Laura Ball
By Laura Ball
The first casualty of war is the truth, said Arthur Ponsonby in 1928, in his book ‘Falsehood in Wartime’. Searching to understand the truth about what is happening amongst all the reports and commentators about the so called ‘War on Terror’ is a difficult job. Each reporter, each commentator, each politician and each news outlet has their own biases and interests, which causes them to make some assumptions.
The role of the media and politicians should be to protect their populations, promote justice and human rights, and to seek the truth about terrorist attacks in as objective a manner as possible. However, today most politicians and channels seem limited in their ability to do this, being dependent upon funding from one source or another and bound by the laws of a particular place. Money seems to influence politics in various liberal societies, calling into question how real democracy, i e representation of, and a voice for all the people can be possible. It seems that today the less than 1 percent with most of the power and money are often just trying to find any means to hold onto and increase their monopoly of influence.
One thing is for certain: generalisations made about any group of people are going to be inaccurate and unjust. Against all media ethics should be the use of the media for propaganda purposes — to generalise in a very opinionated way in order to spread amongst the public a feeling of superiority, mistrust, suspicion, then fear and panic about a particular group or groups of human beings. This process also involves demonisation of a group of people and hence incitement of violence against them, based on a few selected ‘facts’ from history, much suspicion, and sometimes blatant lies.
One example of intense misuse of the media from the 1990s is the insidious Serbian nationalist propaganda campaign by The Radio Television of Serbia, a channel promoted by the ‘politician’ and indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic. The propaganda was encouraged by the religious mythology, blessings, and awards of the Serbian (and Greek) Orthodox Church at the time. It led to and perpetuated years of violent ‘ethnic cleansing’, a euphemism for a religious war against Bosnians (Muslims) and even Croats (Catholics), involving burning of villages, mass rape and widespread slaughter— a huge humanitarian and refugee crisis in Europe, similar to the current situation.
Another example is the propaganda through leaflets and letters written and distributed by Buddhist monks and other Buddhists, and inflammatory speeches by some Buddhist monks, which have preceded and accompanied the ongoing violent village burning, slaughter and expulsion of minority Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. These are examples of how propaganda is a veritable tool of war. Nato recognised this by bombing the RTS headquarters during the Bosnian War, partly because the station was also a coordinating centre of communications for the Serbian nationalists.
Interesting to note is that the population suspected to be a threat were, prior to the eruption of violence, like the targets of terrorism, largely living peacefully with and intermarrying with their neighbours for long periods of time — as in Bosnia and Kosovo, or just living harmlessly for hundreds of years, mostly in a small isolated area away from the main population, as with the Rohingya people. Only a few small incidents may take place, and these are seized upon to hype up the public into a frenzy of fear and anger. In the case of the Rohingya it seems that it was just a number of Buddhist girls marrying Muslim Rohingya men, and some of them converting to Islam, that made the Buddhist establishment feel that its power and influence was threatened, and Buddhist culture undermined.
Many incidents today in America and Europe that are labelled as ‘terrorism’ are suspected by an increasing number of the American and British public to be ‘false flags’. False flag events have been used for hundreds of years by governments and others worldwide to heighten and sustain a tense atmosphere and division of the population, and deflect attention from oppressive or unjust policies of a government, monarchy, or even those of a religious institution, and towards the supposed threat of another group of people.
A combination of politicians’ comments, and unobjective media coverage, can be then used to apparently justify ‘protective’ policies which spread suspicion of a whole religious community, or other group of people, or which reduce every citizen’s right to privacy. In the name of safety and security, increasing powers to control the lives of the population maybe given to the government, to make arrests, detain, and even kill its own citizens, without charge or due judicial process, and to take their resources without warrants, possibly describing the situation as a ‘state of emergency’. The public should keep alert for these types of changes, as they may not be easily reversible. Sometimes the measures may be justified, but rarely.
In response to incidents that have hit Americans, Australians and Europeans that are quickly labelled as terrorist acts by IS or other radical Muslims, the main thrust of many corporate-controlled news reports in Western countries has been to try to tar all Muslims with the same brush. Their message has been that even mainstream Muslims and refugees cannot be trusted, implying they are all potential terrorists, they are the problem, or they are not doing enough to stand up against or to sort out the problem of extreme and radical elements amongst them.
Any cursory perusal of the social media will prove the reverse to be true. Muslims are a very positive force in many Western societies, are extremely vocal in standing up against violence perpetrated supposedly in the name of Islam, and are the majority of the victims and main people fighting on the ground against terrorist groups such as IS. It is unsurprising when would-be politicians such as Donald Trump and Ben Carson echo such blatant generalisations, as they are probably receiving funding from the same sources, or hoping to please similar power bases, to ensure their election success.
Hope can be found in the newly multiplying alternative media outlets, broadcasting online and spread via YouTube and other public social, media-sharing platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp. Increasing numbers of people are questioning the mainstream media’s version of events, and coming up with alternative answers, often very passionately. These discourses are based upon the evidence gathered by an unprecedentedly active and media-savvy public with widespread access to media technologies. Defeating the lies, finding and understanding the real enemies of peace and justice is their goal, and how to most effectively tackle them.
One of the most balanced of these sources is Democracy Now, broadcast from the US and funded only by viewers, to keep it unbiased. Other online or radio ‘channels’ give part of the truth, and a lot more in-depth background information than mainstream broadcasters, but also seem to have interests of one kind or another that affect their ability to convey the full truth objectively. The true picture of what is really happening can be obtained by viewing many sources and thinking critically. Media, when diverse, freely produced and accessed can, instead of being a tool to promote war, be a tool to work towards the truth, justice and peace that most of the global public want.
Laura Ball is the pen name of
Luzita Ball, a writer and editor who has a Masters in Urban Regeneration. The Peninsula
