As a Prelude, we start with this Video (1.29 mins). It is the first edition of the digital ‘Monument for Murdered Authors and Journalists’ by the Theatre of Wrong Decisions (Netherlands) :



This Video is also showing in our Main Gallery, with full details about it (here.)



INTRODUCTION

1. The world's wealthy and powerful elites are always actively denigrating all other needs and all other people, often using press and media (including social media) which they either own, control, or have decisive commercial or other influence over.

2. Around the world it is 'normal' for most of the mainstream press and media to demonise poor people, the unemployed, the homeless, the powerless. In most rich countries, and in some others, this has become so pervasive and so 'normalised' that it is often barely noticed or remarked upon. By contrast : Can you recall your mainstream press or media ever informing you that (according to UNICEF in several reports since 2012) 19,000 children die EACH DAY from preventable causes ? Just think : That is nineteen thousand children every day - and every one of these deaths could be prevented. These children could live long lives instead of dying in childhood. This is just one indication of the kind of 'structural violence' that is 'normalised' by the press & media failing to critique political policies that are inherent in the existing status quo. Big truths like this are 'disappeared' every day by the media's constant deluge of stories that distort our view of the world in favour of their celebrity-focused, money-driven and elite-driven stories. The REAL news is to be found elsewhere, not in this reinforcing of the apalling status quo. We include some of the world's best alternative (non-corporate owned) sources in our Links section here.

3. Far from being assets to democracy and humanity, most of the press, media and social media are appallingly manipulative within the political systems and the cultures they inhabit. Most are devoid of any social or moral responsibility. The song 'Television The Drug of a Nation' (from 1992) summed up much of what is still wrong with the media.

4. Why ? Its simple : The mainstream press and media are owned or financed by extremely wealthy people or corporations and are simply mouthpieces for their elite interests or neoliberal corporate propaganda. They always serve corporate power and are not effective critics of it.

5. Also, the press, media and social media choose to take money from big business and corporate advertisers so they don't have any desire to reveal the awful truth about what corporations and neoliberal economics are doing around the world. In addition, many politicians and political parties around the world, instead of being loyal to the needs of their Citizens, seem to think they exist to serve the media and give them what they want or demand.

6. In many countries where there is some state-owned press or media the situation may not be much better, with press and media acting simply as conduits for the same economic elites, or corporate propaganda, or their corporate-driven governments.

7. The mainstream media normally accept a steady stream of daily 'Press Releases' from these bodies and publish or broadcast them uncritically, as if they are 'facts' or 'truth'.

8. However, this can sometimes have unintended consequences ! In the next example (see the video below) a supposedly 'trustworthy' publicly-funded media organisation (the British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC) did what it does hundreds of times every day without thinking. It took one of many corporate press releases it received and it lazily presented this (completely unchecked) as a major global news story. But this had consequences...

9. It took the corporate press release (seemingly from Dow Chemicals) and invited their corporate PR man to be interviewed on live TV (you can watch this interview here). This was broadcast on the BBC's World News Channel and the BBC unwittingly exposed massive corporate irresponsibility to millions of its viewers, the global public. It also exposed the BBC's servility to corporations and their shared assumptions.


The Pentagon Papers and the US Supreme Court Decision

10. Changing our focus to the US : A landmark ruling was made by the US Supreme Court in June 1971 on the leaking of the Pentagon Papers to the US press by the whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. The leaking of the Pentagon Papers exposed the US government’s many years of lies to the world about its conduct of the war in Vietnam. Over three decades several different US Government administrations, Presidents, officials and military officers (etc) lied comprehensively to their own public, to Congress and to the press and media on matters that could hardly be more serious. For example, the government (including several consecutive Presidents) said they were not at war in Vietnam when they were. During this disastrous war hundreds of thousands of US citizens, mainly very young men, were being conscripted as soldiers and sent off to die in Vietnam, along with many more Vietnamese citizens. When it became obvious that the US was in fact at war, they lied about the reasons for it and the progress of it. They knew from the mid-1950s it was a war they could not win but they lied and said they were winning it and it would be over soon. In this landmark ruling the USA's Supreme Court ruled that :

“…only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell."

11. This ruling referred to the systematic deceptions and lies by the US government throughout its long war (1955-74) in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Throughout this war the government lied to and deceived not only its own public but also the US Congress, the UN and the whole world.

12. This 1971 ruling by a US Judge clearly implies that for democracy to work properly the press should (on behalf of us, the citizens) rigorously and continually examine government, corporations and the powerful, and it should expose any wrong-doing. This is a very important principle – but one which has not been upheld fully (or anything like it) in the US since 1971. Of course, it was a ruling by a USA Court for the USA, not for anywhere else in the world. Both in the USA and around the world this principle has not been upheld - indeed the vast majority of the world's press, media and social media do not even remotely adhere to this principle.



Obviously, we cannot detail all the failures of the world’s press and media here, but we include three examples below to trigger your own ideas and observations.



Example 1 – The Watergate Scandal (US, 1972-4)

13. Following that landmark 1971 ruling, in 1974 a President of the US (Richard Nixon) was forced from office in disgrace and 48 officials in his Administration were found guilty of a range of offences connected with the ‘Watergate Scandal’. This extensive criminal behaviour by the Nixon Administration was exposed by the sustained bravery and high professional standards of two journalists (Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward) on one newspaper (The Washington Post). This was portrayed in the 1976 movie ‘All The President’s Men’.

14. So, at that time in the world’s richest and most powerful ‘democracy’, at least a small part of the press operated to a high standard and did their job of holding the government to account. Most other parts of the US press and media stayed on the side of Nixon and his party (the Republicans) until their guilt was proven way beyond any possible doubt. Even after that, much of the US press and media stayed on Nixon's side - such was (and still is) their bias to their right-wing political friends.

15. However, since those events in the 1970s the press, media and social media in many powerful nations have sunk to very low standards. These days most of the mainstream press and media work to divert our attention away from the multiple lies and deceptions of governments and corporations. The Trump era is showing just how dangerous to democracy a weak or compliant press and media can be. This has also been a major weakness in many other democracies around the world. As you probably know, the press and media can be even worse in the many non-democratic countries. There are many of those in today’s world.


Example 2 – Illegal War against Iraq - Government Lies, with Support from Media (UK, 2003)

16. In the UK the whole of the country’s mainstream press and media supported the UK government’s decision (which it built with its own lies, deceptions and a ‘Dodgy Dossier’) to join in a Coalition with the US to launch the war against Iraq in March 2003. All of the mainstream press and media gave their support to the government’s decision, even though the United Nations at the time clearly stated (a) it would be illegal to go to war, and (b) the UN’s weapons inspection team confirmed that Iraq had no ‘weapons of mass destruction’.

17. Once the US and UK launched this war hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children were then killed, along with thousands of Coalition personnel. Although the US ‘withdrew’ in 2011 this conflict continued and the US rejoined the conflict in 2014 as the head of a new Coalition. It has now lasted more than three times longer than World War Two.

18. A ‘Poll of Polls’ immediately before the UK government’s 2003 decision showed that 69% of the UK public did not approve the decision to start the war. Around the same time the biggest public demonstrations ever held in the UK also had no effect on the government decision to go to war. Such is ‘democracy’ in a country which often proclaims itself one of the best, if not the best, democracy in the world.

19. The Iraq war remains illegal to this day. It has involved war crimes and crimes against humanity which the International Criminal Court has not (so far) dealt with. It has not even challenged those political leaders of the US (Bush) and the UK (Blair) who launched and conducted this illegal war.

20. This seems like one law for the rich and powerful nations (the US and UK are two of the five permanent veto-holding Members of the UN Security Council) and another law for other countries. This is a continuing travesty of international justice – and a massive one. Much of the mainstream press, media and social media in the 'Coalition' countries have, since well before the start of the Iraq war, been providing a propaganda service to support their governments throughout this illegal war.

21. In the modern era most of the world’s mainstream press, media and social media corporations are failing their publics (all of us) continually. In many countries the press, media and social media are not independent enough of increasingly undemocratic governments or of corrupt and unaccountable corporations (by whom almost all are funded – directly or through advertising).

22. This is why the Internet has become an important home for independent critique and deeper truths (see our Links section here for some examples). Nowadays, without the mainstream press, media and social media calling governments to account the world needs whistleblowers and truthtellers more than ever before. The world also needs Truthtellers in the Arts more than ever before. Red Line Art Works exists to encourage those artists and to show their work to the world.

23. So, trust in the mainstream press and media has evaporated over recent decades because they cannot be trusted to expose government or corporate wrong-doings. Indeed, the situation is worse than that. In many countries powerful political interests work hand-in-hand with sections of the press, media and social media to spread conspiracy theories, false information, lies, misinformation and disinformation constantly. Trump and the US press, media and social media are prime examples of this toxic mix at work. So, most of the press, media and social media are themselves heavily engaged in deception and distortion, in fostering hate not hope - as in the next example.


Example 3 – UN Asks Government to Tackle ‘Anti-foreigner Abuse’ in the Press (UK, 2015)

24. In April 2015 the UN Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein urged the UK government to tackle "anti-foreigner abuse" in the British press and media after one newspaper (the ‘Sun’) referred to migrants as "cockroaches". In the UK the term 'migrants' was also being used extensively to label people who were not migrants but refugees fleeing from the conflict in Syria. This characterisation of refugees as ‘migrants’ is indicative of a major failure in the UK’s approach to refugees - men, women and children who have been driven from their homes in Syria by overwhelmingly dangerous circumstances.

25. Mr Hussein pointed out that the Sun's comments used some language which was used in Rwanda in the period leading up to and during the Rwandan genocide and that the UK government should take steps to curb the "incitement to hatred" caused by British newspapers. He also observed that the same paper likened 'migrants' crossing the Mediterranean sea to "norovirus on a cruise ship" and it said gunships should be used to stop people crossing the Mediterranean. At that time more than 1,700 migrants had already died since the beginning of 2015 attempting to cross the Mediterranean in small boats. Since then this number has risen to over 10,000 (as at early 2018).

26. Mr Hussein said the article in the Sun was "one of the more extreme examples of thousands of anti-foreigner articles that have appeared in UK newspapers over the past two decades". "This vicious verbal assault on migrants and asylum seekers in the UK press has continued unchallenged under the law for far too long," he said. "I am an unswerving advocate of freedom of expression, which is guaranteed under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but it is not absolute. "Article 20 of the same covenant says 'any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law'."

27. Mr Hussein called on all European countries to take a "firmer line" on racism and xenophobia, which he said "under the guise of freedom of expression, are being allowed to feed a vicious cycle of vilification, intolerance and politicisation of migrants, as well as of marginalised European minorities such as the Roma".

28. He added: "The nasty underbelly of racism that is characterising the migration debate in an increasing number of EU countries has skewed the EU response to the crisis." The UN said the Sun article followed "decades of sustained and unrestrained anti-foreigner abuse, misinformation and distortion". It said the use of word "cockroaches" was "very similar" to that employed infamously by Rwanda's 'Kangura' newspaper and 'Radio Mille Collines' during the run up to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, as well as in the Nazi media."

29. It is clear that there is widespread concern within the UN that anti-foreigner sentiment in the British media may dissuade the public from supporting action that is needed to save lives. There has been very little response of any kind from either the UK government or the UK press and media to this UN intervention. That is shameful.