The Record of the Newspaper of Record - by Stephen Lendman
Dictionaries define "yellow journalism" variously as irresponsible and sensationalist reporting that distorts, exaggerates or misstates the truth. It's misinformation or agitprop disinformation masquerading as fact to boost circulation and readership or serve a larger purpose like lying for state and corporate interests. The dominant US media excel in it, producing a daily diet of fiction portrayed as real news and information in their role as our national thought-control police gatekeepers. In the lead among the print and electronic corporate-controlled media is the New York Times publishing "All The News That's Fit To Print" by its standards. Others wanting real journalism won't find it on their pages allowing only the fake kind. It's because this paper's primary mission is to be the lead instrument of state propaganda making it the closest thing we have in the country to an official ministry of information and propaganda.
Singlehandedly, the Times destroys "The Myth of the Liberal Media" that's also the title of Edward Herman's 1999 book on "the illiberal media," the market system, and what passes for democracy in America Michael Parenti calls "Democracy For the Few," in his book with that title out earlier this year in its 8th edition.
In his book, Herman writes about the "propaganda model" he and Noam Chomsky introduced and developed 11 years earlier in their landmark book titled "Manufacturing Consent." They explained how the dominant media use this technique to program the public mind to go along with whatever agenda best serves wealth and power interests. So imperial wars of aggression are portrayed as liberating ones, humanitarian intervention, and spreading democracy to nations without any. Never mind they're really for new markets, resources like oil, and cheap exploitable labor paid for with public tax dollars diverted from essential social needs.
In "The Myth of the Liberal Media," Herman explains the "propaganda model" focuses on "the inequality of wealth and power" and how those with most of it can "filter out the news to print, marginalize dissent (and assure) government and dominant private interests" control the message and get it to the public. It's done through a set of "filters" removing what's to be suppressed and "leaving only the cleansed (acceptable) residue fit to print" or broadcast electronically. Parenti's "Democracy For the Few" is democracy-US style the rest of us are stuck with.
Books have been written on how, going back decades, the New York Times betrayed the public trust serving elitist interests alone. It plays the lead and most influential media role disseminating state and corporate propaganda to the nation and world. In terms of media clout, the Times is unmatched with its prominent front page being what media critic Norman Solomon calls "the most valuable square inches of media real estate in the USA" - more accurately, anywhere.
Examples of Times duplicity are endless showing up every day on its pages. The shameless Judith Miller saga is just the latest episode of how bad they can get, but she had her predecessors, and the beat goes on since she left in disgrace. Through the years, the Times never met a US war of aggression it didn't love and support. It was never bothered by CIA's functioning as a global Mafia-style hit squad/training headquarters ousting democratically elected governments, assassinating foreign heads of state and key officials, propping up friendly dictators, funding and training secret paramilitary armies and death squads, and now snatching individuals for "extraordinary rendition" to torture-prison hellholes, some run by the agency and all taking orders from it.
CIA, as Chalmers Johnson notes, is a state within a state functioning as the president's unaccountable private army with unchecked powers and a near-limitless off-the-books secret budget we now know tops $44 billion annually. It menaces democratic rule, threatens the Republic's survival and makes any notion of a free society impossible as long as this agency exists. Not a problem at New York Times. It worked closely with CIA since the 1950s allowing some of its foreign correspondents to be Agency assets or agents. It no doubt still does.
The Times is also unbothered by social decay at home, an unprecedented wealth disparity, an administration mocking the rule of law, a de facto one party state with two wings and a president usurping "unitary executive" powers claiming the law is what he says it is making him a dictator. It practically reveres the cesspool of corrupted incestuous ties between government and business, mocking any notion of democracy of, for, or by the people. That's the state of the nation's "liberal media" headquartered in the Times building in New York.
The New York Times v. Hugo Chavez
This article focuses on one example of Times duplicity among many other prominent ones equally sinister and disturbing - its venomous agitprop targeting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez this writer calls the leading model democratic leader on the planet even though he's not perfect, nor is anyone else. That's why after "Islamofascist terrorists" he's practically "enemy number one" on the Times hit list and Washington's. Besides Venezuela being oil rich, Chavez is the greatest of all threats the US faces - a good example that's spreading. His governance shows how real social democracy works exposing the fake American kind.
That's intolerable to the masters of the universe and their leading media proponent, the New York Times. It always plays the lead media role keeping the world safe for wealth and power. So on June 6, it hauled out former Peruvian president and first ever indigenous Andean one in the country's history - Alejandro Toledo (2001 - 2006). His electoral campaign promised a populist vision for Peruvians, to create new jobs, address dire social needs of the country's poor, and end years of corruption and hard line rule under Alberto Fujimori, now a wanted man on charges of corruption and human rights abuses.
Toledo was little better, failing on all counts pushing the same repressive neoliberal policies he was elected to end. He was in tow with Washington's agenda of privatizations, deregulation, IMF/World Bank diktats, debt service, and overall contempt for the essential social needs of his people. He was also tainted with corruption, and during his tenure violence was used against protest demonstrators, criminal suspects in prisons were beaten and tortured, and dozens of journalists were threatened or attacked for criticizing local politicians or him.
No problem for the New York Times that published his June 6 op ed piece titled "Silence = Despotism." In it, he said "Political democracy will take root in Latin America only when it is accompanied by economic and social democracy (under) political systems....free and fair for all." As Peru's president, he thwarted efforts to do what he now says he champions. Toledo continued saying "our citizens" must be heard, and if free speech is silenced in one country, "silence could spread to other nations" pointing his hypocritical finger squarely at Hugo Chavez.
Venezuelans, he says, "are in the streets (today) confronting repressions. Courageous students raise the flags of freedom, refusing to mortgage their future by remaining silent." He quickly gets to the point citing Hugo Chavez's refusal to renew RCTV's Channel 2 VHF license saying "This is about more than one TV station. President Chavez has become a destabilizing figure throughout the hemisphere because he feels he can silence anyone with opposing thoughts (by) silencing them through repression or government decrees." He then called on other Latin American leaders to confront "authoritarianism" and "stand up for continent-wide solidarity" citing his own presidency and how "it never occurred to (him) to silence (critical) media outlets (or) nationalize them."
Toledo's tainted record as president belies his shameless pieties on the Times op ed page. He did more than try silencing critics. He stayed mute when they were attacked or when two or more of them were killed. The New York Times knows his record even though it suppressed the worst of it while he was in office. Yet it gave him prominent space to denounce Hugo Chavez's social democracy and legal right not to renew the operating license of a TV channel for its repeated illegal seditious acts. RCTV was a serial abuser of its right to use the public airwaves. It was then guilty of supporting and being complicit with efforts to foment insurrection to overthrow Venezuela's democratically elected government.
I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
First let me thank you for your clear thinking and beautifully written truthful article. Chavez, in my eyes is a hero to the people of Venezuela. He is villified by those in our country because he won't cave to the dictatorial power of the U.S. and our corrupt Corporate controlled government. I fear the assassination attempts on Chavezs' life will only continue to escalate. I pray for his safety. Our country is a mess and that I realize is an understatement. How so many of the people in this country can continue to allow themselves to be so blind as to the total decline of anything resembling Democracy in the U.S. is beyond my comprehension. Or how they cannot see that this Corporate control has used us in the hundreds of aggressive actions to control and be the world police around the globe and have destroyed everything in it's path. The deaths of millions having no more meaning than road kill. They don't see that the unrest that begins and escalates is from factions that have been planted, by the Corporate criminals, in these other countries is to deliberatly stir trouble to open the doors so that they can overthrow the then ruling governments and install governments of their choice and it's all for their greed..these countries all have assets they want to control. Greed and control is the ugly driving force of it all. We see it daily with the decisions within and among the majority of our (so called)elected facilitated also by the bought and paid for no news news media. I personally feel the beginning of the end of our country began when a corrupt Senator deceived the Congress into believing he was presenting a monetary reform act when in fact he was opening the door to a global monetary system..exactly what the reform act was meant to prevent..The Federal Reserve System. With the directives our puppet president signed May 9th, I think life as we have known it, however flawed, is history. Our next election, unless another bought and paid for puppet for the White House is assured, may not even happen. We will just find ourselves with a Dictator, King or Emporer pitting our military against their own people.
Thank you again for your clarity.
Sharon Haley (aka mimirae) I'm a 71 year old, 5th generation of 6 generations of out-spoken women and all realist to boot.
by
mimirae (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 27 comments)
on Thursday, June 21, 2007 at 4:33:47 PM
