Glenn Greenwald writes for Salon.com Monday April 5 how murderous operations in Afghanistan complete with Pentagon-cleared cover-up attempts are perpetuated by U.S. and NATO official efforts to intimidate journalists and prevent accurate reporting to the world's media.
How Americans Are Propagandized About Afghanistan
Published on Monday, April 5, 2010 by Salon.com
How Americans Are Propagandized About Afghanistan
by Glenn Greenwald
The original content of this article has been removed from Salon.com as of 3 pm EDT Saturday, April 10.
Excerpt--"Starkey describes the some of the understandable reasons so many reporters do nothing more than regurgitate officials claims: resource constraints, organizations limits, dangers of traveling around, and the 'embed culture.' But he also recounts how NATO tries to intimidate, censor and punish any reporters like him who report adversely on official claims. Illustratively, in response to Starkey's March 13 article detailing what really happened at Paktia and the cover-up that ensued, NATO issued a formal statement naming him and insisting that this article was 'categorically false.' As recently as mid-March, NATO was still claiming -- falsely -- that the women in Paktia were killed prior to the arrival of American troops.
There are some very courageous and intrepid reporters in Afghanistan, including some who work for American media outlets. It was, for instance, a superb and brave investigative report by the NYT's Carlotta Gall in Afghanistan that uncovered what really happened in that air attack Azizabad and documented the Pentagon's false claims. But far more often, Americans are completely misled about events in Afghanistan by the combination of false official claims and mindless stenographic American 'journalism.' And no matter how many times this process is exposed -- from Jessica Lynch's heroic firefight to Pat Tillman's death by Al Qeada -- this propaganda process never diminishes at all."
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