John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN INTERVIEW BY CHRIS HEDGES IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“The View from Iran - Chris Hedges Talks to Iran's UN Ambassador
“Hedges is invaluable. Here he largely reproduces verbatim what Iranian officials are saying, which is almost completely barred from the main news media which only allows the Israeli view. A dangerous situation.”
https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/view-iran-chris-hedges-talks-irans-un-ambassador/ri23866
Good interview.
Readers and viewers in "the West" receive virtually no exposure to high-level spokespeople from countries like Iran.
You might think in theory since countries like Iran or Syria are so much in the news, there might be more effort to gain accurate information about them, and from good sources within the countries.
But of course, that is not how it works at all.
America's tightly-controlled press (not by the state directly but by a quite small number of owners loyal to the state's interests) and its political establishment do exactly the opposite. Iran and Syria are only in the news because they are targets, and you don’t have interviews with those you are targeting.
The American establishment wants you to hear about such places only from the outside, which is to say, only from the official American perspective.
If the average citizen were really thinking about these matters, they'd realize that just the fact alone of never hearing from anyone in a number of countries, countries often on the lips of politicians, says a very great deal about the press and its intentions.
There is never any real effort to inform people about international affairs in America, only to motivate them in supporting the official, established view, something which, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with informing people.
And I have to say, increasingly, this is so also for Canada and Western Europe which are under the American shadow as perhaps never before in my lifetime.
This just again points out the immense contemporary importance of Russian media.
Russian media have their own bias, of course, but it is not the bias of the one party trying to control the entire planet, and that fact alone is very important.
Chris Hedges is one of those rare Americans, combining intelligence being well-informed with dedication to getting at the truth. He has worked towards that for years. A very admirable journalist.
