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We received an email from "Puzzled of Scarborough" last week. He or she rejects our argument that the corporate media functions as a propaganda system for establishment interests: "If what you say is true, then I would have never heard of the negative actions, particularly by the US, but also by UK troops, in Iraq. But, in fact, these things are mentioned constantly in the press that Media Lens castigates as being in the pay of the wicked capitalists."
"Puzzled" has a point. A watered-down version of the truth is reported, and the unvarnished truth does occasionally appear. But "Puzzled" might like to consider how many people know that in 2001-2002 former chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter reported that Iraq had been 90-95 per cent - or "fundamentally" - disarmed of WMD as far
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| How many know that sanctions killed one million Iraqi civilians, according to the UN and aid agencies? |
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back as December 1998. In 2003, the Guardian and the Observer mentioned Iraq in 12,550 articles - yet Ritter was mentioned in only 20 of these.
How many know that Iraq showed great willingness to co-operate with weapons inspectors between 1991 and 1998 in hopes of having sanctions lifted, but that the US deliberately sabotaged inspections to avoid giving the country a clean bill of health?
And how many know that inspectors were withdrawn from, not thrown out of, Iraq in December 1998? Remarkably, the same newspapers and broadcasters that reported "withdrawn" in 1998-1999, reported "thrown out" in 2002-2003.
How many people know that sanctions killed one million Iraqi civilians between 1990 and 2003, according to the UN and aid agencies?
Senior UN diplomats Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck - the people who set up the "oil for food" programme in Iraq - resigned in protest, with Halliday describing Western policy as "genocidal". Both have flatly rejected US-UK government  |
