The mainstream media and politicians have been aghast at the ISIS beheadings of several Western journalists. The New York Times is positively horrified: “The Horror Before the Beheadings” is the title of their front page story of October 26, 2014. Russian “aggression” in taking over Crimea has also caused great anger, denunciations, intensified demonization of Vladimir Putin, and apparent worries and fears of an alleged renewal of Russian expansionism. It is widely agreed in the Western establishment that, once again, Russia must be punished as well as contained.
Prior Beheadings
On the other hand, mainstream publications have mentioned more or less in passing that Saudi Arabia engages in beheading on a routine basis, in response to political dissent, but also social behavior that would not qualify for execution or, in some cases, even imprisonment in the West (adultery, theft, drug dealing, “sorcery”). Janine di Giovanni states that since January 2014 there have been 59 beheadings in Saudi Arabia, not a fact widely disseminated or eliciting indignation and horror in the U.S. mainstream (“When It Comes to Beheadings, ISIS Has Nothing Over Saudi Arabia,” Newsweek, October 14, 2014). There were two more later in October, bringing the 2014 total to 61 as of October 31. Furthermore, some of the crimes have been established by evidence based on the use of torture. The New York Times did have a short August 22 article on page 10 describing a Human Rights Watch report of 19 Saudi beheadings of “convicted criminals” just in August. But more newsworthy for the editors was the page one report on “Putin’s Friend Profits in Purge of Schoolbooks” (November 2, 2014). Note that the schoolbooks are “purged,” not changed, displaced, or removed.
The Russian crime of aggression in Crimea is relatively unique in that it took place in pretty clear response to Western intervention actively supporting the overthrow of an elected government in Ukraine, thereby posing the threat of Russian ouster from its major Black Sea naval base in Sebastapol, arguably a serious threat to Russian national security. The takeover of Crimea was also carried out following an un-coerced vote of Crimeans solidly in favor of integration with Russia. And it was also carried out with no, or very few, casualties.
The characteristics of this Russian aggression were in marked contrast with those of the U.S.-UK invasion-occupation of Iraq from March 2003 onward. In this latter case, the invasion was not based on any credible threat to the national security of the attacking powers, but was instead explained with a big lie—that Iraq possessed hidden “weapons of mass destruction” which somehow threatened those two distant heavily-armed nuclear powers. It also differed from the Russian action in its violence and absence of any pretense that it was being done with the consent of the Iraqi people, who, in fact, reacted with a resistance that after a decade of immense destruction and vast casualties caused the invaders to withdraw.
But the mainstream media’s treatment of these two cases of alleged aggression illustrates perfectly the propaganda role and service of the dominant media. Following the national (and NATO) party line, Russia is steadily assailed for what is regularly called aggression, and it is very common for media pundits, editorialists, and reporters to conclude that Russia is back in the expansion mode and poses a serious threat to attacking all of its neighbors. After the Crimea takeover, Putin actually requested and obtained from the Russian parliament a withdrawal of his right to use force beyond Russian borders without Parliamentary approval. This was obviously a gesture of assurance to global opinion that the Crimea takeover was a special case. Of course, it was a PR effort and could have been fraudulent and designed to mislead, but it was still a mode of assurance and does impose a modest constraint on the external use of force. But can you imagine Bush, Obama or Clinton ever asking Congress to reduce their war-making rights even for PR purposes? The dominant war-party would make it a sign of weakness. U.S. leaders must always display their willingness to oppose “aggression” or a threat to U.S. national security posed by things like weapons of mass destruction allegedly held by a hostile or targeted state (Iraq) or that might be built by an enemy-target in the future (Iran).
Zero Reporting on U.S. Invasions
With real aggression, as in the case of the U.S.-UK invasion of Iraq, the media steer clear of such an invidious word. The New York Times had no editorial comparable to its masterpiece on Russian aggression (ed., “Russia’s Aggression,” March 2, 2104) and they also stay off the subjects of “international law” and the “UN Charter.”
The NYT editorial page batted zero on these words in its 70 editorials on Iraq between September 11, 2001 and March 21, 2003 (Friel and Falk, Record of the Paper). What the media focused on was political opinion and maneuvering in advance of warfare, the mobilization, deployment, and actions of the attacking forces, the search for those WMDs, the new political regime imposed on Iraq, and public and global reactions to the warfare. What was happening to the civilians and infrastructure of Iraq was treated in a very low key way, although this invasion- occupation was turning a relatively prosperous Middle Eastern country into a devastated, politically divided, and unstable failed state.
But while Russia’s no-casualty “aggression” led to global outcries of rage, calls for international action, and the actual imposition of sanctions on Russia by the United States and its allies, the million-plus-casualty and hugely destructive U.S.-UK attack on Iraq, led to no outcries by the officials and pundits of the leading powers and no sanctions were even discussed. There were no “Penalties for Mr. Bush” suggested, analogous to the proposed “Penalties for Mr. Putin” (NYT ed., March 12, 2014). There were no mainstream reflections on whether this wasn’t a new phase of U.S.-NATO expansionism that the world had to contain; the world faced no urgent global challenge as it did with Russia (“NATO’s urgent Challenge” from Russia, NYT ed., September 3, 2014). The UN was even mobilized to cooperate with the invaders in their occupation management of the invaded state. The double standard maintained by the mainstream has been spectacular.
Challenges to the Party Line?
It must be acknowledged that there have been a fair number of journalists and analysts, mostly outside the mainstream media, who have challenged the party line on Russian villainy and U.S.-UK reasonableness. These are what in the mainstream are called “advocacy journalists.” They include people like Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Julian Assange, Robert Parry, and Norman Solomon, who take independent and critical stances on issues where the establishment generates party lines. It is amusing that these should be advocacy journalists, but that folks like Michael Gordon, Marlise Simons, David Sanger, William Branigan, David Ignatius, Brian Williams, Stephen Erlanger, and Thomas Friedman—Bill Clinton’s favorite journalist—should be regarded as not advocating anything, just reporting. Just reporting involves taking the frames and premises of one’s sources as given and unchallengeable, if these sources are government or corporate officials or establishment intellectuals, as they commonly are, you advocate implicitly, but in a way that respectable and uncritical people can unconsciously accept. This is how party lines are formed and consolidated. The more firmly and passionately the party line is maintained, the clearer is the unreasonableness of the stance of the advocacy journalists.
A classic case of “just reporting” bias is found in the work of James Reston, perhaps the most famous of NYT reporters, who, prior to his death in 1995, derived much of his fame and prestige from his relationship with high officials, which gave him regular access to inside information and opinion. But the result was that Reston always followed party lines, and to such a degree that British diplomats—according to historian Bruce Cummings—referred to Reston as Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s “mouthpiece” and Cum- mings himself referred to “Reston’s lips moving, but Dean Acheson speaking” (see further, Edward Herman, “James Reston: The Insider’s Journalist in the Service of Empire,” EXTRA! March 1, 1996).
I’ve always felt that his apologetics for the Vietnam War was so gross as to be laughable and have never resisted quoting his classic and Orwellian remark suggesting that the U.S. attack and invasion of Vietnam, that killed millions and left a huge legacy of destruction and human and environmental damage from intensive chemical warfare, was designed to prove “that no state shall use military force or the threat of the use of military force to achieve its political objectives. And the consequence of this principle has been that the United States would use its influence and its power when necessary, and when it could be effective, against any state that defied this principle.”
Knowing Hypocrites?
As with the mainstream media today, the United States must keep up this work and continue this example of opposing the use of force for political aims. Do the numerous establishment cadres who peddle this kind of baloney that postulates own-leader benevolence and selects evidence to support it with gusto, believe it or are they knowing hypocrites? This is really unknowable because nobody has yet invented a sincereiometer, and the power of self-interest in following party lines, the power of the establishment forces that press the party line, and the persuasivenes of the line developed by skilled people selecting and suppressing evidence and showing the necessary indignation at enemy villainy is hard to resist. Double standards are well aligned with, and are surely rooted in, the power structure of the country and flow from elite interests, as is spelled out in the “propaganda model” (see Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media). Hypocrites abound in this area, but there are many true believers, very often peddling propaganda, but with the honesty helped along by wearing blinders.
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Edward S. Herman is an economist, media critic, and author.