There is not a moment that goes by when the infallible Western media is not ready to judge, patronize or pounce and vilify states across the Global South or in the Middle East about their ‘wrong-doings.’ Be it events of any kind, diplomatic relationships, human rights issue; the list is unending, unrelenting! While it most certainly does not mean exoneration, this god-complex has become an unsatiating food for thought and debate for many.
As this brave new – dystopian – world becomes more and more polarized, every single journalist, writer, thinker and even a layperson, especially from the Global South or belonging to a different race and ethnicity, has to think twice, ponder carefully and wisely choose their words to not just get the right message across, but also prepare and brace themselves for the worst: aggression, violent vitriol, unfounded and baseless allegations levied against them. An unabashedly brazen penalty for advocating or voicing an opinion other than what is being plugged, pushed and marketed by white imperialist powers and their equally, if not more, potent media propaganda machinery.
In an interview for an Al Jazeera report ‘Failing Gaza: Behind the Media Lens’ noted journalist Jeremy Scahill remarked: “It is impossible to overstate that the role the incendiary media coverage played in the events that would unfold after Hamas and its allies broke down the fence that surrounds Gaza, Israel was able to perform in front of the world a masterclass in the manipulation of the media and so you had a narrative set that Netanyahu and Biden on their own would not have had the power to drill into the minds of public…”
Indeed, what Scahill says is true. Media coverage has played an incendiary role, drilling a set narrative into the minds of the public. But looking closely, it is definitely not new. Israel has always been savvy when it comes to devising messages and contriving news – it has been doing that for several decades now. The blogsphere is replete with examples. Where media experts may get it wrong (with all due respect and for the lack of a better word!), is that oppressors have really not performed a masterclass in manipulating the media. Collaborators do not need to manipulate, they execute in agreement and with full, perhaps even unspoken, understanding.
Language is a powerful tool and media – a reckoning force. And to declare such a position about an immensely formidable pillar of politics really diminishes the devastating impact of the role it has played; consequently curtailing accountability.
Palestinian thinker and author., the late Edward Said had repeatedly spoken about it. In one of his articles for the Guardian, he said: “Political rhetoric in the US has overridden these things by flinging about words like ‘terrorism’ and ‘freedom’ whereas, of course, such large abstractions have mostly hidden sordid material interests, the influence of the oil, defence and Zionist lobbies now consolidating their hold on the entire Middle East, and an age-old religious hostility to (and ignorance of) ‘Islam’ that takes new forms every day.”
Chomsky has time and again reflected on the Western media’s standpoint, positionality and thought control. In one of his pieces, he remarked: “A headline in the New York Times reads: ‘Are the Palestinians Ready to Seek Peace?’ (Bernard Gwertzman, NYT, 2 June 1985). In the normal sense of the term ‘peace’, the answer is of course ‘Yes’. Everyone seeks peace, on their own terms; Hitler, for example, surely sought peace in 1939, on his terms. But in the system of thought control, the question means something else: Are the Palestinians ready to accept US terms for peace? These terms happen to deny them the right of national self-determination, but unwillingness to accept this consequence demonstrates that the Palestinians do not seek peace, as defined in conventional Newspeak.”
What these reflections demonstrate is not just that Palestine and Palestinians themselves are flashpoints – scatheful boils that need not to be healed but removed altogether, but also how the media positions and allocates words and imagery to convey and ‘drill’ certain messages. From the media uproar and indignation of beheaded Israeli babies – unfounded and without an iota of evidence – to tight-lipped silence over actual decapitated Palestinian children. From attempting to silence Palestinian/Arab voices like Adania Shibli, Huda Fakhreddine, targeted killings of poets and journalists Like Refaat Al Areer, 20 year old Hassan Hamad and so many more to non-representation of the oppressed in traditional as well as digital news and media. This is all part of the strategy.
In a Guardian article published today, writer Howard Jacobson writes: “I don’t accuse the BBC and other news outlets of wilfully stirring race-memory of the child-killing Jew of the middle ages. But we don’t have to mean harm to do it. We can wreak havoc just as well by being lazy, by letting our unconscious do the work of thought, by dipping into the communal pile of prejudice and superstition and letting it pepper up our reports.”
With over 40,000 killed in Gaza – majority being children and women, thousands and more maimed and crippled mentally and physically… is it laziness on our part as writers and journalists, or are we merely lazy about our own scruples and lack of accountability (and god complex)?
While interviewing acclaimed author, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jon Stewart questioned that in order for a society to progress, does it need to have exploitation?
We live and have been living in a system that is broken and while many would lament about it – what we have failed to discern and recognize is that, this act of rupture and systemic fragmentation is actually premeditated and designed. It is meant to be broken, it is meant to oppress and control!
Distraction by design comes in many forms: propaganda is one, fear – a thoroughly tried and tested method in the book is yet another. The strategic use of information with malevolent or deceptive intent has been going on forever, yet it is now – in this present age – being discerned and recognized as oppression.
The difference now is possibly the convergence and relocation of traditional media thanks to the digital revolution and transformation. No longer can people, the masses be kept in the dark. They are now able to witness the horrors of mass murder, annihilating apartheid and genocide in real time. And yes! There is a shift. There is… hope?
As Ta-Nehisi Coates in his recently published book The Message writes: “Your oppression will not save you…”