I served within the U.S. navy for 20 years, and for the final 15 years I’ve been writing articles which might be usually important of that navy and our nation’s drift into militarism and limitless warfare. Listed here are two classes I’ve realized:
- I agree with I.F. Stone that each one governments lie.
- As a historian who’s learn and studied navy historical past for many of my life, I agree that the primary casualty of warfare is fact.
As a result of all governments lie and since lies are particularly widespread throughout warfare, a wholesome democracy should have an outspoken and impartial media that challenges and questions authority whereas informing the general public.
However the mainstream media (MSM) in America is neither outspoken nor impartial. The MSM in America serves as stenographers to the highly effective. Far too typically, the U.S. navy/authorities lies and leaks, the MSM believes and repeats.
The result’s clear: disastrous wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq) from which little is ever realized, enabled by a media tradition that’s deeply compromised by, or brazenly in league with, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s military-industrial-congressional complicated (MICC).
Right here’s the basic concern: We want a skeptical and highly effective media to discourage the MICC from wars, warfare profiteering, and folly. The MSM ought to, and should, function a test on the MICC whereas holding it accountable when it fails. By doing neither, it serves varied “large lies,” enabling future abuses of energy by the nationwide safety state. There is no such thing as a accountability for failure, so failure is neither punished now neither is it curtailed sooner or later.
Even when the MICC fails, and for the reason that Vietnam Battle it has failed steadily, it will get extra money. Contemplate the FY2023 Pentagon price range, which sits at $858 billion, a virtually inconceivable sum and which is roughly $45 billion greater than the Biden administration requested for.
The problem, as I see it: How can we cease the following warfare constructed on lies from being waged?
One thing to ponder: May a extra important, extra brave, really impartial media have shortened or stopped the Vietnam Battle? Iraq? Afghanistan?
In his well-known speech warning Individuals in regards to the MICC in 1961, Eisenhower (Ike) stated that solely an alert and educated citizenry may guard in opposition to the acquisition of energy by the MICC. This will likely certainly be why most residents are usually not stored knowledgeable or are misinformed in regards to the U.S. navy and its wars. It’s arduous to behave whenever you’re stored ignorant. You’ll even be reluctant to behave whenever you’re instructed to defer to the “specialists” within the MSM, most of whom are deeply compromised, typically by conflicts of curiosity which might be stored hidden from you.
Navy Lying
Put merely, the U.S. navy, in its higher ranks, lacks honor. What issues most is status and budgetary authority. Sharing unfavorable information with the media is absolutely the last item the navy desires to do. Surprisingly, most within the MSM are prepared to look the opposite method, assuming they even know of navy lying and malfeasance.
What this implies, basically, is that the MICC is unaccountable to the individuals–the very antithesis of democracy.
Three large examples of MICC lying: The Pentagon Papers revealed by Daniel Ellsberg throughout the Vietnam Battle; the Iraq Battle and lies about WMD (weapons of mass destruction); and the Afghan Battle Papers. Even because the U.S. navy was shedding these three wars, navy commanders and authorities officers spoke publicly and confidently of lights on the finish of tunnels, of corners being turned towards victory. (Privately, nonetheless, they talked of significant issues and lack of progress.)
The MSM (with notable exceptions) largely repeated the happy-talk lies. Since 9/11, that is unsurprising, for the reason that MSM leans closely on senior retired navy officers, CIA officers, and the prefer to “interpret” occasions in locations like Iraq and Afghanistan. As journalist David Barstow confirmed, these “interpreters” had been and are fed speaking factors by the Pentagon. No matter that is, it’s not trustworthy reporting. It’s not journalism. It’s state propaganda.
It’s not that the American individuals can’t deal with the reality about “their” navy. It’s that the MICC prefers to maintain a lid on the reality, as a result of the reality is usually unfavorable to their positions, energy, status, and earnings.
There are a lot of methods the MICC works with a complicit media (and a compliant Congress) to maintain the reality from us.
- Dangerous information will not be reported. Or it’s labeled or in any other case hushed up. Contemplate the My Lai Bloodbath in Vietnam or the “collateral homicide” video from the Iraq Battle revealed by Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks.
- Crucial info is omitted. Protection is edited. Contemplate the ban on displaying flag-draped coffins by the Bush/Cheney administration, or official studies about drone strikes that omitted the true variety of civilian/non-combatant casualties.
- The navy has its personal PAOs (public affairs workplaces and officers) who feed information of “progress” and related “excellent news” tales to the media. That is additionally true of the State Division. (See Peter Van Buren’s account, “We Meant Nicely,” of his Potemkin Village-like expertise in Iraq.)
- Ever-present appeals to patriotism and warnings that important info will give assist and luxury to the enemy. Even worse, portraying critics as pro-Putin, as potential traitors, as within the NBC smear marketing campaign in opposition to Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, abetted additionally by Hillary Clinton.
- Run-of-the-mill propaganda. Contemplate, for instance, how nearly all U.S. sporting occasions embody glowing protection of the navy and veterans. If all navy members are “heroes,” how dare we query them! As a substitute, you’re inspired to salute well and stay silent.
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Why is the MSM so hobbled and sometimes so complicit with the MICC?
- Rankings/Economics. Recall that MSNBC fired Phil Donahue over issues that his important protection of the Iraq Battle was turning off viewers, i.e. that the community wasn’t being seen as “patriotic” as rivals like CNN or Fox News, thereby shedding market share and cash.
- Embedding Course of. Reporters who need to cowl warfare are sometimes embedded with U.S. navy models. They arrive to determine with “their” troops, who, in spite of everything, are defending them from hurt. The embedding course of forges a way of dependency and camaraderie that interferes with disinterested and balanced reporting.
- Reliance on deeply conflicted specialists from the MICC as an alternative of impartial journalists. No matter else they’re, retired generals and CIA administrators are usually not reporters or journalists.
- Company promoting {dollars}. Why air a report important of Boeing or Northrop Grumman when that firm is a serious advertiser in your community? Why chunk the hand that feeds you?
You don’t want a high secret “Mockingbird” challenge by the CIA to infiltrate and affect the MSM, as we witnessed throughout the Chilly Battle and Vietnam. At present, the MSM and its homeowners acquiesce in their very own infiltration, hiring retired CIA brokers and related senior authorities officers to offer/promote their “unbiased” opinions.
Once more, navy contractors pay for advertisements and sponsor reveals on TV. The media will not be about to problem or criticize a giant income stream. And it’s not at all times a weapons maker like Boeing or Raytheon. Consider ExxonMobil. Their thirstiest buyer is the U.S. navy; ExxonMobil is unlikely to help media studies that criticize its greatest buyer.
In the meantime, there are valuable few reporters and journalists prepared to threat their careers to problem the MICC. With so-called entry journalism, should you reveal uncomfortable info, you’ll doubtless lose entry to the highly effective, alienate your bosses, and possibly lose your job.
Meals for Thought: Journalists are chosen and groomed for compliance to mainstream militarized agendas. They’ve realized and internalized what is suitable and what isn’t. In the event that they refuse to play alongside, they’re fired or shunted apart. (See Noam Chomsky and the manufacturing of consent.)
For the U.S. navy, full-spectrum dominance contains info and the management of the identical, together with most particularly in America.
A ultimate surprising fact: The U.S. navy misplaced in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere whereas avoiding duty. Certainly, its cultural authority and its command over the media have solely grown stronger. Worse, the navy promulgates, or goes together with, varied stab-in-the-back myths that exculpate itself whereas mendaciously blaming the few good media shops for correct reporting in regards to the MICC’s failings.
A vital step in stopping future disastrous wars is a media tradition that sees the MICC for what it’s: a hazard to democracy and liberty, as Ike warned us in 1961 in his farewell handle. How we get there’s a essential concern; the failures above recommend cures.
One treatment I wrote about in 2008: the most important networks must develop their very own, impartial, journalists who’re specialists on the navy, relatively than relying largely on retired navy officers and different senior authorities officers.
We’re instructed that America has impartial media relatively than state media like China or Russia. But, if America had official state media, would its protection differ from right this moment’s content material? The MSM helps state and company agendas as a result of that’s the way it makes cash even because it claims it’s “impartial.”
A Couple of Anecdotes
A journalist colleague instructed me of his expertise instructing college students at considered one of America’s universities. His sense: most college students right this moment don’t need to be Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. They aspire to be on-air personalities who make six-figure salaries whereas being invited to all the suitable events. They don’t need to afflict the comfy whereas comforting the ; they need to be among the many most comfy. Crusading for fact isn’t what they’re about. They search to be insiders.
From the Robert Redford film, “Three Days of the Condor.” If a whistleblower goes to the MSM (within the film, it’s The New York Occasions), will the reality ever see the sunshine of day? Extra to the purpose, if the American individuals do see it, will they even care?
What we’re witnessing in America, based on Matt Taibbi, is an “elaborate, systematized methodology of censorship and opinion management.” Taibbi mentions companies like Homeland Safety and Justice/FBI and their deal with “accumulating home intelligence on a grand scale … looking for to distort the general public’s notion of actuality via mass moderation, through applications we’ve been instructed little to nothing about.”
Whereas Taibbi, in his newest investigation, centered on social media and particularly Twitter, the fact is that the MSM (and social media as nicely) is complicit with the authorities/navy, collaborating on what “truths” are fed to the individuals whereas suppressing info which might be deemed harmful, embarrassing, inconvenient, and in any other case not within the curiosity of the MICC.
With so many Individuals now getting their information from social media websites relatively than the MSM, that the federal government serves as a strong content-moderator for what counts as “dependable” information on social media ought to disturb us all.
Once more, it’s arduous for Individuals to function Ike’s “alert and educated” citizenry when they’re fed lies, disinformation, and propaganda by the federal government and MSM.
Much more essentially, when companies are elevated and guarded as super-capable “residents” and when residents themselves are decreased to passive customers—when companies personal the MSM whereas profiting significantly from warfare and militarism—there’s little hope of fostering freedom and of ever escaping from a state of everlasting warfare.
That is the place we’re right this moment.
