This Fisk article raises several points of interest.
Apart from the very suspicious evidence that someone is collaborating
with ISIS... which could just as easily be the Israelis as it is the Americans,
it also presents a view of the Syrian War absolutely unknown in Western media.
This is not simply because the West doesn't want to portray
the Russians or Syrians in a positive light... namely as forces combating ISIS.
Rather, it presents a view of the battle on the ground, the
reality of troop movements and tactics, the relationship between armies etc.
that is completely ignored by Western media outlets.
This was all the more poignant to me as I've been watching
CNN recently. The YouTube livestream is working again and I've been allowing
myself some 'entertainment' for in truth, that's all CNN is. It might have been
something back in the 1980's, at least is seemed to be at the time, but today
unless you want to catch some limited scope and sensationalised domestic news
or maybe some hurricane coverage, you're wasting your time.
Even Al Jazeera, a news outlet I once respected has failed to
properly cover the Syrian War. Their anti-Russia/anti-Assad agenda has come
through very clearly when it comes to this issue. The channel still excels when
it comes to other topics and overall is one of the best options out there but
when it comes to certain things... it's sorely lacking.
We have so many options these days and yet most of them are
just terrible. I don't miss the days of trying to catch radio programmes in the
middle of the night, scouring newsstands and paying top dollar for
international publications and waiting for things to come in the mail. Yet,
maybe there was something to the careful plodding trickles of information that
allowed for reflection as opposed to the frenetic maelstrom of information
we're getting today. I don't know. There's no going back but there's something
seriously amiss. The Establishment media was pretty bad in the days before the
Internet. But somehow it's gotten much worse. I refer to both the Mainstream
Media and the quality of news coverage in general.
New options exist but often they only sow confusion. What to
do?
Your last reflections remind me of a comment I heard the other day. The radical difference between the 21st century and times before is in regards to information. In the past, those who had power had information, but nowadays those who have power know which information to ignore. Knowing too much can not only be debilitating, but create a false sense of intelligence. I've met quite a few people who try to win arguments or make points by burying me with detail.
ReplyDelete