SYRIA: The Demonization of President Assad and US Hypocrisy

Stephen Gowans
The Regime that Isn’t
‘A substantial body of research conducted over many decades highlights the proximity between western news media and their respective governments, especially in the realm of foreign affairs,’ writes Piers Robinson, Chair in Politics, Society and Political Journalism at the University of Sheffield.
‘For reasons that include overreliance on government officials as news sources, economic constraints, the imperatives of big business and good old-fashioned patriotism, mainstream western media frequently fail to meet democratic expectations regarding independence.’
Robinson’s study of news coverage of the 2003 US-UK war on Arab nationalist Iraq found that mainstream media reinforced official views rather than challenged them. [1] One of the ways in which the mainstream media reinforce official views is by characterizing foreign governments which reject the United States’ self-proclaimed role as leader of the global order as violating Western democratic norms, regardless of whether they do or do not.

This post was published at 21st Century Wire on JANUARY 29, 2017.