DE WERKELIJKHEID EN HAAR VIJANDEN
Een artikel in ‘De Correspondent’ van gisteren zette mij aan
het denken. https://decorrespondent.nl/6794/met-een-groep-mboers-ging-ik-in-gesprek-over-de-media-mevrouw-hoe-weet-ik-dat-u-niet-liegt/187398942764-fb4526b3
Het
artikel had betrekking op een discussieronde met een groep Mbo’ers gevoerd door Vera Mulder een journaliste van deze
digitale krant. Het waren leerlingen van mbo-niveau drie en vier Handel en
Ondernemerschap in de leeftijd van 17 tot en met 27.
(DWS)
Deze jongelui waren het over één ding volkomen eens: ‘journalisten zijn niet te vertrouwen’.
Ze zouden baat hebben bij het verspreiden van nepinformatie. Hun visie wordt gesteund door een
recent onderzoek van het Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau waaruit blijkt dat de
groep jongeren (18-34 jaar) een afnemend vertrouwen heeft in wat de TV en de krant
ons aanbiedt. 
Alle MBO leerlingen voelden zich ondergewaardeerd en onvoldoende gerespecteerd, hetgeen ze toeschreven aan foutieve media voorlichting. Over het MBO laat men zich heel negatief uit en dat steekt deze jonge mensen.
(DWS) Dat er verschil zou bestaan tussen ‘studenten met een migratie achtergrond’ en ‘witte studenten was niet verbazingwekkend.
De ‘migratie jongeren’ vonden dat de media een discriminerend beeld van hen schetste. Zij zagen op Arabische zenders heel andere verhalen over Palestina, over Erdogan, over de banden tussen het Midden-Oosten en het Westen.
De ‘witte jongeren’ vonden dat de media vooral sensatiebelust waren. Alle media zuigen dingen uit hun duim zodat zo veel mogelijk mensen naar hun programma kijken of hun krant kopen.
Toen de studenten vragen mochten stellen kwam er
het volgende uit:
‘Mevrouw,
hoe weet ik dat u niet liegt?’
‘Mevrouw
zegt uw baas weleens dat u dingen moet verzinnen voor clicks?’
‘Mevrouw,
waarom is een witte Guy die mensen doodschiet volgens de media altijd
‘verward’, maar een Moslim die hetzelfde doet een terrorist?’
En,
favoriet onder veel studenten: Mevrouw, waarom liegen Nederlandse media zo over
Israël en Palestina?
De ondertiteling van dit blog luidt: “Een zoektocht naar de feiten achter de meningen”. Worden die
feiten ook gevonden? Feiten in de zin van wiskundige feiten zullen in de
maatschappelijke wereld nooit gevonden kunnen worden. Ons mengsel van ‘nature
en nurture’ staat die objectiviteit in de weg.
(DWS)
De mainstream media zijn voor hun inhoud niet uitsluitend afhankelijk
van hun eigen journalistieke kader maar ook van persdiensten, die door meerdere
kranten samen of door een samenwerkingsverband worden geproduceerd. Dat beïnvloedt
de onafhankelijkheid van de berichtgeving. Hun bureaucratische organisaties
moeten veel geld genereren om in leven te blijven met name in deze tijd van de enorme
concurrentie op het internet.
In de Verenigde Staten bestaan enorme persconglomeraten die
niet in conflict willen komen met de overheid of hun eventuele sponsoren. Na
9/11 en de opmaat naar de Irak oorlog werd elke vorm van kritiek op de regering
als onpatriottisch gezien. Het feit dat vele kranten in Joodse handen zijn
helpt daar ook niet bij. Een aantal journalisten hebben deze krantenvestingen
verlaten en zijn overgegaan op de digitale berichtgeving. De ‘zoetgevooisde’
verslaggevers zoals Thomas Friedman van
de New York Times zijn er nog.
Ik beoefen al een aantal jaren deze vorm van nieuwsgaring en
dan leer je vaak door informatie van anderen en vergelijkenderwijs het kaf van
het koren te scheiden. Een aantal van hen zal ik toevoegen aan mijn Blogrubriek
‘Favoriete Weblogs, -Sites’.
In het Nederlandse taalgebied is‘ De Correspondent’ een goede digitale krant https://decorrespondent.nl/ en het Weblog van Stan van Houcke http://stanvanhoucke.net/ is zeer lezenswaard. Stan van Houcke moet familie van Vestdijk zijn, ook hij ‘schrijft sneller dan God kan lezen’. Zijn kritieken op de steunpilaren van de mainstreamjournalistiek zijn niet mals. Bij onze zuiderburen heeft de journalist Willem Van Damme https://willyvandamme.wordpress.com/ een kritische Website. Een heel interessante digitale krant is DeWereldMorgen.be http://www.dewereldmorgen.be/info/over-dewereldmorgenbe-faq. Hun verslaglegging over het Midden-Oosten lees ik graag.
(DWS)
In het Nederlandse taalgebied is‘ De Correspondent’ een goede digitale krant https://decorrespondent.nl/ en het Weblog van Stan van Houcke http://stanvanhoucke.net/ is zeer lezenswaard. Stan van Houcke moet familie van Vestdijk zijn, ook hij ‘schrijft sneller dan God kan lezen’. Zijn kritieken op de steunpilaren van de mainstreamjournalistiek zijn niet mals. Bij onze zuiderburen heeft de journalist Willem Van Damme https://willyvandamme.wordpress.com/ een kritische Website. Een heel interessante digitale krant is DeWereldMorgen.be http://www.dewereldmorgen.be/info/over-dewereldmorgenbe-faq. Hun verslaglegging over het Midden-Oosten lees ik graag.
Een man in de VS met een geweldig Blog, http://www.tothepointanalyses.com/
die elke week een column levert is die van
Lawrence Davidson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Davidson
De bovenstaande titel ‘De
Werkelijkheid? en zijn Vijanden’ van mijn artikel in het Blog is mede geïnspireerd
door zijn column van deze week.
Reality and its Enemies
An Analysis (28 May 2017) by Lawrence Davidson
Part I – Reality
(DWS)
There is an ongoing reality that is destroying hundreds of thousands of lives in the Middle East. And though most Americans are ignorant of the fact, and many of those who should be in the know would deny it, the suffering flows directly from decisions taken by Washington over the last 27 years.
Some of the facts of the matter have just been presented by the first Global Conflict Medicine Congress held at the American University of Beirut (AUB) earlier this month (11-14 May 2017). It has drawn attention to two dire consequences of the war policies Americans have carried on in the region: cancer-causing munition material and drug-resistant bacteria.
— Cancer-causing munition
material: Materials such as tungsten and mercury are found in the casing of
penetrating bombs used in the first and second Gulf wars. These have had
long-term effects on survivors, especially those who have been wounded by these
munitions. Iraqi-trained and Harvard-educated Dr. Omar Dewachi, a medical
anthropologist at AUB fears that “the base line of cancers [appearing in those
exposed to these materials] has become very aggressive. … When a young woman of
30, with no family history of cancer, has two different primary cancers – in
the breast and in the oesophagus – you have to ask what is happening.” To
this can be added that doctors are now “overwhelmed by the sheer number of
[war] wounded patients in the Middle East.”
— Drug-resistant bacteria:
According to Glasgow-trained Professor Ghassan Abu-Sittah, head of plastic and
reconstructive surgery at AUB Medical Center, drug resistance was not a problem
during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988. However, after the fiasco of Iraq’s
invasion of Kuwait, things began to change.
(DWS)
In the period after 1990, Iraq suffered under a vicious sanctions regime imposed by the United Nations at U.S. insistence. During the next 12 years “Iraqis were allowed to use only three antibiotics” and bacterial resistance quickly evolved. Those resistant bacteria spread throughout the region, particularly after the American invasion of the country in 2003. Today, according to a Medecins Sans Frontieres analysis, “multidrug resistant [MDR] bacteria now accounts for most war wound infections across the Middle East, yet most medical facilities in the region do not even have the laboratory capacity to diagnose MDR, leading to significant delays and clinical mismanagement of festering wounds.”
In the period after 1990, Iraq suffered under a vicious sanctions regime imposed by the United Nations at U.S. insistence. During the next 12 years “Iraqis were allowed to use only three antibiotics” and bacterial resistance quickly evolved. Those resistant bacteria spread throughout the region, particularly after the American invasion of the country in 2003. Today, according to a Medecins Sans Frontieres analysis, “multidrug resistant [MDR] bacteria now accounts for most war wound infections across the Middle East, yet most medical facilities in the region do not even have the laboratory capacity to diagnose MDR, leading to significant delays and clinical mismanagement of festering wounds.”
Insofar as these
developments go, it is not that there aren’t contributing factors stemming from
local causes such as factual fighting. However, the major triggers for these
horrors were set in motion in Washington. As far as I know, no American holding
a senior official post has ever accepted any responsibility for this ongoing
suffering.
Part II – Hiding Reality
As the cancers and untreatable infections grow in number in the Middle East, there is here in the United States a distressing effort to rehabilitate George W. Bush – the American president whose decisions and policies contributed mightily to this ongoing disaster.
As the cancers and untreatable infections grow in number in the Middle East, there is here in the United States a distressing effort to rehabilitate George W. Bush – the American president whose decisions and policies contributed mightily to this ongoing disaster.
(DWS)
It is this Bush who launched the unjustified 2003 invasion of Iraq and thereby – to use the words of the Arab League – “opened the gates of hell.
His rehabilitation effort began in earnest in April 2013, and coincided with the opening of his presidential library. In an interview given at that time, Bush set the stage for his second coming with an act of self-exoneration. He said he remained “comfortable with the decision making process” that led to the invasion of Iraq – the one that saw him fudging the intelligence when it did not tell him what he wanted to hear – and so also “comfortable” with the ultimate determination to launch the invasion. “There’s no need to defend myself. I did what I did and ultimately history will judge.”
The frivolous assertion that
“history will judge” is often used by people of suspect character. “History”
stands for a vague future time. Its alleged inevitable coming allows the
protagonist to fantasize about achieving personal glory unchallenged by
present, usually significant, ethical concerns.
Those seeking George W. Bush’s rehabilitation now like to contrast him to Donald Trump. One imagines they thereby hope to present him as a “moderate” Republican. They claim that Bush was and is really a very smart and analytical fellow rather than the simpleton most of us suspect him to be. In other words, despite launching an unnecessary and subsequently catastrophic war, he was never as ignorant and dangerous as Trump. He and his supporters also depict him as a great defender of a free press, again in contrast to Donald Trump. However, when he was president, Bush described the media as an aider and abettor of the nation’s enemies. This certainly can be read as a position that parallels Trump’s description of the media as the “enemy of the American people.”
But all of this is part of a
public relations campaign and speaks to the power of reputation remodeling –
the creation of a facade that hides reality. In order to do this you have to
“control the evidence” – in this case by ignoring it. In this endeavor George
W. Bush and his boosters have the cooperation of much of the mainstream media.
No sweat here: the press has done this before. Except for the odd editorial the
mainstream media also contributed to Richard Nixon’s rehabilitation back in the
mid 1980s. These sorts of sleights-of-hand are only possible against the
background of pervasive public ignorance.
Part III – Closed Information Environments
Local happenings are open to relatively close investigation. We usually have a more or less accurate understanding of the local context in which events play out, and this allows for the possibility of making a critical judgment. As we move further away, both in space and time, information becomes less reliable, if for no other reason than it comes to us through the auspices of others who may or may not know what they are talking about.
As a society, we have little or no knowledge of the context for foreign events, and thus it is easy for those reporting on them to apply filters according to any number of criteria. What we are left with is news that is customized – stories designed to fit preexisting political or ideological biases. In this way millions upon millions of minds are restricted to closed information environments on subjects which often touch on, among other important topics, war and its consequences.
Local happenings are open to relatively close investigation. We usually have a more or less accurate understanding of the local context in which events play out, and this allows for the possibility of making a critical judgment. As we move further away, both in space and time, information becomes less reliable, if for no other reason than it comes to us through the auspices of others who may or may not know what they are talking about.
As a society, we have little or no knowledge of the context for foreign events, and thus it is easy for those reporting on them to apply filters according to any number of criteria. What we are left with is news that is customized – stories designed to fit preexisting political or ideological biases. In this way millions upon millions of minds are restricted to closed information environments on subjects which often touch on, among other important topics, war and its consequences.
So what is likely to be more
influential with the locally oriented American public: George W. Bush’s
rehabilitated image reported on repeatedly in the nation’s mainstream media, or
the foreign-based, horror-strewn consequences of his deeds reported upon
infrequently?
This dilemma is not uniquely
American, nor is it original to our time. However, its dangerous consequences
are a very good argument against the ubiquitous ignorance that allows political
criminals to be rehabilitated even as their crimes condemn others to continuing
suffering. If reputation remodelers can do this for George W. Bush, then there
is little doubt that someday it will be done for Donald Trump. Life, so full of
suffering, is also full of such absurdities.
