The Media: An Instrument of Imperialism

After the revelation of the identity of ‘’Deep Throat’’, the source of the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal that made Nixon fall, Bill Clinton’s former advisor, Sydney Blumenthal, got annoyed at the media’s reaction. The revelation of Mark Felt, former FBI number Two, gave the media an opportunity to regard themselves as the Fourth Power and to recall that they had made Nixon fall. In the Guardian, the author presents a very different version. Nixon’s fall was organized by FBI senior officials who feared for their posts due the centralization of power by the White House. The press was never a counter-power in this issue but they associated the bureaucracy against Nixon. Today, George Bush is building the imperial presidency of which Nixon dreamed and the media remains passive. Even worse, it becomes an accomplice of the state lies that try to justify this policy. Blumenthal is joined in the analysis by media specialist Claude-Jean Bertrand in Izvestia. The US media are today in the hands of big economic groups who hope to be profitable and want to attract the political power. Prisoner between the commercial logics of infotainment and the forced docility, the media is no longer the democratic instruments it pretends to be.
The media play an important role in the US’s imperialist policy. Television and the press have convinced public opinion of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq against all odds. Today, they sell the policy of “democratization” of the “Great Middle East”. In the Washington Post, the former Secretary of State and also a leading figure of the NED/CIA, Madeleine Albright, and the current president of the NED, Vin Weber, also recommend the implementation of the Arab media. Commenting on the report about the “democratization” of the Arab world, of which they are co-authors for the Council on Foreign Relations - they confirmed that the American efforts are undermined by the bad image of the United States. Thus, they recommend developing “independent” Arab media outlets to restore the American prestige. The authors also consider that the Arab leader have to be pressured using freedom as the foundation of their propaganda aimed at the Arab population.
However, for intellectual Immanuel Wallerstein, interviewed by Strana.ru, the United States is very excited with its imperialist policy. The US economy is super-indebted and about to sink. Washington no longer has the means to sustain its policy and its economy is at the edge of the abyss. Sadly, it may drag some regions of the world with it. We will then witness a redefinition of international alliances for which Russia is already preparing. Anyway, for the author, the United States can not wage another war although it may be the dream of some of its leaders. For their part, those who oppose the war of Iraq and Washington’s imperialist policy are trying to make themselves heard.
The former Democrat presidential candidate in 1972 (who caused the Watergate scandal), George McGovern, and Democrat Representative for the state of Massachusetts, Jim McGovern (not related), call for a rapid withdrawal of the troops of the Coalition. This war can not be won and the presence of occupation forces only stirs up violence in the country. The US withdrawal from Iraq may provoke some chaos but if it stays there it will certainly be a disaster. In the same newspaper, former independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and the director of the website DemocracyRising.US, Kevin Zeese, recall that this war was triggered by a lie. Recalling that Bill Clinton was almost removed by Congress from his post for committing perjury in a moral and personal issue, they demand Congress to be coherent and begin an impeachment process against Bush and Cheney.
This appeal, however, has only been echoed by the Boston Globe. It is not the case of Washington’s propaganda against the Iraqi resistance. Tus, the Project Syndicate publishes in the Korea Herald, the Taipei Times, the Daily Star and maybe in another one tomorrow, a column by a professor of the US Army War College, Steven Metz. In another effort to compete with Washington’s lack of knowledge about the Iraqi resistance, he recycles the most used propaganda: the “jihadists” occupy an essential place within the resistance, which would be linked to Al-Qaida and it would not be moved by feelings of national sovereignty but by nihilism, and it would be financed by Syria and Saudi Arabia.