Last
month, an article by Fair.org went viral in republications by
popular alternative media outlets ranging from Salon to Zero
Hedge to Alternet to Truthdig, among many
others. The article was initially titled “ACTION ALERT: It’s Been Over a Year
Since MSNBC Has Mentioned US War in Yemen”, but many subsequent republications
went with variations on the more attention-grabbing headline, “MSNBC has done
455 Stormy Daniels segments in the last year — but none on U.S. war in Yemen”.
The
centerpiece of the article was the following graphic, which I saw shared on its
own many times in my social media feeds:
That’s
about as in your face as it gets, isn’t it?
Ever
since the Saudi-led assault on Yemen began in March of 2015, alternative media
outlets everywhere have been repeatedly and aggressivelydecrying the mainstream media in the US and UK for their spectacular failureto adequately and accurately cover the violence and humanitarian disasterwith appropriate reporting on who is responsible for it. After
the 2016 US election, journalist Michael Tracey wrote an essay documenting how throughout the entire
year and a half that Americans were pummeled with updates from the mass media
about candidates and their campaigns, not one single question about Yemen was
ever asked by any mainstream outlet of any candidate.
This
is of course outrageous, but because of how media coverage works, mainstream
attention was never drawn to the problem. It hasn’t been a totalmedia
blackout, but because it only turns up in mainstream media reports every once
in a while with little if any emphasis being placed on who is behind the
devastation, it occupies a very peripheral place in western consciousness. The
average American would probably be able to tell you that some parts of their
government appear to be concerned about Russia, Syria, Iran and North Korea,
because those rival nations have been the subject of intense mass media
coverage, but if you asked them about Yemen you’d likely be told something like
“I think there’s some kind of humanitarian crisis there?”, if anything.
This
has all changed in the last few days. Suddenly, the atrocities being inflicted
upon the people of Yemen are being pushed into mainstream attention by the mass
media outlets which have been ignoring them for more than three years.
The Washington Post editorial board published an op-edtitled
“End U.S. support for this misbegotten and unwinnable war”. CNN did some
actual, real journalism for a change with a viral exclusive documenting which American war
profiteers were behind some of the more devastating Saudi bombings. And yes,
MSNBC finally did cover the violence in Yemen, breaking its year-long silence
to report
on a US-supplied bomb which killed 40 children with such urgent
condemnation of those responsible you’d never know they’d been consistently
ignoring such incidents which have been going on for years. Now politicians and celebrities everywhere
are shoving the horror of their government facilitating the slaughter of
innocents into mainstream attention.
What’s
interesting here is that nothing at all has changed except for the coverage.
US-supplied bombs have been dropping on marketplaces, hospitalsand funerals and slaughtering
civilians in far more deadly incidents for years, and the US has also
been providing extensive assistance to Saudi airstrikes, as
well as attacking Yemeni targets directly. The only thing that has changed is that now it’s
being reported with an urgency and volume that is appropriate for such a
horrific incident instead of an occasional low-profile mention with little or
no mention of responsibility.
Nobody
with their eyes open believes that the mainstream media have just suddenly
developed a conscience and now deeply care about the mass murder of Middle
Eastern civilians. So why the change? If you ask some of the Trump supporters
I’ve seen responding to the shift, it’s because their president can now be
unfairly blamed for a military campaign which began long before he took office.
But that doesn’t really hold water, does it? I mean, the aforementioned year in
which MSNBC didn’t cover Yemen took place entirely during this administration,
and every American with cable TV knows that MSNBC markets itself as the
anti-Trump network. If they’d wanted to use Yemen as another angle from which
to criticize this administration they would have done so, instead of not doing
so at all. The entirety of mainstream media have been grossly neglecting this
issue up until the last week despite having every opportunity to condemn Trump
for it.
For
the record, while we’re on the subject, I personally don’t much care if Trump
gets all the blame for the Yemen catastrophe at this point. I’ve spent 2017 and
2018 fighting the insane corporate liberal notion that all American depravity
began in January of last year, but at this point I’m happy with literally
anything that just ends the death and devastation. A year into the war, the
30-year CIA veteran Bruce Riedel said that “if the United States of America and the
United Kingdom tonight told King Salman that this war has to end, it would end
tomorrow, because the Royal Saudi Airforce cannot operate without American and
British support.” If using this as an opportunity to attack Trump creates the
necessary political pressure to end the bombings, blockades, starvation and
disease that is killing untold thousands of Yemeni civilians, then fine,
whatever, I’m all for it.
But
again, from what I’m seeing right now I don’t believe that this is about Trump.
Not directly anyway. From what I can see right now, I think what we are
witnessing is a clear instance in which alternative media successfully caused
the establishment to lose control of the narrative on an important issue.
In
the US, criticism of Saudi Arabia is nearly as taboo as criticism of Israel. As
we saw explained in a leaked State Department memo last year, it is standard
US policy to use human rights abuses as a bludgeon with which to attack rival
governments, while sweeping the atrocities committed by allies under the rug.
Because of its lucrative petrodollar deal with the US, and because
its opaque and unaccountable monarchy makes it capable of nefarious maneuvers
to advance geopolitical agendas that an ostensible democracy would have a hard
time getting away with, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of America’s most
important allies. And the plutocrat-owned media, whose controllers have a
vested interest in protecting the establishment upon which their kingdoms are
built, consistently fall right in line with that same State Department policy.
This,
and the fact that the control of a key strategic region is at stake, is why
we’ve been seeing the Saudi war crimes in Yemen and the US facilitation thereof
downplayed for years by the mass media. And they would surely remain downplayed
indefinitely were it possible.
But
it wasn’t possible. The story kept getting pushed toward mainstream
consciousness year after year, and eventually the fact that an outlet which
upholds itself as the flag bearer of Trump’s opposition has been completely
ignoring this administration’s facilitation of war crimes was made viral. At a
certain point a Dem-voting audience which is being told day in and day out that
Trump presents a unique and unprecedented level of danger to the world will
lose trust in the outlets which market themselves to that demographic if they refuse
to make a big deal about the fact that this administration is helping tyrants
murder busloads of children.
For
this reason, western mainstream media have been forced to finally report on the
cruelty being inflicted upon the people of Yemen by Saudi Arabia and its allies
in order to avoid losing credibility. The story got out, and the story about
their lack of coverage of that story got out, and now they’re all reporting on
it like they’ve been doing so this entire time. Which, if it continues, will make
it very difficult for the US/UK/Saudi war machine to retain the consent of the
governed for its mass slaughter.
In
my opinion, we can safely call this a win for alternative media. The
voices who aren’t beholden to the empire and its geopolitical agendas refused
to let this story die, and eventually succeeded in overtaking the dominant
narrative.Not because media-controlling oligarchs like Brian L Roberts and Jeff
Bezos gave them permission to, but because unauthorized truth was spoken and
carried by many ordinary people into mainstream consciousness via Facebook
shares, Twitter retweets and speaking out loud and proud wherever possible. A
people’s information battle was fought and won by the people.
If
things go as I am hoping they will go, we will see more and more such populist
hijackings of dominant narratives in the future, and ultimately a failure of
the oligarchs to continue manufacturing consent for their omnicidal, ecocidal,
Orwellian agendas. We will have to be aggressive, we will have to be creative,
and we will have to be interesting enough to catch the eye of the casual
citizenry, but the fact that trust in the mass media is at an all-time low and
our ability to network and share information is at an all-time high combines
with the fact that we have truth on our side to create some very exciting
possibilities. I find this all very encouraging.
