History has seen the rise of various faiths from Judaism to Christianity and Islam and along with each has come an attendant clergy. Today though something new is beginning to appear: it is becoming increasingly evident that a New World Order is emerging together with a new body of faith, the media.
Accountable to no one but its owners the modern media has a power almost without precedent in this world. And like the religions of old it too has its own high priests, the media’s talking heads and commentators, who shape public opinion and influence the way we view events. Thus through subtle persuasion it can change the way we look at things and, given time, even make us accept what once would have been unacceptable. So the media can be all things to all men: and if we don’t like what one newspaper says we can just buy another; or if we don’t agree with one talking head we can simply switch channels and listen to someone else.
And therein lays its power: for behind this façade of apparent diversity the media tends to follow a general trend. Certain issues are highlighted and given exhaustive coverage while others are minimised or ignored altogether. Or sometimes stories are reported but with critical factors omitted: the end result being accepted almost without question by a public that is gradually losing the ability to think for itself. For the very diversity of media outlets creates an illusion of choice and that allows the media to shape the perceptions of an unwitting public.
In Huxley’s Brave New World a drug was used to induce pleasure and stifle dissent. Today the mainstream media performs exactly the same function. It is indeed a true opiate of the masses. It entertains and informs, and in the process helps suppress dissension, but more effectively than any repressive law because it’s far less obvious. There are no suppressive clampdowns or authoritarian decrees, just entertainment and a daily diet of “news” and “commentary.” And like the drip, drip, drip of dripping tap it gradually and almost imperceptibly colours our view of reality.
A recent example of this came in the so-called Independent.
Regular readers may recall that we've previously featured “Tears of the Mighty” by Jared Israel. The article proved quite clearly that the famous photo of an emaciated figure standing behind barbed wire in an alleged Serbian “concentration camp” was in fact a set up. The journalist behind the story, Penny Marshall, had cynically used a visit to the Trnopolje refugee centre to turn the simple refugee camp into a “death camp.” Readers might also recall that the gaunt figure of Fikret Allich, standing behind the barbed wire, was in fact the victim of childhood Tuberculosis – not the inmate of a concentration camp. Whilst Penny Marshall’s camera crew had set up their equipment inside a fenced off storage area in the refugee centre, filming through the barbed wire that enclosed them; consequently making Fikret Allich look as if he was standing behind barbed wire and thus completing the illusion of a captive in a concentration camp.
However the Western public was not to know any of this: and suitably prepared allowed America and Britain to bomb and blitz the Balkans.
Well there has been a sequel to that story. Fikret Allich was recently tracked down by the Independent and, alongside an account by Penny Marshall of how she had first noticed his emaciated figure, was a recent photo of the man himself. And as with the first photo it too had been carefully staged. Allich was pictured with his young wife and child, but just to make sure that the illusion remained intact the photographer had Allich crouch behind his standing toddler, which ensured that Allich’s skeletal torso remained concealed.
Had it not been so many might have begun to question stories about Serbian concentration camps, but it wasn’t. Instead the Independent used this opportunity to reiterate old lies and invest them with a new plausibility and this is how much of our so-called “free press” now operates: it manufactures news and then uses it to build perspectives and opinions useful to a ruling elite.
Even those bodies that claim to be public corporations are in fact accountable to no one but big money.
A good example of this being the BBC: which offers news coverage that is essentially no different from its commercial rivals. So perhaps it is no coincidence that BBC Chairman Greg Dyke, along with Peter Mandelson, is said to be a regular diner with the heads of the Rothschild banking dynasty.
See Jared Israel's 'Tears of the Mighty':
www.emperors-clothes.com/news/film.htm
Fikret Allich pictured at the refugee centre which the media was later to portray as a 'concentration camp'
Last updated 31/12/2002
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