Journalism is Dead. Long live the Truth!

Six years ago, I quit my career in media to start working in health and social care. Unlike journalism, which requires you to wade through a cesspit of bullshit and negativity on a daily basis, support work is refreshingly positive and rewarding. This life change was the consequence of a decade-long awakening to several truths: Firstly, my opinion is worth no more than anyone else’s. Secondly, personal evolution is needed far more than political revolution. Thirdly, there really was no media outlet worth writing for anymore.

Journalism is dead, I decided. F**k the corporate media – and f**k the Indy media, too. Citizen journalism is the future. That’s the conclusion I came to, and as time has passed, I’ve only become more convinced of it. With hindsight, I realise that what I’d labelled writer’s block was just a symptom of the grief I was feeling over the death of journalism itself. 

I started my Journalism degree on 14th September 2001, just three days after 9/11. There it was on the TV, replayed over and over again: Death, destruction, shock, fear, confusion, hysteria. It was the end of life as we knew it. The end of global harmony, the end of taking a burka-wearing Muslim at face value, the end of critical thinking, the end of live and let live. The end of history itself.

It was a terrible time for humanity, but the most exciting time ever to study journalism. In addition to learning how to craft articles (ie, how to manipulate the masses), I studied the science of language. I was particularly fascinated by classes that delved into issues of politics and power: how words are carefully chosen to sway public opinion, how linguistic devices can be used to hypnotise an entire population, how speeches can be used to gain popular support for illegal wars.

Language is an incredibly powerful tool. It can turn neighbour against neighbour, instill fear and hatred, and cover up grotesque lies. I spent every waking minute analysing Bush’s gung-ho war speeches, Blair’s deceitful warnings about WMD in Iraq, and comment from so-called respectable media outlets on why invading Iraq and Afghanistan was the ‘right thing to do’.

I learned about the Journalism industry’s code of conduct and the importance of media ethics – a concept which seems laughable twenty years later. I studied media law and the history of the industry going back to the printing press, looking at how our current systems of media monopolization and corporate globalisation have impacted honest reporting.

I’d dreamed of writing for The Guardian since I was a kid, but the fact that the world had just changed forever was to ruin that fantasy, because understanding how the media industry works ultimately caused me to despise it. The iconic, infamous image of those burning planes consuming the twin towers didn’t only mark the beginning of the end of our civilisation, they also sounded the death toll of journalism as it once was: ethical, accountable and investigative.

By the end of my degree course in 2005, I had nothing but contempt for the mass media. From the in-yer-face fear-mongering and sensationalism of the red tops to the extremely covert (yet equally powerful) propaganda peddled  by ‘leftie’ broadsheets, I didn’t believe a word any more. I’d come to believe that the industry’s power over our perception of reality is the biggest threat to all the things I hold dearest: peace, truth, freedom and justice. I wasn’t scared of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden; I was scared of Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch.

The monopolization of the press (fewer individuals or organizations controlling increasing shares of the mass media) is growing year by year. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s right wing, neo-liberal politics are reflected in his 175 newspapers, and endorsed by pundits on the 123 TV channels he owns in the USA alone. One rich, corrupt man’s perspective consumed by millions of people across the globe. It’s a grotesquely all-encompassing monopoly, leaving no doubt that Murdoch is one of the most powerful men in the world. What’s worse is that his power doesn’t start and end with his media interests.

One of the most disturbing things to emerge from the infamous News International phone hacking scandal was the exposure of numerous shady connections between press tycoons and top politicians. The case exposed a quagmire of corruption, ‘chumocracy’ and corporate intimidation, with details emerging of the media mogul’s threats to various politicians who didn’t do his bidding, of secret meetings and clandestine friendships. How can senior journalists do their job of holding politicians to account when they are holidaying together or rubbing shoulders at private dinner parties? They can’t, and they never intended to.

The purpose of the mainstream media is the same as any other industry in a Capitalist society: to make profit. It’s time to let go of any naive notions that the press exists to inform, educate and entertain us. Profit is the goal, followed closely by the quest for consolidation of power, the exertion of control over law-makers, and the manipulation of public opinion (often as a means to these ends). Mainstream publications make the vast majority of their profit from advertising (typically around 75%), meaning it’s these super-rich advertisers and powerful shareholders who dictate editorial content – not journalists, and certainly not consumers.

Considering the UK government has spent millions of taxpayer pounds on mass media advertising during this ‘pandemic’, the conflict of interest is clear. As (ex-Fleet Street journalist) Chris Sweeney writes: ‘It will surprise most Brits that the nation’s biggest advertiser is not Amazon, Apple, or Nike – it’s the government. That’s across all forms of advertising…Between the start of lockdown and July 2020, the government spent £44 million in three months. In context, that was a 5,000 percent year-on-year increase.’

Consider what impact this has on editors and journalists holding politicians and other powerful people to account. BBC journalist Andrew Marr acknowledged the dilemma in his autobiography, writing: ‘The biggest question is whether advertising limits and reshapes the news agenda. It does, of course. It’s hard to make the sums add up when you are kicking the people who write the cheques.’

Historically, journalism has a vital role to play in a healthy democracy. It’s an industry that once prided itself on comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. It’s an industry traditionally devoted to uncovering the truth at any cost. Great activists like Julian Assange and John Pilger know that. Whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden know that. Yet those who embody the true spirit of journalism are frequently persecuted by the mainstream media.

Michael Grunwald of Time magazine tweeted in 2013 that he ‘can’t wait to write a defense of the drone that takes out Julian Assange,’ while The New York Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin demanded Ex-Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald’s arrest for his bravery in publishing the Edward Snowden files. Is it ironic to hear these ‘journalists’ expressing contempt for some of the most important journalism in the last decade? Not when you see them for what they are, the puppets of a dying empire. Salon magazine’s David Sirota called this phenomena ‘The Journalists against Journalism Club’ and commented: ‘Because these voices loyally promote the unstated assumptions that serve the power structure…their particular opinions aren’t even typically portrayed as opinions; they are usually portrayed as noncontroversial objectivity.’

This is exactly what you see every time you turn on the TV or read a popular daily newspaper. But objectivity cannot exist in an industry whose primary motivations are profit, political control, power consolidation and manipulation of the masses. The only press that is truly free is the independent publication with no corporate advertisers, board of directors, shareholders, sponsors, or CEOs.

I’ve been very lucky in the past to earn a decent living by freelancing for progressive indy magazines; being able to freely criticise the status quo rather than being subject to censorship by those with a vested interest in maintaining it. But the alt media is not the solution to this (dis)information war either. Click-bait articles and advertising spam, ‘news’ scraped from Reddit, plagiarism, callous team discussions about how to squeeze tons of money out of readers, publishing articles full of errors, taking on writers who can’t research, spell, or proofread: all of these things are standard procedure in the world of alt-media journalism.

The total lack of respect for primary sources within the indymedia industry is mind-boggling, too. I want to tell new stories, not regurgitate old ones. You think writers do any research nowadays? They don’t. They’re ordered to scrape Reddit for anything that has the potential to go viral, and it’s usual in the alt press to be asked what your source is when submitting an original piece of work. I don’t want to be told to go find a primary source for an article I’m pitching just to prove it’s a subject worth writing about. That’s not journalism.

As I wrote about long ago here, the corporate media wields immense power over both people and government – but I’ve learned over time that the alternative media is also biased and corruptible.  Since becoming entirely disillusioned with both, I’ve come to believe that the future is citizen journalism.

We need a source of news which is based on no other motive than to inform and educate. It’s a means of information produced entirely by the people, for the people: a people’s press. Citizen journalism is often called democratic, participatory or collaborative journalism. It’s inclusive to anyone with a blog or social media account and is a form of activism in itself, because it bypasses and boycotts the system’s mouthpiece in favour of creating new systems of information that serve us all. For this reason it’s also known as guerilla or street journalism. The idea of a global citizen journalism platform is an idea I’d daydreamed about setting up during the Occupy movement, but it never felt like the time was right.

Now though, we have a global propaganda war and a bad case of mass hysteria to resist. Keyboard warriors of conscience are very much needed! Digging deep into inconvenient facts and disseminating censored information is vital in the fight against mass hypnosis (or is it mass psychosis?). So if anyone reading this is feeling the urge to research, to write, to document, to photograph, to dare to think a thought they haven’t fed to you, to find and plant revolutionary seeds of truth, do it. The world needs you!

For more reasons why none of us can trust traditional forms of media, check out my original post from 2011. Like everything else on my site, this article is open sourced and completely available to repost anywhere, with the following conditions: Credit to the author, a link to the original, and absolutely no editing of the original without a note making it clear what was edited and when. 

Six Huge Stories The Mainstream Media Ignored In 2015

 

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Whistleblowers, Ecocide, top secret trade deals, and shady ties between the Islamic State and the West’s closest allies…here are a few hot topics the mainstream media barely covered in 2015.

1. Any Tragedy That’s Not Western-Centric

The outpouring of fury, despair and grief by the corporate press over the November 13 Paris attacks highlighted the bias of the mainstream media towards western victims of terrorism. There were two suicide bombings in Lebanon the day before the events in Paris, killing 37 and wounding 180, but they were not mentioned much in the sensationalist coverage of France’s tragedy, nor were they mentioned in the minutes’ silences and vigils conducted across the Western world in the aftermath.

From the horrors of the Congo’s bloody civil war to Erdogan’s persecution of Turkish Kurds, from Boko Haram’s ongoing reign of terror in Nigeria, Chad, and Cameroon to the plight of Sudanese refugees, the mainstream media seems to pick and choose which human lives deserve our empathy and which aren’t quite so important.

2. Indonesia Burning

Credit: Wikipedia

As we previously reported, the Indonesian wildfires that caused devastation to the country’s people and wildlife last year were largely ignored by the mainstream media until several months after the devastating event began. The fires were started by loggers to clear the way for controversial palm oil plantations and caused health problems for over one million people. The World Bank estimates that the fires destroyed 2.6 million hectares (6.4m acres) of rainforest between June and October, costing $16.1bn and causing untold loss of life to the endangered animals who depend on the forests for their survival. Terrified orang-utans fleeing the disaster were abused in a sickening way by some Indonesian villagers.

Ecocide on this scale should have been one of the biggest stories of 2015, but with the exception of Guardian columnist and environmental activist George Monbiot (who attacked his industry for censorship of the event), the tragedy was largely ignored to protect corporate interests.

3. France’s Slip Into Martial Law

Credit: Sylvain Szewczyk, Flickr

The terrorist attacks in Paris were used as justification by the French, British and German governments to join military strikes in Syria. They were also used as justification by the French government to severely restrict freedoms at home. As we reported, immediately after the terrible events of November 13, the French government began closing down alternative news sites. The President also declared that anyone’s house could be searched without a warrant, websites could be blocked without warning, and citizens could be put under house arrest without a trial. Activists hoping to march in Paris at last month’s Climate Conference were disappointed to learn that France’s state of emergency also included a ban on protests. Some French politicians are pushing to install GPS trackers in rental cars, re-write the Constitution to allow for martial law, block free wifi and Tor, and combine state databases, which would give the state access to citizens’ personal medical records.

Amnesty International, along with many French bloggers, expressed concern that the Government had imposed martial law in response to the terrorist attack. They have a point: Isn’t a restriction of freedoms at home exactly what extremists would want? John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Director of Europe and Central Asia, said in November: “It is a paradox to suspend human rights in order to defend them.”

Many bloggers agreed and said they were scared about the situation in France. One wrote:

“I’m currently living in Paris, the city where some fanatics killed people because they were listening to music, watching a football match, or simply enjoy beers in a bar. I was living in the neighbourhood of where those tragic event happened. Now I’m scared.
I’m not scared of terrorists.
I’m scared of my own country.
I’m scared because different is now starting to mean dangerous.”

The anonymous man goes on:

“It seems that being an ecologist is enough to get house arrest. Before its 20th November reform, this sentence was reserved to people ‘whose activity is dangerous’, now it’s ‘serious reason to believe that his behaviour constitutes a threat’. We’re almost at the thought crime.”

France’s emergency measures were reported by the mainstream media, but there was little analysis or debate about whether they are justified: the myth we have to trade in our freedoms to get security has become a normal part of everyday life.

4. The Truth About ISIS

Credit: Christopher Dombres, Flickr

In 2015, I reported on a growing body of evidence that strongly suggests the Islamic State:

• Would not exist at all if it weren’t for the Pentagon’s terrible handling of the illegal 2003 Iraq invasion
• Is funded and armed by Western allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia
• Continues to grow due to oil sales to Turkey
• May have ties to the British government and Israel
• Could be part of a bigger geo-political plan by the USA and Britain to destabilise the region, using the corporate press to lie to the public in order to gain popular support for more endless oil wars.

The mainstream media continues to peddle the tired old narrative that the Western coalition are in Syria specifically to fight the I.S. If this were true, it would be logical for these countries to support Russia in its war against the terrorist organization. Yet coverage of Vladimir Putin in the corporate press continues to be entirely negative, despite the fact Russia single-handedly took out 40% of the Islamic State’s infrastructure in just one week. The revelations above have been completely censored by the corporate press, which is becoming less credible by the day.

5. The British Parliament Voted Against Democracy

The words in this image are taken from a real and very worrying speech by UK Prime Minister David Cameron late last year.

Last month, an English politician stood up in the Houses of Parliament and gave a speech calling for electoral reform. His request, backed by thousands of citizens, was blocked. The UK has an archaic system of voting which is unfit for purpose and entirely undemocratic: after unpopular Prime Minister David Cameron won the 2015 election with just 36% of the vote, millions of British people felt cheated. A petition was launched to demand proportional representation rather than the co-called ‘first past the post’ system, which benefits the major political parties but never the alternatives. In short, Britain is not the fair, democratic nation it pretends to be. News that Jonathan Reynold’s request (video here) for a fairer system was rejected should have been a big story in the UK, but the British media barely covered it.

6. The Reality Of Top-Secret Free Trade Deals

The TTIP (Trans-Atlantic Partnership Agreement) TISA, (Trade in Services Agreement) and TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement) are highly controversial and top secret deals that will affect the lives of every citizen of the planet, yet we apparently have no right to decide whether we want them- or even to know the exact details of the draft legislation.

TTIP, in particular, is of huge concern. As we have reported, the deal threatens to allow corporations to sue governments who don’t do as they are told, kill online privacy, make fracking standard procedure across 28 countries, privatise European health systems, force GMO food on unwilling citizens, strip us of our civil liberties, and ensure that corporations have control over the European parliament.

Julian Assange called TTIP “The most important thing happening in Europe right now,” which is why Wikileaks is raising a 100,000 euro reward for any information relating to the deal. The site says of TTIP:

“It remains secret almost in its entirety, closely guarded by the negotiators, and only big corporations are given special access to its terms. The TTIP covers half of global GDP and is one of the largest agreements of its kind in history. The TTIP aims to create a global economic bloc outside of the WTO framework, as part of a geopolitical economic strategy against the BRICS countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.”

Considering the impact all three of these trade deals will have on democracy, human rights, food safety and the environment, public awareness should be widespread. Worryingly, a huge number of people know next to nothing about TTIP, TISA and TPP.

Far from questioning the secrecy of such important agreements or inciting a crucial public debate about whether these deals are ethical and democratic, mainstream coverage has glossed over the negatives and generally provided a biased view of the benefits of this corporate take-over of the world.

First published here.

This Is Huge: Evidence Emerges Linking Israel, Turkey To ISIS

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You might have seen accusations in the press this week* that the Islamic State is selling oil to Russia. Apparently, Turkish President Reccep Tayyip Erdogan claims that Putin is one of the key buyers in Syria’s dirty illegal oil trade. But don’t fall for it: the story now being peddled to us by the Western press is a panicked response to a major Russian exposé that first came to light last week. Actually, it’s our friend Turkey who has been caught buying oil from the terrorist organization…and that’s not all. Recent revelations point to evidence that:

• Erdogan’s son is dealing in illegal arms and oil with the Islamic State.
• Russian satellite images show three main oil smuggling routes to and from Turkey.
• Turkey shot down the Russian jet because it is defeating I.S and therefore interfering with Erdogan’s lucrative trade.
• Somehow, despite the scale of the operation, The USA seems to have missed all of this.
• There are also new claims about an Iraqi security team who have evidence of a top Israeli military officer fraternizing with members of the I.S.
• A journalist has uncovered evidence the USA is complicit in a Turkish terror campaign against a Kurdish village last March. He claims the Turkish army waged this war on civilians alongside Islamic jihadists.

You may remember Putin accusing the USA of creating and arming the Islamic State. In that interview, which we covered here, the Russian President claimed the White House knows exactly which of its allies are buying the oil that allows I.S to keep on growing.

We’ve had to wait a while to find out who he was referring to, and this is big news. But these revelations are at risk of being lost in a quagmire of lies, as Erdogan, backed by Western intelligence agencies and their media lapdogs, has inverted the truth to distract and confuse the public.

When a Russian jet was downed by Turkey in late November, Putin said:

“We have every reason to think that the decision to shoot down our plane was dictated by the desire to protect the oil supply lines to Turkish territory.”

Two days ago, the Russian Defense Ministry held a major briefing on new findings concerning IS funding in Moscow (see video). According to Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov, up to 2,000 fighters, 120 tons of ammunition and 250 vehicles have been delivered to Islamic State and Al-Nusra militants from Turkish territory.

“Terrorism without money is an animal without teeth,” Antonov declared, saying Russia was determined to fight the Islamic State. He pointed out that attacking the source of their wealth is the logical key to defeating them. Antonov showed satellite evidence that Turkey is involved in a large-scale illegal smuggling campaign, and said:

“Today, we are presenting only some of the facts that confirm that a whole team of bandits and Turkish elites stealing oil from their neighbors is operating in the region.”

He claimed there are thousands of trucks and live oil pipelines involved.

“According to our data, the top political leadership of the country- President Erdogan and his family- is involved in this criminal business.”

“These [airstrikes] helped reduce the trade of the oil illegally extracted on the Syrian territory, by almost 50 per cent,” Antonov says, adding: “The income of this terrorist organization was about $3 million per day. After two months of Russian airstrikes their income was about $1.5 million a day.”

Turkey is certainly getting a lot of attention, but it has overshadowed other important news. A claim by the Iraqi security forces could point to Israel as a suspect in the terrorist group’s training and operations command.

In another massive revelation, FARS news agency reports that Iraqi security forces recently took an Israeli colonel hostage, along with the Islamic State militants he was accompanying. The Iraqi army commander told the agency that the Israeli militant “had participated in the ISIL group’s terrorist operations.”

The colonel was arrested along with the jihadists, and the Iraqi commander even specified the traitor’s name and dog collar number:

“The Israeli colonel’s name is Yusi Oulen Shahak and is ranked colonel in Golani Brigade with the security and military code of Re34356578765az231434.”

The Iraqi commander said it wasn’t the first time Israelis had been caught with Islamic State militants, but they had never before found a high ranking officer. Iraq also claims that I.S drones with Israeli-made labels have been shot down on two occasions.

Along with Israel’s Netanyahu, Reccep Tayyip Erdogan is far more of a tyrant than Vladimir Putin. His military is targeting Kurdish citizens, an ethnic group with their own language who are alienated in their own country. Most anti-Kurdish atrocities at the Turkish government’s hand have been ignored by the mainstream media, although a few independent journalists have uncovered clues that (like the downing of the Russian jet) Turkey’s actions have the USA’s approval.

President Erdogan has crushed civil liberties during his time in power, and responded with extreme violence during Turkish protests against his leadership. Other Western allies such as Qatar, Israel and Saudi Arabia are also known for their horrendous repression and human rights records, yet Putin- the only leader who is actually doing anything to crush the terrorist cell- always attracts the most criticism from the Western press.

Erdogan strongly denies Russia’s allegations, and has said he will resign if it can be proved he’s lying. Judging by the following image and Antonov’s statement in full, it the corrupt President should be packing his bags as we speak.

Russian satellite images of the ISIS oil hub with 3,000 trucks transporting oil to Turkey. Strangely enough, the USA hadn’t spotted it. Credit: RT/Russia

*First published December 4th 2015 here.

Would Little Aylan Still Be Safe In Syria If It Weren’t For Western Imperialism?

European governments have turned their backs on the worst humanitarian crisis of our time, and Britain in particular has a huge compassion deficit. It’s time we remembered what caused this mess in the first place

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A heartbreaking photograph of a dead Syrian toddler whose lifeless body washed up on a beach in Turkey yesterday added a very real dimension to the so-called European ‘migrant’ crisis. ‘Only by the grace of God is this not your child‘, said many Facebook users who shared the devastating image of this innocent child. ‘The failure of the world in one photo‘, another commented.

His name was Aylan. He was just three years old when he drowned in the Mediterranean sea, along with his five year-old brother Galip. The boys were making the treacherous crossing from Bodrum in Turkey to the Greek island of Kos with their father. They were fleeing violence, oppression and starvation in Kobani, a town in Northern Syria which has long been the scene of fighting between ISIS militants and Kurdish forces. Aylan’s boat capsized 30 minutes into the crossing, and the brothers (who were not wearing lifejackets) didn’t stand a chance. Three other children and a woman were among the 12 who died. The image of Aylan’s limp body went viral within hours, becoming the top trending picture on Twitter under the hashtag #KiyiyaVuranInsanlik (humanity washed ashore).

Last year, over 3000 people died crossing the Mediterranean in a desperate attempt to reach Europe. In 2015, those figures are set to double. The number had already passed 2500 by mid-summer, and increases daily. Most of the people fleeing their homes come from countries in Northern Africa and the Middle East: they are not economic ‘migrants’ but rather asylum seekers who have no choice to risk life and limb in search of survival elsewhere.

AFP/Getty. A man carries a young child into Hungary at the Serbian border as the national right-wing party Jobbik demonstrate against refugees.

Hungary, Macedonia, Greece, Italy and The Czech Republic are the European countries struggling to cope with the sheer number of refugees who are desperate for asylum. Turkey, although not a member of the EU, is also under enormous strain as thousands of families flow into the country to find a way of reaching Europe. Germany, which handles around a quarter of all European asylum claims, has announced it will not turn away Syrian refugees, and Chancellor Merkel has criticized other member states for not doing enough to ease the collective burden.

A BBC graphic shows where refugees come from.

A BBC graphic showing the distribution of refugees in Europe

Britain’s David Cameron seems to have conveniently forgotten that starting a brutal civil war in Syria was directly responsible for the crisis we are now witnessing, and he repeated on Wednesday in the wake of Aylan’s tragic viral image hitting the press that the UK would not open its borders. The UK’s mainstream press (in particular the rabid, vile, neo-fascist Daily Mail) prefers to stir up fear and loathing within the public mindset, rather than offering any debate about possible solutions.

It is time for people to understand that they cannot support illegal and immoral military actions in oil-rich countries without acknowledging the obvious consequences of these invasions (which include increased terrorist reprisal attacks in addition to the influx of desperate refugees). Western imperialist nations such as the USA and Britain have a duty and a responsibility to re-home those who lost everything when their troops began bombing the sh*t out of civilian areas in an effort to ‘spread freedom and democracy’. The lie that our troops are ‘liberating’ Syrians/Iraqis/Afghans/Libyans (take your pick) from evil, villainous despot leaders is one which has been repeated by leaders and their poodles in the mainstream media for 14 long years since the false flag attacks of 9/11. How long are we going to swallow this bullshit? Wake up, already!

The truth is that Britain and the USA couldn’t care less about freedom or human rights. You only need look at the systematic destruction of civil liberties at home to understand this fact. We need a military presence in the Middle East for reasons which are entirely financial (the arms trade, the oil fields, the rebuilding contracts) and strategic (the region provides a crucial geopolitical foot-hold for them to eventually wage war on Iran, which is no doubt the final target of this Mad Max-style horror we have inflicted on innocent Arabic civilians). The smear campaign against Muslims has been carefully planned from the outset to ensure that by this stage, so many Westerners have developed an acute case of Islamophobia that their compassion levels are close to zero. This dehumanizing of ‘the other’ allows our puppet-masters to roll the dice and keep playing their psychopathic game, with relatively little protest from the average Joe.

While ISIS is usually cited as the main reason for refugees fleeing Syria, we must ask ourselves how this terrorist group was actually created in the first place. Noam Chomsky rightly believes it would never have come into existence if the USA and Britain had not illegally invaded Iraq back in 2003. Stories of ISIS jihadists waging terror with CIA-issued weapons and tanks should not be brushed under the carpet either; they deserve further investigation. To pretend that our military and governments have no part to play in this mess is both short-sighted and naive.

Anadolou images. A mother’s grief at being told she has lost two of her three children, Turkey

Luckily, there is a ray of hope. While our disgraceful leaders turn their backs on the crisis, individual people all over Europe are volunteering to help those in need. One organization doing amazing work is MOAS (the Migrant Offshore Aid Station), which is a registered foundation based on the small island of Malta. It is dedicated to preventing loss of life at sea by providing assistance to refugees who find themselves in distress while crossing the Mediterranean.

Equipped with a 40-meter vessel, two remote piloted aircraft, two inflatable boats and a highly experienced team of rescuers and paramedics, MOAS is able to locate, monitor, and assist boats in distress. With no government funding, the project is financed entirely by private individuals and led by Martin Xuereb, Malta’s former Chief of Defense. Up until now, 9313 lives have been saved by these brave individuals (10,000 in its first year alone).

AP images. A ship carries asylum seekers to Italy

Many of those rescued are babies, pregnant women, and unaccompanied children. When you consider the terror of crossing the ocean as a small child- completely alone, probably orphaned- to go to an unknown place where nobody speaks your language, it seems even more despicable that the general public’s reaction to the crisis is one of apathy. They, along with David Cameron, should hang their heads in shame and hope that they never need suffer the same fate.

In such a turbulent world, we would do well to remember that our own future safety is not guaranteed. We are all part of one global family, connected at a level which is not divisive and does not recognize distinctions of religion, culture, nationality or race. We are one, so let’s start reaching out and showing love and compassion for our fellow human beings. The first step is to pressure our governments to unite once and for all to meet and discuss ways in which the burden of immigration could be fairly shared throughout EU member states and other developed nations.

The video below shows a rescue mission by MOAS in the Mediterranean this summer. A three-week search and rescue program was successful in saving the lives of hundreds of men, women, children and babies who would otherwise have drowned. To continue their urgent work, MOAS need your help. Please consider sharing this article to raise awareness, and donating whatever you can to the team’s rescue efforts by clicking here.

This article was first published on 3 September 2015 here under the original title ‘This could be your son. Where is the love and compassion in the debate about Europe’s refugee crisis?’

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Here’s Why You Can’t Trust The Mainstream Media

A poll last year showed that trust in the mainstream media is increasing, which should worry all of us who value truth, integrity and press freedom. Why? Here are 10 disturbing things everyone needs to know about the global media giants who control our supply of information, wielding immense power over the people- and even over the government.

1. Corporate media exists solely to make profit

What’s the purpose of mass media? Saying that the press exists to inform, educate or entertain is like saying the Apple corporation’s primary function is to make technology which will enrich our lives. Actually, the mass media industry is the same as any other in a capitalist society: it exists to make profit. Medialens, a British campaigning site which critiques mainstream (or corporate) journalism, quoted business journalist Marjorie Kelly as saying that all corporations, including media corporations, exist primarily to maximize returns to their shareholders. This is, she said, ‘the law of the land…universally accepted as a kind of divine, unchallengeable truth’. Without pleasing shareholders and a board of directors, mass media enterprises simply would not exist. And once you understand this, you’ll never watch the news in the same way again.

2. Advertisers dictate content

So how does the pursuit of profit affect the news we consume? Media corporations make the vast majority (typically around 75%) of their profit from advertising, meaning it’s advertisers themselves that dictate content- not journalists, and certainly not consumers. Imagine you are editor of a successful newspaper or TV channel with high circulation or viewing figures. You attract revenue from big brands and multinational corporations such as BP, Monsanto and UAE airlines. How could you then tackle important topics such as climate change, GM food or disastrous oil spills in a way that is both honest to your audience and favorable to your clients? The simple answer is you can’t. This might explain why Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times- sponsored by Goldman Sachs- is so keen to defend the crooked corporation. Andrew Marr, former political correspondent for the BBC, sums up the dilemma in his autobiography: ‘The biggest question is whether advertising limits and reshapes the news agenda. It does, of course. It’s hard to make the sums add up when you are kicking the people who write the cheques.´

3. Billionaire tycoons & media monopolies threaten real journalism

The monopolization of the press (fewer individuals or organizations controlling increasing shares of the mass media) is growing year by year, and this is a grave danger to press ethics and diversity. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s right wing, neo-liberal politics are reflected in his 175 newspapers and endorsed by pundits (see Fox news) on the 123 TV channels he owns in the USA alone. Anyone who isn’t worried by this one man’s view of the world being consumed by millions of people across the globe – from the USA to the UK, New Zealand to Asia, Europe to Australia- isn’t thinking hard enough about the consequences. It’s a grotesquely all-encompassing monopoly, leaving no doubt that Murdoch is one of the most powerful men in the world. But as the News International phone hacking scandal showed, he’s certainly not the most honorable or ethical. Neither is Alexander Lebedev, a former KGB spy and politician who bought British newspaper The Independent in 2010. With Lebedev’s fingers in so many pies (the billionaire oligarch is into everything from investment banking to airlines), can we really expect news coverage from this once well-respected publication to continue in the same vein? Obviously not – the paper had historically carried a banner on its front page declaring itself ‘free from party political bias, free from proprietorial influence’, but interestingly this was dropped in September 2011.

4. Corporate press is in bed with the government

British Prime Minister David Cameron partying with Rebekah Brooks
Photo: Dafydd Jones (telegraph.co.uk)

Aside from the obvious, one of the most disturbing facts to emerge from Murdoch’s News International phone hacking scandal (background information here) was the exposure of shady connections between top government officials and press tycoons. During the scandal, and throughout the subsequent Leveson inquiry into British press ethics (or lack of them), we learned of secret meetings, threats by Murdoch to politicians who didn’t do as he wanted, and that Prime Minister David Cameron has a very close friendship with The Sun’s then editor-in-chief (and CEO of News International) Rebekah Brooks. How can journalists do their job of holding politicians to account when they are vacationing together or rubbing shoulders at private dinner parties? Clearly, they don’t intend to. But the support works both ways- Cameron’s government tried to help Murdoch’s son win a bid for BSkyB, while warmongering ex Prime Minister Tony Blair is godfather to Murdoch’s daughter Grace. As well as ensuring an overwhelming bias in news coverage and election campaigns, flooding newspapers with cheap and easy articles from unquestioned government sources, and gagging writers from criticizing those in power, these secret connections also account for much of the corporate media’s incessant peddling of the patriotism lie– especially in the lead-up to attacks on other countries. Here’s an interesting analysis of The New York Times’s coverage of the Syria situation for example, demonstrating how corporate journalists failed to reflect public feeling on the issue of a full-scale attack on Assad by the US and its allies.

Image Credit: heavy.com

5. Important stories are overshadowed by trivia

You could be forgiven for assuming that the most interesting part of Edward Snowden’s status as a whistleblower was his plane ride from Hong Kong to Russia, or his lengthy stint waiting in Moscow airport for someone- anyone– to offer him asylum. Because with the exception of The Guardian who published the leaks (read them in full here), the media has generally preferred not to focus on Snowden’s damning revelations about freedom and tyranny, but rather on banal trivia – his personality and background, whether his girlfriend misses him, whether he is actually a Chinese spy, and ahhh, didn’t he remind us all of Where’s Wally as he flitted across the globe as a wanted fugitive? The same could be said of Bradley Manning’s gender re-assignment, which conveniently overshadowed the enormous injustice of his sentence. And what of Julian Assange? His profile on the globally-respected BBC is dedicated almost entirely to a subtle smearing of character, rather than detailing Wikileaks’s profound impact on our view of the world. In every case, the principal stories are forgotten as our attention, lost in a sea of trivia, is expertly diverted from the real issues at hand: those which invariably, the government wants us to forget.

6. Mainstream media doesn’t ask questions

Image Credit / web.archive.org

‘Check your sources, check your facts’ are the golden rules of journalism 101, but you wouldn’t guess that from reading the mainstream press or watching corporate TV channels. At the time of writing (see note at bottom), Obama is beating the war drums over Syria. Following accusations by the US and Britain that Assad was responsible for a nerve gas attack on his own civilians, most mainstream newspapers- like the afore-mentioned New York Times– failed to demand evidence or call for restraint on a full-scale attack. But there are several good reasons why journalists should question the official story. Firstly, British right-wing newspaper The Daily Mail actually ran a news piece back in January 2013, publishing leaked emails from a British arms company showing the US was planning a false flag chemical attack on Syria’s civilians. They would then blame it on Assad to gain public support for a subsequent full-scale invasion. The article was hastily deleted, but a cached version still exists. Other recent evidence lends support to the unthinkable. It has emerged that the chemicals used to make the nerve gas were indeed shipped from Britain, and German intelligence insists Assad was not responsible for the chemical attack. Meanwhile, a hacktivist has come forward with alleged evidence of US intelligence agencies’ involvement in the massacre (download it for yourself here ), with a growing body of evidence suggesting this vile plot was hatched by Western powers. Never overlook the corporate media’s ties to big business and big government before accepting what you are told- because if journalism is dead, you have a right and a duty to ask your own questions.

7. Corporate journalists hate real journalists

Michael Grunwald, senior national correspondent of Time, tweeted that he ‘can´t wait to write a defense of the drone that takes out Julian Assange.’ Salon writer David Sirota rightly points out the irony of this: ‘Here we have a reporter expressing excitement at the prospect of the government executing the publisher of information that became the basis for some of the most important journalism in the last decade.’ Sirota goes on to note various examples of what he calls the ‘Journalists against Journalism club’, and gives several examples of how The Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald has been attacked by the corporate press for publishing Snowden’s leaks. The New York Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin called for Greenwald’s arrest, while NBC’s David Gregory declared that Greenwald has ‘aided and abetted Snowden’. As for the question of whether journalists can indeed be outspoken, Sirota accurately notes that it all depends on whether their opinions serve or challenge the status quo, and goes on to list the hypocrisy of Greenwald’s critics in depth: ‘Grunwald has saber-rattling opinions that proudly support the government’s drone strikes and surveillance. Sorkin’s opinions promote Wall Street’s interests. The Washington Post’s David Broder had opinions that supported, among other things, the government’s corporate-serving “free” trade agenda. His colleague Bob Woodward has opinions backing an ever-bigger Pentagon budget that enriches defense contractors. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg promotes the Military-Industrial Complex’s generally pro-war opinions. The Times’s Thomas Friedman is all of them combined, promoting both “free” trade and “suck on this” militarism. Because these voices loyally promote the unstated assumptions that serve the power structure and that dominate American politics, all of their particular opinions aren’t even typically portrayed as opinions; they are usually portrayed as noncontroversial objectivity.’

8. Bad news sells, good news is censored, and celebrity gossip trumps important issues

It’s sad but true: bad news really does sell more newspapers. But why? Are we really so pessimistic? Do we relish the suffering of others? Are we secretly glad that something terrible happened to someone else, not us? Reading the corporate press as an alien visiting Earth you might assume so. Generally, news coverage is sensationalist and depressing, with so many pages dedicated to murder, rape and pedophilia and yet none to the billions of good deeds and amazingly inspirational and positive changes taking place all over the planet. But the reasons we consume bad news are perfectly logical. In times of harmony and peace, people simply don´t feel the need to educate themselves as much as they do in times of crises. That´s good news for anyone beginning to despair that humans are apathetic, hateful and dumb, and it could even be argued that this sobering and simple fact is a great incentive for the mass media industry to do something worthwhile. They could start offering the positive and hopeful angle for a change. They could use dark periods of increased public interest to convey a message of peace and justice. They could reflect humanity´s desire for solutions and our urgent concerns for the environment. They could act as the voice of a global population who has had enough of violence and lies to campaign for transparency, equality, freedom, truth, and real democracy. Would that sell newspapers? I think so. They could even hold a few politicians to account on behalf of the people, wouldn´t that be something? But for the foreseeable future, it´s likely the corporate press will just distract our attention with another rumor about Justin Bieber´s coke habit, another tale of Bruce Jenner (who is that?)’s lips, another lame article about Kim Kardashian’s ridiculous backside.. Who cares about the missing $21 trillion or where the bankers hid it?

9. Whoever controls language controls the population

Flickr / Jason Ilagan

Have you read George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 yet? It’s become a clichéd reference in today’s dystopia, that’s true, but with good reason. There are many- too many- parallels between Orwell’s dark imaginary future and our current reality, but one important part of his vision concerned language. Orwell coined the word ´Newspeak´ to describe a simplistic version of the English language with the aim of limiting free thought on issues that would challenge the status quo (creativity, peace, and individualism for example). The concept of Newspeak includes what Orwell called ´DoubleThink´- how language is made ambiguous or even inverted to convey the opposite of what is true. In his book, the Ministry of War is known as the Ministry of Love, for example, while the Ministry of Truth deals with propaganda and entertainment. The fact our new Tory government has a justice minister who supports the death penalty, an equality minister who doesn’t believe disabled people have the right to work, and an education secretary who believes the way to progress is to abuse the teachers, those fantastic and dedicated professionals-  the important people we entrust on a daily basis to inspire and guide our children in our absence. The job titles of these politicians in contrast to their real motives and core beliefs is very Orwellian indeed. Another book that delves into this topic deeper is Unspeak, a must-read for anyone interested in language and power and specifically how words are distorted for political ends. Terms such as ´peace keeping missiles´, ´extremists´ and ´no-fly zones´, weapons being referred to as ´assets´, or misleading business euphemisms such as ´downsizing´ for redundancy and ´sunset´ for termination- these, and hundreds of other examples, demonstrate how powerful language can be. In a world of growing corporate media monopolization, those who wield this power can manipulate words and therefore public reaction, to encourage compliance, uphold the status quo, or provoke fear.

10. Freedom of the press is an endangered concept

The only press that is truly free is the independent publication with no corporate advertisers, board of directors, shareholders or CEOs. Details of how the state has redefined journalism are noted here and are mentioned in #7, but the best recent example would be the government´s treatment of The Guardian over its publication of the Snowden leaks. After the NSA files were published, editor Alan Rusbridge was told by the powers that be ´you´ve had your fun, now return the files.’ He claimed that government officials stormed his newsroom and smashed up hard drives, while journalist Glenn Greenwald´s partner David Miranda was detained for nine hours in a London airport under the Terrorism Act as he delivered documents related to the story? Journalism, Alan Rusbridge lamented, ´may be facing a kind of existential threat.´ As CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather wrote: ‘We have few princes and earls today, but we surely have their modern-day equivalents in the very wealthy who seek to manage the news, make unsavory facts disappear and elect representatives who are in service to their own economic and social agenda… The “free press” is no longer a check on power. It has instead become part of the power apparatus itself.’

Note May 20th 2015: This article was first published here in September 2013 and wasn’t added to my own blog at the time. I felt the need to edit and post it now due to the recent British election result (which I wrote more about on True Activist here and here if anyone’s interested). For all the reasons listed above, I feel the need to say this: repeating a memorized collection of fear-mongering, divisive stories from the Daily Mail/Sun/Telegraph/Times does not make a valid argument for the truth of the matter. Some might argue that 37% of  66% is not a majority win under a first-past-the-post system, but none of that really matters. What matters is who Rupert Murdoch is supporting. He was arrogant enough to tell Britain all about his enormous power back in 1992 with the infamous front page above. Murdoch’s newspapers have continued to manipulate public opinion every five years since then, switching sides when Blair won a landslide victory for New Labour. Blair went on to destroy the liberties given to us 800 years ago in the Magna Carta, in the name of the post-9/11 anti-terrorism frenzy. He and Bush did this while bombing various oil-rich countries in the name of freedom. The dismantling of basic liberties is a baton Cameron has taken with glee from his faux-liberal predecessor, with the planned repealing of the Human Rights Act being a pressing priority for his second term.