The bias of ‘international media’ - EDITORIAL

The media play an important role in shaping public awareness and providing information that shapes attitudes and public opinion. Media also becoming an increasingly powerful tool whether it’s television, radio, or the internet.  Therefore it is important that media reports are factual and unbiased.
Resultantly the question arises as to what the role of media that plays in a given society and what purpose it serves. Do the media play a positive role or a negative one?

While local media help highlight local issues, play an important role in protecting democracy and freedom, it is often seen that the international media are not very impartial in their coverage of events that take place far afield. In Sri Lanka, there is a strong body of opinion which believes the international media play a very negative role in building relations between nations and reporting on events which take place far afield. 

For example, the reporting regarding the setting up of the State of Israel on Palestinian land and the toppling of Iranian premier Mohammad Mossadegh. Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the CIA and British intelligence, after he (Mossadegh) initiated the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in 1953. Their reporting was twisted and incorrect. 

During those disturbing times, we saw clearly how the media lent themselves to be an appendage of imperial interests.  
The style of reporting glossed over ground realties and painted a picture of a battle between good versus evil. The ‘evil’ in the Iranian case being the representing of the Iranian PM, who was intent on nationalizing US and British assets in the Iranian oil industry, as being an unjust despot determined to rob the US and British companies of their investment in Iran. 

In Palestine, we saw the imperial powers divide the state of Palestine, to set up a new state of Israel in Palestinian territory. The international media propagated the myth formulated by Zionists (an extremist radical Jewish group) that Palestine was a land without people and this land could be turned into a homeland for the people without a land (the Jews who were persecuted under Hitler) - ‘A land without people, for people without a land’.

The role played by the international media in hiding the truth of the situation from public scrutiny - accusing opponents of being anti-Semitic, led many ordinary people worldwide to sympathize with the Israeli occupiers who were portrayed as victims of Nazi atrocities rather than the displaced Palestinians.
None sought to question as to why the Europeans and Americans, if they felt so deeply about the suffering of the Jews under Nazis were not prepared to provide a homeland in Europe or in the US itself as a Jewish homeland after the war.

Today, as then, the media continue to play an important role in building or breaking relationships between countries. When news organizations believe that the government of a particular country is evil or bigoted, they will look much more critically at that country. They report everything that is negative, and gloss over the good. 
On the other hand, if a regime is one, a particular news organization believes is righteous and good, that administration will not be looked at with a critical eye. Wrongs or misdeeds are overlooked news which are reported in such a way as to minimize, what is in fact something seriously wrong.

The Western based media used to be prejudiced and still continue to be so when reporting worldwide events. An example of how governments make use of media for their own purposes was seen in the manner the media was used by the governments of the US and Britain in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. Both countries made spurious claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to the Americans. 

The reality - no nuclear weapons were found. The chemical weapons that US troops found in Iraq – artillery shells, bombs and other weaponry containing sarin, mustard and nerve gas – were rusting leftovers from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Ultimately it was these American troops who suffered from the remnants of long-abandoned chemical weapon programmes, built in close collaboration with the West.” 

International media houses have unfortunately not played an impartial role in reporting events from afar and are guilty of misleading the public. On many occasions they play a negative role in building relationship among nations. 
A good example is the reporting of the defeat of the LTTE at the hands of the Sri Lankan state.