From: Solomon Zerai (zerai_s@yahoo.co.uk)
Date: Thu Jan 15 2009 - 18:12:58 EST
Possibility of Media Manipulation
By Zerai Solomon
London UK
In the current climate of consolidation of the global media industry, independent broadcasters simply don't survive for long.
The
U.S. government has changed the rules of the game. Today media
companies are more concentrated than at any time over the past 40
years. The Federal Communications Commission defends its decision by
saying that people these days have more media choices than ever before.
But the stark reality is that only a few corporations decide what
choices are available to the general public at large.
Across
the English - speaking world for instance, institutions like the
Associated Press, Reuters, MSNBC, CNN, BBC, and Al-Jazeera -
international dominate international news. These well established media
corporations at times unite to resist fierce external pressure from
governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as various
lobby groups.
News is neither collected nor disseminated in neutral manner. News
nowadays is filtered and selected to fit a fixed agenda laid down by
senior editors and managers who answer to the owners, advertisers and
regulators.
The government supplies much of the information
the media needs for its political coverage including reports on new
spending plans, legislation and diplomacy gossip.
The shift in
public trust from newspapers to broadcasters has returned society to
the era when all newspapers were licensed. The media acts as the eyes
and ears of society, the other vested interests have taken advantage of
the key structural weaknesses and devised potent stratagems for media
manipulation.
Detlef Zimmerman, journalist who was based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
(1999-2008) explained how baseless information is built up.
One
recent example; When Bush claimed Iraq had obtained materials to make
WMD, he cited Blair, Blair made the claim citing intelligence reports.
The intelligence reports turned out to be fake documents originated in
Italy. According to an investigation by the Italian parliament, the
originators of the fake documents were Washington neoconservative.
The limited hangout, introduce damaging information a little at a time, like vaccination, hedged with mitigating factors,
suggesting to the reader that the information is not surprising at all. Later it can be described as "nothing new".
It
emerged during the CIA scandals in the 1970's that hundreds of
journalists and editors across the world, including in Washington, were
on the CIA payroll. It was famously said that a journalist in
Washington was cheaper than a good call girl. I am informed that the
situation is similar in London; in every major newsroom there are one
or two people reporting to Intelligent Services.
In the past
12 months MI6 & MI5 officers have been allowed to discuss their
work on radio, television and in other mediums, with the latter even
having a schools programme for interested parties.
Indeed, the
BBC children channel was even given permission to film inside the
headquarter of MI6 dubbed "Lego land" and MI5 headquarters. However,
last year saw one of the most unusual recruiting programmes ever
conducted by a major Intelligence service. Even Israel's intelligence
agency - Shin Bet, also known as the General Security Services or
Shabak, has gone one step further.
In
March it launched a Hebrew - language "web blog" written by four of its
officers. It's the first time any intelligence services allowed its
staff to “blog” and interact with a global audience of potentially
millions.
The unidentified spooks, who are silhouetted to hide
their identities, explain how they were recruited, their work regimes,
and they even take questions sent in by inquisitive members of public.
It's not clear if the questions are vetted before they reach the
officers, or if answers are monitored.
A substantial volume of
literature from one pro-establishment school of America sociology holds
that "conspiracy" is a deviant way of thinking. The conspiracy school
correctly sites ways in which false ideas can arise, using terms like
"urban legend" and "canard" but fails to understand that the corporate
medias particularly vulnerable to spread of false information.
The
greatest tactic of political controls divide and rule, famously
practiced by the British Empire. Now, the global oligarchy uses the
same technique by co-opting leftist and conservative journalists as
"gatekeepers" building up their credibility as speakers for their
respective constituencies so long as they tow the line on the big
issues.
D. Zimmerman went on to explain; the media is forever
entangled in cultural warfare. Modern day media coverage is a key
weapon in cultural warfare. Biases exist, spin is the norm and many
notable social actions go under reported. It's not that long ago that
the global intelligence community got involved and started to put in
place a cultural warfare intelligence infrastructure.
The
approach to cultural warfare intelligence is a cadre of international
scouts that are well educated on international politics, culture as
well as languages and dialects. These assets are embedded for a
significant amount of time so that they develop a level of comfort with
strange and distant places. These intelligence assets are given time to
absorb a single culture and to establish trust with those willing to
trust them.
The primary objectives of cultural warfare;
1. To change or influence the opinion of a target group of people so as to align it with those of the attacker.
2. To accelerate the evolution of specific aspects of a target group's values, beliefs, norms and law.
3. To create disruptive activities
that impacts the people's view of a targeted government.
The
mass media and rich capabilities of the internet and modern day
communications have created an asymmetric warfare weapon that can be
launched from anywhere and target anywhere in the world.
Ethiopian Government uses the news media to launder lies and recruit journalists like Martin Plaut ( Africa editor, BBC World Service
News, a former Associate Fellow of Chatham House and the co-editor of
Unfinished Business: Ethiopia and Eritrea at War (Red Sea Press, 2005 - born in South Africa)
Patrick Gilkes
(is a consultant with the Ethiopian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
and is a former Senior Research Office, FCO, and one-time head of the
BBC) here in London to serve as lobbyist and agents
inside & outside the country. Ethiopia wastes in excess of $ 4.6
Million annually in lobbying.
Mainstream political reporting
depends on long-established personalities and standard left-v-right
debates which evolve gradually but a major event can produce overnight
change in political landscape. Those people who write on the media
often change allegations, little by little over a long period of time
into what seem facts. However, this strategy of feeding fake
information in a chain is not always successful.
Zimmerman underlined also that the Ethiopian Government & CIA changed its strategy co-ordinated by a person called Hebur Ghebrekidan
and begin to invest on Eritreans who are ready to betray their country
and principles and in some cases, on those who were rewarded Eritrean
citizenship by virtue of their birth.
For example last weekend
10/11 January 2009 London Conference is just a continuation of CIA
& EPRDF failed effort to destabilize Eritrean Government through
their puppets the so-called ' Citizens for Democratic Rights in Eritrea' - Civic organization?
These individuals include but are not
limited to the following:-
Suleman Adem, Tzedal Yohannes, Berhane China (ex. EDU member), Abdurahman Said,
Petros
Be'Atay, Mohammed Tahir Debesai, Ghebru Tesfamariam, Habtom Yohannes,
Kidane Mengesteab, Berhane Woldegebriel, Tsegai Yohannes, Gaim Kebreab and Aburay.
Take
a moment to reflect and think about cultural warfare, the implications
of change as well as the possibility of media manipulations as a weapon
in the arsenal of asymmetric conflict.
Zerai Solomon,
London UK
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