Propaganda by ommission

GV at Calling England has spotted a telling comment by BBC reporter, Paul Mason, made in a report from Athens.

“And I will repeat the point about hostility to the media: it's not a problem for me and my colleagues to be hounded off demos as "representatives of big capital", "Zionists", "scum and police informers" etc. But to get this reaction from almost every demographic - from balaclava kids to pensioners - should be a warning sign to the policymaking elite. The "mainstream" - whether it's the media, politicians or business people - is beginning to seem illegitimate to large numbers of people.”

It’s a common perception.

We have all come to see that the mainstream media is either guilty of inadequate reporting, leaving us all ignorant of huge events that are happening in our immediate neighbourhood, or that they are deliberately not informing us of uncomfortable truths that might harm their ideological world view and financial positions.

The protests in Greece have now been repeated in Spain, the disgruntled of Portugal find an echo in Ireland, but the only time we see any in-depth reporting of this is on Russia Today.

There is another thing that I’ve noticed – none of the main “left-wing” blogs seriously tackle the European Union.

Whether it’s Mandelson on a Russian oligarch’s yacht, migrant workers, directives that affect our Postal services, Cross Border Health Directive, European Arrest Warrant, European Investigation Order, the new Labour elite – the Marta Andreasen-sacking Kinnock for example – it’s all hypocritically brushed under the carpet.

When Spanish protesting youths were being clubbed by police thugs it would be assumed that “the left” over here would have been up in arms – but nothing, zilch, nada.       

Twitter and Facebook have not only left the dead tree press in their wake, the digital media is showing that the mainstream media and political party machines are guilty of propaganda by omission.

Well, we’re on to them; we don’t just see the code, we can read it and decipher it.

The truth is hard to hide now.