February 14, 2006

Mainstream Media an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy

by Garry Leech

A sequence of events transpired over the past few days that perfectly illustrate the mainstream media’s role as propagandists for the U.S. and Colombian governments. These events consisted of the media’s coverage of the massacre of six family members in Colombia and the release of a United Nations human rights report. The problem is rooted in the media’s over-reliance on official sources, despite being fully aware of a long history of lying and manipulation by those sources. The corporate media’s insistence on continuing this practice makes evident its willingness to operate as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy by providing disinformation and outright lies to the U.S. public.

On February 12, the European-based Reuters and the Spanish news agency EFE reported that leftist rebels belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) had massacred six members of a family, including an 80-year-old woman. The entire story, as is so often the case in such instances, was based on the statements of a single Colombian government official. As usually occurs in Colombia, the U.S.-backed government blamed the FARC for the massacre despite a clear lack of evidence. The media, without any further investigation, obediently published articles regurgitating the official accusation that the FARC were responsible.

U.S. media outlets, including the Houston Chronicle and ABC News, unquestioningly began publishing the wire service story about the massacre. The FARC—Washington’s principal enemy in the wars on drugs and terror in Colombia, despite the fact that pro-government forces kill more civilians and right-wing paramilitaries are more involved in drug trafficking than the guerrillas—was duly vilified in the eyes of the U.S. public.

As has so often occurred in Colombia, it was later revealed that the FARC were not in fact responsible for the massacre. While it usually takes weeks for the truth to be revealed in such instances, on this occasion a government official came clean two days after the initial reports of the massacre were published. The interior minister of the department of Antioquia, Jorge Mejía, acknowledged that following an initial investigation into the killings, “The method of operation indicates [the perpetrators] to be paramilitaries who have demobilized but have remained in the region.”

And as also so often occurs, mainstream media publications that eagerly reported the initial story blaming the FARC did not give the newly-revealed evidence the time of day. Neither Reuters, the Houston Chronicle or ABC News bothered to inform the public that previous claims made in their publications apparently were not true and that evidence instead points to supposedly demobilized right-wing paramilitaries as the perpetrators of the massacre. Only the Spanish news agency EFE published a follow-up story.

The mainstream media’s willingness to simply regurgitate any statement issued by government officials without further investigation is the normal modus operandi for foreign correspondents based in Colombia. U.S. and Colombian officials are fully aware that this practice provides them with an excellent opportunity to propagandize on current events and that the truth, when finally revealed, will rarely be reported. In other words, officials know that the media will not hold them accountable for their lies.

For its part, the corporate media simply claims that its coverage is “objective” because it is only publishing statements made by others; it is not asserting the truth or falsehood regarding the claims made by those interviewed in articles. However, when journalists and media outlets frequently decide to rely solely on official sources for information, they have made a conscious editorial decision to repeatedly provide the public with only one point of view. And, inevitably, it is the point of view of government officials who have a vested interest in how news events are presented to the public. In other words, the media has simply chosen to act as a mouthpiece for Washington, particularly with regard to U.S. foreign policy issues that rarely get covered in any depth.

The media’s obedient coverage of the massacre in Colombia was further put into perspective one day after the initial news stories were published. On February 13, the United Nations released its annual human rights report in which it stated that there had been an increase in extra-judicial killings by Colombian soldiers and police in 2005. It went on to note that government forces often dressed the corpses as guerrillas and presented them as combat deaths. According to the report, “Cases were recorded in which commanders themselves had allegedly supported the act of dressing the victims in guerrilla garments to cover up facts and simulate combat.”

The UN report is just the latest revelation in a long history of overwhelming evidence showing that the government repeatedly distorts the truth about killings in the country’s civil conflict. One would think that the media’s knowledge of this fact, and its awareness that officials repeatedly issue statements that later prove to be false, would lead journalists and editors to realize that they are simply being used for propaganda purposes. Consequently, one would assume that they would choose to be more cautious about publishing news stories based solely on official sources.

It appears, however, that the mainstream media is unconcerned with this threat to its credibility and simply intends to continue conducting business as usual. The corporate media’s unwillingness to change its modus operandi, along with its failure to hold government officials accountable for their lies, suggests that it has consciously accepted its role as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy.

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