Western media credibility
Some of us take whatever is in Western media as undeniable and irrefutable facts. Well, they cannot be more wrong. The famous American newsmagazine Newsweek carried a feature story wondering about the reasons of Western media prejudice against Arabs and GCC nationals, including strong criticism of death sentences issued in Saudi Arabia (noting that the death penalty is used in the US), though there were only 175 cases in a year. The story said that the very same media turned a blind eye to a regional country that executed 700 within six months only. The magazine went on with comparisons between similar incidents that happened in regional Arab and non-Arab countries and how the former was covered, highlighted and severely criticized, while the same media kept silent about those taking place in the latter.
In 2007, scores of some American university professors and their students made a meticulous survey about news published in American and Western media in the years 2005 and 2006. According to a book published later including the survey results, the media were banned from approaching news stories that would harm the interests of major companies like that of Dick Cheney that had been secretly selling atomic technology to a regional country it had been publically calling to boycott.
In addition, Donald Rumsfeld’s company, Gilead Sciences, might be the one behind creating a state of avian flu panic in order to sell the vaccines it manufactures. The study showed that the Congo wars that claimed over seven million lives in the most brutal ways were not waged over political or racial disputes as the press claims. Those wars were rather waged to enable mega companies take over natural resources such as diamonds, tin, copper, gold, and most importantly, coltan and niobium, which are very essential rare earth elements in the mobile phone industry.
Western media taboo lists are long and reflect prejudice and bias over the interests of mega companies and establishments. In fact it was the World Bank that actually financed building the apartheid barrier in the West Bank, neglecting stories about the toll of civilian victims of air strikes in Iraq, torturing prisoners to death in Afghanistan, IMF’s mistake in Iraq that totally destroyed its economy, the truth about the danger of genetically modified foods and some common agricultural pesticides, reports about the reason behind the collapse of the New York towers, destroying the Amazon forest, creating the death squads that were transported from Latin America to some Middle East countries, the Red Cross’ silence about many anti-humanity crimes it witnessed, etc.
Finally, that report said that some insignificant silly reports, such as celebrities’ marriages and individual crimes, are often published to distract the public and cover up more serious incidents simultaneously taking place that are meant to go unnoticed.