2006-08-07 13:44 | fche blog politics reutergate
By now, many people know of reutergate a yet another scandal where news is faked. Other recent examples include overstatements of casualty figures, staging of rescue / body-display scenes. Granddaddy “rathergate” from 2004 is still a freshly oozing memory.
It seems to me that the real tragedy behind this phenomenon is not just that
- the fake news spreads and affects public sentiment here and abroad
- it confirms the Nazi-era theory of the Big Lie
- it erodes the trust in public institutions, in culture, in basic principles of our civilization
What most saddens me about it is that many of the western news organizations are so hungry for any information that tends to put their ideological foes (Israel, George W, the entire USA, whomever) into bad light, that even the enemy knows it can exploit them, enlisting their aid. These organizations are fighting on the wrong side of the war, and may not even know it. “Those stupid infidels!”, the enemy must be snickering.