Prosecute
US Corporate Media Whores
For War Crimes
By David
Walsh
Information
Times
24 April, 2003
The ongoing US aggression
in the Middle East raises the most serious questions about the role
of the mass media in modern society. In the period leading up to the
invasion, the American [corporate] media uncritically advanced the Bush
Administration's arguments, rooted in lies, distortions and half-truths,
for an attack on Iraq. It virtually excluded all critical viewpoints,
to the point of blacking out news of mass anti-war demonstrations and
any other facts that contradicted the propaganda from the White House
and Pentagon.
The obvious aim was to misinform
and manipulate public opinion, and convince the tens of millions within
the US who were opposed to the Administration's war policy that they
constituted a small and helpless minority.
Now, as if on cue, the US
media has obediently turned its attention to Syria, evidently the next
target of the US military. If the focus of the White House and Pentagon
should shift to North Korea or Iran, the appropriate items will begin
to appear about the dire threat represented by those regimes to the
security of the American people.
In the American media, there
is barely a trace of serious analysis
concerning the political and social realities of the Middle East. It
long ago abandoned any sense of responsibility for educating and informing
the public or carrying out the critical democratic function traditionally
assigned to the "Fourth Estate," i.e., serving as a watchdog
and check on government abuses and falsifications. Instead it slavishly
carries out the function assigned it by the ruling elite: to confuse,
terrorize and intimidate the American public, rendering it less able
to resist the reactionary program of the right- wing clique in Washington.
The television networks and
leading newspapers are the prime source of news and information for
tens of millions of people in the US. However, these public resources
are in the hands of giant firms, controlled by fabulously wealthy individuals
who will stop at nothing to defend their profits and property. The corpses
of thousands, or, if necessary, millions of Iraqis, [Afghans], Syrians,
Iranians and others are a small price to pay, as far as the media billionaires
are concerned, for achieving American military and economic domination
of the globe.
This makes the US media an
accessory before and after the fact to crimes carried out in Iraq and
future crimes against other peoples in the region and around the world.
Sitting far from the ravaged Iraqi cities, in well-appointed boardrooms,
the media moguls may believe they will never face such charges. There
are, however, historical parallels and precedents to the contrary.
The Nuremberg Precedent
The role of propaganda and
propagandists figured prominently at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal,
convened to render judgment on the Nazi leaders following World War
II. The tribunal was an institution organized by the victorious Allied
governments, serving in the final analysis the ruling classes of those
countries.
Nonetheless, in their arguments
US prosecutors set forth a democratic legal principle derived from the
international experience of a half- century of carnage: that planning
and launching an aggressive war constituted a criminal act and that
those who helped prepare such a war through their propaganda efforts
were as culpable as those who drew up the battle plans or manufactured
the munitions.
The case made against Hans
Fritzsche, one of the individuals chiefly responsible for Nazi newspaper
and radio propaganda, is particularly significant. Fritzsche, born in
Bochum, Westphalia in 1900, served in the German Army in World War I
and studied liberal arts at university, but left without a degree. He
began a career as a journalist working for the Hugenberg Press, a newspaper
chain that supported the right-wing "national" parties, including
the Nazis.
Fritzsche began commenting
on radio in September 1932, discussing political events on his own weekly
program, "Hans Fritzsche Speaks." That same year the regime
of Franz von Papen appointed him head of the Wireless (Radio) News Department,
a government agency. Fritzsche was generally sympathetic to the Nazi
cause, but not a member of the party.
Underlining the importance
with which the Hitlerites viewed radio as an instrument of propaganda,
on the evening that the Nazis came to power, January 30, 1933, two emissaries
of Joseph Goebbels, soon to be minister of propaganda and enlightenment,
paid Fritzsche a visit. The latter was allowed to stay on as head of
the Wireless Radio Department despite his rejection of certain conditions
set by Goebbels, including the immediate firing of all Jews and all
those who refused to join the Nazi Party.
The Nuremberg prosecution
case against Fritzsche notes: "Fritzsche continued to make radio
broadcasts during this period in which he supported the National Socialist
[Nazi] coalition government then still existing."
In April 1933, Goebbels paid
Fritzsche a personal visit and informed him of the decision to place
the Wireless News Service under the jurisdiction of the newly created
Propaganda Ministry as of May 1, 1933. Apparently satisfied with the
results of the first meeting, Goebbels arranged a second at which Fritzsche
informed the propaganda minister of the steps he had taken to "reorganize
and modernize" the agency, including ridding it of Jewish employees.
"Goebbels thereupon
informed Fritzsche that he would like to have him reorganize and modernize
the entire news services of Germany within the control of the Propaganda
Ministry. ... He [Fritzsche] proceeded to conclude the Goebbels-inspired
reorganization of the Wireless News Service and, on 1 May 1933, together
with the remaining members of his staff, he joined the Propaganda Ministry.
On this same day he joined the NSDAP [Nazi Party] and took the customary
oath of unconditional loyalty to the Fuehrer."
After entering the Propaganda
Ministry, Fritzsche went to work for
its "German Press Division." From 1933 to 1942 Fritzsche held
various positions in that department, heading it for the four years
during which the Nazi regime launched its invasions of neighboring countries.
The Nuremberg prosecution argued: "By virtue of its functions,
the German Press Division became an important and unique instrument
of the Nazi conspirators, not only in dominating the minds and psychology
of Germans, but also as an instrument of foreign policy and psychological
warfare against other nations."
According to Fritzsche's
own affidavit: "During the whole period from 1933 to 1945 it was
the task of the German Press Division to supervise the entire domestic
press and to provide it with directives by which this division became
an efficient instrument in the hands of the German State leadership.
More than 2,300 German daily newspapers were subject to this control.
... The head of the German Press Division held daily press conferences
in the Ministry for the representatives of all German newspapers. Hereby
all instructions were given to the representatives of the press."
The Prosecution Case:
Propaganda as an Instrument of Aggression
The prosecution case, argued
by Drexel Sprecher, an American, placed considerable stress on the role
of media propaganda in enabling the Hitler regime to prepare and carry
out aggressive wars. "The use made by the Nazi conspirators of
psychological warfare is well known. Before each major aggression, with
some few exceptions based on expediency, they initiated a press campaign
calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people
psychologically for the attack. They used the press, after their earlier
conquests, as a means for further influencing foreign politics and in
maneuvering for the following aggression."
Fritzsche was named head
of the German Press Division in 1938 after the "primitive military-like"
methods of his predecessor, Alfred Ingemar Berndt, created "a noticeable
crisis in confidence of the German people in the trustworthiness of
its press," in Fritzsche's words.
The Nuremberg prosecutor
detailed the propaganda campaigns taken up by the German media, under
Fritzsche's immediate supervision, in relation to various acts of foreign
aggression, including the incorporation of Bohemia and Moravia (1939)
and the invasions of Poland (1939) and Yugoslavia and the USSR (1941).
The Nazi press propaganda
campaign preceding the invasion of Poland involved manufacturing or
manipulating complaints of the German minority in that country. Fritzsche
explains: "Concerning this the leading German newspapers, upon
the basis of directions given out in the so-called 'daily parole,' brought
out the following publicity with great emphasis: (1) cruelty and terror
against Germans and the extermination of Germans in Poland; (2) forced
labor of thousands of German men and women in Poland; (3) Poland, land
of servitude and disorder; the desertion of Polish soldiers; the increased
inflation in Poland; (4) provocation of frontier clashes upon direction
of the Polish Government; the Polish lust to conquer; (5) persecution
of Czechs and Ukrainians by Poland."
In regard to the Nazi propaganda
surrounding the Yugoslav events, the prosecutor noted the "customary
definitions, lies, incitement and threats, and the usual attempt to
divide and weaken the victim."
Fritzsche describes how he
received instructions on the eve of the invasion of the Soviet Union
in June 1941: "[Foreign Minister Joachim von] Ribbentrop informed
us that the war against the Soviet Union would start that same day and
asked the German press to present the war against the Soviet Union as
a preventative war for the defense of the Fatherland, as a war which
was forced upon us through the immediate danger of an attack of the
Soviet Union against Germany. The claim that this was a preventative
war was later repeated by the newspapers which received their instructions
from me during the usual daily parole of the Reich Press Chief. I, myself,
have also given this presentation of the cause of the war in my regular
broadcasts."
Thus, the presentation of
an illegal invasion of a foreign country as
a "preventative" or pre-emptive war did not originate with
Bush,
Cheney or Rumsfeld.
The prosecution in the Fritzsche
case raised an issue that is of the greatest relevance today: the role
of Nazi media propaganda in inuring the German population to the sufferings
of other peoples and, indeed, urging Germans to commit war crimes. It
argued: "Fritzsche incited atrocities and encouraged a ruthless
occupation policy. The results of propaganda as a weapon of the Nazi
conspirators reaches into every aspect of this conspiracy, including
the atrocities and ruthless exploitation in occupied countries. It is
likely that many, ordinary Germans would never have participated in
or tolerated the atrocities committed throughout Europe, had they not
been conditioned and goaded by the constant Nazi propaganda. The callousness
and zeal
of the people who actually committed the atrocities was in large part
due to the constant and corrosive propaganda of Fritzsche and his official
associates."
The American media today
reports poll results indicating that 60 or 70 percent of the population
supports the war against Iraq. Such polls are not conducted by disinterested
bodies for the purpose of advancing sociological knowledge. The manner
in which the interviewees are selected and the questions formulated
has a considerable impact on the results obtained. The powers that be
in America have every interest in maintaining the fiction of a nation
united behind its president and armed forces. In reality, there is widespread
hostility and opposition to the war and to the Bush administration,
which finds no expression in the media, the
Democratic Party or any other official American institution.
Nonetheless, there is a constituency
for war among the more backward layers of the population. Aside from
the relatively small number of right-wing fanatics, who would be in
favor of war against almost anyone, including a good section of their
fellow Americans, those in favor of the assault on Iraq believe a) that
the Saddam Hussein regime had a hand in the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attack on New York City and Washington; b) that the Iraqis possessed
"weapons of mass destruction," which they intended to use
against their neighbors or the US at some future point; and/or c) that
the Iraqi population desired "liberation" at the hands of
the US military.
While it is outside the scope
of this article to expound on this, all
three claims have been proven to be lies by the events of the war
itself and will be further exposed by future developments. If many
Americans, however, believe these arguments, with all the tragic
consequences for the Iraqi and other peoples, how is that to be
accounted for? Clearly, by "the constant and corrosive propaganda"
of the US media over the course of months and even years, dating back
to the first Gulf war. The media's very success in manipulating public
opinion is one of the strongest proofs of its culpability in the commission
of war crimes.
It is worth quoting extensively
from the Fritzsche prosecutor's
conclusion, for it sheds considerable light on the role of the media
in the modern age, as well as the democratic sensibilities of those
pursuing the Nazi war criminals, sensibilities that no longer carry
any weight within US ruling circles.
"Fritzsche was not the
type of conspirator who signed decrees, or who sat in the inner councils
planning the overall grand strategy. The function of propaganda is,
for the most part, apart from the field of such planning. The function
of a propaganda agency is somewhat more analogous to an advertising
agency or public relations department, the job of which is to sell the
product and to win the market for the enterprise in question. Here the
enterprise was the Nazi conspiracy. In a conspiracy which depends upon
fraud as a means, the salesmen of the conspiratorial group are quite
as essential and culpable as the master planners, even though they may
not have contributed substantially to the formulation of all the basic
strategy, but rather concentrated on making the execution of this strategy
possible. In this case, propaganda was a weapon of tremendous importance
to this conspiracy. Furthermore, the leading propagandists were major
accomplices in this conspiracy, and Fritzsche was one of them...
"Fritzsche learned a
lesson from his predecessor, Berndt, who fell
from the leadership of the German Press Division partly because he over-played
his hand by blunt and excessive manipulation of the Sudetenland propaganda.
Fritzsche stepped into the gap caused by the loss of confidence of both
the editors and the German people, and did his job with more skill and
subtlety. His shrewdness and ability to be more assuring and 'to find,'
as Goebbels said, `willing ears of the whole nation,'these things
made him the more useful accomplice of the conspirators...
"Fritzsche is not in
the dock as a free journalist but as a
propagandist who helped substantially to tighten the Nazi
stranglehold over the German people, who made the excesses of the conspirators
palatable to the German people, who goaded the German nation to fury
and crime against people they were told by him were subhuman.
"Without the propaganda
apparatus of the Nazi State, the world would not have suffered the catastrophe
of these years, and it is because of Fritzsche's role in behalf of the
Nazi conspirators, and their deceitful and barbarous practices, that
he is called to account before the International Military Tribunal."
The tribunal found Fritzsche
not guilty on the dubious grounds that
he had not had sufficient stature to formulate or originate the
propaganda campaigns undertaken by the Nazi regime. It also asserted
that the prosecution had not proven that Fritzsche was aware of the
extermination of the Jews or had spread news he knew to be false. (Fritzsche
was immediately rearrested and charged by German courts with various
crimes. He was sentenced to nine years at hard labor, left prison in
1950 and died of cancer three years later.)
The prosecution, in its reply
to the "Unfounded Acquittal of
Defendant Fritzsche," returned insistently and pointedly to its
arguments. It noted that the verdict failed to take into account that
Fritzsche was until 1942 "the Director de facto of the Reich Press
and that, according to himself, subsequent to 1942, he became
the 'Commander-in-Chief of the German radio'."
The prosecution went on:
"For the correct definition of the role of
defendant Hans Fritzsche it is necessary, firstly, to keep clearly in
mind the importance attached by Hitler and his closest associates (as
Goering, for example) to propaganda in general and to radio propaganda
in particular. This was considered one of the most important and essential
factors in the success of conducting an aggressive war."
In Hitler's Germany, the
reply to the verdict continues, "propaganda was invariably a factor
in preparing and conducting acts of aggression and in training the German
populace to accept obediently the criminal enterprises of German fascism.
...
"The basic method of
the Nazi propagandistic activity lay in the
false presentation of facts. ... The dissemination of provocative
lies and the systematic deception of public opinion were as necessary
to the Hitlerites for the realization of their plans as were the production
of armaments and the drafting of military plans. Without propaganda,
founded on the total eclipse of the freedom of press and of speech,
it would not have been possible for German Fascism to realize its aggressive
intentions, to lay the groundwork and then to put to practice the war
crimes and the crimes against humanity. In the propaganda system of
the Hitler State it was the daily press and the radio that were the
most important weapons."
There is little to be added
to this condemnation. While all
historical analogies have their limits, the indictment of the German
media chief for war crimes speaks with great force to the role of the
US media barons in contemporary world affairs.