Why has so much journalism succumbed to propaganda? Why are censorship and distortion standard practice? Why is the BBC so often a mouthpiece of rapacious power? Why do the New York Times and the Washington Post deceive their readers?
Why are young journalists not taught to understand media agendas and to challenge the high claims and low purpose of fake objectivity? And why are they not taught that the essence of so much of what's called the mainstream media is not information, but power?

What we need is a Fifth Estate: a journalism that monitors, deconstructs and counters propaganda and teaches the young to be agents of people, not power. We need what the Russians called perestroika - an insurrection of subjugated knowledge. I would call it real journalism.


It's 100 years since the First World War. Reporters then were rewarded and knighted for their silence and collusion. At the height of the slaughter, British prime minister David Lloyd George confided in C.P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian: "If people really knew [the truth] the war would be stopped tomorrow, but of course they don't know and can't know."

johnpilger.com/articles/war-by-media-and...riumph-of-propaganda

Thanks for highlighting thisd article. Until Pegler's name mentioned on this site never heard of him and he certainly makes one think.
I am looking forward to a kind of pro-active journalism that suggests a positive and productive approach to the problems they raise. Like Pegler quite rightly raises the issue of WMD's and Iraq 2003 amongst others. But still no interview with someone who had thought of alternative solutions to the 9/11 attacks. Or a journalist proposing a course of action with previous successful history that shows a positive outcome of positve results - lives saved and people enjoying a burger at MacDonalds rather than blowing each other up.
So far from reading Margaret Thatcher's autobiography, news articles from all sides of the fence, I see people just bumbling about. It is most worrying and again Pegler is correct, it is more a wonder we haven't already had that third world war already. No matter how high an education these people have no one tends "to detail the existing problem" then "set out solutions" with reprecussions of each possible approach. For example in Iraq the Sunnis and Shite divide (That is in spite of the Irish divide of Proteswtants and Catholics to take note from). Or in days gone by denying the Vietmanese the promised vote. And no real help in agriculture, food housing and so on. I think if I was them (Vietnamese that is) I would of chosen the communist because the Americans offered no alternative.
A good historical example to learn from is the treatment of Germany at the end of the first world war and than again at the end of the second. Completely difference. The odd thing was that on the repatriations after the first world war was Keynes opposed the idea and warned the world it could lead to disaster. But what did he know he was just a man always pretending to something he wasn't. Great eh!
My pleas is find the journalist / media people who not only investigate and stand out but who can point to real solutions for real problems. Please!!!