How media lies | Video Documentaries |Axisoflogic.com

Editor's Commentary:
This is a film about Palestine/Israel - but its real goal is to examine a specific example of dishonest media. While you might find the information about Palestine/Israel disturbing (and I hope you do), the real point of posting this documentary is to criticize the media. Media reports from around the world, and on almost every topic, bear the same mark of propaganda. The film is a few years old; but the story of the media (and of Palestine/Israel) remains the same.

Editors like to portray that they are even-handed and only interested in balance and truth. Most editors will assert that their publications or programming does, or at least tries to do, a good job of presenting impartial news. And they will tell you they want their audience to make up their own minds about news items. Frankly, that is just fatuous. Newspapers and television are managed news, just as virtually all news sources are managed news. By definition, that means someone - whether with good or ill intention - decides what people will read and how it will be presented to them.

If media were as non-biased as Mr or Ms Editor usually would have us believe, we would be seeing reporting from vastly different perspectives than we do. That is, conflicting reports. Much of the 'news' part of a daily newspaper is obtained from news services (AP, CP, Reuters, etc.) and edited locally. But in North America, where are the stories from reporters working for Southeast Asia News? Or Africa Today? Or Pravda? Or any other of a host of news services? Print those articles, which will be clearly different from what we usually see, and then let your readers make up their own minds.

Let me explain my point. Several years ago, I visited the former Soviet Union. Upon arrival in Moscow, I managed to find a Russian-based English language newspaper. Leaving aside for a moment any editorial comment, I was struck right betwixt the eyes by the 'news' I was reading. There were reports of several international events that I had seen covered in Canadian newspapers and on television several days earlier and the stories in the Soviet paper carried identical facts. But the way they were written changed the entire interpretation of the events. Having been raised that these were the 'bad guys', the natural conclusion would have been to condemn the Russians as manipulative. Clearly, though, there was no reason to suspect them any more than the Western press and every reason to suspect both. Since then, I have become very wary of anything printed in a newspaper or displayed on television news.

Presenting differing opinions (on the few occasions that happens) is refreshing but opinions are just that, opinions. The various points of view of just what events have actually transpired and what they mean is absolutely missing from most newspapers.

For all news sources, the language selected to report news has a huge bearing on the response of the audience. Words are carefully chosen for their weight. To use a simple example, when a newspaper reports about some conflict and the story of the day is about huge deaths on one side or the other, they influence their readers immensely by choosing, or not, the word 'massacre'. Even if they don't perceive it overtly, calling the deaths 'a massacre' when they are on one side clearly indicates a sympathy for that side and helps to sway the audience to that view.  

I serve as a voluntary Editor for Axis of Logic. We purport to present 'alternative news and views' and, largely, we do. But you will never find an article or opinion singing the praises of Barack Obama or David Cameron because we think the mainstream press already does a sufficient job of glossing over these men's enormous deficiencies. Yet, that in itself, makes Axis of Logic 'managed' news. We publish numerous articles and opinions with which I heartily disagree, including many that I edit myself. But that is what I see as my job - to help the writer present their views in a readable way. The only criteria I apply are that facts must be substantiated, argument must be coherent and cogent, it must demonstrate a logical progression and application of some principle, and it has to have some currency with important events.

When I publish something with which I disagree, I do so in an attempt to spark debate and real discussion.

Editors often brag that what they present is the 'truth'. Whose truth? Truth is a very movable and very ephemeral thing. The truth of almost anything depends on perception. Take as an example the Church of the Nativity in Jerusalem and the Palestinians who were inside it in 2002. For one side, the truth is that these people occupied the Church and held priests captive against their will. For the other side, these people were trapped inside the Church and under siege with the priests free to come and go as they wished. Are either of these 'true'?

Let me be clear that some mainstream media are downright awful while there are some that are clearly better than others. But their editors emend stories to put a particular slant to them; the editorial writers craft their opinions in specific ways; the regular columnists are selected from a group of voices that suit the desires of the newspaper's editorial board or owners; the news that is selected for printing is news from a very narrow array of the world's events.  

We see our job here is to present the contrary views and to present arguments that will foster debate. And that's why we've featured this film.

- prh, Editor
Axis of Logic