That's the title of a very enlightening essay at Lew Rockwell. It describes the life and experiences of German journalist Udo Ulfkotte, who explains just how journalists are "bought" and paid off by the powers that be. It's long, but very interesting. Here's an excerpt.
Now to the subject of lying media. When I was sent to the Iran-Iraq war for the first time, the first time was from 1980 to July 1986, I was sent to this war to report for FAZ. The Iraqis were then ‘the good guys’.
I was bit afraid. I didn’t have any experience as a war reporter. Then I arrived in Baghdad. I was fairly quickly sent along in a bus by the Iraqi army, the bus was full of loud, experienced war reporters, from such prestigious media as the BBC, several foreign TV-stations and newspapers, and me, poor newbie, who was sent to the front for the first time without any kind of preparation. The first thing I saw was that they all carried along cans of petrol. And I at once got bad consciousness, because I thought: «oops, if the bus gets stuck far from a petrol station, then everyone chips in with a bit of diesel’. I decided to in the future also carry a can before I went anywhere, because it obviously was part of it.
We drove for hours through the desert, towards the Iraqi border. Approx. 20-30 kilometers from the border, there really was nothing. First of all no war. There were armored vehicles and tanks, burned-out long ago. The journalist left the bus, splashed the contents of the cans on the vehicles. We had Iraqi soldiers with us as an escort, with machine guns, in uniform. You have to imagine: tanks in a desert, burned out long ago, now put on fire. Clouds of smoke. And there the journalists assemble their cameras.
It was my first experience with media, truth in reporting.
While I was wondering what the hell I was going to report for my newspaper, they all lined up and started: Behind them were flames and plumes of smoke, and all the time the Iraqis were running in front of camera with their machine guns, casually, but with war in their gaze. And the reporters were ducking all the time while talking.
So I gathered courage and asked one of the reporters: ‘I understand one thing, they are great pictures, but why are they ducking all the time? ‘
‘Quite simply because there are machine guns on the audio track, and it looks very good at home.’
. . .
I just want to say that this was my first experience with truth in journalism and war reporting.
That is, I was very shocked by the first contact, it was entirely different from what I had experienced. But it wasn’t an exceptional case.
. . .
I was greedy. I accepted many advantages that a regular citizen at my age in my occupation doesn’t have, and shouldn’t have. But I perceived it – and that is no excuse – as entirely normal, because my colleagues around me all did the same. But this isn’t normal. When journalists are invited to think-tanks in the US, like German Marshall Fund, Atlantic Bridge, it is to ‘bring them in line’, for in a friendly way to make them complicit, naturally to buy them, to grease them with money.
. . .
A lot of subjects and news, that are not being reported at all, or they are – I claim reported very one-sided. One can only explain this if one knows the structures in the background, how media is surrounded, bought and ‘brought onboard’ by politics and the intelligence services; Where politics and intelligence services form a single unity.
There's much more at the link. Highly recommended reading.
The same sort of habitual lying on the part of journalists is widely known, as in "Journalists Have Become Hoaxers". We addressed the subject earlier this week, looking at "Propaganda Versus Fact". We see it around us every day . . . yet we tolerate it without objecting to the news media or the powers that be. I wonder why? Have we been so brainwashed that we simply accept it as inevitable?
Peter
7 comments:
I have often wondered if the uncritically fawning coverage that John and Robert Kennedy, and their family, got for a long time from the US press wasn't, at least in part, bought and paid for. Old Joe Kennedy would have known how to apply crisp green folding reason to editors and feature writers.
And the beauty of that is, it's not even illegal as far as I know.
Why should there be any surprise. Remember most people were never aware that FDR was wheelchair bound, even though the press was well aware. FDR and many subsequent Presidents had mistresses, again the press was aware. Lately we saw AOC sobbing at a fence in Texas, the press was aware of her act in that it saw what she saw, nothing at all. More recently, the press gave a video example of the horrors in Syria, except it was filmed stateside. Then, there is the Syrian lady waving her "dead" child at the press, when clearly the child was alive and attempting to wake up, by the way, the same Syrian lady and the same "dead" child being waved before the press a few days ago.
It is not "we" Peter, but them are "them" (the many gullible, imbecilic idiots out there who believe all of the stinking trash being fed to them is food for thought and something to digest).
Rockwell owes an apology to actual hookers, who at least provide a certain amount of service.
Journalists who've sold out provide nothing at all, and should be shot on sight and hunted to extinction, on the grounds that stupid should merely hurt, but evil should be fatal.
There's a reason the word "presstitutes" was invented.
Peter,
it is always tempting for a man with a certain opinion to find and then to publish evidence that supports it. On the other hand one should always have a closer look at any kind of "evidence". "Cum grano salis" ist the key phrase.
Mr. Ulfkotte's Report is quite attractive to anyone who believes that ALL media are completely bought. I have to admit that he started as a respected journalist at a highly renowned (and conservative) German newspaper. The FAZ is well known for the fact that they use to give their journalists a lot of leeway. They don't even have a chief editor, only a board of publishers.
Unfortunately his state of rationality - and also his general health situation - deteriorated rapidly around the turn of the millennium. He started to invent "facts", exaggerated things to get the benefit of a higher invalidity pension and jumped on a growing number of conspiracy bandwagons.
Loved to read his reports in the past, but finally he crossed the line where even his closest personal friends gave up on him. But they keep admitting that he was always very entertaining, whatever he did.
End of the story: there was only one publisher left who bought his stories. Kopp. Hmm, not easy to explain, what Kopp means. Imagine a publisher where you can find serious Neo-Nazi stuff, any UFO-Reports you want to find, any known conspiracy theory ever invented by mankind, flat anti-americanism, flat anti-israelism, flat anti-islamism, esoterical bullsh... etc. etc.
You name it, they got it. And everything for preppers (sorry, could't resist).
Do you really think, quoting a guy like him is helpful?
Peter, I like like you and your blog very much, I visit it more often than Correia, Williamson, Volk, Paw-paw and all the others. But sometimes you make me just shake my head...
Hansjoerg
Unlike “journalists” and politicians, hookers stop screwing you when you run out of money.
Saw it first hand while working in Panama in '87. The press publicly worked hand in hand with Noriega's henchmen in creating fake anti-American 'protests including instructing the Panamanians in creating the best shots. Scorsese would have been proud. They routinely edited footage of actual anti Noriega protests and presented it as riots against the US government complete with spliced in shots of banners flown by Noriega's personal guards (without showing the soldiers holding the banners of course).
Haven't believed a single news story since.
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