If the base upon which an edifice is arranged is defective, then the edifice will topple when the base crumples. In the case of the violence raging in Syria, western governments inimical to the Syrian government have blamed the violence, through their monopoly media organs, on the Syrian government security apparatus using lethal force to put down unarmed domestic protestors. If this depiction is false, if it is disinformation, then the subsequent killing and the millions of refugees displaced by the violence is a monstrous crime — a crime for which western governments and their media bear criminal culpability.
Given the lethality of the crimes being perpetrated against Syria, it is a must that people of conscience scrutinize monopoly media skeptically (or better still abandon it. Other than being aware of the lies, why willingly subject oneself to disinformation?).
One must also be aware of imperialist reverberations within purportedly independent media. I wrote of one example of this recently concerning the “independent” Democracy Now!
There are plenty of people who do combat the disinformation and for no pecuniary profit. One of them is Robert Roth, a former assistant attorney-general for New York (1981-1991) and Oregon (1993-2007), who has prepared a booklet What’s really happening in Syria (available for download here) that debunks much of the western corporate/state media disinformation on Syria, beginning with Syrian president Bashar al Assad being…