News Commentary – October 26, 2010
Amidst mounting tension between Teheran and the West, Iran has reportedly stopped fully refuelling British passenger jets making regular runs to Iran.
This has forced British Midlands International, which operates daily flights to Teheran to make refuelling stops on its return flight to the U.K.
However, the Western media doesn’t quite put it that way. In fact there is an element of downright duplicity in the Washington Post’s coverage.
Reporting on the snag in refuelling, Monday’s Washington Post placed the story under the headline: “Iran stops fully refuelling British planes in retaliation against oil agreement”.
As if Iran were refusing to refuel the British jets because it had been slighted by something as innocuous as an “oil agreement”.
Anyone looking a little closer however, would have found that Iran was simply responding in kind after its planes had been
refused fuel at European airports.
The writer of Monday’s Washington Post article, Thomas Erdbrink had in fact previously reported this under the headline
‘U.S. deal with European oil firms hobbles Iran Air’.
So he knew full well that the “oil deal” wasn’t quite as innocuous as it sounds.
Writing in the earlier Washington Post report, Erdbrink had noted:
“A recent agreement between four of Europe's largest oil companies and the United States aimed at further isolating Iran is already having an impact, with Iran Air, the Islamic republic's national carrier, unable to refuel its planes in most of Europe.”
So the innocent sounding “oil agreement” had in fact been “aimed at further isolating Iran”, rendering Iran Air, “unable to refuel its planes in most of Europe”.
We shouldn’t be surprised though. After all in the current face-off between Iran and the West the corporate media has a vital role to play: disingenuously dishing-up the dirt on Iran.
Just as it once did with Iraq and its Weapons of Mass Destruction – which paved the way for the invasion of Iraq but which were subsequently proved to exist only in the minds of Western journalists – the same media is now doing its best to portray Iran as ‘bad’, maybe even a threat.
Little wonder therefore that those working for the Western corporate media have been referred to “presstitutes” and “intellectual whores”. In effect these writers have been paid to misinform to distract and effectively to deceive their readers.
It is truly a lowly form of prostitution in that these writers are employed to foment wars and conflict under the guise of 'journalism'.
Last updated 28/10/2010
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