[A-List] Western media play along in the disinformation game

[Tony B.]

...I'd hardly call Tiananmen Sq. the 'number one distortion'....Still, 
worthy of note...


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Totten" <shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp>
To: <a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu>
Sent: Friday, June 25, 2010 8:47 PM
Subject: [A-List] Western media play along in the disinformation game


> by Gregory Clark
>
> The Japan Times (June 25 2010)
>
>
> Are they being manipulated by governments? Or, are they just plain lazy,
> happy to go along with what everyone else is saying and what readers want
> to believe without wanting to look too closely into relevant background?
>
> I refer to the way the Western media, both lately and in the past, have
> accepted blatant and often dangerous news distortions.
>
> The Number One distortion remains the so-called massacre at Tiananmen
> Square. On the 21st anniversary of that alleged event earlier this month,
> the main news agencies still managed to preserve the fiction of Chinese
> troops marching into Beijing's iconic square and shooting down innocent
> students in the hundreds, if not thousands. This, despite all the reliable
> eyewitness reports, available on Google, that say almost nothing occurred
> in the square on the night of June 3-4 1989.
>
> What happened was quite different: There was wild shooting on roads
> leading to the square by soldiers retaliating for vicious firebomb attacks
> by angry citizens on units sent to remove protesting students who had been
> allowed to occupy the square for weeks while regime moderates tried vainly
> to negotiate the reforms the students wanted. Many died as a result,
> including soldiers incinerated in their trucks and other vehicles.
>
> But never mind the facts. The fantasy story makes for much better reading.
> It also gave the European nations an excuse to blacklist China for arms
> sales and even for the riot control equipment that might have prevented
> the mayhem.
>
> A detailed 1998 study in the Columbia Journalism Review titled "Reporting
> the Myth of Tiananmen, and the Price of a Passive Press", by Jay Mathews,
> Washington Post former bureau chief in Beijing (also available on Google)
> traces the massacre myth to a front-page story in Hong Kong that was
> flashed quickly around the world as fact by news agencies. My not
> uninformed guess says it was probably planted by either Western or
> Taiwanese intelligence agencies. The alleged author has never been found.
>
> Closer to home, we have the reports of the March torpedo attack on a South
> Korean warship, killing 46 seamen. Western media blasting North Korea for
> the attack make little or no mention of the fact that it was in disputed
> waters and that, if caused by North Korea, it would almost certainly have
> been retaliation for a November 2009 South Korean attack on a North Korean
> patrol boat in the same area, also with casualties.
>
> Even less mention is made of the fact that the waters are disputed because
> of an arbitrary line drawn by the United States under the 1953 Korean War
> armistice. Determining the correct line would be a key item in the peace
> agreement that North Korea wants but that the US has delayed, hoping for
> regime collapse in the North.
>
> There are even doubts whether there was an attack. Sweden, the only
> neutral member in an international group investigating the affair,
> withdrew from the final report (see the article by John McGlynn {*} in the
> June 7 Asia-Pacific Journal). Two other possible causes for the sinking
> have been put forward, but little of this finds mention in Western media,
> where calls for strong retaliation and UN condemnation against North Korea
> wax large.
>
> {*} http://www.japanfocus.org/-John-McGlynn/3372
>
> It's a similar story with regard to the media fuss over Chinese naval
> activity in the East China Sea. China has a not-invalid claim to a large
> Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the East China sea even if it conflicts
> with Japan's median line claim.
>
> China can hardly be expected to remain immobile while Japan acts as if its
> own claim is set in stone, especially since Beijing, unlike Tokyo, seeks a
> compromise joint development agreement between the rival claims.
>
> The western Pacific coral reef of Okinotorishima presents a similar
> dilemma for Beijing. China does not dispute Japan's ownership of the reef.
> But it could hardly remain silent after the Japanese military earlier this
> year landed troops on the reef in a bid to support Tokyo's claim for an
> encircling 400,000-square-kilometer EEZ - a claim that contradicts
> international law, which states that rocks unable to sustain economic
> activity cannot have an EEZ.
>
> But one would have to look hard for any mention of these crucial details
> in the Western media, where increasingly China is portrayed as
> expansionist and a future military threat.
>
> Many Japanese media were happy to use the biased versions of these
> incidents to accuse the Hatoyama administration of ignoring Chinese and
> North Korean threats, and to pressure it into agreeing to the relocation
> of a US Marine base to Henoko, Okinawa.
>
> Can't we have an end to this kind of media bias? Media acceptance of Cold
> War disinformation operations by both sides cost millions of lives and
> decades of stunted economic growth. Working in Canberra during those
> years, I saw close up how slanted material from allegedly impartial
> academics and think tanks was pushed into the media, and used. Western
> disinformation efforts during the Kosovo and Iraq wars were equally
> harmful.
>
> With South Ossetia, we had the remarkable sight of the main US and UK
> media telling us that Russia had attacked Georgia when it was almost the
> complete opposite - a claim that could easily have led to a revived Cold
> War.
>
> Even worse was the 1962 claim that China had attacked India when in it was
> the complete opposite - a false claim that indirectly led to the Vietnam
> War.
>
> Today, over Iran, we have a similar media disinformation war under way,
> financed in part by CIA funds, reported American award-winning commentator
> Seymour Hersh in 2008. Maybe it's time for the media to clean up their act
> a bit.
>
> _____
>
> Gregory Clark is a former Australian diplomat and a longtime resident in
> Japan working as a correspondent and in a variety of university positions.
>
> (C) All rights reserved
>
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