To get a taste of it, we present this exchange between the organisation and the BBC. Objecting that its reporters were simply repeating US and UK government claims of their motives as objective fact, Media Lens emailed the company. They pointed out that one reporter stated that "US intervention in the region . . . is pushing its democracy agenda, has created a political space that dissenters can occupy." However, "All this does not mean that the dreams that the Bush administration has for the region are coming true."
As Media Lens note, this "is the key propaganda sentence: the United States and Britain are driven by fundamentally benign motives in the Middle East - by 'dreams' of democracy, no less. Our governments invade countries illegally, wage vast propaganda campaigns to deceive their own populations, and kill and injure countless thousands of innocent civilians. But somehow, at heart, they are striving to spread liberty, democracy and the rights of man."
This is a standard position for the BBC. A Newsnight reporter, for example, talked of "Bush's grand design of toppling a dictator and forcing a democracy into the heart of the Middle East." When Media Lens challenged Newsnight editor to justify this as objective reporting, he replied: "I don't think it's right to challenge the assumption that [Bush] wants democracy in Iraq"! It gets worse. The BBC's News at Ten reported that British and American forces "came to Iraq in the first place to bring democracy and human rights." Asked whether she stood by this factually untrue statement, the BBC's director of news replied that the "analysis of the underlying motivation of the coalition is borne out by many speeches and remarks made by both Mr Bush and Mr Blair." So if our rulers say something, the BBCconsiders it as true. Journalism at its finest!
Needless to say, Media Lens pointed out the obvious facts of the matter, namely that it was "flatly false." US and UK troops invaded Iraq to disarming an "alleged 'serious and current threat'to the West from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Only when this claim was revealed as an indefensible fraud, did Blair and, later, Bush beginemphasising 'democracy and human rights.'" This the BBC simply presented "as truth arguments made in 'many speeches and remarks made by both Mr Bush and Mr Blair.' Is it the job of objective, neutral BBC journalists to take it as read that our leaders are telling the truth?Isn't that the task of propagandists?"
That this war was not about regime change has been placed in the Memory Hole. It is a good job that Media Lens is there to remind us of the facts, particularly as the same nonsense is now being peddled by the government to justify an attack on Iran and the media is going along with it.