The propaganda and disinformation

of the Western media

By: Raza ul Haq

Propaganda and disinformation are a common topic these days among many Western media outlets. The topic is not the only commonality but the narrative as well. In-depth examination of the propaganda topic reveals that it is mainly the geopolitical adversaries of the West who allegedly engage in propaganda. Western media loves to point out the propaganda maneuvers of others but soft peddles its own devious ways as ‘mistaken reporting’.

Prior to delving deeper, let us make clear that all media outlets engage in some form of propaganda. Every media organization has a worldview and holds certain philosophical presuppositions which it holds as valid and those opposing it as invalid. Through this prism, media outlets prioritize a certain outlook on events.

The Western media presents the war in Ukraine through the angle of the violation of its sovereignty. Afghanistan, Kashmir, Palestine, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Iraqdo not merit such consideration. The global information field is dominated by mainly Western media institutions or organizations where Western trained media technocrats hold significant sway. Thus, readers need to be made aware of some notorious propaganda maneuvers conducted by Western media organizations which rarely get highlighted. In recent years some of the most misrepresented reporting has been related to Afghanistan, Kashmir, Palestine, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Iraq.

For two decades, the US told one lie after another about the war in Afghanistan. The lies came from the White House, Congress, the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA, as well as from Hollywood, cable news pundits, journalists, and the broader culture. The lies which the Western regimes used, and still do, as anti-Taliban propaganda, right from the start was the smoke screen of "women's rights, girl's rights and democracy". This was used to sell the illegal invasion and the brutal and savage bombardment of the Afghan people. They knew that the 9/11 excuse for such vicious destruction of a country, was going to be a short sell. The ensuing 20 years proved that the Western regimes did not care an iota for the women and girls of Afghanistan.They installed puppets in their tailor-made ‘democracy’. It was always a war against Islam, as proven by their spreading of the war into Iraq.

The US invasion of Iraq was built on a false story of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’. This was articulated by George W. Bush in a speech days before invasion:“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq’s neighbors and against Iraq’s people.”To the lie about the possession of WMDs, Bush added a few more: that Saddam Hussein “trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al-Qaeda.” Moreover, left unchecked, those Saddam-supplied terrorists could “kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country (USA).”The US killed over a million people in Iraq.

When NATO began bombing Libya in May 2011, Western media outlets began projecting the Viagra rape story of Libyan soldiers.The myth of Muammar Qaddafi distributing Viagra to his soldiers to have people raped was even “confirmed” by Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.Except that it was completely false.But by “confirming” such fake news publicized by Western news outlets gave them an aura of credibility.

Today, in the war in Ukraine, propaganda is regularly referenced as a Russian disinformation campaign.One rarely hears Western media outlets discussing propaganda in relation to the Ukrainian side.When a prominent Danish journalist Matilde Kimer recently announced that the Kiev regime tried to pressure her to engage in pro-Ukrainian propaganda, this received little or no coverage in the Western media.Instead, it was confined to a niche news source, the ‘Interecept’.

Compared to unrefined propaganda, Western news organizations are quite experienced at manipulating information.They have a lot of experience in projecting falsehoods and have become quite sophisticated.Most of their non-Western competitors are no match for them.In his book, Manufacturing Consent, Professor Noam Chomsky has explained this concept fully.

The positive news on the propaganda front is that as the West’s geopolitical hegemony declines, Western news sources are forced to resort to crude propaganda techniques.Thus, involuntarily they are unmasking themselves.Examples from their recent coverage of Afghanistan, Kashmir, Palestine, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iraq and now Ukraine show the decline in sophistication of Western propaganda. We can be hopeful that the truth will eventually prevail over al forms of falsehood.