The question of balance: How the media subverts truth

So, round a friend’s house the other week I asked what people thought of the most recent reckless government plans to let Covid rip in what appears to be another incarnation of the much denied but prima facie attempt at herd immunity. “What else are they supposed to do” came the reply, “got to get back to normal at some point” came another. I mentioned how we could have stopped flights from Covid hotspots and provide proper support for people isolating. I mentioned that China has appeared to successfully curb infection and largely returned to normal — and in contrast to the murderous zealots running the UK, they seem to have the best intentions for their citizens. Ahh, what about the Uyghurs came the predictable reply. Well, I said, what is happening to the Uyghurs is open to question. This was met with a dismissive, almost mocking laughter… ok, best to move on… we’re here to watch the football… nothing to see here — came the official closure of debate.

I believe that I try to keep an open mind and a sense of balance about world events but in such exchanges, I often wonder how it is that I end up looking like the extremist pariah while others, with what I would describe as genuinely unbalanced views, are the self-satisfied ‘sensible’ people in the room. How does this happen? The answer lies in the construction of values and perceptions that alters this balance in the public mind. Central to this role is the media. I am not alone in arguing that the problem of the media in this country is so huge it cannot be overstated. Contrary to many who rightly hold this view, I am not however aiming my fire solely at the right-wing media, which of course is vile, racist and divisive. Of course, we need better press regulation in the UK where five billionaires control the huge majority of print media, using it as their own personal vehicles for spouting lies, politically driven culture wars and the tittle tattle that is taken for news these days. But I save the worst of my ire for the so called progressive or ‘balanced’ outlets such as the Guardian and the BBC that fundamentally act as instruments of the establishment. Their primary purpose it to allow for a manufactured and controlled debate within constrained boundaries that create an illusion of a pluralistic media environment, providing that much vaunted balance. But this is a lie. It is a construct that exists to prevent real balance while retaining the establishment status quo that works against the interests of the majority population — the world over.

Let me provide some examples starting with the biggest and most relevant in relation to the topic introduced above: The Uyghurs. Firstly, I do not discount that some element of repression may be taking place by the Chinese government against the Uyghur population. What I am explicitly saying is that the nature and scale of that oppression is certainly open to question, particularly when it is being peddled by western intelligence agencies with the willing acquiescence of a compliant and stubbornly conforming media. One that has proven to be at best gullible fools and at worst working hand in glove with the establishment and intelligence agencies to replicate and magnify proven falsehoods (Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction and the scale of antisemitism in the Labour party to name a couple of recent examples).

So, when the scale of ‘evidence’ appears so overwhelming that it enables such disparaging and dismissive laughter to occur from what I know to be otherwise quite liberal minded people, then what is the countervailing evidence I would like to have discussed had I not been shut down like a naughty schoolboy for thinking the unthinkable? A good place to start is the Grayzone’s excellent reporting on the origins of much of the current narrative on the mistreatment of the Uyghurs which has largely become the accepted mainstream narrative of genocide. This they track back to a certain Adrian Zenz. The Grayzone reports Zenz “…is a far-right Christian fundamentalist who has said he is “led by God” against China’s government, deplores homosexuality and gender equality, and has taught exclusively in evangelical theological institutions”. So much for a human-rights approach there. The Grayzone has undertaken a careful review of Zenz’s research which shows… “that his assertion of genocide is concocted through fraudulent statistical manipulation, cherry-picking of source material, and propagandistic misrepresentations. His widely-cited reports were not published in peer-reviewed journals overseen by academic institutions, but rather, by a DC-based CIA cut-out called the Jamestown Foundation and “The Journal of Political Risk,” a publication headed by former NATO and US national security state operatives”[1].

“But haven’t you seen the pictures”! I hear the average liberal Guardian reader reply — “pictures don’t lie”. I have indeed seen the pictures. Taken at face value I would argue that the pictures show a well dressed, well fed detained/prison population engaged in what looks like meaningful activity. Of course, I cannot be sure if these people have been charged or found guilty of any specific crime or are being arbitrarily detained. But that is the point. I do not know so am wary about coming to any fixed judgement in the absence of authoritative evidence either way. Moreover, when taken together with the evidence of what I do know about the origins of such (mis)information and the past role the media has played in amplifying and acting as the unquestioning mouthpiece of such misinformation (Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya to name but a few recent examples) then I would argue I am not only wise but obliged to keep an open mind. Taking it a step further, compare these pictures with what we can observe as the operation of the US military-industrial-prison complex. To all intents and purposes this represents a modern day equivalent of a functioning slave trade: a majority black population many of whom are imprisoned by a discriminatory justice system ever willing to pass draconian sentences, housed in overcrowded, filthy, dangerous conditions put to work for some of the biggest capitalist companies for slave wages. If this situation appears to be worse which I would argue it does then where is the equivalent media outcry. Any moral argument based on human rights rapidly evaporates.

If, however the media attention on the Uyghurs is understood within the context of a new cold war against China then a more critical rather than unquestioning approach should be taken. When people realise that China is currently encircled by over half of the 800 US overseas military bases with nuclear bombs prepped and ready to fire, they may begin to make the connection between the Uyghur reporting and this wider context. Now name the counties that China has invaded or is even hostile towards? — compare that answer to the same question regarding the US and UK. Why is this wider context not seen or understood? Because the media chooses not to report it.

While the mainstream media works in many ways to manipulate public opinion — exaggerates, distorts and outright lies — perhaps the most destructive and pernicious means is through omission. Simply, not reporting on facts that are in the public domain prevents people from building a more balanced opinion for themselves. If you are not told about the origins of disinformation or relevant countervailing information that would dispute official narratives, why would people question what they are being told. The answer is overwhelmingly that they don’t.

This brings me to my next example: Syria and specifically, the alleged 2018 Douma chemical attack. There is now strong, even overwhelming, evidence in the public domain based on internal whistleblowing from members of the original Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) investigation team and the dogged work of journalist Aaron Mate[2], that the OPCW distorted the original findings of the investigation team under US pressure, the conclusions of which conveniently provided retrospective justification for Western intervention. If true, this follows a worrying trend by imperialist powers, including with the UK acting as a more than willing accomplice[3], to manufacture ‘evidence’ to justify invasions. If true, and when seen within the wider context of imperialist invasions, the OPCW — an apparently objective and independent institution is now being used to manipulate evidence to meet the imperialist demands of Western powers. With the previous Weapons of Mass Destruction debacle in Iraq it is easy to understand why the US is keen to distance itself and the portrayal of apparently objective evidence from an independent and respected organisation achieves precisely this outcome. But when there are striking similarities in justifications for military intervention (WMD/chemical weapons) with history so closely repeating itself, surely it is the role of the media and citizens more generally to ask deep and searching questions. It appears that unfortunately the comparisons do not stop there. It is also an indisputable fact that western intervention has prolonged the war, causing infinitely more human suffering. Ironically, and yet again, the West is also directly responsible for further proliferating Islamic terrorism through direct financial and military support and indirectly through its despotic middle-east allies — Qatar and Saudi Arabia. This has undoubtedly strengthened the blood thirsty jihadists the West has used as the pretext for its imperialist misadventures over the past two decades. So much for human rights…again. There is also a direct link back to the Uyghurs in that they make up some of the most violent jihadists operating in Syria over the past decade[4] — and in the process they gain direct battlefield experience for their confrontation with China.

While the first two examples above focus more on the role of the US, the UK’s direct role in Saudi Arabia’s aggression against Yemen is also worthy of scrutiny. While the UK feigns concern for the starving and blockaded Yemeni population, its outsourced BAE Systems military affiliate conducts weekly shipments of arms and supports the logistics and training of Saudi fighter pilots. As recently documented by Declassified[5], a secret UK military unit are directly advising the Saudi invaders — a brutal regime that literally use bone saws to dismember journalists they don’t like — to turn a Yemeni airport into a torture and rendition camp. All this as the UK hysterically shouts about its role in upholding human rights around the world and in direct contradiction, its ‘special relationship’ with the Saudi dictatorship. Add to this the UK military’s role in secretly assisting a Colombian police unit that is responsible for the recent slaughter of 63 people[6] and the disappearance of hundreds of others, or the UK ambassador to Bolivia’s role in the US instigated coup of that country in 2019. The list goes on and on, but you can be sure if nobody knows then no one cares.

But why, if this information is in the public domain, in the interests of balance is it not more widely reported by our so-called liberal, independent media? The silence speaks volumes. The absence of debate is because the media does not want you to have the debate — it does not even want you to know there is the possibility of having a debate.

While the Guardian has been a consistent and loyal servant of the establishment throughout its 200-year history (as recently documented by the dedicated work of Media Lens)[7] its slavish support for western intelligence narratives took a turn for the worse following its release of the Wikileaks Collateral Murder files and subsequent revelations by Snowden. Once Julian Assange served his usefulness to the Guardian, helping it to secure lucrative book sales and increased exposure and kudos associated with the leaks, he was hung out to die. Assange even become the victim of one of the Guardian’s very own scurrilous disinformation campaigns through the infamous fabricated ‘Manafort meets Assange to discuss Russian leaks’ story by the thoroughly discredited Luke Harding[8]. This sad turn of events can be seen as the inevitable outcome of the Guardian’s much closer co-opted relationship with the UK intelligence community. Sufficiently neutered, the Guardian was rewarded with a seat on the Government’s D-Notice committee[9] that ‘advises’ against the reporting of information deemed to be a threat to national security. The outcome? Near silence on the ongoing arbitrary detention of Assange in the UK’s highest security prison and appalling miscarriage of justice associated with his extradition hearing. A vicious vendetta against speaking truth to power. Silence on the recent statement by convicted Icelandic fraudster and paedophile that he lied to implicate Assange in return for immunity from further prosecution by the FBI in its desperate attempt to strengthen its feeble case against Assange. The irony is that the fate of Assange is a direct threat to all journalists and freedom of speech more widely, but this fact is silenced through collective omission by all mainstream journalists — the very likely victims of such illiberal antidemocratic lawfare manoeuvres that are directly aimed at preventing the use of journalistic sources to uncover inconvenient truths to established power. And make no mistake, this is co-ordinated at the highest levels through bi-partisan, cross-country, judicial, intelligence, political and media institutions. The silence is deafening.

The obvious question arises then as to why is this information not more widely documented or shared? What is the common denominator in each of the examples outlined above? Taking each in isolation one might excuse the lack of media scrutiny but when taken together a pattern emerges of total complicity in seeking to hide basic information that would lead to people being able to make more informed, balanced judgements on what they should believe. But that is exactly the point. The media plays a key role in ensuring the information you need to do this, rarely, if ever, sees the light of day. This has nothing to do with support for communism or dictators but holding a mirror up to the actions of Western imperialist aggressors and their lickspittle media accomplices. This my friends, is why I try my best to keep an open mind.

[1] https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/17/report-uyghur-genocide-sham-university-neocon-punish-china/

[2] https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/29/grayzones-aaron-mate-testifies-at-un-on-opcw-syria-cover-up/

[3] How a network of UK intel-linked operatives helped sell every alleged Syrian chemical weapons attack | The Grayzone

[4] https://www.newsbred.com/article/the-real-truth-on-uyghurs-which-is-used-to-taint-china

[5] https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-07-06-revealed-uk-troops-secretly-operating-in-yemen/

[6] https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-07-22-revealed-uk-military-unit-in-colombia-assisted-police-force-that-killed-63-protesters/

[7] https://www.medialens.org/2021/shocking-omissions-capitalisms-conscience-200-years-of-the-guardian-john-pilger-and-jonathan-cook-respond/

[8] https://fair.org/home/misreporting-manafort-a-case-study-in-journalistic-malpractice/

[9] Deputy editor Paul Johnson joined the MoD’s Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice (also known as DSMA or D-Notice) committee in 2014. D-Notices are advisory warnings to the media not to publish certain information, supposedly aimed at protecting national security, but which many journalists regard as an attempt to gag them and suppress important information from the public