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From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Sat Jun 26 2010 - 00:47:08 EDT
Western media play along in the disinformation game
By GREGORY CLARK
Are they being manipulated by governments? Or, are they just plain lazy,
happy to go along with what everyone else is saying and what readers want
to believe without wanting to look too closely into relevant background?
I refer to the way the Western media, both lately and in the past, have
accepted blatant and often dangerous news distortions.
The No. 1 distortion remains the so-called massacre at Tiananmen Square. On
the 21st anniversary of that alleged event earlier this month, the main
news agencies still managed to preserve the fiction of Chinese troops
marching into Beijing's iconic square and shooting down innocent students
in the hundreds, if not thousands. This, despite all the reliable
eyewitness reports, available on Google, that say almost nothing occurred
in the square on the night of June 3-4, 1989.
What happened was quite different: There was wild shooting on roads leading
to the square by soldiers retaliating for vicious firebomb attacks by angry
citizens on units sent to remove protesting students who had been allowed
to occupy the square for weeks while regime moderates tried vainly to
negotiate the reforms the students wanted. Many died as a result, including
soldiers incinerated in their trucks and other vehicles.
But never mind the facts. The fantasy story makes for much better reading.
It also gave the European nations an excuse to blacklist China for arms
sales and even for the riot control equipment that might have prevented the
mayhem.
A detailed 1998 study in the Columbia Journalism Review titled "Reporting
the Myth of Tiananmen, and the Price of a Passive Press," by Jay Mathews,
Washington Post former bureau chief in Beijing (also available on Google)
traces the massacre myth to a front-page story in Hong Kong that was
flashed quickly around the world as fact by news agencies. My not
uninformed guess says it was probably planted by either Western or
Taiwanese intelligence agencies. The alleged author has never been found.
Closer to home, we have the reports of the March torpedo attack on a South
Korean warship, killing 46 seamen. Western media blasting North Korea for
the attack make little or no mention of the fact that it was in disputed
waters and that, if caused by North Korea, it would almost certainly have
been retaliation for a November 2009 South Korean attack on a North Korean
patrol boat in the same area, also with casualties.
Even less mention is made of the fact that the waters are disputed because
of an arbitrary line drawn by the United States under the 1953 Korean War
armistice. Determining the correct line would be a key item in the peace
agreement that North Korea wants but that the U.S. has delayed, hoping for
regime collapse in the North.
There are even doubts whether there was an attack. Sweden, the only neutral
member in an international group investigating the affair, withdrew from
the final report (see the article by John McGlynn in the June 7
Asia-Pacific Journal). Two other possible causes for the sinking have been
put forward, but little of this finds mention in Western media, where calls
for strong retaliation and U.N. condemnation against North Korea wax large.
It's a similar story with regard to the media fuss over Chinese naval
activity in the East China Sea. China has a not-invalid claim to a large
Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the East China sea even if it conflicts
with Japan's median line claim.
China can hardly be expected to remain immobile while Japan acts as if its
own claim is set in stone, especially since Beijing, unlike Tokyo, seeks a
compromise joint development agreement between the rival claims.
The western Pacific coral reef of Okinotorishima presents a similar dilemma
for Beijing. China does not dispute Japan's ownership of the reef. But it
could hardly remain silent after the Japanese military earlier this year
landed troops on the reef in a bid to support Tokyo's claim for an
encircling 400,000-square-km EEZ — a claim that contradicts international
law, which states that rocks unable to sustain economic activity cannot
have an EEZ.
But one would have to look hard for any mention of these crucial details in
the Western media, where increasingly China is portrayed as expansionist
and a future military threat.
Many Japanese media were happy to use the biased versions of these
incidents to accuse the Hatoyama administration of ignoring Chinese and
North Korean threats, and to pressure it into agreeing to the relocation of
a U.S Marine base to Henoko, Okinawa.
Can't we have an end to this kind of media bias? Media acceptance of Cold
War disinformation operations by both sides cost millions of lives and
decades of stunted economic growth. Working in Canberra during those years,
I saw close up how slanted material from allegedly impartial academics and
think tanks was pushed into the media, and used. Western disinformation
efforts during the Kosovo and Iraq wars were equally harmful.
With South Ossetia, we had the remarkable sight of the main U.S. and U.K.
media telling us that Russia had attacked Georgia when it was almost the
complete opposite — a claim that could easily have led to a revived Cold
War.
Even worse was the 1962 claim that China had attacked India when in it was
the complete opposite — a false claim that indirectly led to the Vietnam
War.
Today, over Iran, we have a similar media disinformation war under way,
financed in part by CIA funds, reported American award-winning commentator
Seymour Hersh in 2008. Maybe it's time for the media to clean up their act
a bit.
Gregory Clark is a former Australian diplomat and a longtime resident in
Japan working as a correspondent and in a variety of university positions.
The Japan Times: Friday, June 25, 2010