Friday 17 December 2010

Films, Music, Education, Food. Not war

http://culturesofresistance.org/

"Cultures of Resistance (CoR) is an activist network that encompasses a family of initiatives. These include an outreach web site, a feature documentary, a media production company, and a private foundation." I saw footage they supplied in John Pilger's film The war you don't see, broadcast on ITV earlier this week.

Pilger's film showed how media organisatios are at best complicit with war propaganda, and at best taken in by it. One point repeatedly made was that if a politician says something that is not true, and a media organisation reports what s/he said, the media organisation is being truthful, whilst managing to convey an untruth. The film featured several journalists expressing their regret that they'd been taken in and had passed on propaganda (lies) as news/truth.

Getting at the truth of war is hard. Journalists that report what the war machine wants them to report are given protection ("embedding") and access to sources. Journalists who try to live up to their high calling of objectivity and impartiality seem to be fewer. The film featured a memorial to journalists killed in war at St Bride's Church Fleet Street - 'the journalists' church'.

The idea that journalists should trade their objectivity for their lives / personal safety is particularly galling.

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