Controlling News Media
June 26, 2008Matthew Brett points out that Canadian news media stories about Afghanistan are framed almost exclusively within the terms of reference of “controllers”, institutional primary definers identified, in this case, as NATO and the US. Here, he shows how an opinion column by Jeffrey Simpson of the Globe and Mail manifests characteristics of institutional control:
The Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Police (ANP) were, until today, reported as gaining in strength and numbers. Anyone following the war for any period of time would know this was nothing but propaganda from U.S, NATO and Canada. Remaining illusions can now be dispelled as the General Accountability Office of the U.S. Congress reports that, “despite a U.S. investment of more than $10-billion since 2002, only two of 105 ANA units are capable of operating effectively.” This quote from the Globe and Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson is a welcome report of the dire circumstances of Afghanistan, almost entirely void of propaganda. However, Simpson’s article cannot entirely escape from “the controllers.”
Pakistan produce young men (and women) “ready to blow themselves up,” writes Simpson, and “as long as the Pakistani government is powerless or unwilling to combat these institutions, a constant stream of recruits will cross the border into Kandahar.” True this may be, but he entirely neglects the reality that more civilians were killed by NATO-led air strikes with 2,000 lb bombs than young men and women “ready to blow themselves up.”
Simpson is not yet released by “the controllers.” He writes that there is no record of suicide bombing when the Soviets occupied Afghanistan. Simpson is well within the controller’s reach in explaining this exponential rise in these attacks. “Suicide attacks have arrived courtesy of imported but now ingrained al-Qaeda ideology, the example of Iraq and the teachings of various religious communities.” Suicide attacks have indeed arrived courtesy of an imported and ingrained ideology, but it’s not of al-Qaeda, it’s of the U.S.
The lack of substantive debate of any kind in Canada about our involvement in Afghanistan is stupefying.
I think he’s right on the money here (although I’ll have to read more than the excerpt once I get home from work). One thing that suprises (and disturbs me) about Canadian media coverage of Afghanistan: how rare it is to hear from ordinary Afghans. The one-way nature of information being disseminated is unbalanced to the point of uselessness.
(And re: that stuff at my pad–we’re cool. I get testy sometimes, and don’t do well tempering my heat in disagreements with people who are friends, which, perversely, makes me even more prickly and inarticluate than I would be in a more impersonal confrontational interaction). But thank you for acknowledging my feelings.
Yeah well I thought you were pretty articulate mattt. lol
I’m still thinkin’ about it. Yes, I meant to acknowledge your feelings, but I’d also like to do right by your thinking. I’d like to be able to chat a bit more about it at some point.