Mainstream Media Lies About Syria.

Posted on February 5, 2014

by Jerry Alatalo

“I shall give a propagandist cause for starting the war. Never mind whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked, later on, whether he told the truth or not. In starting and waging a war, it is not right that matters but victory. Have no pity. Adopt a brutal attitude… Right is on the side of the strongest.”

– Adolf Hitler

Has any mainstream American news organization, when “reporting” on the situation in Syria, ever mentioned the word “pipeline”? Any news outlet that looks like it is reporting the causes of this over three-years long conflict without talking about energy resources wars, proposed pipelines, and profits/market shares for oil and gas companies is lying by omission.

These news outlets will call the fighting in Syria a fight for freedom or a sectarian war between Sunni and Shia. They will try to convince viewers that the war in Syria is a historically normal event, that the Middle East region has had this type of fighting for thousands of years, and that the best nations can muster is trying to keep the peace as much as possible.

They will describe events without accuracy and completeness.

However, unfortunately the wars of the Middle East starting post-industrial age have virtually all been about control of the natural resources of the region – namely oil and natural gas. For mainstream media outlets to fail consistently to omit this essential fact is both highly disturbing and saddening. For one to understand that mainstream news has slanted reports to effect public opinion with “facts” that do not represent the complete truth about events on war and peace, describes perhaps the biggest wakeup call humanly possible to experience.

Fortunately, however, men and women around the world have received their wakeup calls by the millions and millions in recent years, and no longer accept the reporting/omissions coming from mainstream media. People around the world, especially in the United States, have come to the point where they will not believe a word of news reports and reporters coming from their televisions. Corporate propaganda and “spin” simply no longer cuts it, so many people have simply stopped watching TV news or reading newspapers and news magazines altogether.

In 2014 people are turning to news groups that do not accept money from corporate advertisers or rely on viewer support in greatly increasing numbers. Mainstream media has in a way become like the World Professional Wrestling Association and its members, participating in a charade and a sham – a fake – nowhere near to producing 100% truthful reports at all costs, but settling for manufactured versions of the actual truth on events and situations around the Earth.

Arthur Hays Sulzberger (1891-1968), who was publisher of the New York Times, addressed the New York State Publishers Association in 1948 and said:

“A man’s judgment cannot be better than the information on which he has based it… Give him no news or present him only with distorted and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with propaganda and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning process and make him something less than a man.”

America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Libya and in the proxy war of Syria, would have been much less harmful to the men, women, and children of those nations – wars in those nations may have been averted –  had the U.S. mainstream media not diminished the American people’s judgment, and had the mainstream media given the American people the total truth.

Mainstream media performance regarding truth is very saddening

Saddening because of all the death, injury (both physical and psychological), and shattering of innocent lives which would never have occurred had truth been told all the way down the line. In 2014, there needs to occur very serious discussions about media reforms in America, because the airwaves are under the ownership of the people, and there are those who have been allowed to use those airwaves to slant the truth or outright lie to the American people.

This is a very serious issue that has gone on for decades and requires change of a fundamental nature to resolve. Because war and peace is the most serious issue on this Earth. For continuing to allow less than correct or wholly inaccurate reporting to go out over the people’s airwaves on war and peace risks the disastrous repeat of human carnage of the past – namely unwarranted, unnecessary, and illegal military actions.

There is no criticism of this world’s capitalist systems but for the times when competition crosses a line where ruthlessness exists – where morality and ethics become non-existent. Those are the times when competition degenerates totally into a fully dehumanizing situation where war occurs. The world’s people no longer accept this barbaric form of business competition and are calling for it to end. Forever.

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