Since 2014, with the meltdown in Ukraine, caused by the US-sponsored coup, one of the most obvious differences between how the facts on the ground were presented and how the ensuing killing in the Donbass region actually went, is how it was covered in the media. As a consequence, there is a massive gap between what the media presents as truth and public opinion!
Current Western media coverage could be interpreted as a period when truth went out the window and pure propaganda replaced it, at least on the part of most Western media outlets, and especially domestic ones to boot. Confusion is the result of the provision of the bulk of information to the average Westerner being false, or “modified” to suit a particular agenda, the recipient of which is becoming incapable of separating truth from rhetoric and media spin.
It is an understatement to say that journalism is dying. One could even say that it’s not dying, but that it is committing suicide! This is a dire situation, and is mostly due to corporate and political interests being paramount for those publishing the “news”, as real journalists are no longer needed. This is especially true for foreign correspondents, those who are not into just reading the news handed to them by the state, or rewriting press releases.
People are no longer reading newspapers, due to changing times and practices in how journalism currently works, reducing advertising revenue severely, which is the way media funds itself. Craig lists have replaced advertising contributions, 40 percent of the revenue traditionally received by newspapers, and Northwestern University has estimated that the US has lost one-third of its newspapers and two –thirds of its newspaper jobs since 2005.
This tendency is not limited to the United States, and with the lack of local news, and the advent of social media and the targeting of advertising based on customer searches on the internet and social media, which makes it so that you are besieged with ads and also determines the kind of search results you will get, and get the kind of news they want you to consume.
It is little wonder why so many people are becoming clueless about what is really going on in the world, not being provided with an array of alternative views and analysis, and to make a complex matter all the more complicated, governments and special interests are actually the ones deciding editorial policy for the supposedly “free press”.
There are many ways that the mass media negatively impacts society. Selective and exaggerated news coverage, including echo chambers full of talking heads, can make people believe things that aren’t true, especially when it comes to US and Western foreign policy and creating fear or panic (like suggesting Russia will take over).
This is an effective mechanism that is being used to distract the unwashed masses from other issues, like why the US should keep supporting Ukraine militarily and how Russia is losing when the facts show the complex opposite. Western media can even whitewash an ongoing genocide, such as the outright slaughter of civilians in Gaza, or help rig an election, by suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The CNNs of this world can be easily controlled to shape what people think and how they vote, which affects elections and even national security decisions. The media is most guilty of pushing specific political views and making the political divide all the worse, marginalizing alternative views.
Liberal “saint” and “beacon of democracy”
A case in point is the media take on the death of Navalny in a Russian prison. He is portrayed as some kind of liberal “saint” and “beacon of democracy”, neither of which are even remotely true. Navalny was well known for his extreme views on ethnic minorities in Russia, and was extremely negatively disposed towards neighboring former Soviet republics, such as Ukraine and Belarus, which he believed should be forcibly incorporated into the Russian Federation, or Georgia, where he called for the complete destruction of Tbilisi by Missiles during the 2008 war.
If you were to believe the western media, they would have you think that Navalny was the darling of the Russian people, who were all waiting for him to lead some sort of color revolution against Putin. Unfortunately for this narrative, opinion polls put Navalny’s support at less than 2 percent of the population/
That is revealing, as he is not only a manufactured person of importance for Western consumption, but not even locals take much notice of him, other than considering him, for those that keep up, as a petty rabble-rousing politician whose only claim to fame is corruption and treason.
Interestingly, media is also fawning over his “devoted wife”, Yulia Navalnaya, who is supposedly taking over his mantle of “opposition leader”, aside from all too conveniently being at the Munich Security Conference to tearfully announce her (estranged) husband’s “possible” death, blaming it squarely on Putin without any evidence. Her supposed devotion to Navalny is dented by a number of high-profile liaisons she has had since Navalny was imprisoned.
Lack of critical thinking skills
And then there is the mentality of many who consume the news, which talks to the deterioration of the education system, with them not being able to use critical thinking skills and to know the difference between creditable news and low-level propaganda, and, as a result, even the most obvious spin is swallowed whole hog.
As we can understand in the West, he was as much as a threat to Putin as Trump is to Biden, to make an analogy. The truth of the matter, is that neither is (or was, in Navalny’s case) considered a threat, and to think so, is to have drank the political spin Koolade about Trump, to make an analogy.
The reason why the West is exploiting Navalny’s Death for US consumption to support its military aggression in Ukraine, and justify its support to Neo Nazis. Such collective Navalny style support has not been an isolated incident, but is part of a larger and oft repeated pattern, as we have seen the same with the former president now jailed for an array of crimes in Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili.
The BIG Lie
The way that that public opinion is manipulated would impress Joseph Goebbels, especially over the twisting of attitudes towards Russia and Ukraine – the motivation, methods, and how effective it has been, however, people are finally starting to wake up as to how the wool has been pulled over their eyes.
This goes beyond the CNN Effect and Manufacturing Consent. It is a case of cooking up a great fairy tale, so BIG a lie that many people believe it, and swallow it hook, line and sinker.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus, by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
As to the methods, according to one media specialist who teaches political communication in Tbilisi, Georgia: “Yes it has [goes beyond] and I am shocked every day how well it works on most people. I was recently discussing with 2 different people on 2 news pages giving them all the evidence, and they just called me a liar or a Putin troll.”
Call him and me what you want; however, we will continue putting up a fight for the truth and working to get people to open their eyes to what is really going on in the world.
Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.