American journalism on top of its game

Please take a moment to skim the following two stories regarding the Syrian conflict, one from AP, a U.S. propaganda outlet, the other from Voltaire Network, a French propaganda outlet.

The contrast could not be more stark. AP propaganda makes no mention of NATO, the driving force behind the uprising, nor does it give any hint that the attack might be failing. It completely frames the war as a natural uprising. It refers to western infiltration of the country by western state/corporate interests as “free market reforms” in the same fashion that Pravda might once have referred to Russian state farms as “people’s” enterprises. This is an extreme example of submission to the state/corporate correct posture. American news is quite worthless, generally.

Voltaire offers an interesting perspective, framing the conflict as a NATO-inspired undertaking in retreat, sacrificing the “insurgents” to Syrian forces merely to unload them. Thierry Meyssan, the driving force behind Voltaire, also speculates that Prince Bandar, the Bush family intimate and sponsor and trainer of “Al Qaeda” insurgents, might be dead. If that is the case, I wonder of he might have to be officially “killed” in some PR spectacle down the road.

The point is not to highlight the accuracy of one or the other, though I obviously hold American news in contempt. It’s entirely a personal choice, but mere exposure to more than one side of a story does create internal disharmony. An American who only reads American news should feel certainty that he is on top of things, and that is a sign of effective propaganda. If we go to NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, CNN, NPR, New York Times, Washington Post or Salt Lake City Bee, Billings Gazette or Denver Post, it is all the same duckspeak. Propaganda does not seek to lie so much as to envelop the target audience in a sea of uniform information, often even accurate. By exclusion of interfering counterfactual information, often accurate as well, it creates internal peace and harmony. By exclusion of real-world head-scratching uncertainty, doubt is erased. (Of course, opposing outlooks are occasionally included, but in scare quotes.)

In this regard, Americans are the best. The very best.

By the way, when presented with extremes in possibilities as these two stories represent, the truth is not to be found “in the middle.” Truth exists on its own, and can randomly appear anywhere in the spectrum. Or, outside it.