Judy TannerActivist Post
BrandonTurbeville.com
January 26, 2018
Censorship of news is never a good thing. It might suit media corporations worried about their business model, falling circulation and losing advertising dollars, or maybe they worry about government directives and what they can and cannot say, but censorship is never a good thing. The new labels 'fake news', 'post truth era' which Facebook has taken up as its cause must be balanced against the fact that Facebook is a tech company, not run by journalists, not governed by journalistic ethics. So who is minding them?
The Chilcot inquiry looked into a number of questions arising from the inaccurate reporting of the Iraq war, the 'failure of intelligence' or as some might say, the lies Western governments told about WMDs that didn't exist and the role of the media in uncritically defending the pretext for war on Iraq. The Chilcot inquiry found many errors and damning evidence of the wrong doings of the UK and the US governments and their allies. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people died as a result of the US attack on Baghdad and war on Iraq.
The removal of Saddam Hussein, another 'dictator' in Western terms, did not improve the living standards of Iraqi civilians. Instead it led to the rise of a variety of terrorist groups, destruction of infrastructure and the ruin of civil society. It increased, not decreased the suffering of the Iraqi people. That suffering continues today. Accountability, accuracy, thorough research, being on the ground, checking sources for accuracy and reliability- all of these things are again missing in media reports on Syria today. Another Middle Eastern country is subjected to foreign invasion, terrorism and all the media can do is blame and demonise the leadership of the country- victim blaming on a global level and report from sources that turn out to be terrorists with no interest in building a stronger more cohesive Syria.
