Ken Burns & Lynn Novick's THE IRAQ WAR

[ad hoc]

To stand up for linus here, I get what he is saying. Not that Fox News is "better" or "fairer" than the BBC or PBS, rather that most people know that Fox is unbalanced and therefore take what they get from Fox with a pinch of salt (I know that some people think Fox is a bastion of balance, but I'd argue that most are well aware that it's biased). Whereas the BBC and PBS have a reputation of being fair and neutral, which means that the establishment line that gets trotted out on those channels is far more insidious because the viewers/listeners take it as fact (or at least that it has been through a series of filters which ensure that it is factual and/or balanced). For the same reason that the Daily Mail is far more dangerous than the Sun. Nobody reads the Sun thinking its news coverage is balanced, whereas a vast swathe of the UK think the Daily Mail is a real newspaper.

I ran a course in the US three weeks after 9/11 at which nearly all the participants were middle aged women from the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. One day, after evenings of watching CNN in their hotels, they approached me and asked with a note of panic "Do Americans know that this is all propaganda? Do they know that this (at that stage the march to war in Afghanistan) is an incredibly one sided story? We always knew under Communism that we were being lied to, but do they know?"

[jeanmid]

To stand up for linus here, I get what he is saying. Not that Fox News is "better" or "fairer" than the BBC or PBS, rather that most people know that Fox is unbalanced and therefore take what they get from Fox with a pinch of salt (I know that some people think Fox is a bastion of balance, but I'd argue that most are well aware that it's biased). Whereas the BBC and PBS have a reputation of being fair and neutral, which means that the establishment line that gets trotted out on those channels is far more insidious because the viewers/listeners take it as fact (or at least that it has been through a series of filters which ensure that it is factual and/or balanced). For the same reason that the Daily Mail is far more dangerous than the Sun. Nobody reads the Sun thinking its news coverage is balanced, whereas a vast swathe of the UK think the Daily Mail is a real newspaper.

I ran a course in the US three weeks after 9/11 at which nearly all the participants were middle aged women from the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. One day, after evenings of watching CNN in their hotels, they approached me and asked with a note of panic "Do Americans know that this is all propaganda? Do they know that this (at that stage the march to war in Afghanistan) is an incredibly one sided story? We always knew under Communism that we were being lied to, but do they know?"

Can you give examples of bias in Novak's series?.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Right, the 16 hour Vietnam documentary that doesn't even mention that the Gulf of Tonkin incident, official reason for US involvement, was a false flag attack.

There's no real evidence it was. Or at least not in the sense of the "false flags" beloved of conspiracy theorists.

[ad hoc]

Can you give examples of bias in Novak's series?.

I haven't seen it. So, no. *

My comments were about the BBC/PBS in general

(*I mean there will be bias in it somewhere - omission, weight given to one point of view over another, etc etc. It can't not be biased)

[Satchmo Distel]

There's no real evidence it was. Or at least not in the sense of the "false flags" beloved of conspiracy theorists.

Indeed, Tonkin does not fulfill the criteria in this definition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag

Tonkin was a deception, but an opportunist one using data manipulation rather than "let's fire on our own ships and make it look like the enemy did it."

[Tubby Isaacs]

This is what's on PBS today. More scary than Fox News.

Last Stand at Little Big Horn
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: Documentary exploring the Battle of Little Big Horn, known as 'Custer's Last Stand', which has been one of the most frequently depicted, though least understood, moments in American history. Such are the myths surrounding the battle, which left no white survivors, that two very different accounts exist: one white, one Native American.

9:15AM
B-2 Stealth at War
It's the most expensive aircraft in the world. Highly classified and America's secret weapon for twenty years, this is the story of the B-2 Stealth Bomber.

10:25AM
Prohibition: Prohibition: A Sea of Rum
In the Jazz Age of the mid-1920s, illegal bars called speakeasies become a symbol of glamorous city nightlife as reporters like Lois Long of The New Yorker chronicle their generation's glittering debauchery. In Chicago, Al Capone becomes a celebrity, holding press conferences to promote his image while his murderous gang rises in power. To many, Prohibition looks more and more like a terrible mistake. Part 4 of 5.

11:30AM
Last Stand at Little Big Horn
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: Documentary exploring the Battle of Little Big Horn, known as 'Custer's Last Stand', which has been one of the most frequently depicted, though least understood, moments in American history. Such are the myths surrounding the battle, which left no white survivors, that two very different accounts exist: one white, one Native American.

AFTERNOON
12:50PM
The Mystery of the Black Death
Shattering the myths surrounding the most lethal disease in the western world. For years it has been believed that the Black Death, which swept through Europe in the Middle Ages, was bubonic plague. However, in the light of powerful new research its identity has come under scrutiny. Timewatch examines the human impact of the Black Death and the cause and effect of plague. Along the way, surprising evidence is revealed. Historical descriptions of symptoms don't quite match up with plague symptoms, an examination of medieval farm buildings in villages hit by Black Death suggests there were no rats (which spread plague), and attempts to extract traces of plague bacteria from Black Death burial pits fail. So if this epidemic was not bubonic plague, what was it? If we don't know its identity, how can we prevent its return, or cope if it strikes again? This exciting mix of history, archaeology, cutting-edge scientific research and dramatic reconstruction forms a compelling detective story.

1:55PM
On Now
B-2 Stealth at War
It's the most expensive aircraft in the world. Highly classified and America's secret weapon for twenty years, this is the story of the B-2 Stealth Bomber.

3:00PM
Prohibition: Prohibition: A Sea of Rum
In the Jazz Age of the mid-1920s, illegal bars called speakeasies become a symbol of glamorous city nightlife as reporters like Lois Long of The New Yorker chronicle their generation's glittering debauchery. In Chicago, Al Capone becomes a celebrity, holding press conferences to promote his image while his murderous gang rises in power. To many, Prohibition looks more and more like a terrible mistake. Part 4 of 5.

4:10PM
Last Stand at Little Big Horn
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: Documentary exploring the Battle of Little Big Horn, known as 'Custer's Last Stand', which has been one of the most frequently depicted, though least understood, moments in American history. Such are the myths surrounding the battle, which left no white survivors, that two very different accounts exist: one white, one Native American.

5:20PM
The Mystery of the Black Death
Shattering the myths surrounding the most lethal disease in the western world. For years it has been believed that the Black Death, which swept through Europe in the Middle Ages, was bubonic plague. However, in the light of powerful new research its identity has come under scrutiny. Timewatch examines the human impact of the Black Death and the cause and effect of plague. Along the way, surprising evidence is revealed. Historical descriptions of symptoms don't quite match up with plague symptoms, an examination of medieval farm buildings in villages hit by Black Death suggests there were no rats (which spread plague), and attempts to extract traces of plague bacteria from Black Death burial pits fail. So if this epidemic was not bubonic plague, what was it? If we don't know its identity, how can we prevent its return, or cope if it strikes again? This exciting mix of history, archaeology, cutting-edge scientific research and dramatic reconstruction forms a compelling detective story.

EVENING
6:35PM
B-2 Stealth at War
It's the most expensive aircraft in the world. Highly classified and America's secret weapon for twenty years, this is the story of the B-2 Stealth Bomber.

7:50PM
The Secrets of the Mary Rose
It's one of the best known and best preserved ship wrecks in the world. The speed with which the Mary Rose sank in July 1545 ensured that the ship and its contents were entombed in silt and preserved from the ravages of time, providing archaeologists and historians with a Tudor time capsule. The 30-year programme to excavate, raise and conserve the wreck is the most complex and extensive maritime archaeological project ever undertaken. Twenty years into the programme, project experts exclusively reveal the results of their work. Skilfully interweaving the modern-day story of the raising of the ship and its conservation with dramatic reconstruction of its final doomed moments, this film provides a unique window on a fascinating world.

9:00PM
Prohibition: Prohibition: A Nation of Hypocrites
By the close of the 1920s, many blame the law for the rise of criminal syndicates, promiscuity and a sense that the entire government is corrupted. Once the Great Depression sets in, Americans begin to re-examine their priorities. By December of 1933, Prohibition's reign finally comes to an end under President Franklin D Roosevelt, and for the first time in 13 years, Americans can legally buy a drink. Part 5 of 5.

10:15PM
Secrets of the Shining Knight
A knight in shining armour may sound like a character out of a storybook, but once upon a time knighthood was a serious business, and for countless medieval fighters their armour was what stood between life and death. But what was it really like to live beneath the metal? How was that shining armour crafted and how strong was it? Could it withstand the impact of the most lethal weapons of the day, including crossbows, muskets and primitive hand guns? NOVA challenged blacksmith Ric Furrer and master armourer Jeff Wasson to recreate parts of an elite armour originally manufactured in the Royal Workshop founded by King Henry VIII. Secrets of the Shining Knight traces their successes and setbacks from start to finish as the experts rediscover centuries-old metalworking secrets and then put their new armour to the ultimate test against a period musket.

11:35PM
The Secrets of the Mary Rose
It's one of the best known and best preserved ship wrecks in the world. The speed with which the Mary Rose sank in July 1545 ensured that the ship and its contents were entombed in silt and preserved from the ravages of time, providing archaeologists and historians with a Tudor time capsule. The 30-year programme to excavate, raise and conserve the wreck is the most complex and extensive maritime archaeological project ever undertaken. Twenty years into the programme, project experts exclusively reveal the results of their work. Skilfully interweaving the modern-day story of the raising of the ship and its conservation with dramatic reconstruction of its final doomed moments, this film provides a unique window on a fascinating world.

12:45AM
Prohibition: Prohibition: A Nation of Hypocrites
By the close of the 1920s, many blame the law for the rise of criminal syndicates, promiscuity and a sense that the entire government is corrupted. Once the Great Depression sets in, Americans begin to re-examine their priorities. By December of 1933, Prohibition's reign finally comes to an end under President Franklin D Roosevelt, and for the first time in 13 years, Americans can legally buy a drink. Part 5 of 5.

[Snake Plissken]

That Prohibition is a Ken Burns joint. I saw it a while ago, well up to the usual standards.

I'm becoming quietly addicted to that channel. They had a couple of documentaries about the nuclear arms race which were fascinating and well above the usual Quest / BBC One fare.

[Tubby Isaacs]

That Prohibition is a Ken Burns joint. I saw it a while ago, well up to the usual standards.

I'm becoming quietly addicted to that channel. They had a couple of documentaries about the nuclear arms race which were fascinating and well above the usual Quest / BBC One fare.

Yeah, I think what Linus and others say is much fairer of BBC than PBS.

[ad hoc]

Yeah, I think what Linus and others say is much fairer of BBC than PBS.

Agreed

[Tubby Isaacs]

I only really notice Brexit stuff on the BBC, at second hand. If it's anything like as bad on the Middle East, well.

[ursus arctos]

I don’t know where Tubbs took that schedule from, but it excludes NewsHour, their nightly news programme

PBS and the BBC may have some superficial similarities, but they are really very different animals.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It's one that I can watch here.

[ursus arctos]

That’s what I would have guessed. BBC America excludes the news programmes as well, though it is usually just ridiculous.

Today, for example, we are getting seven consecutive episodes of Star Trek, The Sixth Sense, and Graham Norton.

You aren’t sending us your best people.

Here is today’s schedule for our local PBS station, which includes news from the World Service

[Amor de Cosmos]

BBC Canada provides wall-to-wall Top Gear and little else.

[Hot Pepsi]

Yes, this. There's a great interview with Noam Chomsky from about 1996 when Andrew Marr quizzes him about his then-recent research on what Chomsky called The Propaganda Model. One of the key aspects of the model, Chomsky claimed, was that it subtly inculcates the belief among people in Western societies (i.e.: those who believe they are not subject to propaganda) that "there are certain things that you just don't say." This isn't done via some shadowy corporation or government agency manipulating people's minds but rather it's a set of attitudes shared and tacitly agreed-on by powerful members of society that disseminates these ideas through the media outlets they have access to (or control outright) and begins the filtration process as soon as someone begins school. So, for instance, if a USAF drone strike bombs innocent civilians, the media discourse must be couched in terms of what a horrendous blunder it was as opposed to what it really is - a callous, recidivist disregard for human life. Another example would be what your colleagues from the former Eastern Bloc referred to - for many Westerners, the very idea that we are at all subjected to propaganda is laughable: "That only happens in totalitarian countries, our media and governments would never make a concerted attempt to shape our opinions."

But all that's separate to Tonkin.

The difference is - or at least as I understand it - is that proper propaganda is from the top-down, created by the people officially in charge or at least those specifically beholden to them, for the specific purpose of justifying or ginning-up-support-for what they want to do anyway. They know it's a lie (and often so to the people), but they believe it serves a higher purpose. It comes from inside the government and spreads outward.

What Chomsky is describing is a different kind of bullshit. It's "conventional wisdom" or "group think" shared by a certain class of people who, in addition to sharing interests, share the same schools, restaurants, TED Talks, bars, PTA meetings, etc. in DC, New York, etc. And the people who are on TV and writing op-eds, by and large, are also part of this same group of people and hang out with them. The Post made that sadly clear, but then lied about it insofar it might have led viewers to believe that all that media-politician fraternization ended that day Ben Bradley realized it was bad.

But insofar as that's what the government wants us to think or what the big media wants us to think, it's often not so much because they are trying to lie to us (Ok, Fox News is trying to lie), but often because the people in the government and/or the media really believe it (and that includes politicians), and they really believe it because they live among that same class of people spreading it in the press, among lobbyists and think tanks, etc. As far as they know, "there is no alternative" to use Thatcher's comment (which she may not have said but just believed? I don't know). So that kind of stuff is coming from the outside into the government just as much, if not more, than it's going out.

To be sure, there are conscious and systematic lie-making efforts within the government and in some media organizations, especially Fox News and especially this current administration, but those are frequently exposed pretty easily. After all, doubts about the Gulf of Tonkin emerged very early on. And in any event, that wasn't really what Chomsky was talking about there.

And in any event, it's never been clear to me how much Chomsky understands that a whole lot of people believe a lot of that garbage because they desperately want to and would believe it whether a respected news outlet told them that or not. If that wasn't clear in the 80s, it's abundantly clear now where huge numbers of people believe bullshit about Obama or Trump or whomever that isn't even on Fox. The psychology of that is not simple, but it's very real.

Nobody, especially anyone on the left, ever wants to blame the working-class or the masses for their complicity in their own ignorance. We'd like to believe it's all a conspiracy of a wealthy cabal. But that's just not true.


Post-Watergate, not many Americans would believe that our government or our politicians are inherently trustworthy (most people didn't actually believe that before, I suspect). But those things were exposed by the press. Shit like that is often first exposed by the press, rather than the police or other government watchdogs. So we are in a position whereby we have to trust the press to watch the government (and other major institutions) but we cannot really trust anyone in particular to watch the press. Not the "alternative press" or Chomsky or Pilger or "bloggers" or anyone. They all have axes to grind and are frequently trying to sell a book just like everyone else. Besides, they don't have the resources to uncover the stuff that needs to be uncovered. TV barely even tries anymore since talking head bullshit is so much more cost-effective.

So we're stuck with the big newspapers and, in some cases, certain academics to tell us what is going on, and we just have to do our best to be appropriately skeptical and be willing to listen to diverse sources.

[Amor de Cosmos]

[Applause)

[Amor de Cosmos]

I'd agree with everything Reed said. I think too, that there's an increasing belief, not only that everything we see, hear, or read is propaganda, but that if it isn't it should be. Too many people approach the world nowadays with an explicit agenda. Whether fact or fiction, if the author views things from a perspective that doesn't concur with their own their work is dismissed out of hand. One example. I've just finished reading The Camomile Lawn. Briefly, it's memoir/novel about a group of upper-middle class English people and how they survived the WW2 (mainly by fucking like rabbits.) Published in the early eighties, it's a fascinating and thought provoking view of the importance of sex in hard times — and a whole lot more (I'll probably write something more extensive in OTFbooks in a few days.) But, if you look on Good Reads, or Amazon, you'll find comments like "There are no working class characters. End of story." Well of course there aren't you bonehead, the writer is drawing from her own life and experience. Should she pretend to be something she's not, or would you like her to just shut up? I find this sort of idiocy alternately infuriating and depressing. It's turning everyone into a pack of narrow-minded jades and bigots who aren't willing to look to more than an inch in front of their nose in case they see something that offends them.

[Satchmo Distel]

Yes, Reed's post was excellent. On the working class, I would say it was heading to the right before Thatcher and Reagan, just as it was heading to the right before Trump. Its collective groupthink can often be conservative with a small 'c'. Although the working class has materially less than the middle and upper class, it still has much to lose, so its fears can lead it in racist and anti-liberal directions. In the US, you obviously have added religious conservatism.

The relevance to Vietnam is perhaps the perception of the anti-war movement as being a bunch of over-privileged students, and the fact that losing a war hurts the working-class's white masculine pride. Then there's fear of feminism and resentment of 'uppity blacks'. Nixon tapped into all of that then Reagan did his infamous Rambo-based rewriting of the historical memory.

The Chomsky/Pilger fallacy is partly the belief that the working-class would be inherently more radical if it wasn't being drip-fed the BBC's cosy liberalism. Whilst I certainly agree that the BBC engages in that chattering class bullshit, I think its market is the middle class rather than the working class, which probably avoids the news these days. PBS seems to have an audience that is my generation or older, which means we get a healthy 1970s-style approach to journalism but also a worldview that is limited by whatever mindset a Democrat aged 50-75 is likely to have. Maybe Radio 4 is the best UK parallel, assuming Radio 4 these days is still like it was before I left the UK.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I enjoyed that HP, but it doesn't really cover the astroturf nature of the rise of libertarianism in the US in the second half of the 20th century, or the rise of the idea that Freedom means freedom of capital to do whatever the fuck it wants, like it was the 18th century again. no-one was interested in Libertarianism after they had a good dose of the new deal, and the collective effort of the second world war. conservatives believed that taxes on millionaires were too high and should be cut to 75%. It was an era of investment, expansion and prosperity. someone had to pay a lot of money to endow chairs in universities, to create think tanks, to hire op=ed writers who were writing some pretty far out shit for the time, for this bullshit to become part of the discourse.

It's not even so much about convincing people directly about a particular fixed idea as it is about dragging the overton window back to the gilded age. It's an effort so successful that every Democratic candidate for president makes Angela Merkel look like Rosa Luxembourg.

I think the way to think about is to view every country as some form of oligarchy, to varying degrees. In the uk and in brexit, the oligarchs in the Uk And the US are separate to the govt. They own politicians and more importantly they own much of the media, and decide what people get to hear. So it seems to be coming from the independent media. in somewhere like the USSR, the Oligarchs were the politicians, and the media was owned by the party, so it seems more direct. But both are similar in effect. It's just that I'm not sure that all the people watching Globus films with Chuck Norris and mossad kicking the shit out of palestinian terrorists all over the world were aware just how childishly propagandist these movies were.

As for the BBC, whatever pro-govt lines tendencies a state broadcaster have is completely fucking swamped, by their requirement to cover both sides of the british political bubble like they're equally valid, even if one of them is insane destructive xenophobic proto-fascism. That was really obvious during brexit, but ultimately boils down to them having to be the middle ground between the Daily Mail, and the guardian, while treating both as valid. This is a major problem that afflicts their domestic political coverage, which far outweighs their less than stellar work on palestine, or their following of the Govt line in covering certain other foreign stories. Whatever faith I might have in the integrity or honesty of the BBC has been completely fucking vapourized by the Scottish referendum, the brexit referendum, and their coverage of Brexit since.

But I think it's that watching one episode of Question time where I think the panel was a Daily mail journalist, a tory minister, Nigel farage, the grand wizard of the KKk, and some labour non-entity who spent the afternoon thinking about how much better their career would be going if they had joined the tories in college. Or maybe it was the audience of angry, ill informed people, many of whom were clearly disturbed. I found myself thinking, is this it? is this as polished as the BBC can make this particular political turd?

[San Bernardhinault]

Yes, Reed's post was excellent. On the working class, I would say it was heading to the right before Thatcher and Reagan, just as it was heading to the right before Trump. Its collective groupthink can often be conservative with a small 'c'. Although the working class has materially less than the middle and upper class, it still has much to lose, so its fears can lead it in racist and anti-liberal directions. In the US, you obviously have added religious conservatism.

Has the working class actually headed to the right? Didn't the working class always have a large portion who were this kind of "conservative"? Who were heavily religious, who were homophobic and racist, who didn't like change and didn't like foreigners? Surely what happened was that the political left decided that it cared more about fairness and justice, rather than just being a vehicle for the (white, male) working class. When the left started backing socially liberal policies - rather than just redistribution and using political heft to protect working class jobs - it moved itself away from the conservative working class leaving them as fairly easy pickings for the Nixons, and later Reagans and Thatchers.

The working class didn't change its politics.

All that said, I agree with the rest of your post. That change meant that it was easy to sell the anti-war movement as the movement of all these elitists who have their high-falutin' ideas, rather than good down to earth types who want to protect Real Working People.

[Satchmo Distel]

The upper section of the working class became more individualistic and less collectivist. Union membership declined. These started before Thatcher.