Corporate Media Puts Nicaragua in Its Crosshairs
Corporate Media Puts Nicaragua in Its Crosshairs
By Tortilla con Sal
Sunday, Jun 7, 2015
North American and European corporate media news outlets have failed for so long to give a true and fair view of foreign affairs, it is hard to remember if they ever did. The origins of that outcome may be a matter for argument, but the outcome itself is indisputable, more obviously in times of intense crisis, like the wars in Lebanon, Gaza, Libya, Syria or Ukraine. Less obvious is the steady, between-crisis, drip-by-drip psychological warfare against governments or political movements targeted by NATO country governments for resisting the strategic agenda of Western corporate elites and their local allies.
Examples of this kind of psychological warfare abound in the pages of flagship Western corporate media. One recent article in the UK Guardian targeting Nicaragua's education system offers a helpful concrete example of how this kind of anti-ALBA country propaganda tends to work while staying within the bounds of apparently progressive ideas and argument. Since inheriting in 2007 a semi-privatized education system impoverished by 16 years of neoliberal misrule and the preceding ten years of war, Nicaragua's Sandinista government has transformed education in Nicaragua.
But the counterfactual Guardian article argues the Nicaraguan government has practically abandoned a large number of it's school age population and lacks a serious commitment to improving the country's education system. The structure of the text is almost a template for this kind of false propaganda. Although dealing in this case with Nicaragua, the same propaganda recipe recurs repeatedly in similar articles attacking aspects of politics, society and environmental or economic policy in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
This particular propaganda recipe is as follows :
•select a target-country community suitable for the propaganda purpose
•adapt the language to the target audience core values (progressive, conservative, fascist, socialist, etc.)
•start by establishing credibility with an anecdote giving local colour
•introduce a quote early on to establish the main propaganda point
•label interviewees accordingly and, if necessary, vary the tags for the same person (e.g. first “feminist”, later “democracy activist” and so on)
•use old or otherwise compromised data to give spurious factual authority
•isolate the target government from the regional context
•consolidate the initial message with quotes of local anti-government opinion
•avoid or minimize alternative, contradictory views
•cite international institutions to suggest a broad objective panorama
•end by reinforcing the propaganda message
More:
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_70631.shtml
