Editorial:

Insidious propaganda

Rupert Murdoch denies that management interferes in editorial 
decision-making, and generally speaking that is probably true. 
The uniformly pro-war, fear-mongering line that pours out of his 
media empire, from the daily newspapers through Fox News 
television, is not the result of day-to-day edicts handed down 
from his board of directors. Murdoch backs George W Bush, the 
theft of civil rights and the military aggression being carried 
out under the cover of the war on terrorism. Senior editors are 
given their instructions, the wheels are put in motion and the 
general line followed: all employees must follow suit. The 
propaganda can be overt, or sly and underhand. The Weekend 
Australian Magazine of November 13-14 is a prime example.

On its cover, instead of a headline there is a long quote — "She 
looked pregnant, otherwise she was completely normal. She looked 
at me. She smiled and then she exploded." There is the photograph 
of a young woman in army fatigues holding a child on one arm and 
a gun on the other. That particular issue of the magazine lift-
out was a carefully designed promotion of racism tied to the 
denigration of women. The juxtaposition of photos, the order of 
appearance of its articles, the choice of subjects; all were 
loaded to give maximum effect to the cover story.

There was a reminiscing piece on the women protesters who were 
arrested at the US base at Pine Gap in 1983, written as though 
the threat of nuclear annihilation by a world superpower no 
longer exists, and as if US spy bases are essentially benign 
presences.

Next to that there was a profile of singer Tina Harrod — with 
glossy colour photo in designer fashions — who we are told 
critics are "comparing to Nina Simone and Aretha Franklin".

Further on there is a head and shoulders colour portrait across 
two pages of "Perth teenager Gemma Ward", who we are informed is 
"the supermodel of the moment" but who has "her wide eyes set on 
bigger things". There followed two pages with a photo history.

The next feature was a story about shark attacks with the upper-
case headline "BLOOD IN THE WATER", leading into the cover story. 
Headlined "MOTHER, MURDERER, MARTYR", it asked, "What led a young 
mother to choose a murderous fate as a suicide bomber?" The 
article runs across seven pages.

It asserts, "Every Palestinian wants to be a suicide bomber, in 
public at least. Western reporters' notebooks are filled with 
page after page of declarations of an imminent self-sacrifice 
that rarely happens. Like an old coin the same tired slogans have 
passed from hand to hand despite the dawning recognition that the 
war of martyrs has failed."

Further on the author contradicts himself, claiming "the cult of 
martyrdom has grown". And in order to rob the story of its 
political content, the article insinuates, without any facts to 
back it up, that the young mother had become pregnant in an 
adulterous affair and that that was why she carried out the 
bombing.

It says she had "never left the prison strip of Gaza", which is 
"crammed with 1.3 million Palestinian refugees", that she "lived 
in a world of suffocating closeness."

The author's description of Palestinian society, its historical 
and cultural make up, is placed in skewered context: "The tribe, 
not the individual is paramount. Western concepts of 
individualism — the ambitions and dreams, the private bedroom 
that Australian teenagers take for granted — are culturally 
alien."

The Israeli occupation, the real "suffocating closeness", is 
mentioned, but the impression conveyed is that this is simply a 
necessary measure in order to keep in check an "alien" culture.

The conclusion we are expected to draw from all of this is that 
the answer to the question posed at the beginning, "What led a 
young mother to?" must be, "Because she is not Western", meaning 
"civilised", meaning her "uncivilised" society drove her to it. 
The real barbarians — Israel's Sharon Government and its state-
sponsored terror — are left completely out of the picture.

If only she had been like that blues singer, that supermodel, 
those spirited women at Pine Gap, who after all didn't resort to 
that sort of thing.

Such are the insidious peddlers of racial hatred and the 
promoters of war.