Last month I posted a brief missive about the CBC's consistently pro-military, pro-war spending stance. I recently read this excellent article from Mark Leith at rabble.ca: "Reflections on military propaganda in Canadian media" that says it much more excellently:
The following is an analysis of two examples of propaganda pieces found in Canada’s two most prominent corporate media publications, The Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail.
“This is the ugly truth about global trade: If Canada wants more butter, we need to buy more guns”
Andrew Phillips,The Toronto Star, June 21:
“Jens Stoltenberg said Canada needs to step up its military spending because of the alarming rise in threats to the world order from the likes of Russia, China and North Korea.”
Jens Stoltenberg recently stepped down as the NATO Secretary-General, an unelected position. Based on his perceived prestige, he has had the role of publicly haranguing, on a literally daily basis, NATO members, particularly Canada, to constantly increase their military spending. Here Stoltenberg raises the specter of threat, related to countries NATO has chosen to actively antagonize, and presents no other remedy than military action that requires ever more weapons.
“It’s hardly news that Canada is seen as a laggard when it comes to spending on our military. We’ve long been accustomed to sheltering under the American umbrella.”
The use of the word “laggard” is intentionally chosen for its derogatory meaning and “sheltering under the American umbrella” is a standard trope in these military propaganda pieces. Although the phrase is meaningless from a military strategic viewpoint, it is used to highlight Canada’s shameful weakness and dependency.
...
Now at the end of his article, the author comes to what he believes is his article’s salient point. Quoting from a right wing think tank, which are the only sources used in propaganda pieces, he comes up with the completely implausible threat, without a shred of evidence, that countries will retaliate with trade against Canada for not meeting its NATO pledge.
Indeed.
“Canada’s NATO Commitments Are a Running Joke”
Andrew Coyne, July 17, 2024.
Andrew Coyne is a well-known Canadian national columnist.
“A farce in three acts.”
Coyne has decided he will use the technique of satiric ridicule, rather than logical argument, in an effort to demean the Canadian government for not doing what he assumes everyone knows they should do.
...
“Biden administration officials warned their counterparts in the Trudeau government that Canada faced being singled out for criticism at the meeting, possibly publicly.”
Fear of public ridicule is also seen as a valid reason to increase military spending by the propagandists. Public ridicule is a primitive group technique that goes back to the early days of human civilization.
Towards the end of his article Coyne writes derisively, in order to ridicule them, about how Trudeau and his defense minister Blair are scrambling to get their pennies together to meet the NATO allotment at the end of the NATO summit.
At the end of his piece Coyne writes:
“Mind you, by then the target may be obsolete. NATO may have raised it to 2.5 or 3 per cent. Or we may be in a world war.”
From these sentences we may conclude that Coyne is no mere propagandist. He is apocalyptically irresponsible.
Yeppers.
As we can conclude from this analysis of the media in Canada, it is urgent that we have a public commission to examine and make recommendations regarding the over concentration of corporate, government and military media and the coercive role that military propaganda plays within the Canadian media landscape. This over concentration of media is choking the much-needed diversity of thoughtful political voices that are required for a healthy, peaceful democracy.
Oof!
AT the beginning of the article, Leith mentions how he actually got to have an hour-and-a-half meeting over lunch with the Glib n' Stale's editor (some dude named Walmsley) about this very issue. And Mr. Editor-Walmsley was very friendly and forthcoming and it appears that he genuinely believes the crap he's spewing.
Read the whole thing.
4 comments:
Everything goes back to Herman and Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent". Their model has held up amazingly well as a description of how the media operates. And as per that model, Mr. Walmsley very likely believes implicitly in the approved positions--if he did not, he would not be the editor.
It's interesting if kind of horrible to watch when there's some sort of shock in events, like the genocide in Gaza. You get all these journalists who totally believed in the status quo and, since they'd never had any unapproved opinions, in the openness of the media. And they hit this big shock, and some of them change their mind at least somewhat about whatever it is. And they start trying to report on it according to their new understanding of the situation . .. they'll be like I hate to say this but I'm a journalist, Israel is doing bad things! And then there's a brisk trickle of pieces, mostly in alternative media but sometimes briefly hitting official newsworthiness, about them being astonished to find out their press is not nearly as open as they thought, as they get leaned on, sacked, publicly denounced and so on. Herman and Chomsky called it "flak".
Andrew Coyne is an ass. I'm sick and tired of his right wing biased bullshit. .Canadians should tell America to "fuck all the way off" and keep their noses out of our business and on their own rotting reputation and global failures. Canadians didn't hide at Dieppe, Vimy, Caen or the liberation of Holland. What we didn't show in force and equipment we made more of a show of courage. No one needs more war or guns and anybody who thinks that Canadians are laggards needs a fucking kick up their ass. Peace out.
Purple library guy,
Yeah. When they find out that us lefties aren't all deranged conspiracy theorists. The instances of journalists you described are valuable case-studies though.
And it's good whenever a careerist discovers they have values.
Relatedly, I got a kick out of how paid hypocrite Candace Owens got "cancelled" by nasally speed-talker/Freezepeach champion Ben Shapiro, for calling Israel's genocide and a genocide.
zoombats,
Good point. I thought something similar when we had that public spat with Saudi Arabia during the Trump years and Trump said he wouldn't take a side.
Instead of responding by grovelling to Clown Prince Bone-Saw, Trudeau could have mentioned all the political-cultural values we [supposedly] share with the USA and how we've fought side-by-side since 1917, and if that's the thanks we're going to get and blah, blah, blah.
Of course, Trudeau's the air-head ignoramus who was PM when Parliament gave a standing ovation to an SS veteran.
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