NYT Headline Turns Fact On Its Head

December 20, 2010

The New York Times reports on the election in Belarus with this headline.

After Belarus Vote, Riot Police Attack Protesters

Reading the headline one assumes an unprovoked attack of brutal police on peaceful demonstrators.

But that is not what happened. The article itself gives the real version which is quite the opposite of what the headline says:

At one point, protesters charged the entrance of the imposing government headquarters, breaking through glass doors and trying to push through barricades that had been erected inside.

But armored riot troops quickly overwhelmed the protesters, at times funneling them toward packs of plainclothes officers who beat them.

The reporter observed a violent attack of protesters against a protected government building with a police force defending against that. The headline is thereby a willful falsification of cause and effect. Violent protesters attacked and the riot police action was a reaction to that.

We have seen such willful falsification before. After the election in Iran, which unlike the recent one in Belarus were not manipulated, U.S. media emphasized police action in Tehran while leaving out the fact that protester brutalities had caused them.

For the record. I am generally not against violent protest against governments and have personally taken part in several demonstrations that ended in big and violent clashes. It is sometimes necessary to show the state that there are limits it better does not cross.

But there is no justification for manipulating casual readers of a 'free press' by a headline which says the opposite of what the facts bear out.

Posted by b on December 20, 2010 at 08:56 UTC | Permalink

Comments

b-
America’s mainstream media is the voice of corporate Amerika – just a bunch of shills for what the corporatist want you to know. The only ‘free’ press in America is probably the Internet and the ‘coconut telegraph’, both are quite unreliable, but are the only place to find ‘real’ information.
I’ve worked for newspapers in America… I’ve been kicked-out of a Forstmann Little & Company event in Aspen that was attended by enough scary bigwigs, I was glad to be away from the place. Because of the number of important people eating bad food together – including movers and shakers from the world of both broadcast and print media – I couldn’t believe there wasn’t more about the function in the big papers… or I should say, anything relevant. I’ve also guided trips for groups from the Aspen Institute (yeah, I’ll probably burn in hell for doing those gigs, but back then I didn’t know) and I’ve guided billionaire investment bankers who wanted to learn how to hike… ugh!
Where was I? Oh yes, talking about the lying-ass corporate media who distort truth in order to further empire’s agenda. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but Americans are fools for believing they have a ‘free’ press. Newspapers and Television are both for-profit businesses and the folks with the money are setting the agenda for what is discussed publicly. Honest reporters may win a few small awards, and uncover some ugly truths about the world, but they’ll rarely (if ever) have a national platform to showcase their work – unless it furthers the agenda of the PTB.
Uncle $cam is constantly hammering this truth home with his links… one of the best that I keep on hand for these moments is a little piece about Edward Bernays I’m sure you’ve seen it. If not, check it out and then ask yourself if there was ever such a thing as a free press? Seriously, the press in America has always been compromised. Those souls who may have spoken the truth were only allowed to do so because it furthered TPTB’s agenda.
There is censorship in America; it’s a diabolical censorship that isn’t obvious, or stated, but which exist and is noticeable to those who learn to see it. Mostly it is self-censorship by reporters who are paid starvation wages and who want to further their careers. Every journalist in America has sold-out at least once, and sold once, it’s just questions of when, and for whom, and for what, that will make them want to sell themselves again.
And if that weren’t enough cards stacked against the free-flow of truth, there are rumors of government hacks working in journalism to help massage the message. But maybe that’s just the Reynold’s Wrap talking? After witnessing the way the news is manufactured in America – kind of like watching sausage being made – I can’t help but think it’s all a bad dog and pony show.
I think it’s the Chinese who say there are three truths: your truth, my truth and the truth. So true.
Peace

Posted by: DaveS | Dec 20 2010 15:10 utc | 1

I happened to stop my other favorite watering hole in town today (the American Legion) and read VT’s major newspaper The Burlington Free Press. There was a short article on the Belarus protest. It was just like you mentioned in your overview b. The article made it sound like the riot police had, without provocation attacked innocent protesters and brutally beaten them. It made no mention of the protesters non-peaceful actions. The article however did shed light for me on what was going on. It referred to Belarus as a buffer zone between Russia and the West and of significant importance to Russian. It also referred to the US’s disfavor with Lukashenko. Reading between the lines and connecting the dots I see that Belarus is of strategic importance to Russia and the US would like to see a regime change that showed more deference to the US. I will now jump to my unsupported conclusion based solely on past history and some knowledge of US provocations supporting it’s foreign policies and claim that there were agent provocateurs present. Conjecture only but it fits the pattern. Iran comes to mind. Or maybe just a malfunction in my Reynolds wrap
While pertinent to this particular episode, I believe DaveS’ post has a far broader reaching significance. There is far too little attention paid to the pervasiveness and efficaciousness of Public Relations and the genius of Edward Bernays’ offerings to the 20th and now 21st centuries’ mechanisms of mass control. DaveS’ link to Edward Bernays is well worth the 8 minutes it takes to watch it and it succinctly summarizes what I’m trying to get across. Interestingly and not so ironically, tobacco smoking was the first of Bernays’ brilliant PR successes and today the misinformation campaigns being waged against the science behind acid rain, ozone depletion, SDI, global warming, and neonicitinoids, to name but a few, are patterned around the PR strategies pioneered by the tobacco companies. Until the masses or at least a higher percentage of them are able to see through the lies and miss- and diss- information spread by corporate America, it is unlikely we can bring to an end the pernicious activities of corporate capitalism and their government lackeys.

Posted by: juannie | Dec 20 2010 20:22 utc | 2

Wikileaks and Media Disinformation
by Gearóid Ó Colmáin
[…] The interpretation and significance of those Wikileaks stories disseminated throughout the corporate media must be subjected to careful and critical analysis. […] While exposés of American war crimes should damage America’s imperial ambitions, other ‘leaks’ could actually serve the opposite purpose, especially when they are uncritically reported as ‘revelations’. In this article we are going to look at two examples of how Wikileaks stories could be used to further a US imperialist agenda.
Wikileaks on Belarus
The first example concerns the Republic of Belarus. In a Wikileaks document released on December 1 and reported in The Messenger Georgia’s English language newspaper. The Wikileak reports the statement of the Spanish prosecutor José Gonzalez who accuses Russia, Belarus and Chechnya of being ‘mafioso’ states. According to The Messenger ‘The statement was made by Gonzalez on January 13 this year during a session of the Spanish-American working group on combating terrorism and organised crime.
Wikileaks reports that the information was sent by the US embassy in Madrid to the US government with the comment that the remarks were deep and valuable since the author had knowledge of the Euro-Asian mafia.’ (1)
What is interesting here is the suggestion that the remarks are deep and valuable due to the author’s so-called ‘knowledge’ of the Euro-Asian mafia. The inclusion of Belarus in this ‘leak’ is particularly puzzling. Belarus has one of the lowest crime rates in Europe. The President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko has been continuously re-elected since 1994, due to his progressive social policies and no one denies his obvious popularity.
Yet he is consistently slandered as a ‘dictator’. While Belarus does have close connections with Russia, relations between the two countries have soured recently over energy disputes, geopolitical differences and Belarus’s refusal to pursue free-market policies.
Belarus and Alexander Lukashenko in particular, has been indefatigably demonised in the international press for his refusal to privatise the Belarusian economy, opening up publicly owned industries to international, finance capital mafia.
President Lukashenko’s refusal to indebt his country through IMF loans together with the robust performance of the Belarusian economy since the outbreak of the global economic crisis, have won the Belarusian leader the praise and close friendship of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who has described Belarus as model socialist economy.
Yet Wikileaks considers a flippant and mendacious comment by a Spanish prosecutor to be ‘deep and valuable’? Here we can see ideology masquerading as objective truth. A flippant opinion by a Spanish prosecutor is considered ‘deep and valuable’ because he should know such things.
The Wikileak is in reality not a revelation at all. It is simply the publication of a highly dubious statement with an ideological assumption appended. Here the Wikileak serves to bolster the negative view of the country engineered by the acolytes of the corporate media to demonise a respectable socialist democracy. Far from undermining US imperialism, this Wikileaks ‘revelation’ slanders a law-abiding country by associating it with criminality and terrorism.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22321

Posted by: Anonymous | Dec 20 2010 21:20 utc | 3

Thanks for the link Anon. I found the article quite a valuable read. Something for we all to keep in mind as the Wikileaks “news” keeps unfolding. I added further comments on this article to the “South Korean Artillery Fire – How Will North Korea Respond?” thread. I also think the following from the article are worth quoting here:

[…]the Israeli press is pushing the idea that these ‘revelations’ of US policy maker’s opinions constitute ‘proof’ of Iran’s threat to the world and internet censorship could soon become a reality.
Cables supposedly ‘leaked’ by an internet website containing such dangerous allegations that could serve as a pretext for a global nuclear war should be subjected to the most stringent expert analysis. This will be the job of the alternative media in the coming months as the corporate media is likely to prevent such ‘revelations’ as facts in an effort to drum up support for the annihilation of Iran and North Korea.
[…]
The three ‘enemies’ of America mentioned in this article Belarus, North Korea and Iran, all have one thing in common. They have largely state-owned economies. This is what makes them a ‘threat to international security’. The final phase in the War on Terrorism will be to destroy the last obstacles to total US economic and political control of the planet.

Posted by: juannie | Dec 21 2010 8:32 utc | 4

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