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It's OK To Describe Suffering from Oklahoma Tornadoes but NOT NATO Bombs
Reporting News is Not Propaganda but Manipulation of the News to Deceive the Public IS
Propaganda - Not!
By: Mary Mostert,
May 7, 1999
Berry Tramel, a staff writer for the Oklahoman, in Oklahoma City, wrote describing the
devastation caused by tornadoes that swept through Oklahoma City and it surrounding
areas: "I've stood in Arlington National Cemetery.
I peered through the fence at the Murrah Building. I've interviewed dying children.
Nothing sobered me like a walk down Windemere Drive.
"Look south, and homes by the dozens are leveled. Look north, and no home still
stands. Block after block after block, nothing but piles of rubble, interrupted only
by trees stripped of limb and leaf. Piles with people si
fting for valuables.
"I've seen footage of tornado damage. I've seen footage of this tornado damage. I've
never seen anything like this. This looked like something out of World War I. This was
a barren land."
A flurry of stories chronicled the suffering of the people, left without electricity,
housing, telephones, and water in some cases and explained the complexities of
removing the debris left by the tornadoes, and the pain
at the losses suffered:
"Mother and son survived the storm in a neighbor's cellar.
"He came out of the cellar and said, 'Mama, you don't have a house.' Then he looked
down the street and said, 'Mama, I don't have one, either,'" Delma Whitaker said.
As Carpenter sat on the rain-stained mattress in the sunshine and open air of what had
once been her childhood bedroom, she began to cry. Her mother sat beside her, pulling
her close and offering wordless comfort.
"Carpenter shook her head as she looked at the devastation around her."
On Fox News yesterday, the Big Story was the tornado damage. With 41 known dead, and
some towns totally wiped out, damage was described by one talking head as "looking
like the area had been bombed back to the Stone Age."
Through the pictures and written descriptions of the suffering caused by the
tornadoes, the American people are sympathetic to the suffering described. Does that
constitute "propaganda" - which the dictionary describes as
the "systematic effort to spread opinion or beliefs." Are the stories repeated hour
after hour in an effort to get the American people to think about the tornado victims
in a certain light - and, if so, is that bad?
Simultaneously with the tornadoes, a natural disaster, there is another swath of
destruction taking place in Yugoslavia by design as bombers and missiles rein down on
the people of Yugoslavia, where Bill Clinton and his f
riends in NATO are determined to "bomb the Serbs" back to the Stone Age, unless they
agree to surrender their sovereignty as a nation. Descriptions of the suffering of the
people who are actually being bombed back to the
Stone Age are considered "propaganda" by some and they complain. For example, the
following e-mail protesting articles about the impact of NATO bombs prompted one of
Mike Reagan's listeners to write:
Mike: Love the show and site. Good info, but am perturbed by excessive Serbian
propaganda at site. Sure clinton is the C-in-C from Hell, but if we blow this, it's
not just him that goes. If we can't defeat a two-bit tinho
rn like this, much of what your Dad achieved will be dissipated. I'm with Sen. McCain.-
Very Respectfully,
David Crow
Apparently Crow believes that descriptions of suffering caused by bombs is
"propaganda" - but descriptions of suffering caused by tornadoes is not. The
destruction, and the resultant suffering of the injured and the dying
, the lack of food , water, heat - and in some instances - housing are the same. For
example, from Ivanka, a 74 year old writer in Belgrade to her daughter in America:
"May 5th-(Phone) Power goes on, power goes off. No el
ectricity at Olga's right now. Our showers are cold, laundry is dirty, and food is
getting spoiled. I am afraid to use elevators, as power failures are so unpredictable
that people are getting stuck and have to be rescued
. Considering that my building is almost empty, who knows how long I'd have to wait
for help if that happened. I have no idea how my 90 year old neighbor is handling it
all - I've spent most of the time at Olga's.
"It's frustrating, not being able to watch the news, nor access the Internet. I wonder
if that was the reason for strangling of our power lines - killing journalists has
proven too costly in Public relations points... Rea
listically, the army depends the least on our country's power grid. They have
batteries and generators, as I am sure NATO knows very well if even I can think of it.
"The food in the stores is getting bad. The milk we bought today was spoiled, and
there was no bread in the morning. However, by the middle of the day, it arrived. Some
of the stores are not open, and there is a great big
rush on any of the pubs that still have electricity - only places you can still find
cold beer...
"We are starting to open preserves, as there are no cans (except for fish, for some
reason). Still, we are lucky. We live on the third floor, and still have water. Lucky
to have found gas just days before the power went o
ff. Poor people in the high rises, on the 22nd and 20th floors are having a hard time,
and so are the people living in the hilly areas of Belgrade where there is no water
whatsoever. They are looking for water anywhere th
ey can find it, and there are cisterns around, distributing it to the most affected
areas. Unfortunately, with very little gasoline for cars and trucks, there's not much
that can be done. Trolleys are stopped too. This is
, I guess, the kinder, gentler war. Instead of shooting us with a big gun to the head,
they are smothering our faces in the suffocating pillow of exhaustion and deprivation.
Much less noise from the press that way - dark
streets don't photograph well."
"We've come to depend on papers and friends to find out what goes on. Occasionally,
the TV comes on. Still, there's plenty of information, although, of course, our
ability to hear the news from the outside world is now se
verely limited, thanks to NATO that masterminded our isolation. If they bombed SRT TV
station for "lying", shouldn't they at least kick themselves for managing to single
handedly eliminate most of the independent informat
ion we can receive?
"One wonderful news: There was a thank you note left for Yugoslavia by one of the
young soldiers freed! His name is Chris Stone.
"He actually said that he will be praying for us and that he hopes for the end of the
war. He even learned a few words of our language. His president might not have
manners, but Chris has shown the kindness and warmth tha
t I noticed in other young people of America, when I was visiting San Francisco. They
were always happy to help me get on the bus, in the grocery store, to answer my
questions. I am sure that, if there was a way to have e
ach American soldier meet a Yugoslav person, sit and talk over coffee, this war would
be over within a day. That's why there is the need to distance from the victim,
destroy from afar - people are overall decent, and woul
d throw their weapons down in horror if they realized what they were doing.
"I was lucky to reach the director of my music school in Panchevo, who was able to
tell me what goes on across the river, in the choked city. The smoke from the burning
refinery is still raising. It was estimated that rig
ht after the disaster, the amount of carcinogens in the air was over 10,000 times the
safe level.
"The entire part of the city next to the refinery had to be evacuated - Vojlovica,
where mostly the Slovaks and Hungarians lived. Some wonderful people of Slovakia have
been helping to get the poor Panchevars out of the m
ost endangered areas. Local Red Cross and Hrasko Teresa, a Slovak angel, have
organized the transport of 200 Slovakian children into Slovakia, where they'll be safe
from NATO bombing. Hungarians mostly left for their rela
tives' homes around Serbia and Hungary, who knows where."
Bill Clinton and his NATO pals have bombed TV stations, killing working journalists,
power plants, and water mains - leaving not just Serbs, but Albanians, Slovakians,
Hungarians, Americans living in Belgrade and others w
ithout basic necessities for life. But we journalists should not mention it? Even
though targeting civilian water supplies is a violation of International Law?
"If we can't defeat a two-bit tinhorn like this, much of what your Dad achieved will
be dissipated. I'm with Sen. McCain." Sen. McCain has stated that, while the bombing
was not well thought out, now that Clinton is doing
it we need to get behind him.
Why should we get behind a policy that is simply wrong? Certainly Ronald Reagan would
not expect the American people to support a wrong-headed policy that is destroying a
nation of people who have long been one of our mos
t courageous and valiant allies. The Congress of the United States has not voted in
favor of the bombing.
Propaganda is what is going on when the networks of America spend hours everyday, as
Fox News did yesterday, repeating over and over stories about the "suffering" Albanian
refugees, who looked hale and hearty getting off
the plane in New Jersey, while ignoring the suffering of Hungarian, Serb, Slovakian
and other groups who are being bombed by NATO in Yugoslavia. Many of the people the
bombs are landing on are refugees, Serb refugees, who
were driven out of Krajina, Croatia a few short years ago.
Politically correct sympathy even for refugees, it
appears, is to be limited to those given the Clinton
stamp of approval.
When the media reports or withholds stories, based on
the identity of the refugees - that is propaganda. If
we should have sympathy for tornado victims in America
or Albanian refugees in New Jersey, why the insistence
that the human suffering of others who live in
Yugoslavia, whom we are bombing, be ignored?
I think the answer is obvious. Clinton knows full well
that he does not have the support of the American
people for his bombing. However, many have not heard
enough of the story to understand yet what is
happening - and Clinton does not WANT them to know
what is really happening.
At this writing we are hearing that a peace
"agreement" may be in the offing, as the G-8 nations
meet in Bonn, Germany. Perhaps it will materialize. On
the other hand, it may not - especially if Clinton
insists on the Serbs surrendering their sovereignty.
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>From wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : The Balkan Crisis
Scenes of death and destruction
Victims of tornadoes or victims of bombing?
By Jerry White
6 May 1999
The devastation wrought by the three tornadoes that
hit in Oklahoma and Kansas late Monday has been widely
detailed by the US news media. Survivors emerged from
their basements to survey scenes of death and
destruction: flattened homes, schools and buildings,
neighborhoods strewn with twisted metal and trees.
The savage force of 260-mile-an-hour winds killed at
least 43 people, injured another 663 and destroyed or
heavily damaging nearly 2,000 structures. As of
Wednesday hundreds of victims were still missing.
Rescue workers, sifting through the rubble, expected
the death toll to rise.
Officials and news commentators described the impact
of the tornadoes with words usually reserved for a war
zone. Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating said: "We have
whole communities that simply aren't there anymore. It
certainly looks like a huge battle has taken place." A
73-year-old survivor, who hid in a closet, compared
the fear of the moment to her days in Germany during
World War II when bombs fell around her.
The tornadoes produced a human tragedy of considerable
proportion. The victims, many of whom suffered most
because they could ill afford well-built houses and
lived in trailer homes, deserve sympathy and public
support. Undoubtedly, the government aid promised by
President Clinton and other officials will fall far
short of the needs of those affected, who will soon be
forgotten once the media spotlight is turned off.
Those who empathize with the tornado victims, however,
should pause for a moment and consider what if this
destruction had been the result of bombs and cruise
missiles, instead of a natural disaster?
Such horrific scenes are being produced every day in
countless Yugoslav cities and villages by US and NATO
warplanes but go unreported. The four-hour "reign of
terror" described by tornado survivors in Oklahoma
City, Wichita and Kansas City is virtually a nightly
occurrence for the residents of Belgrade, Novi Sad and
Pristina who pile into bomb shelters, instead of
tornado shelters.
Thousands of Serbs, including women and children, have
already been killed and injured in neighborhoods,
schools and hospitals destroyed by Operation Allied
Force. Families are searching through the rubble for
loved ones and to pick up the pieces of their
destroyed lives, not unlike their American
counterparts. But the tornadoes moved on and
dissipated after their destructive work. Tens of
thousands of ordinary Serbs still face the terror of
escalating bomb attacks and the possibility of
invading and occupying troops.
The US news media has deliberately concealed the scale
of the human tragedy that has been caused by the US
and NATO warplanes, while repeating the Pentagon and
White House lies about not targeting Serbian
civilians. Moreover, the US military has deliberately
destroyed Serbian television stations and broadcasting
facilities to prevent most images of the impact of
bombing from reaching the American public. The
political establishment is well aware that the such
scenes would strengthen antiwar sentiment in the US
and evoke widespread sympathy for the Serbian people.
See Also:
Clinton, NATO generals discuss expansion of Yugoslavia
war
[6 May 1999]
The fraud of NATO humanitarianism
What are the reasons for the war in Yugoslavia?
[5 May 1999]
Wall Street celebrates stepped-up bombing of Serbia
[5 May 1999]
Blair outlines his vision of the new military world
order
[29 April 1999]
War in the Balkans
[WSWS Full Coverage]
Top of page
Readers: The WSWS invites your comments. Please send e-
mail.
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