), Syria, or Ukraine, as \u2018the kind of Newspeak that would make George Orwell proud\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":121823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[1894,2314,855,1855,2462,2938,278,961,1365],"class_list":["post-220541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-bbc","tag-corporate-media","tag-george-orwell","tag-mainstream-media-msm","tag-military-industrial-media-complex","tag-newspeak","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-war-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}