lenny unencumbered

If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

–Malcolm X, civil rights leader

Perhaps you’ve noticed that I often criticise Western mass media as corrupt stenographers for their corporate owners’ opinions. Their refashioned purpose seems less about fact-checking and informing than about perpetuating and steering a narrative sponsored, of course, by vested interests.

So why do I still read, watch, or listen to these serial manipulators?

I think it’s important to digest what they’re telling you, so that what they’re leaving out, covering up, or papering over becomes more obvious.

However, that only works if you obey the rules of scepticism, reason and logic. If you’re just shopping for confirmation of your own biases, then you’re only helping them perpetuate a profitable vicious cycle.

While British media have a superb command of the English language and a very civil style of presentation, they’re no less corrupt than their crass American counterparts like Fox News. American media, without doubt, cater to an audience that craves entertainment because it has been conditioned to worship celebrities. Western media know the show they put on matters more than the truth; at least that’s what it looks like from afar.

Outlets like CNN and MS-NOW (formerly MSNBC) don’t come off any better. The less said about them, the better.

So how did the British public get duped into tolerating the unadulterated garbage that emanates from media networks like Talk TV and GB News, which have regular shows hosted by egregious liars and bigots like Julia Hartley-Brewer, Ash Gould, James Whale (now deceased), Piers Morgan, and regular racist bigots commentators like Douglas Murray?

The BBC, once known for superlative news reporting and documentaries, is now a shadow of its former self. It now struggles to convince its audience it is still a service they can rely on.

Last night I watched, with mild amusement, a segment on YouTube from the news, talk, and phone-in radio station LBC (Leading Britain’s Conversation), in which host Shelagh Fogarty interviewed Seyed Mohammad Marandi.

Marandi is an Iranian-American academic and a professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran. He now lives in Tehran and advised the Iranian team that negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Professor Marandi is now a seasoned political commentator and has appeared on numerous international news networks, talk shows and podcasts.

I have no illusion that Professor Marandi is an independent political commentator. His links to the Iranian government are no secret, and he has never denied them. I find him, however, credible and a person of integrity, and he uses logic and reason to refute common dishonest Western narratives frequently recycled on the platforms where he is interviewed.

Shelagh Fogarty was rude, condescending, ill-prepared, and either dismally ignorant or pursuing an (ill)advised line of questioning. Her bias and pitiful attempt to build a false narrative were so glaringly obvious that it was painful to watch as Marandi completely dismantled it (as he so often does). At one point, I actually started feeling sorry for her.

This interview encapsulates everything wrong and terrifying with Western media. They have gotten away with it for so long. It’s a pity that the multitude of awful tragedies unfolding in the Middle East has to expose it so starkly.