War Propaganda on Pacifica Radio in the USA, Professor Hall Posts a Complaint

Dear Arlene Englehardt, Executive Director, Pacifica and Bob Conger, KPFK General Manager

I want to register my view that the content of Ian Masters' "Daily Briefing" show of 23 June, 2010 constitutes a clear and
egregious violation of part (d) of the Pacifica Radio Network's mission
statement.

Pacifica Mission Statement

"(d) In radio broadcasting operations to engage in any activity that shall contribute to a lasting understanding between nations and between the individuals of all nations,
races, creeds and colors; to gather and disseminate information on the causes
of conflict between any and all of such groups; and through any and all means
compatible with the purposes of this corporation to promote the study of
political and economic problems and of the causes of religious, philosophical
and racial antagonisms."

The basis of the offending show was a sympathetic interview with Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington. Junger is the author of the book, War. Junger worked with Hetherington on the documentary film, Restrepo, whose local showing was repeatedly
promoted by Mr. Masters. Both the
book and the film chronicle the time that Junger and Hetherington spent as
embedded journalists with a Special Forces military unit in the Korengal Valley region
of Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008.

Masters again and again agreed with his guests that the literary and film productions don't venture "into political turf." Masters indicated that Restrepo
was "a true documentary"
rather than "a piece of proselytizing." Masters made similar
characterizations of the book. I disagree. To me the host and the
guests tended
to lionize US soldiers and dehumanize the opponents by describing them
in
highly politicized terms such as "the enemy," "the
insurgents," and the "the militants." Junger and Masters both
presented a picture distinguishing generic "Afghans" from generic
"Talibans." Somehow, according to Masters and Junger, all so-called
Taliban and their supporters are excluded from Afghani
citizenship. So-called Taliban who move back and forth across an
international boundary imposed on the region quite recently by the
European empire builders who preceded the US occupiers are
characterized on your radio system as outsiders whereas US soldiers and
their journalistic cheer leaders from, say, California, become through
propaganda something other than foreign invaders.

Rather than acknowledging the ethnic dimensions of the civil war taking place in the region, Junger and Masters both characterized the opponents of the US-backed puppet regime in Kabul as aliens, as "a proxy force for
the Pakistani government." The Pakistani government is therefore presented
as a single cohesive entity rather than as a polity as fraught with
factionalism and competing agendas as the US government and its various constituencies (both human and corporate).

This kind of war propaganda aimed at demonizing opponents and attaching public sympathy to only one side in a complex conflagration is hardly calculated to "contribute
to a lasting understanding between nations and between the individuals of all
nations, races, creeds and colors." Moreover Masters, Junger and
Hetherington engage in forms of disinformation that confirm hostile stereotypes
rather than "disseminate information on the causes of conflict between any
and all of such groups." The presenters do not, for instance, deal with any of ethnic
and religious dimensions of the military conflicts in the so-called AfPak
region or the reasons given for NATO's intervention after the events of 9/11.
Hence the effect of the broadcast was to distort public perceptions rather than
to provide information to advance "the study of political and economic
problems and of the causes of religious, philosophical and racial
antagonisms."

KPFK Senior Programmer Alan Minsky entered the on-air discussion to make a pitch for the rareness and importance of Junger's and Hetherington's work and to
suggest they were promoting peace rather than providing propaganda, as they
did, to promote a further the military build up in the AfPak region. Mr. Minsky
reflected on the interview characterizing it as an example that KPFK delivers
"journalism that you don't get anywhere else." In fact Sebastian
Junger has been making the rounds of many mainstream media venues whose bias
generally is to promote aggressive war rather than to advance the cause of
international peace through justice and truth. Hence the interview is more a symbol of how the content of
KPFK and the Pacifica Network are more and more in line with the content of the
mainstream media. This narrowing of content and perspective has serious
consequences for the health of the Body Politic. What is behind the trend
preventing the decision makers at Pacifica, National Public Radio and other so-called alternative venues from advancing a range
of perspectives that differ substantially from those available on for-profit media of communications?

An enormous part of the problem goes back to the failure of your broadcasting system and others of its ilk
to make available balanced and
open venues for the airing of contested interpretations concerning the
originating events of the so-called Global War on Terror. The Armed
Forces of
the United States and of my own country, Canada, are presently being
deployed
in Afghanistan based on an historical interpretation that is the
subject of
considerable academic and journalistic debate. Surely KPFK, Pacifica as
well as, for instance, NPR, The Nation, Z, Rabble, and The Guardian
should
be covering this debate in a fair, honest and symmetrical fashion.
Instead we see a growing pattern of systematic bias, censorship, black
listing and cover-up. Instead we see the likes of Ian Masters and Alan
Minsky betraying the requirements of sound journalism when they failed
to press on Junger and Hetherington the obvious questions
arising from the embedded journalists' propaganda promoting President Bush's,
and now President
Obama's
version of
the Global War on Terror. Such sabotaging of the media systems whose
role is supposed to be to create well informed electorates is not going
unnoticed.

Given the need of the Obama administration to court liberal engagement in its expansion of
aggressive
warfare in Eurasia, it is quite likely we can anticipate that Pacifica,
NPR and the like will more and more be enlisted in the cause of adding
to the theatrics we
already get from the likes of Fox, Rush Limbaugh and the info-entertainment cartels
that
have contaminated the airwaves with so much disinformation. It is hard
not to interpret such disinformation as elements of a unrelenting
agenda of psychological warfare that projects forward the national
security state's well documented media manipulations in the Cold War
into the era of the so-called Global War on Terror. Accordingly, I
believe my intervention
on this matter has broader implications throughout Pacifica Radio and
the
larger political economy of the media environment that creates the
context of the
Masters-Junger-Hetherington interview.

I address in more detail many of the issues I refer to in this letter in my own forthcoming book, Earth into Property: Colonization, Decolonization, and Capitalism. This 1000 page, peer-reviewed
academic text, published by McGill-Queen's University Press, will be available
in September. I request equal time to that extended to Junger and Hetherington
to bring to light some of the conclusions I draw from my academic investigation
of many topics, including some of those of obvious interest to Ian Masters and
Alan Minsky.

Yours Sincerely,

Anthony J. Hall

Professor of Globalization Studies

University of Lethbridge

Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada

(403) 328-6549