Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media Page #11

When Chomsky came around, he had with him

a file of all the coverage

in The New York Times, The Washington Post,

and other papers of East Timor,

and he would go to the meticulous degree

that if, for example, The London Times

had a piece on East Timor,

and then it appeared in The New York Times,

that if a paragraph was cut out,

he'd compare, and he'd say,

"Look - this key paragraph right near the end

which is what tells the whole story

was let out

of The New York Times' version

of the London Times' thing."

There was a story in The London

Times which was pretty accurate.

The New York Times revised it radically.

They didn't just leave a paragraph out.

They revised it,

and gave it a totally different cast.

It was then picked up by Newsweek,

giving it The New York Times' cast.

It ended up being a whitewash,

whereas the original was an atrocity story.

So, I said to Chomsky at the time,

"Well, it may be that you're misinterpreting

ignorance, haste, deadline pressure, etcetera,

for some kind of determined effort

to suppress an element of the story."

He said, "Well, if it happened once,

or twice, or three times

I might agree with you,

but if it happens a dozen times,

Mr Meyer,

I think there's something else at work".

It's not a matter of happening one time,

two, five, a hundred. It happened all the time.

I said, "Professor Chomsky, having been

in this business, it happens a dozen times.

These are very imperfect institutions".

When they did give coverage,

it was from the point of view of...

it was a whitewash of the United States.

Now, you know, that's not an error.

That's systematic, consistent behaviour,

in this case without even any exception.

This is a much more subtle process...

...than you get...

...in the kind of sledgehammer rhetoric

of the people that make an A to B equation

between what the government does,

what people think, and what newspapers say.

That...

That sometimes what The Times does

can make an enormous difference.

At other times, it has no influence whatsoever.

So...

one of the greatest tragedies of our age

is still happening in East Timor.

The Indonesians have killed

up to a third of the population.

They're in concentration camps.

They conduct large-scale military campaigns

against the people who are resisting,

campaigns with names like Operation

Eradicate,

or Operation Clean Sweep.

Timorese women are subjected

to a forced birth control programme,

in addition to bringing in a constant stream

of Indonesian settlers to take over the land.

Whenever people are brave enough

to take to the streets in demonstrations

or show the least sign of resistance,

they just massacre them.

It's sort of like Indonesia, if we allow them

to continue to stay in East Timor -

the international community -

they will simply digest East Timor

and turn it into...

they're trying to turn it into cash crop.

I mean, this is way beyond just demonstrating

this subservience of the media to power.

I mean, they have real complicity in genocide

in this case.

The reason that the atrocities can go on

is because nobody knows about them.

If anyone knew about them,

there'd be protests and pressure to stop them.

So therefore, by suppressing the facts,

the media are making a major contribution

to some of... probably the worst act of genocide

since the Holocaust.

You say that what the media do is to

ignore certain kinds of atrocities

that are committed by us and our friends,

and to play up enormously atrocities

that are committed by them and our enemies.

And you posit that

there's a test of integrity and moral honesty

which is to have

a kind of equality of treatment of corpses.

I mean, every dead person should be in

principle equal to every other dead person.

That's not what I say.

- I'm glad it's not, because it's not what you do.

Of course it's not what I do.

Nor would I say it. In fact, I say the opposite.

What I say is we should be

responsible for our own actions primarily.

Because your method is not only

to ignore the corpses created by them,

but also to ignore corpses

that are created by neither side,

that are irrelevant to your ideological agenda.

- That's totally untrue.

- Let me give you an example.

Um... one of your own causes that you take very

seriously is the cause of the Palestinians.

And a Palestinian corpse

weighs very heavily on your conscience,

and yet a Kurdish corpse does not.

That's not true at all. I've been involved

in Kurdish support groups for years.

That's... It's simply false.

Just ask the Kurdish...

Ask the people who are involved in...

You know, they come to me,

I sign their petitions, and so on and so forth.

If you look at the things we've written.

Let's take a look...

I'm not Amnesty International.

I can't do everything.

I'm a single human person.

But if you read... Take a look, say, at the book

that Edward Herman and I wrote on this topic.

In it we discuss three kinds of atrocities -

what we call benign bloodbaths,

which nobody cares about,

constructive bloodbaths,

which are the ones we like,

and nefarious bloodbaths,

which are the ones the bad guys do.

The principle that I think we ought to follow

is not the one that you stated.

You know, it's a very simple, ethical point.

You're responsible for

the predictable consequences of your actions.

You're not responsible for the predictable

consequences of somebody else's actions.

The most important thing for me and for you

is to think about

the consequences of your actions.

What can you affect?

These are the things to keep in mind.

These are not just academic exercises.

We're not analysing the media on Mars,

or in the 18th Century, or something like that.

We're dealing with real human beings who are

suffering, and dying, and being tortured,

and starving because of policies

that we are involved in.

We as citizens of democratic societies

are directly involved in and are responsible for,

and what the media are doing is ensuring

that we do not act on our responsibilities,

and that the interests of power are served,

not the needs of the suffering people,

and not even the needs of the American people

who would be horrified

if they realised

the blood that's dripping from their hands

because of the way they're allowing themselves

to be deluded and manipulated by the system.

What about the Third World?

Well, despite everything,

and it's pretty ugly and awful,

these struggles are not over.

The struggle for freedom and independence

never is completely over.

Their courage, in fact, is really remarkable.

Amazing.

I've personally had the privilege,

and it is a privilege, of witnessing it a few times,

in villages in Southeast Asia

and Central America,

and recently in the occupied West Bank,

and it is astonishing to see.

And it's always amazing -

at least to me it's amazing.

I can't understand it.

It's also very moving and inspiring.

In fact, it's kind of awe-inspiring.

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