Review by Evelyn Groenink

Remember the rescue of Jessica Lynch, the cute blonde US soldier who had been captured and wounded by Iraqi soldiers somewhere in that country’s desert, some years back? Remember how she was rescued in a heroic display of comradeship by her fellow US Special Forces and taken home on a stretcher?

The whole operation was filmed by a former assistant to Hollywood film director Ridley Scott. Afterwards, the material was examined by the Pentagon and then distributed over all major TV channels in the Western world.

Much later, the full story of the Jessica Lynch rescue emerged. It was true that the soldier was cute and that she had been captured by Iraqi soldiers. What was not true, is that she had been beaten by her Iraqi captors, or even that she needed to be rescued. Iraqi doctors had treated her for her wounds and had saved her life; an Iraqi military convoy had then tried to return her to an area controlled by US forces. However, the convoy had been shot at by US soldiers and had been forced to retreat back to the hospital. Where, in front of film cameras, Jessica was ‘rescued’ two days later.

Bewildered doctors later described US special forces in full combat outfit, running through the hospital, shouting “Go, Go, Go!” with not an Iraqi opponent in sight.

By the time the full story was known, the world had switched its prime time TV slots to other stories.  

Powerful forces in the world habitually lie to the media. Stan Winer has documented numerous occasions in which (mainly US, because he seems to think, possibly correctly, that the US is the true master of this game) government leaders blatantly tell untruths they know to be untruths on the evening news. (Like: ‘Iraq DOES have weapons of mass destruction’.) In an impressive work of research, spanning almost a century, Winer dissects orchestrated events, lies disguised as official reports, planted stories and a zillion other examples of the media sheepishly and sometimes even happily doing the work of the CIA, MI5 and a number of other secret services.

Wars, Winer notes, are habitually entered into when a certain power feels threatened. But what to do when you want to enter a war and nobody is attacking you? You make an attack up, of course: Nazi soldiers pretended to be ‘Polish invaders’ of a German radio station, precipitating the invasion of Poland by Germany in World War II; the American secret service orchestrated the sinking of a vessel full of Russian weapons of the Vietnamese coast, and had TV footage to show that the ‘Russians had now entered the Vietnam war’, thereby giving the US the green light to start fighting in Vietnam as well. The weapons had been sourced from US military warehouses.

In his book, that should be read by any journalist worth his or her professional salt, Winer gives countless such examples: from hidden agenda’s in World War Two, that could have been exposed by journalists but weren’t, to radio stations that during the Cold War interviewed fake ‘rebel leaders’ and that had their ‘journalists’ sign oaths of secrecy about the goings-on. Winer also describes –as in the example above- a number of more recent circuses and disinformation projects around the Gulf and Iraqi wars. He also dissects how the Saudi armsdeal inquest was stopped by the UK government.

Even though Winer shoots most of his arrows at the US, the UK and at the forces of imperialism in general, whilst leaving other powers in the world largely alone, his research is in-depth and his conclusions are frightening indeed: especially because there is no reason whatsoever to assume that manipulation of the media by powerful forces in society has lessened, or is about to lessen.

In Africa, as elsewhere, governments and other forces, -in the case of Africa, most notably secret services from countries with interests in African resources-, co-own, own, steer and influence media all day long. Entire departments are devoted to doing this. Governments and government arms operate radio and TV stations, research institutes and libraries, employing and ‘feeding’ journalists in at least two different ways. Even arms traders do this: a number of mass media in the US are identified by Winer as co-owned or even majority owned by companies that derive most of their profits from arms sales. Will a media entity owned by an arms company encourage prying by its journalists into the truthfulness of, for example, fake, or exaggerated, ‘war alerts’? Not likely.

In FAIR, journalists come across examples of media manipulation by powers-that-be every day. In Zambia, governmental anti-corruption task teams and structures target the former president, and the former president only. All official documents emanating from these structures tell journalists that the former, not the present, government is corrupt. ‘And it is almost impossible to get documents on any other issue of corruption or crime’, in the words of Zambian IJ Zarina Geloo (spoken at the recent Pan-African IJ Summit organized by FAIR).  In the DRC, the president pays TV stations to broadcast only good things about him. In South Africa, a powerful law enforcement agency has influenced media –through the leaking of dossiers and charge sheets, and ‘Hollywood-style’ raids- to present its odd selection of cases against certain politicians as ‘crimefighting priorities’. (In the US, it was J. Edgar Hoovers FBI that did this –in the nineteenthirties.)  As far as the notorious Southafrican arms deal is concerned, only a few (small) bribe takers have been prosecuted whilst the very bribe payers who incriminated these individuals enjoy cosy personal relations with the prosecuting authority. In Zimbabwe, the war fought between Mugabe and the West is reflected word-for-word in a media that is either controlled by the former, or paid by the latter.  In Francophone Africa, news stations supported by either French or American ‘development aid’, will reflect pro-American or pro-French views. As journalists, we are regular people, it seems: we don’t bite the hand that feeds us. Especially where jobs are scarce and children have to eat.

But what about those of us who call ourselves investigative journalists? Shouldn’t we, more than anybody else, show courage in the face of pressure and relentlessly dig for truth? Are we often even aware of the falsifications staring us in the face?  Or are we naïve enough to think that, simply because a document is marked ‘official’ or ‘top secret’,  it is the truth? Do we really go and interview X because X happens to present himself, without us even once asking why X, why now?

The lesson from Stan Winers book may well be that, even if nothing else, we should always just ask that very question.

 

Between the lies: rise of the media-military-industrial complex

Stan Winer

Southern Universities Press, London, UK