Propaganda, Western Style

From Jesse's Cafe:

We bring it up because this article below exposes the typical modus operandi of the Western press, now and over the past twenty years. Carry a party line until the situation explodes, cover it up and distract the public with phony debates and verbal circuses, and then back to give breaking coverage of Armageddon, with a twist of shared guilt. No one is to blame.

Can you remember the coverage of the tech bubble of 2000 by the media? Giddy excitement as the numbers climbed higher, with reassurance as they turned down that this was just a temporary setback.

And I will never forget, as the stocks collapsed and people were wiped out, the CNBC regular arrogantly saying "Well, no one FORCED them to buy those stocks."

Keep this in mind, because we are nearing that point again, with the western media reassuring its public that all is well, while the insiders sell, and the grifters and grafters are draining the nation of its wealth, while the propaganda puppets mouth the slogans of the day. And after it blows up, they will shift gears without an afterthought, keeping the public mind moving on, trusting to the collective amnesia of a distracted populace.

As they said on Bloomberg this morning regarding the crisis just passed, 'We are all to blame; the regulators, the government, the rating agencies, the banks, and the public who was apathetic, who failed to act."

And then they moved on to let us know that Ashley Dupre will be providing a weekly advice column in the NY Post. Romance with a financial twist?

The difference here, at least it seems to me, is that the American public is still a believer in what the government says. The Russian people, at least by that time, did not. So perhaps there are a few more good years left.

The Nation
The Journal's Russia Scandal
By Matt Taibbi & Mark Ames
October 4, 1999

Just before Christmas in 1997, as a tumultuous stock-marketcrisis ravaged emerging markets in every corner of the globe, readers of theWall Street Journal were treated to some good news: Russia was going to emergefrom the mess unscathed. While conceding that "few debt markets outsideSoutheast Asia were hit harder by recent financial turmoil than Russia's," theJournal's Moscow bureau chief, Steve Liesman, added quickly that "many analystsbelieve an equally strong rebound may be in the offing." Moreover, Liesmanwrote, investors were rapidly coming to the realization that "Russia's problemsare far different and, for the moment, less dire than those that underminedAsian economies." The December 16 piece was headlined, "Russian Debt Markets Duefor Rebound."

A few weeks later, Liesman and the Journal used evenstronger language to trumpet Russia's economic merits. They chided investors who were too busy "fretting over Asia's financial crisis" to notice what they called"one of the decade's major economic events: the end of Russia's seven-yearrecession."

The Journal's prediction was more than a little precipitate.
Instead of getting better, things in Russia got worse. A lot worse. Nine monthsafter Liesman declared that Russia's debt market was due for a rebound, and just over seven months after proclaiming the end of the Russian recession, theJournal--like most US newspapers--found itself having to explain the near-totalcollapse of Russia's economy and capital markets...

Read the rest here: The Journal's Russia Scandal - Matt Taibbi, The Nation 1999

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