Media Manipulation - How Subtle Does It Get?
SOTT 27/01/2006
Yesterday, the BBC, along with many other mainstream news sites, ran a story about Bush's backing of the plan for Iran proposed by the Russians. The story was essentially the product of a White House press conference yesterday morning and most mainstream news outlets directly quoted Bush's words from the conference. The BBC Article stated:

"Iran wants further talks amid some reluctance to give up control of a key part of the nuclear cycle. 'The Russians came up with the idea and I support it... because I do believe people ought to be allowed to have civilian nuclear power,' said Mr Bush. But he added that he did not believe 'non-transparent regimes that threaten the security of the world should be allowed to gain the technologies necessary to make a weapon'. Russia should also collect nuclear waste of use in weapons, he added. 'The Iranians have said We want a weapon and it's not in the world's interests that they have a weapon,' Mr Bush said in Washington. It was not immediately clear to what Iranian statement the US leader was referring."

Later on in the same article, and to its credit, the BBC made the point that Iran has in fact consistently denied US-led accusations that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, insisting its nuclear programme is for producing electricity. While it would have been nice if the BBC had been more explicit in showing that Bush was yet again making incorrect and inflammatory statements about the intentions of a Middle Eastern country, we can be thankful that the point was made at all. Sadly, not all mainstream news sites could find the integrity to actually report the facts as the BBC did, never mind draw the logical conclusion from those facts. Take Reuters for example. As we might expect, this stalwart of news reporting also carried the 'Russian plan for Iran' story, and also quoted from the White House Press Conference - but only up to a certain point and with a very subtle twist included for good measure. In their story 'China and Iran warm to Russian nuclear proposal' Reuters reporters Lindsay Beck and Ben Blanchard write:

U.S. President George W. Bush described how the arrangement would work: "The material used to power the plant would be manufactured in Russia, delivered under IAEA inspectors to Iran, to be used in that plant, the waste of which will be picked up by the Russians and returned to Russia. "I think that is a good plan," Bush told a news conference. "The Russians came up with the idea and I support it."

So far so good, the Reuters journalists have accurately quoted from the White House press conference transcript. Now all that remains is for them to wrap it up by directly quoting from the very next paragraph of the White House press conference transcript where Bush said:

"And the Iranians have said, we want a weapon"

Strangely, the Reuters reporters do not do this. Instead, for some reason, the above quote from Bush was discarded in favor of an interpretation of what Bush said. Here's what the Reuters reporters came up with:

"But he said Iran had shown by its actions that it wanted a nuclear weapon."

Can you see what has occurred here? Bush made a blatantly false statement to the press that Iran had stated that they "want a weapon" and should have been exposed for doing so, yet by fabricating the statement by Bush that: "Iran has shown by its actions Reuters made it appear that Bush had not made a false statement at all. Can anyone come up with a plausible excuse for this act on the part of the Reuters reporters? It could not have been the result of error because the words "shown" and "actions" do not appear anywhere in the White House press conference transcription and the Reuters reporters were, in the same article, able to accurately transcribe many other words spoken by Bush. The logical conclusion then is that Reuters engages in deliberate distortion of the facts when presenting the news, and even goes so far as censor and replace evidence that could otherwise be used to prove to the general public that government officials lie. Yes, I know, you want me to tell you something you didn't already know. But still, it's nice to have some clear, 'in your face', evidence now and again.