22 December 2010 By Reason Wafawarova IN his defence piece "Why shoot the Messenger?"
recently published by The Australian, WikiLeaks
founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange quoted a
young Rupert Murdoch writing in 1958 and saying: "In
the race between secrecy and truth, it seems
inevitable that truth will always win." Assange defended his "scientific journalism" as
practised by his four-year-old website and he argues
in the piece that his style of journalism enables
readers to make independent judgments both about the
journalist and also about the content of the published
material. Assange says he is inspired most by his childhood
background when he grew up in the "dark days of
corruption" in the State of Queensland, Australia. When a society is riddled with corruption there is
always this irresistible urge to expose the
perpetrators and whistle-blowing has always been known
to be the best way of exposing the powerful and
corrupt elites. While it is not a secret to the average Zimbabwean
that MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai is a "flawed
figure", chinhu chakadhanganyika in Shona, the
confirmation of this characterisation by the very
person who spent half a decade in Zimbabwe publicly
propping up and magnifying the image of Tsvangirai was
most revealing. Christopher Dell made truth prevail
over secrecy — here the secrecy being not the flawed
character of Tsvangirai, but the truthful attitude of
American elites towards Africa's most prominent puppet
politician. It was also very informative for Zimbabweans to
learn that Christopher Dell called President Mugabe "a
dictator" in public and "a brilliant tactician" in
private, or at his honest best. WikiLeaks brought out hard truths about the Iraq
and Afghan wars, mainly the fact that these are not
just wars but unjust wars based on falsehoods and
deliberately told lies meant to mislead the Western
public into committing both their lives and resources
to a cause that is no less than con. Also revealed are secrets on corporate corruption,
Hillary Clinton's instruction that US diplomats were
to steal information and personal details from UN
officials, the call for the US invasion of Iran by
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah and that Britain's Iraq
war inquiry was no more than a fixed act designed to
protect "US interests". These revelations have been described as "risking
people's lives", "threatening national security" and
"endangering troops" and the US has shown ruthless
determination to eliminate both the website WikiLeaks
and its members, particularly its founder member,
Julian Assange. Credit card corporations Visa and MasterCard were
both bullied and arm-twisted into pulling the pin on
WikiLeaks and the US government made this a very
public gesture. PayPal was instructed to do the same
and Amazon and many other website host companies were
also ordered to terminate relationships with WikiLeaks.
The instruction from the White House has been to "knive
Julian Assange's baby". One would think this was a nasty piece of act from
a notorious totalitarian state run by a tyrant
irreversibly addicted to dynastical power, not from
the self-proclaimed home of freedom and democratic
values — the United States of America. Barrack Obama's administration has told the world
that Julian Assange needs to be "taken out" and US
maverick Sarah Palin has said Assange must be "hunted
down like Osama bin Laden". An advisor to the Canadian Prime Minister publicly
called for the assassination of Assange and threats
have been extended to the family of Julian Assange,
including to his 20-year-old son, who has been
threatened with kidnapping and harm so his father can
be silenced. It is very hard to imagine this repressive
behaviour is emanating from a Western community, and
it is even harder to imagine that Barrack Obama has
something to do with it, and that the targeted victim
of this most uncivilised brutality is an Australian, a
Westerner and a citizen of a country that prides
itself as a leading democracy. Such persecution of journalists is often reported
from countries accused of totalitarianism and
despotism and the persecuted journalists from these
countries often receive numerous awards from the West
for bravery and courageous journalism. One wonders if any such award will come from the
US' many foundations that often claim to champion the
cause for democracy and accountability. Julian Assange's award comes from the people, the
very people who for years have been cheated, misled
and conned by successive US governments, and that
award has already been given. The persecution of Julian Assange and his
subsequent arrest on what appears to be contrived
charges for sexual crimes allegedly committed in
Sweden are all a pathetic sign of US hypocrisy and
many people are clearly appalled. The US is basically charging that WikiLeaks and
other media publishing these secret US diplomatic
cables have all become too independent and too
powerful for the public good and this charge is not
new at all — it is not the first and will not be the
last. Defending the media against a similar charge,
Anthony Lewis of the New York Times once wrote: "The
Press is protected (by the First Amendment) not for
its own sake but to enable a free political system to
operate. In the end, the concern is not for the
reporter or the editor but for the citizen-critic of
government." In his argument, Lewis made it clear that when we
speak about freedom of the Press, what is at stake "is
the freedom to perform a function on behalf of the
polity". He cited Supreme Court judge Powell, who observed:
"no individual can obtain for himself the information
needed for the intelligent discharge of his political
responsibilities . . . By enabling the public to
assert meaningful control over the political process,
the Press performs a crucial function in effecting the
societal purpose of the First Amendment". Judge Gurfein ruled in support of the New York
Times' right to publish the Pentagon Papers after the
US government had failed to show any threat of a
breach of security but only the possibility of
embarrassment. Said Judge Gurfein: "A cantankerous Press, an
obstinate Press, a ubiquitous Press must be suffered
by those in authority in order to preserve the even
greater values of freedom of expression and the right
of the people to know." In the book "Manufacturing Consent", Edward S.
Herman and Noam Chomsky co-wrote: "We do not accept
the view that freedom of expression must be defended
in instrumental terms, by virtue of its contribution
to some higher good; rather, it is a value in itself." The self-image of Western media and the reality in
the Western political culture is today a matter of no
mean concern. The contrast to the view that the media are
cantankerous, obstinate and ubiquitous in their search
for truth and their independence of authority and
Herman and Chomsky looked at the propaganda model that
sees the media as serving a "societal purpose". This societal purpose is not that of enabling the
public to assert meaningful control over the political
process by providing them with the information needed
for the intelligent discharge of political
responsibilities, something the leaked US diplomatic
cables certainly do. It is rather a contrived societal
purpose that serves elitist aspirations and goals. Zimbabweans, for example, can exercise full
political responsibility in the coming election as
they are now very clear of the relationship between
the ever-meddling US and the puppet MDC-T party, as
captained by its "flawed figure" leader, Tsvangirai,
thanks to the leaked cables. The propaganda model suggests that the societal
purpose of the media is to inculcate and defend the
economic, social, and political agenda of privileged
groups that dominate the domestic society and the
state. The US and its Western allies are now too used to
the media that serve the purpose of defending elitist
interests and that is done in so many ways. There is
the infamous selection of topics, the elitist
distribution of concerns, the disgusting framing of
issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone,
as well as the confining of debate to acceptable
premises and bounds. In the book "Manufacturing Consent" Herman and
Chomsky sought to show that the Western propaganda
model's expectations are often realised, even
surpassed, and this is why Western governments preach
that their media are free to express themselves, but
not when they do what WikiLeaks just did. Julian
Assange's case falls out of these expectations and in
this regard his media outlet is an act of "terrorism"
and this is why the man is being hunted down. Chief Justice Hughes cited "the primary need of a
vigilant and courageous Press" in order for democratic
processes to function in a meaningful way and that is
fairly straightforward and expected. However, the
evidence reviewed by Herman and Chomsky indicated that
this need is not met or even "weakly approximated" in
real practice. Some have argued that today's media, particularly
those in the West, are more independent than the media
in past years. Lewis asserted that the past
generations taught the modern media to exercise "the
power to root about in our national life, exposing
what they deem right for exposure", without regard to
external pressures or the dictates of authority.
Assange will disagree today. In the 1970s and the 1980s, the reporting on the
Tet offensive was taken as a classical example of how
the media had gone too far in their exuberant
independence and challenge to authority, so far that
they had to be curbed if democracy were to survive. But even these cases demonstrated the subordination
of the media to the requirements of the state
propaganda system. At the peak of this alleged media
independence, and as the Vietnam War entered its final
period, and as the media were threatening Richard
Nixon's presidency, the subordination to these demands
never flagged. This was illustrated by the media coverage of the
Paris peace treaty of 1973, one of the most flagrant
examples of media misrepresentation based on an
uncritical reiteration of official claims and
adherence to the political agenda of the state — only
comparable to the media misrepresentations that hit
Nicaragua in the eighties when the US was propping the
Contras against the democratically elected and popular
Sandinista government led by Daniel Ortega, or perhaps
the onslaught on Zimbabwe after the country embarked
on a popular land reform programme that displaced
white commercial farmers. The Watergate affair is to critics of the media an
illustration of the media's irresponsible excesses and
the word "irresponsible" has been used by the
Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, in
describing Julian Assange. To those who defend the media Watergate represents
media independence and commitment to the values of
professional journalism. So we have two sides of the
story here. The major scandal of Watergate as portrayed by the
mainstream media was that the Nixon government sent a
bunch of petty criminals to break into the Democratic
Party Headquarters for obscure reasons. The only reason Nixon's actions were scandalous was
that he carried his mischief against an organisation
that represented powerful domestic interests in the
United States — the interests of the powerful from the
business community. At the time Nixon got involved in the Watergate
scandal, the Socialist Workers Party, a legally
registered political party, which represented no
powerful interests, had several break-ins and
disruptions from the FBI. This was not a scandal at all, and the disruptions
and break ins kept going on for a decade — a violation
of democratic principles far more serious and
extensive than any of the charges brought up during
the Watergate hearings. The actions of the FBI were only part of a
well-calculated government plan extending over many
administrations to deter independent political action,
stir up violence in the ghettos, and undermine the
popular movements that were beginning to engage
sectors of the generally marginalised public in
decision making. Despite being brought up in court, the actions of
the FBI did not attract much media attention and that
is why the police assassination of a Black Panther
organiser in Chicago was not a scandal at all. The genocide carried out by the US in Cambodia only
entered the Watergate marginally, not because this
gruesome war crime killed hundreds of thousands of
Cambodians, but precisely because Congress was not
properly notified, so much that its privileges were
infringed. When the Western media criticises President Mugabe
for calling for an election, the crime in question is
not the act of calling for an election, but the fact
that such an election is called for when Morgan
Tsvangirai's party is in disarray and therefore when
Tsvangirai is not ready. It is not a scandal when Tsvangirai discussed
illegal ways of removing a democratically elected
government with US diplomats, but it is a scandal when
Mugabe announces that after the lifespan of the
Zanu-PF-MDC inclusive Government, there will be
elections. This is the propaganda model that manipulates the
media and yet we stand lectured that there exists in
the West something called Press freedom. Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome.
It is homeland or death! Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can
be contacted on
wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@rwafawa rova. com
or visit
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