A
Matter Of Opinion
By
Ramzy Baroud
27 November,
2007
Countercurrents.org
What
do an organic farmer from Spain, a union worker activist from Brazil
and a human rights scholar living in London have in common? They are
all individuals who affect substantive change in their communities and
they are also individuals who are overlooked by the corporate media.
The latter
has its own lists of ‘experts’ — usually well-groomed
males with little involvement in the daily struggles of the unseen and
unheard multitudes of the world, yet able to influence their lives (most
often detrimentally) from a well-guarded distance.
So how does
the business of expertise work? Why are those qualified to address their
own affairs so widely ignored by mainstream channels in favour of intellectual
middlemen who purport to have some sort of legitimacy over a range of
narratives, without any convincing credentials, let alone first-hand
experiences?
The phenomenon
precedes the advent of network television and satellite news. It is
embedded in a Western tradition that was formulated around imperial
conquests: for a people to be conquered, they have to be understood
in a language that prioritises the interests of the colonialist over
the rights of the colonised. The latter’s identity is replaced
by verbal and textual reductionism. Thus Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, the
Somali leader who strove for twenty years to free his people from British
and Italian colonialism was termed ‘Mad Mullah’ by the British.
Hassan, of course, was as ‘mad’ as Martin Luther King Jr,
Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and the vigorous leaders of numerous
struggles around the world. The list of these individuals is ever expanding,
as activists are written off by those in power, those whose ‘sanity’
preaches subscribing to the status quo and the inherent wisdom of the
‘system’.
This system
serves not the majority of people living within it, but rather the combined
interests of those with the money and those with the weapons: one funds
the other’s military adventurism, and the other guarantees unhindered
access to cheap supplies, labour and markets. Without Bush’s war
in Iraq, Blackwater could not generate over a billion dollars of extra
contracts; the relationship is painfully obvious.
Of course,
neither Bush nor Blackwater executives are imprudent enough to speak
of their real motives, and it would be equally imprudent for us to trust
that Blackwater’s ultimate objective is to contribute to the efforts
of the US military to ‘protect’ their country and its founding
principles. Unfortunately, though the deceptiveness of dominant rhetoric
may often be apparent, when repeated numerous times to millions of people
worldwide, it eventually gathers force, and even credibility. The process
has real and very deadly consequences: Blackwater mercenaries go on
killing sprees; endless media airtime is given to its executives and
sympathetic ‘experts’ who ‘objectively’ defend
their company’s image; a congressional hearing of good cop/bad
cop is held whereby one congressman thanks Blackwater for protecting
the lives of Americans overseas while another gently reprimands it for
not using extra care. Extra care in gunning down innocent people? At
this question the story is shelved. By the time Blackwater kills again
it is no longer even newsworthy.
Many far
from credible ‘experts’ are employed in this way to neutralise
and effectually justify violence. Their roles are those of apologists
of state and corporate crimes, and as ideologues who tailor information
to fit political and economic agendas. They are dangerous because they
have the leverage of being presented as impartial observers, even when
their very identity should give away their partiality. Benjamin Netanyahu
has managed to reinvent himself to US publics as a ‘terrorism
expert’, thanks to Fox News. As for the former Israeli Prime Minister’s
own crimes while in office, and his close ties to the neoconservatives
— the ‘intellectuals’ behind the Iraq war —
and his persistent use of anti-peace language — these are unimportant
diversions.
According
to the corporate media and the selective samples of humanity they endlessly
feature and tout for their ‘expertise’, the world is a convenient
place that consists of big companies (and no workers, thus no workers’
rights), prison guards (no prisoners, thus no prisoners’ rights),
war engineers (no victims, thus no accountability) and celebrities (no
ordinary people, thus no widespread and urgent grievances). All those
in brackets don’t exist as actual, living and breathing individuals;
they only exist as part of skewed narratives, designed carefully by
an expert and a think tank. That ‘expert’ need not be there
to understand, he needs only to speak in a language that manipulates
prejudice. The working women of India fighting globalisation, the lawyers
of Pakistan fighting for judicial independence, the teachers of Palestine
fighting for survival amid siege and boycott, the millions of uninsured
Americans fighting for a doctor’s appointment — these people
simply don’t exist as far as corporate media is concerned. Or
worse, they exist but don’t matter.
As those
justifying violence on the basis of security, justice and democracy
work to make the world increasingly unsafe, unjust and undemocratic,
there seems an equally increasing need for a new kind of media, one
which requires a new kind of ‘expert’.
When I contacted
Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Arun Ghandi, Ilan Pappe and many other intellectuals
and activists from all over the world, proposing an alternative to ‘expertise’
in the media, I didn’t expect that just a year later the discussion
could evolve into JUSTmedia (JustMedia.net). JUSTmedia is the first
initiative to be launched by the People Media Project, a global scheme
that hopes to offer a different kind of platform for discourse, dialogue
and commentary by promoting the voices of people from all walks of life.
Supported by intellectuals who refuse to play by the roles of the ‘mainstream’,
the idea is to extend a bridge across cultural, language, geographic
and political divides to show and extend the possibilities of true democracy
and human rights in the media.
They say
it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. After much darkness
and much cursing, another kind of candle may well be lit, one which
only the efforts of ordinary people could keep alight.
Ramzy
Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com.
His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide.
His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a
People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London)
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