Media analyst and professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School, Edward S. Herman, co-author with Noam Chomsky of Manufacturing Consent, discusses the propaganda embedded in US mainstream media coverage of the Ukraine crisis.
Dan Falcone: What is missing in the US mainstream news coverage of Ukraine? What major elements are being suppressed?
Edward Herman: What is missing, first of all, is a minimum of objectivity. The media are functioning more than ever as a propaganda machine for the State Department. One thing missing - and being suppressed - is the important role of neo-Nazi elements both in the Kiev government and in the forces they have fielded in their war against East Ukraine. The media are eager to find Russians in Ukraine, but will not even recognize neo-fascists staring them in the face, but working on our side. They had earlier virtually suppressed the very important role of these right-wing elements in the Maidan protests and the accompanying violence and overthrow of the elected government in Kiev. The media regularly called those forces "protesters," whereas they called the East Ukraine rebels "pro-Russian militants" and "separatists" rather than "protesters" and "federalists." The double standards here are dramatic and the sign of a propaganda system at work.
So also is the different treatment of casualties. In the Maidan street protests and fighting before the coup, the media were very sensitive to violence against the protesters, although less attentive to violence by the protesters; whereas the thousands of civilian casualties in the Kiev war against the East have been of little interest to the media, again following the party line and paralleling the attention of [US Secretary of State John] Kerry and [US Ambassador to the UN Samantha] Power. They buried the story of the Odessa massacre, which was surely of greater scope than the Racak massacre in Kosovo, which so aroused US officials and the ever-so-amenable media.
Complete story at - Mainstream News Coverage of Ukraine, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Shows Western Propaganda Machine at Work
Dan Falcone: What is missing in the US mainstream news coverage of Ukraine? What major elements are being suppressed?
Edward Herman: What is missing, first of all, is a minimum of objectivity. The media are functioning more than ever as a propaganda machine for the State Department. One thing missing - and being suppressed - is the important role of neo-Nazi elements both in the Kiev government and in the forces they have fielded in their war against East Ukraine. The media are eager to find Russians in Ukraine, but will not even recognize neo-fascists staring them in the face, but working on our side. They had earlier virtually suppressed the very important role of these right-wing elements in the Maidan protests and the accompanying violence and overthrow of the elected government in Kiev. The media regularly called those forces "protesters," whereas they called the East Ukraine rebels "pro-Russian militants" and "separatists" rather than "protesters" and "federalists." The double standards here are dramatic and the sign of a propaganda system at work.
So also is the different treatment of casualties. In the Maidan street protests and fighting before the coup, the media were very sensitive to violence against the protesters, although less attentive to violence by the protesters; whereas the thousands of civilian casualties in the Kiev war against the East have been of little interest to the media, again following the party line and paralleling the attention of [US Secretary of State John] Kerry and [US Ambassador to the UN Samantha] Power. They buried the story of the Odessa massacre, which was surely of greater scope than the Racak massacre in Kosovo, which so aroused US officials and the ever-so-amenable media.
Complete story at - Mainstream News Coverage of Ukraine, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Shows Western Propaganda Machine at Work
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