-Caveat Lector- "The News That Didn't Make the News", Original Sources, Sep 01 Sorting Out Facts From a Barrage of Government Distortion and Half-truths By: Mary Mostert ---------------------------------------------- Yesterday I received an e-mail entitled "Untold Stories of U.S./NATO's War and U.S. Media Complacency" by Peter Phillips, director of "Project Censored" at Sonoma State University in California, which said in part: "The mainstream media in the United States were aware that the Pentagon and NATO were releasing biased and false information regarding the war in Kosovo yet they continued to pass on the information to the American public as if it were gospel," the report began. " '...the media were once more asked to sort out a few kernels of facts from a barrage of distortions and half-truths from government information manipulators...baloney-ladened military briefings in Brussels...cryptic shows at the Pentagon,' reports Senior correspondent for Newsday's Washington Bureau, Patrick Sloyan. Writing in June's American Journalism Review, Sloyan went on to describe how the elite of U.S. media complained to President Clinton, but failed to use their power to challenge the government. "That the U.S. Military and NATO kept the American public propagandized and ignorant about the our most recent war is a well known fact among mainstream correspondents. Foremost in the undercovered or ignored categories, but widely covered in Europe, were: extensive civilian deaths (2,000+); massive damage to non-military civilian facilities in Serbia; the use of illegal cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions; Devastating environmental pollution was created by the bombing and burning of refineries and chemical plants. "The deliberate destruction of public utilities left many Serbians without power, water and heating. Yet the Pentagon persisted in saying they were attacking only legitimate military targets. How could all of this massive civilian destruction just be collateral damage? Why was a public television station considered a legitimate military target? "According to the London Daily Telegraph of July 22, 1999, 'NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia had almost no military effect on the regime of President Milosevic.'" It did, however, bring diplomatic ties among NATO partners to the near breaking point." Of course, if you had been reading my columns during the past seven months you WOULD have read all those stories while they were actually news. So, " If news suppression were common in the United States, one might expect that efforts to identify and publicize the most important overlooked stories would receive scant attention from major news outlets." Will this report and recently published book, "Censored 1999: The News That Didn't Make the News" receive any publicity from the media it scolds? Of course not. The story of WHY the media is doing such a poor job, although often a topic of conversation on talk shows and among reporters, will not be the subject of a serious analysis at the TV networks or the large corporate entities which have a big investment in trying to corner the "news" markets. Phillips observed: "A review of the top 25 censored stories of last year suggests that foreign affairs and corporate misdeeds were the most consistent areas of neglect. In part, this may be explained by corporate takeovers of the three main television networks by outside industries beginning in the 1980s, with resultant newsroom layoffs, closing of foreign news bureaus and potential conflicts of interest." Actually, I have a different explanation. I think the problem is more basic. It appears to me that the majority of those reporting and writing "news" simply do not understand what news is and how to find it. As I pointed out during the bombing, some of the top "reporters" in the industry were assigned to NATO headquarters in Brussels to "report" the story of NATO bombing Yugoslavia by waiting for Jamie Shea's daily press conference and press releases. He was obviously simply pulling figures out the air at times and regurgitating propaganda from the KLA about what was supposedly happening to the Yugoslav army - destruction of its airforce, 10,000 killed, most of his tanks destroyed, etc. At one point he said to the gathered top reporters that Albanian women in refugee camps had "given birth to 100,000 babies" - obviously the fault of the indicted "war criminal" in Belgrade - Slobadan Milosevic. The figures was reported worldwide without question - and not a soul (except me) questioned how 200,000-300,000 women who fled Kosovo could have possibly given birth to 100,000 babies in a little more than 2 months. Shea and the White House talked on CNN daily about "100,000" missing and killed "Albanians" and "mass graves" containing "hundreds" of tortured and murdered Albanians. Yet, there were almost NO reporters on the ground in Yugoslavia and the ones that WERE there were reporting no signs of thousands of body bags with dead Yugoslav soldiers returning from the front in Kosovo. Where did those figures Jamie Shea and White House were reporting come from? Where are the bodies? They haven't been found. The KLA now seems ready to start shooting KFOR troops in their quest of Greater Albania and seizure of lands, factories and buildings owned by Serbs and other minorities in Kosovo. Sitting in my home California I seemed usually to have a better source of information than the reporters in Yugoslav hotels, watching Serbia TV. I was getting hundreds of e-mail from people all over Yugoslavia, who were reporting to me what they were personally experiencing in the bombing raids, plus e-mail forwarded to me from all over the world from people getting e-mail from relatives in Belgrade, Pristina, Novi Sad, etc. I received e-mail from Belgrade telling me about the F-117 that was shot down BEFORE it was announced on US television. Then I watched CNN as it re-played the video of the downed stealth bomber on Serbia TV, while Washington was still denying NATO had lost a plane. I might add that I was also getting reports of other downed NATO spy planes and piloted planes - which I never saw videos of - especially after NATO bombed the SerbTV station. NATO never admitted losing those planes, and I didn't report them, because I couldn't verify the stories, but long before the bombing stopped I fully realized what Phillips is saying. The news, the real news, of the NATO bombing was never actually reported by the networks OR by news staffs of bureaus and major newspapers. While reduced staffs, as Phillips suggests, may have contributed to the dearth of reporting, I believe the biggest problem involved bias and professional arrogance. The Serb side of this argument simply was never reported and the White House and London's official government line was reported as "news" - while anything that contradicted that line was dubbed "propaganda." When ordinary people in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Pristina began sending e-mail which described what they were experiencing as NATO bombed their cities, their reports rang true. The press releases from the White House and NATO headquarters didn't. The eloquence of ordinary people describing what had happened when NATO bombed the Freedom bridge over the Danube River at Novi Sad, which they loved dearly, far surpassed anything written by a reporter in Brussels who Jamie Shea describing NATO's "success" in destroying it. (see http://www.suc.org/exhibitions/destruction/17.html) And that, folks, was why the decision was made to bomb the Serb TV station, and the power plants and why pressure was put on the European servers to stop providing Internet access by which those e-mails to me and thousands of others around the world were being sent. The Yugoslav bombing was the world's first e-mail reported war. All the billions spent by a few billionaires like Ted Turner did not succeed in keeping the truth from leaking out about Kosovo. Quite a bit of information got out - and is still getting out. It just was never reported on network news. In fact, in the last six months a worldwide network has developed around my daily column, and other Internet sites, which is awesome. Finding that I value their input, scores of people send me infomation they have uncovered or someone in their nation has reported, sometimes on a daily basis. Often all the bits and pieces enable me to find answers to international puzzles. In spite of the billions of dollars spent bombing Yugoslavia and the billions of dollars spent to corner the media sources, destroy TV transmitters and stations, power stations, schools and hospitals, and the indicting Milosevic as a war criminal, the Serb side of story is beginning to be told anyway. The "legacy" that Clinton and Blair dreamed of is probably going to be very different than that they thought they could create with a major propaganda effort - because there are thousands of people telling a story that they personally experienced, bomb by bomb, fact by fact, via networked personal computers And, facts, told on a first person basis by many people, sent to many other people, will eventually overwhelm the mass of misinformation and outright lies told by Jamie Shea and the Clinton White House. Facts are stubborn things and they already are beginning to overtake the lies. The real war has not begun yet in the Balkans. To comment: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact Peter Phillips Ph.D., Sociology Department/Project Censored Sonoma State University 1801 East Cotati Ave. Rohnert Park, CA 94928 ======================================================================= " It all comes out in the wash." - Wun Hung Lo [J2] =================================================== DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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