I've been a fan of Chomsky for some time now and one thing I find interesting in particular, is his claim that the media manufacture consent to serve the interests of power. One way they do this, is by allowing a lively debate but only within a very narrow spectrum of opinion. In his work he cites many examples to prove his point.
Being an American, his work is primarily focused on the media in the US, which arguably might be more servile to power than the media in other Western countries. But the Dutch media is of more interest to me.
Being an American, his work is primarily focused on the media in the US, which arguably might be more servile to power than the media in other Western countries. But the Dutch media is of more interest to me.
The noble West
The Arab uprisings provide a showcase example of this phenomenon. The uprising in Egypt gained the most attention and while at first I expected the long-time US (and the West in general) support for the Mubarak regime to go unmentioned, it was actually mentioned quite often. What was interesting however, is the way they framed the debate about this issue.
Whenever it was discussed, our commitment to democracy and human rights was rarely ever questioned. Support for Mubarak may have been denounced as a strategic error, but our intentions were noble. That is: to maintain 'stability' and peace in the region. Surely we wouldn't do it for our own selfish interests.
The exceptions
One of the few exceptions I've seen was an opinion article in the newspaper Trouw, where historian Geert Somsen equated our support for Mubarak as support for terror. His article was quite a relief after waiting for weeks for anyone to at least ask the question: 'what does this say about our commitment to democracy and human rights?' It seems like such an obvious question to ask when someone mentions how we've supported a brutal dictator. But apparantly, the possibility of our leaders not being the heroes of the free world we'd like to think they are, is inconceivable to most of our journalists.
Another exception -although not as fierce as Somsen- was journalist Joris Luyendijk, when asked to comment in a documentary about our close relationship with many Arab dictators. He seemed sceptic of our supposedly noble intentions and was flabbergasted by a video of an interviewer for the tv-show Nieuwsuur (News Hour), failing to confront the prime-minister with our support for dictators while he was making great declarations about his love for democracy.
It is nice to know that there's atleast some room for such dissident voices. But overall the media failed horribly in asking the questions that really matter.
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